The surprising ways Ashrams actually produce growth

I've been living in the Ashram for three months now, dedicating much of my time to the prescribed spiritual practices like meditation, Hatha Yoga, Chanting, Karma yoga, etc. These practices have been truly wonderful—my body has undergone significant positive changes, my mind feels different, and while there’s still plenty of mental clutter, I’ve had many moments of genuine stillness which has been profound to experience. Surprisingly, however, I'm starting to realise that the other 'non-practice' facets of living in the Ashram, are what actually creates the most potential for growth. These facets are both the constant demand of the structure and routine, and how it forces individuals to be in constant contact with each other.

The Ashram really is a highly spiritual, generous, giving, peaceful or harmonious place. The classes are wonderful, and rightly, it attracts people who wish to deepen their sense of spirituality, the connection to the prescribed practices or different parts of themselves and tune out from the distractions of the material world. The Ashram is also highly demanding environment though, and as one spends longer there, it naturally produces uncomfortable feelings & states of mind. It also gently but surely, provokes the full spectrum of interpersonal dynamics amongst its long-term residents: relationships form, abruptly end, or fade away, envy develops, stories are shared and fabricated, conflicts occur within groups, out-casting happens, leaders emerge, resentment festers, and so on. In short, all the normal individual and group behaviours we see in the social world, are also present in the Ashram, if not more!!

Before arriving, I naively believed that the negativity I encountered in the real world wouldn't exist in the Ashram. I imagined it to be a perfect place. So, when I started noticing the subtle yet powerful dynamics at play, I was caught off guard. My mind spiraled into disapproving and frustrated thoughts that feel a bit embarrassing to admit: "Isn't this an Ashram? Shouldn't it be totally peaceful?" and "Wow, I guess it's all just a waste of time, like everything else." After much reflection and reading, I realised that the challenges and tests people face in the Ashram are exactly what make it so effective. The Ashram is designed to bring out and confront the darker and weaker parts of ourselves, helping us rise above them. 

Swami Satyananda, who dedicated his life to teaching in Ashrams, understood that they could be challenging environments for people, but he believed this difficulty was essential for change. In the quotes below, he highlights the importance of facing suppressed and negative emotions and rising above them. He also stresses that unpleasant circumstances are crucial for awakening hidden aspects of the psyche and starting the transformation process.

“All the emotions which have been avoided and suppressed need to come out. The karma which was holding up one's evolution will have to be worked out. The inherent desires and ambitions have to be exhausted and expressed, otherwise they merely remain in a dormant state in the mind as barriers between one's present state of existence and the absolute experience.” —  Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Sadhana: The Path of Transformation

  “Samskaras of the past have to be burned; disease, discomfort, disturbance, insult, unpleasant situations all help to purge foreign matter from the soul. This is the meaning of purification.” — Swami Satyananda Saraswati, Sadhana: The Path of Transformation

What is the spiritual path? 

The spiritual path is a personal journey toward spiritual ideals. There are numerous accessible spiritual texts and practices designed to guide individuals along the way. Stories of Gurus or Swamis who have undergone profound transformation are abundant. Studying their lives, following their teachings, or simply being in their presence can inspire progress. From various sources, I’ve gathered key principles and values that appear to define a deeply spiritual or evolved person. While enlightenment is unique to each individual, these qualities, in my view, are universal to all seekers. 

-  Remain equanimous in all situations 

- Authentically feel and express universal love to all beings 

- To be free from attachment to material possessions or sense of personal identity 

- To fully live in the present moment 

- To live a life of selfless action 

- Feel a radiant inner peace and as such are unshaken by chaos or conflict around them 

- To have resolved inner turmoil and conflicts 

 

The Ashram shows you where you stand

Early on in my Ashram experience, despite fully engaging with the practices, my flaws compared to the spiritual ideal became glaringly obvious. While this was quite uncomfortable at the time, I now see it as a unique and precious gift. In the outside world, even though I knew I was far from enlightened, I had enough escape mechanisms and coping strategies to keep the truth buried. Whenever something uncomfortable surfaced, I could just distract myself with activities that made me feel good, skillfully avoiding any harsh self-confrontation. It seems almost normal in our culture for people to drift through life without facing such truths. Anyway, here are a few examples of situations that brought out some unpleasant truths about myself: 

-  I recall the anxiety I felt around my first solo breakfast shift and how disappointed I felt when not everyone in the Ashram loved the unique ingredients I selected 

- My shyness meant I struggled to stick up for myself with others who were constantly critiquing my cleaning 

- I struggled to balance my social needs with the needs to grow intellectually 

- Resentment festered towards others who were making for friends

- Resentment grew towards people who I didn't see as taking spirituality seriously 

- I felt parts of me enjoy seeing certain people being excluded

- An inability to focus on basic tasks, especially when I sensed conflict or unease around someone

- A lack of courage around having difficult conversations and expressing what I needed to others

As uncomfortable as these experiences were, they were the moments that revealed the most and led to significant growth. As I was practicing mediation and yoga so frequently, I came to be far better at observing and distancing myself from my inner reactions. Somehow, I was able to compare myself to my spiritual ideal, and then my personality commenced evolving. For example, I overcame my shyness to stand up for myself and my boundaries, developed tolerance & acceptance towards behaviours & people I disliked, learned to balance and manage inner conflicts, cultivated the discipline needed to focus, identified unhelpful thought patterns rooted in habit rather than reality, and retrained those patterns to be more positive and life-affirming.

I hope readers can grasp the points I've aimed to share through my honest example in this blog. Life in the Ashram, with its relationships and the stress they bring, makes it impossible to ignore the negative aspects of oneself as they naturally and frequently arise. Yet, being in the Ashram, blending these challenges with spiritual practices, nurtures the process of transcending these parts of oneself.

What I hoped from the Ashram was an environment of peace and harmony, where I could easily commit myself to spiritual practices. In the end, my experience was quite different, which I am truly grateful for. 

 

A New Chapter

I gave my mother a call this morning as I was sitting in the town's trendy health foods cafe. We had a lovely catch up as we always do. She's had surgery recently on her foot where she developed some kind of debilitating arthritis condition. But her recovery time requires her to be immobile for 3 months or so, making her engagement with the world around her fairly limited. I've been away for a long time too, its coming up to four months since I've been living in an Ashram. My stay there means my contact with the outside world is also fairly limited and so for each of us the regular catch up had more rigour than normal. 

We discussed the normal kinds of things like how certain family members are going, how are we progressing with our immediate goals and the evolving ideas around our potential futures, perceptions around the nature of the outer world around us. I told her specifically, that I had decided to sit myself down in the local cafe this morning to just, write. I said that I hadn't really written seriously for a long time, but that in this moment I'd recognised my experience of the Ashram had forced me to. 

In the Ahram there is always so much happening both between people in the living arrangement, and internally for any spiritual aspirant. I had committed myself to the practices as thoroughly as I could have, and learnt as much as I could about the tradition I was now immersed in. In recent weeks though, my reading dropped off, admittedly, partly due to finding a chapter from the Upanishads that really required a lot of digesting. Also, my focus on the practices themselves had dropped off somewhat too. When this happens, a genuine seeker has to ask themselves why. Am I losing faith in this process, this tradition? Are there other desires arising in me that are causing me to deviate from my intention? Are any of the desires healthy...?

As the tradition, and well a lot of Eastern spiritual thought will tell you, the answer to these questions arises when one creates space within oneself. This occurred for me quite successfully four days ago on Sunday afternoon when I decided to use my limited time off to go for a bush stroll in the neighbouring forest. As I tried to observe every thought, and sensation as I traversed the incredibly natural and bushy realm, it occurred to me in a flash of insight, that was far more illuminous than the typical kind of activity that seeks to distract the soul from itself. 

The insight arrived in a series of questions to myself: Maybe you're full? Maybe you've absorbed too much? Maybe there's simply not enough room inside to put it in? Then I started to answer these questions with more questions, however, I could tell these were now answers because of their positive tone which reflected excitement and relief: Maybe, just maybe, it's time to write again!!?? Maybe you've reached that point!!?? Maybe what you feared was a dwindling of commitment, was in fact, the opposite - an inner requirement to spiel, describe, articulate, share!!

Of course, this was where I was at. I mean if I was to just step back from myself for just a bit, the amount of experience and ideas that have been trailing through my mind recently is so large that I wouldn't be able to actually discern it all properly. This is perhaps the point of it all, that there was too mush going on internally, and so it was time to document. 

In response to this story, Mum suggested I start up a blog, because she knew how much I had written in the past and she knew that I loved delving deeply into ideas and to make sense of experience, but that I should I find a way to communicate these with the world, rather in relative solitude or isolated conversations. 

Immediately, following that conversation I looked up how to start a blog and for no reason in particular chose Blogger over WordPress. When I signed in through Gmail, I found a bunch of blogs that apparently, I'd already written from 2013. Blogs that were fairly interesting, deep and compelling to my reading eyes. It turns out that I had actually started this project about 12 years ago, which stopped abruptly enough for to me completely forget about it.

I don't really know why this first attempt at blogging stopped so definitively. But I do know now that any commitment or resolve that I'm making right now is far stronger than what would have been those years ago. 

I won't dish out those reasons right now, but I will disclose my resolve. This will be to regularly (at least once per fortnight), post to this blog. At this stage I'm not exactly sure what the posts will be about, or even why I'm posting aside from an obvious need to communicate my experience. Some of the posts will be direct reflections from my experience, some may be educational around topics that have recently fascinated me, they might be the lyrics to songs or the songs themselves. I'm sure as time progress a style and intent for the posts will refine and crystalise into something more particular. As for now, it will stand as it is, quite loose. 

What I can say assuredly, however, is that I am committed to a spiritual path. This is my direction I've chosen as an individual which will surely take me down and through many different types of experience. Thos blog, is ultimately a reflection of that journey