The Four Great Aims of Life: KAMA
This session was where one found themselves completely in the threshold of war within the mind. Also included here is a practice for you to test on your own, and much more:
We’ve all been going through such heavy heavy times. It becomes very easy and understandable to feel stuck in the mud. To be filled up with despair, or depression, melancholy…that’s why its so important that we take care of ourselves.
Not in just how we nourish our bodies, but how we stay connected to our joy, to our creativity, to remember that it doesn’t help to stay stuck in the mud.
Us being depressed does not help anyone else’s circumstances.
When we can remember that life is interwoven with each other, and if I can bring up a little bit of happiness in me, then that also can be helpful to another.
If I can keep connected to my creativity, if I can make sure that I’m taking care of my joy, keeping joy as a priority…because joy is something necessary, joy is a feeling of Spirit.
Jai Dev Singh - Session Three - Kama / Desire
Welcome to the breakdown of the third session of the Four Purusarthas / Winter Solstice Kundalini Retreat.
This is Kama.
If you haven’t seen the prior two articles, Dharma and Artha, you may do so here:
At this point in the retreat, I was almost through that threshold of mental circus hell, but not quite — so I had no idea what was going on, nor did I know there was an end in sight. I had faith based on experience, but It’s hard to recall much memory when you are aspirating all things hidden in your subconscious.
If one buys the ticket, however, one must see the ride to completion. Otherwise, what is the point? So… let’s get into what this chapter is all about, as we draw even closer to Liberation, or Moksha, when that actually happened in real time.
In talking about desire, I felt lost. So much was brought up from my psyche that everything was static. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t see or hear Jai. Everything in me was fighting me from getting to… me.
I suddenly didn’t know what I wanted. It was like I had been pulled apart and even though I am a person who always has that north star, who always has the mission… I didn’t feel attached to any of it.
I think at one point I prayed and had some inner decision of “the next song I make will be my last, and if there’s any inkling of me missing it, I’ll stay with it, but if not, fuck it.” I was literally questioning music, the thing I choose to live for.
*Real time update: I didn’t even need to test it. Today, (days after this experience), I just finished recording a new song in my studio— the first one in a LONG time. Months.
I share that with you to tell you how lost one can feel when it’s time to focus — these mechanisms within us that rip us away from our true nature.. never underestimate how powerful they are. This is part of the conditioning / programming that separates us from truth, and when we discover how deeply rooted it is within us.. it’s war to pull them out.
In the last article when Jai was quoted in saying, if you wan’t to become truly happy, you better show up as a warrior — he was not playing around. It is a war. Just not in the sense most people think of as war. The screams are all in your head:
This was when I began to feel as though I was within my own personal wasteland.
I made a song called Wasteland in 2021 about the external wasteland (lockdowns, living in DTLA during 2020 and dealing with LAPD and people jumping off balconies and shit going insane from quarantine, seeing all kinds of SHTF scenarios, and the way people truly behave when they’re afraid en masse, covid and vax tyranny, yada yada) but now?
None of this shit was external. It was all within me. Internal wasteland. Fog. One must keep going, but DAMN.
Here’s what the external wasteland is like. Once you start doing Kundalini Yoga for a few years, well, I guess I’ll have to make a song about traveling the internal wasteland and coming through that as well. Here’s some musical / slightly comical relief for you before we dive deep into the teachings:
Suddenly, I heard something telling me I was right where I was supposed to be. It was Jai.
“Sometimes with these Kriyas, things can get very heavy. If thats the case, keep going, because the joy and the lightness on the other side of that heaviness is worth persevering for.
Thats whats nice about these retreats, but also difficult, you always get to a point where it’s like... uhg… the threshold. Stay the course. You come through that thing to the other side. Thats what we came here for.
It’s not just testing ourselves, its bringing things up to the surface that are operating all the time, they just operate outside of our conscious awareness.
Part of what kundalini yoga is doing is expanding awareness by opening the chakras and circulating the chi and the prana, and with that, that stuff can be purified, but it’s important to remember when we talk purification, what are we purifying?
We’re purifying the mind. Theres nothing unsure about us or who we are. The mind needs purification so we can actually experience who we are.
These things are actually some of the greatest joys of life, to get into the pleasures of dharma practice. Its not just all heavy and hard and muddy — thats part of it, to get to the medicine you have to swim through the mud, but that medicine is not a bitter medicine, that’s a sweet medicine that you get where you feel Love.
And you don’t need outer stimulus to feel love, to feel joy, to feel blissfulness— you can sit on your own in that, without needing something in our conditional world to happen.
On thresholds, transformation, and a little more on Tantra — I have to quote him because as I said, my mind was pure static at this time… I only have so much of my own words I can share, and I’m not sure how helpful they’ll be.
When things get to a perturbation point, theres always going to be a release. That release might come with tears, that release might come with laughter, it might come with any pronounced wave of emotion.
Like a vehicle, in order for anything to move, there has to be some sort of fuel that is there. And that fuel is going to have some sort of exhaust. Thats how transformation takes place.
That feeling of perturbation is the process of transformation happening. So when a human being releases its energy, it does so through emotion, energy in motion. So if there is that feeling of being very sad or heavy, we don’t push that away. It can happen for a moment, but know it, feel it. It’s just like you’re doing a deep clean of your home and you pull out stuff that you normally don’t see, and for a minute, it feels dirtier than when you started.
Now it’s more of a mess, if you just leave it like that. But if you can finish that job, now you don’t even wanna leave your home, because you made it feel so good. Creativity flows.
Clean your room. Open the things up. Bring the mind into its neutral force. Thats what Tantra is. We want it to be the sexy and it is, but it’s neutralization of the psyche, and that neutralization of the psyche opens things up into your intuitive awareness and your connectivity to the meaningfulness of your life.
You don’t have to go find Dharma. It’s already everything about every part of you. What we do need is to transport ourselves sometimes to the space to where we can experience it in that way, and thats why we go through the thresholds.
Jai Dev Singh, Life Force Academy
Alright, let’s move into Kama, Desire.
Sometimes we’re overwhelmed by desire. Sometimes we lack having any desire at all. But in between those two things, of dominating desire, and lackluster, theres the contained desire, where we’re very clear on our desire.
And we build a vessel, an instrument, a mind, a body, that can hold that desire and that can move in the direction of fulfilling it. And that type of courtship is pleasurable. Its empowering. Move into the desire Shakti, ambitious energy.
So yes, some may think when they hear DESIRE that it means something lustful or superficial. Not so much, not from the yogic perspective at least. Sure, that’s part of life, but as stated above, what we’re going for is contained desire — clarity, and there’s the intelligence again.. awareness.
The awareness of our true nature is what brings the clarity of all these things.
Then comes the process of having the “caliber” or “becoming a fit receptacle” which I believe was discussed in the Artha article — how sometimes, all the blessings and prosperity and wealth can come our way, but if we’re not right in our mind, body and spirit, we’ll burn it to the ground. Anyone else relate to ever doing that in their life? I think it’s commonly called self-sabotage.
These sessions are for paid subscribers only, but because of this one exercise he had us do, I’m going to make this post public so more people can see it and if they would like, test it on themselves.
The Great Wish
Do you have a great wish for yourself, for your life?
Tune into yourself. Don’t tell anyone what this wish is. It’s a secret.
Yet with it being a secret in your heart, it’s actually not a secret. It doesn’t need to be spoken to another, at least not right now… but by you tapping in with your own heart and drawing attention to this wish, you are communicating with the heart of the entire universe, and all things within it.
This is the Tantric influence that has been present throughout this whole process — the interwovenness of all things. Of course this is present in the other philosophies as well, and one can plain as day confirm it with quantum physics or just simply paying attention to life, and the things we call “synchronicities”.
Whatever your great wish is… establish it in your heart and mind. Carry it with you. Do whatever you do to solidify something, it can be through meditation, writing, art, whatever. We all have our own way of honoring and processing these things.
Sit for a minute or two in silence with your hands over your heart if it’s hard for you to come up with. Ask your heart what it wants. Ask your heart what it needs right now. You will receive an answer.
I know this sounds simple in theory, but theory and practice are completely different. The saying "faith without works is dead” sums that up perfectly. The way I’d say it is… theory doesn’t mean fuckall without putting it to the test. Without the experience. Without the practice.
Why stop at someone else’s dictated experience? Our society has become far too voyeuristic in this manner. Step into your own experience. No one has authority or influence over that. You are a sovereign being. You are free. Test it. See what happens.
I send my love to you.
Much of my writing for this session I will omit, as I am keeping that between me and me, however we will all still be communicating these heart desires in the cosmic ocean, just not through language. Not yet at least.
ORACLE CARDS that were drawn… LORD this was a really tough session so I know I drew more than one.
This could NOT have been a more perfect card to have drawn while feeling defeated during a kundalini yoga retreat. Why? Mai Bhago was a Sikh warrior, and is credited with having preserved that religion when persecution and death came its way. Kundalini Yoga has been an occult (hidden) practice for centuries until VERY recently. It is said that the Sikh warriors were to practice Kundalini Yoga, and then of course, Indian royalty would practice, but common people (so anyone who wasn’t royalty or served a specific purpose of protecting an entire culture) wasn’t allowed to learn it. So let’s get into this card:
Mai Bhago - The Warrior-Saint
Who She Is:
Mai Bhago represents the otherworldly courage and resourcefulness that comes with deep devotion and commitment. Mai Bhago was born in the 17th century in what is now Amritsar, Punjab, at the time of the 10th Guru, Guru Gobind Singh. She was raised a devout Sikh and was trained by her father to use a sword so that she could uphold the Sikh tenet to defend, but not attack.
When she was a young woman, her village was threatened by Mughal forces. She heard that the Khalsa, or the warrior-saints appointed by the guru to defend the Sikhs had defected and were fleeing back to their villages. Mai Bhago took her sword and went village to village convincing the warrior-saints to go back and protect the guru from the advancing Mughal army.
She gathered 40 men to fight with her. And on December 29, 1705, the small courageous band of Sikh warriors rushed out to protect the legacy of their religion in the battle of Muktsar with Mai Bhago as their leader. Mai was the only one to survive. Guru Gobind Singh blessed these 40 men and declared them Chali Mukte, the 40 liberated ones. Mai became the guru’s personal bodyguard and dressed in men’s attire until she retired and spent her last years immersed in meditation.
Mai Bhago is considered a great Sikh warrior-saint. The house where she spent her last years in meditation has been converted into a gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship. Her sword and musket are on display as saint relics and as symbols of fierce courage Mai displayed out of her devotion to the guru. She saved the Sikh religion from extinction.
When your soul selects her card:
Devotion grounds us and allows us to see just how many resources are available to us. And devotion elevates our perception so that the spiritual realm can infuse us with light, strength and energy that is greater than our own. Devotion is the action we feel compelled to take that demonstrates our commitment to love.
The power of Mai Bhago’s devotion kept the Sikh religion alive. The task seemed impossible: 40 Sikhs against a whole Mughal army. But what has never happened before becomes possible through true devotion and the force of pure love.
Mai is the warrior-saint who reminds us to become fully devoted to what we love. Then, courage isn’t an effort. It isn’t something we have to cultivate. Courage is what commitment to love bestows us.
Devote yourself fully to what’s at hand, to what is in your heart, and the strength, the support, and the courage to complete the task will rise to meet you.
-Card is from the Divine Feminine Oracle Deck by Meggan Watterson, who also wrote the above description and soul selection breakdown on Mai Bhago.
Okay friends, this is a shorter one, check the prior two if you want to brush up, otherwise… we have one more left, and that happens to be the one where some serious shit went down that I haven’t been able to articulate yet… so sharing it here will be the first time I attempt to do so. Love to you all.
I'm currently in the process of a purge, it's time to let go of those things I no longer need. This is external, deep housework, I need an organised environment before I feel comfortable about working on the internal. I'm also trying to be more 'analogue' about stuff as opposed to 'digital', as you've said we cannot rely on binary code if things get restricted and access limited.
Another very helpful post, there's always an underlying positivity with your work, absolutely essential at the moment.
Our hearts communicating with the heart of the Universe...that is beautiful. It's so easy to forget our interconnectedness. It seems so simple, but it is also huge, yet all the while it's just who and what we are. And I do think we all have such a wish. I thought mine was one thing until I sat with it a moment and realized it was something much more fundamental, and it truly is something that starts with me. Can't wait to read the last one!