SIXTEEN
Write Your Story with Love and Compassion
–1–
I stood barefoot on the red-ochre granite steps of Vishram Ghat in Mathura, which descended into the flowing waters of the River Yamuna. The wet steps glistened like glazed pottery, as the rising sun pierced through the morning fog.
In the dark night of the soul, our life story is shattered. This opens an opportunity to rewrite our story, this time consciously, using the highest design principle: love and compassion. What if we could make our entire life an expression of love and service? What if we could write our story out of sacred love, rather than out of fear, ego, neediness and attachment?
Writing our story with love is an art; and like the mastery of any art, it requires practice. It requires an understanding of the ancient technique of creating an infallible intent, called a sankalpa, as well as of how to nourish and protect sacred love. I learned this in India one autumn day.
Amid several thousand pilgrims, I stood at Vishram Ghat with my teacher. It was the first day of a one-month pilgrimage. We had come to this sacred place to perform a sankalpa. The Sanskrit sankalpa means “definite intention”, “resolve” or “vow”. It’s a powerful technique in yoga.
Krishna explains to Arjuna that those with resolve have their intelligence fixed on one point, while the intelligence of those without resolve has many branches and diversifies without limit.47 Krishna is speaking here about the importance of sankalpa, the ancient practice of fixing one’s resolve.
A sankalpa takes our deepest desire and manifests it in the world. It gives it a form. What that form looks like depends upon the command given to the mental force by the one making the sankalpa.
A sankalpa isn’t the simple idea that I make a wish and then do a little spiritual practice to bring it about. When performed correctly, a sankalpa is more potent than matter. It allows us to achieve the impossible. It has the power to reshape our destiny.
Our sankalpa becomes our inspiration, illuminating our entire being and stirring our soul into activity. It’s best not to waste the power of a sankalpa on anything trifling or trivial. The Bhagavad Gita advises us not to settle for a sankalpa that relates to our small human stories.
Even the removal of unhelpful habits in our life is not weighty enough to be our sankalpa. While essential, it isn’t the purpose of our life. When we choose our sankalpa and it lights up our soul, our unhelpful habits will fall away automatically.
Krishna tells Arjuna that one whose sankalpa is free from selfish desire, and whose actions are thereby purified by the fire of knowledge, is truly learned.48 When a person lets go of all selfish sankalpas, she is advanced in yoga.49
The dark night of the soul is a perfect opportunity to find our sankalpa, our true north on this journey through life. A sankalpa is formed of the deepest desire fuelling our practice. Even Krishna, the Lord of Yoga, has a sankalpa.
Arjuna’s problem at Kurukshetra is that he stands to fight without a sankalpa. If you remember, he no longer knows where he’s going, and in his crisis on the battlefield, he finds himself lost and without strength or direction.
If we don’t have a sankalpa, then when life presents challenges and difficulties we’ll simply want to run away, like Arjuna. Krishna helps him find his sankalpa at the level of the soul, and in doing so, speaks the Bhagavad Gita for generations to follow. The Gita guides the reader to the deepest fulfilment of one’s soul purpose.
No one can select our sankalpa for us. Only we can do that. And once we’ve decided upon our sankalpa, it shouldn’t be changed until it becomes a reality in our life.
Importantly, only one sankalpa is to lead the way at any one time, so don’t accept a new sankalpa until the previous sankalpa has been fulfilled.
There are four steps to the process of sankalpa: receive, articulate, resolve and remember.
Step One: Receive
A sankalpa is not constructed by the mind. It’s revealed in our heart, from the depths of the soul.
The first step is therefore a process of receiving. Krishna, the Universal Teacher, gifts our sankalpa to us, and we receive it. We can ask Krishna to reveal our sankalpa to us so that it comes into our awareness in a clear, precise, unmistakable way.
Our sankalpa will most easily enter a heart that has let go of the worldly story we live and that has taken refuge in Krishna.
Take your time to discover your sankalpa. Don’t select a sankalpa that doesn’t spring from the deepest yearning of the soul. Don’t pick a sankalpa on the basis of popular opinion either. Tell yourself, “I’ll find my sankalpa.” It can take a full year to discover it, so don’t rush.
When your sankalpa is revealed to you, accept it with humility and reverence. This is an important part of receiving it. A sankalpa is worthy of worship, because it’s the yearning of the soul.
The nature of the soul is to offer love. A sankalpa that is truly an expression of the soul will be connected in some way to an offering of love, or to the soul’s journey towards sacred love.
Our sankalpa will be revealed more easily and distinctly when we have a clarity through yoga practice or through illuminating company. Like a clear diamond or crystal, consciousness reflects the qualities of its surroundings. Therefore, it’s easiest to receive our sankalpa when we’re in the company of a teacher or someone who inspires the best in us and whose heart is filled with sacred love.
When we first come to understand our sankalpa, it may fill us with surprise, maybe even fear, initially. This is because our sankalpa may ask of us something that seems difficult, even impossible. But know that within every sankalpa lies the full potential of its fulfilment, just as a little acorn contains the invisible compressed potential of an entire oak tree.
Step Two: Articulate
The second step is to articulate our sankalpa clearly and precisely in words. Our sankalpa cannot be vague, confused or ill-defined. We won’t have truly understood our sankalpa until we can articulate it clearly.
Find the shortest, clearest, most concise and positive way to express your sankalpa, beginning with “I will…”. Try to use five or six words, or even less. There is no need for several paragraphs; keep it simple, clear and filled with the essence of your truth.
Words are very powerful. They have immense creative potency. Therefore select your words carefully. The closer you are to your true sankalpa, the louder the statement will speak to you, generating energy in your heart.
A sankalpa is not to be revealed to anyone. This helps retain its potency. When we keep something a secret, it grows in intensity and power. My teacher once counselled me, “Keep your sankalpa concealed from the world like fragrant camphor sealed in a container. If you keep opening the lid, the camphor will evaporate and disappear. In the same way, if you share your sankalpa with others, it will quickly evaporate.”
Krishna himself has a sankalpa, and this is his most closely guarded secret—a truth he doesn’t disclose, not even to Arjuna.
Step Three: Resolve
Discovering your sankalpa isn’t enough. To harness its true potential, you’ll need to fully own your sankalpa, embracing it wholeheartedly.
In this step we transform our deep desire into an intent, which we then release into the world. We’re sparks of consciousness, fragments of divine energy, caught up in this illusory world. Our own power is tiny and belongs to Krishna, the source of all potency. Our ability to act with any potency, therefore, is intrinsically connected to the Soul of all souls. In recognizing this, the release of our sankalpa takes the form of a prayer.
The strength of our resolve is likely to wane over time. But Krishna is known as amogha-sankalpa, one whose resolve is infallible.50 By connecting with the divine, our sankalpa can become unfailing too. It can become our means to overcome any obstacle on our spiritual path.
One way to sanctify or consecrate this third step is with a sacred ritual, such as offering a lamp or a candle. The flame represents our sankalpa, which we offer to the Soul of the Universe.
When ritualizing a sankalpa at Vishram Ghat in Mathura, we would take water from the Yamuna in the palms of our hands and offer it back to the sacred river. This symbolizes that we’ve received the gift of our sankalpa and are offering it back to Krishna with humility and love. Accepting the precious gift of our sankalpa from the Divine within us, and then offering that sankalpa in the service of the Divine, we approach our sankalpa in the most powerful way: as an expression of loving service.
Offering fragrant flowers can be a part of the sankalpa ritual too, as well as the repetition of mantras, or sacred syllables. Choose an offering, prayer or ritual that has special meaning to you. You can visit a sacred place to make your sankalpa, or you can travel there with your mind and heart, consecrating your intention from there.
When performing this third step of birthing your sankalpa, it’s most important to connect with the emotions behind your sankalpa, feeling the “fire” of your sankalpa in the depths of your being.
Step Four: Remember
By giving us a clear, focused direction, our sankalpa will help us in our daily decision-making. We can ask ourselves whether something moves us closer or further away from the fulfilment of our sankalpa. Listening to our heart will reveal what next steps we should take in the service of our sankalpa.
To allow our sankalpa to guide us, we’ll need to remember it, keeping it alive within our heart. One way to remember our sankalpa is by repeating it to ourselves with love and attention, making it a daily meditation. This reaffirms and intensifies it.
We can meditate on our sankalpa at any time during the day or night. It’s especially helpful to remember our sankalpa at times when we’re most receptive to it. I make it my first thought upon waking and my last thought before sleep overtakes me. Other helpful times include the beginning and end of our yoga practice; the beginning and end of meditation; before and after meals; in our dreams; upon visiting or worshipping at any shrine or temple; before making any important decision or beginning any important task; and upon completing a difficult task.
When repeating a sankalpa, it’s important to do so with the heart. It should be as if all our mental and emotional energy, all our faith, all our devotion and dedication are being concentrated into the form of our sankalpa.
It may help to visualize the fulfilment of your sankalpa—what does such a state look or feel like? Maintain a positive attitude towards your chosen sankalpa, and move forward without a hint of doubt or self-questioning.
There may be times when there will seem to be a huge gap between our sankalpa and its fulfilment. At such times, it helps to repeat the sankalpa as a prayer in a heartfelt way, with tears in our eyes, for tears are the highest form of prayer.
At the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna is lost and confused. But by the end of Krishna’s yoga teachings, Arjuna has found his sankalpa and is now willing to face the battlefield. As he declares, his confusion has vanished, and he’s ready to engage with life, this time with awareness of his true identity beyond the play of form of this world.
“My confusion is destroyed, and by your grace I have regained memory, O Infallible One. I’m firmly resolved, with doubts dispelled, and I’m ready to act according to your words,” Arjuna affirms.51 These are his final words in the Gita.
What kind of sankalpa has Arjuna made? His confusion destroyed and his memory regained, we can know that his sankalpa doesn’t concern the illusory ego and its narratives. When we’re free from our stories, we discover our true sankalpa, or soul purpose; and with a fixed sankalpa, all our doubts are dissolved. We’re then ready to act on the field of life with unearthly potency, even in the face of the greatest adversity.
Arjuna acknowledges here that this has occurred by the grace of Krishna, the Universal Teacher. “By your grace,” he says to Krishna. Discovering our sankalpa is the result primarily of grace.
The function of a sankalpa is to obtain infallible resolve—where our intent becomes more powerful than the universe itself. With such one-pointed resolve held in our hearts, feelings of confusion and being stuck vanish. Our sankalpa gives us one-pointed focus, shedding the weight of extraneous efforts, distractions, negativity and unhelpful chatter of the mind, and in the absence of doubt, even the greatest challenges we face begin to shrink.
Usually, our problems take immense significance in our mind. But they’re “right-sized” by our sankalpa. Like a lamp, our sankalpa dissolves the fearful darkness and illuminates our path. It’s not that we no longer experience any difficulties. Rather, those challenges become less significant, and our sankalpa gives us the strength we need to overcome them.
Arjuna doesn’t openly state what his sankalpa is, as a sankalpa is to be kept secret. But there are clues. Krishna has just revealed to Arjuna the teachings of Bhakti-yoga, his “most secret of all secrets”, and Arjuna now states, “I’m ready to act according to your words.”
We know, therefore, that Arjuna’s sankalpa is about making his life an offering of love. The warrior is now ready to engage with life, no longer as an expression of false ego, but of sacred love. In redirecting our energy, a sankalpa is the best way to rewrite our story. If our sankalpa is an expression of sacred love, then we can rewrite our entire story out of sacred love.
In dismantling our previous conceptions of self, the dark night of the soul offers an opportunity to receive our true purpose, our sankalpa. To find our sankalpa is one of the most valuable gifts of the dark night of the soul.
–2–
Without food, all life dries up, extinguishes and dies. Likewise, if we don’t know how to nourish and feed our love, it will wither and die.
So what food does love need? I asked this question to my teacher.
“To love means to serve,” my teacher replied. “Love grows through attentive, loving service, as well as through humility. This is its food.”
Love isn’t simply a feeling. The real nature of love is sacrifice for the object of love, my teacher explained. Therefore, love is expressed and nourished by loving service, which opens our heart and increases our capacity to love.
We’re all servants already. Mostly, we spend our time serving our uncontrolled mind, with whom we identify and to whom we have handed the reins of our chariot on the field of life. If we direct our capacity to serve to the Soul of the Universe, seated within our own heart, then we nurture a love that extends towards all beings.
It’s better to be a servant of love than a master of self-interest. Exactly the same activity, such as writing this book, can be an expression of loving service or an expression of ego. The same activity can take us forward on our yoga path, or backwards.
Importantly, loving service is a way to create our life where we’re not obsessively putting ourselves in the centre, an especially fruitful challenge during times of personal crisis. By focusing on serving, we move away from the small human story we’re trapped in that causes us so much suffering.
When we give selflessly of ourselves and cast aside all measure of gain, we gain beyond all measure. Indeed, true love doesn’t serve any purpose except itself. As my teacher explained:
Love has nothing to take but everything to give. … We want to be completely selfless in our dealings, and for this we have the example of the tree, which gives its bark, roots, fruits, leaves, wood and shade. The tree offers everything to others with no expectation of remuneration. Why can’t we human beings be so selfless?52
We can make everything we do an expression of love and affection. This is known as “continuous practice”. Rather than being something we reserve for the yoga mat only, yoga now becomes our life practice.
One of the most surprising questions Arjuna asks Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is, “What is knowledge?”53 Arjuna has a sense that real knowledge is not about storing ideas and information in our mind. After all, Arjuna has learned so much from wise elders and sages; but on the battlefield of Kurukshetra he finds himself utterly lost and confused. So, what does it mean to know?
In reply, Krishna gives Arjuna an incredibly beautiful list of divine qualities: “Humility, absence of deceit, non-violence, tolerance, simplicity…” This, Krishna declares, is knowledge; all else is the absence of knowledge.54
All else is the absence of knowledge. If the information we hold doesn’t create transformation within, if it doesn’t elevate us, it’s simply another manifestation of folly, or the absence of knowledge.
The first quality Krishna places in his list is humility. We can know so much, but if we don’t have humility, Krishna is saying, we’ve not learned anything at all.
Yoga begins with humility. When the heart is filled with pride, with a mood of superiority, we’re unable to serve anyone except ourselves. Humility is therefore the highest wisdom.
When a tree is heavy with ripened fruit, when it has something to offer the world, its branches bow down to the earth. Clouds hang low when filled with fresh rain. Ears of rice bend to the ground as they ripen.
The word “humility” comes from the Latin humus, meaning “ground”. When we understand humility, we conquer the false ego.
Sacred love grows on the soil of humility. Without humility, sacred love can’t manifest in the heart, just as a plant can’t grow without nutrient-rich soil.
Humility is freedom from the false identity of our story. If our humility is natural and genuine, then we’ll begin to see ourselves as servants. When we see ourselves as the smallest of the small, we can make room for the whole world.
My teacher explained once, “When even a little Bhakti has entered someone’s heart, then humility will certainly be there. Where there is no humility, we can understand that there is no Bhakti.”55
The highest humility, my teacher continued, is found in Shri Radha, the Goddess of Sacred Love: “She is the pinnacle of humility. In whomever she detects even a trace of Bhakti, she considers that person worthy of her reverence. She offers prayers to that person, thinking, ‘I should try to become like them.’”56
But in fact, it’s her mood of humility and her endless compassion that we should hope to embody. As the source of all loving service, we can look up to her in our own practice.
We can envisage each day as being a beautiful, fragrant flower that we offer to Shri Radha, the Goddess of Sacred Love. In our morning meditation, before beginning our day, we can place that flower at her feet: “Today, I offer this day to you, Shri Radha. Please guide me so that I can be an instrument in your service.”
At the end of a day of service, as we go to sleep, we’ll long for the next day to arrive, so we can offer an even more beautiful flower to the Goddess of Sacred Love.
–3–
To write my story out of love and compassion, I would need to understand not only what feeds love, but also what harms love.
While there are so many things that obstruct love, they have one thing in common: they’re all expressions of disrespect.
The Sanskrit word for disrespect is aparadha, which means, “without Radha”.57 In other words, disrespect is that which causes Shri Radha, the Goddess of Love, to leave that place. Love can’t bear to remain where there is any form of disrespect.
So how do we respect others? We can begin by learning to look at others at the level of the soul, beyond the stories we live out.
When we define others through the lens of our little stories, we engage in a form of disrespect. We fail to truly see the other person before us.
The stories we manufacture and live out in our life are self-serving: they’re designed to put us at the centre. Our imaginary self, the lead character in our story, then begins to take on immense significance. We look at others through our own small narrative and try to co-opt them into our own service. We determine our friends and enemies by their relationship to our ego.
This is the basis of the entire conflict at Kurukshetra. At the beginning of the Bhagavad Gita, the blind emperor Dhritarashtra is caught up in this paradigm of “I” and “mine”.
Krishna’s first teaching to Arjuna is therefore about the soul. By the end of the Gita, as students of yoga, we’ll hopefully have loosened the grip of Dhritarashtra’s paradigm of fear, ego and illusion, moving our vision beyond that, to see all beings at the level of the soul. We’ll hopefully enter a space of self-reflection before setting people apart as enemy or friend.58 This opens the door to love and affection for all beings, not simply those who support our flawed human narrative.
Ultimately, we alone are our own best friend or worst enemy, not anyone else, as Krishna explains: “Indeed, the self alone is the self’s friend, and the self alone is the self’s enemy.”59 Understanding this is the first step to being able to respect all beings, and to loving them.
The best possible time to develop this vision is in the dark night of the soul. With our story torn apart forcefully, against our will, we can practise relating to others from a higher perspective.
One of the secrets to cultivating kindness and respect in our life is to start by being kinder and more compassionate to ourselves. We can do this by treating our own story less seriously and seeing the beautiful foolishness of our own life. If we’re continually judging and punishing ourselves through the lens of our illusory ego, how can we expect not to judge and punish others through that lens also?
By releasing the grip our story has over us and becoming aware of our existence as a soul alongside all others, we learn self-kindness and are able to see and honour others. Self-kindness fosters kindness to others. Non-violence therefore begins at home, with ourselves. That’s why the Mahabharata, the larger epic in which the Gita is situated, affirms, “Non-violence is the best of friends.”60
–4–
What is Krishna’s most closely guarded secret?61 What is his sankalpa?
I was so eager to know, and it took me many years to discover. Every autumn, the monks from the monastery with whom I had lived for nearly ten years go on a barefoot pilgrimage throughout Braj, and while in India, I always joined them.
Braj, the sacred land of Krishna, encompasses forty-eight forests, with countless lakes and smaller ponds. I’m always drawn to its many secret places, such as “The Lake of Sacred Tears”, “The Forest of Loving Desire” and “The Pond of the Goddess of Love”.62
Like many regions of India, Braj has in recent years suffered deforestation and over-development. But it remains a timeless place of pilgrimage. A sacred land, Braj is compared to a lotus flower situated above the turbulent waters of the phenomenal world. For the spiritual aspirant and the mystic, Braj represents a doorway to the highest level of transcendence, a land composed of sacred love.
In one ancient text it’s said that the trees in Braj are wish-fulfilling trees and the land is made of wish-fulfilling gems, the water is nectar, all speech is song, all movement is dance, and the flute is the dearest friend.63 That Braj is the goal of the pilgrims’ wanderings. We can enter this enchanted land with the help of a sadhu, or spiritual guide, and with a mood of loving service.
It was Kartika, the month of Shri Radha, the Goddess of Sacred Love. We made our way to Shri Radha-kunda, her divine pond. The waters of this pond are said to be non-different from Shri Radha herself. One who bathes in them with an open heart develops unconditional love.64
Shri Radha is the supreme goddess. She is Krishna’s eternal paramour, and he is completely controlled by her selfless love.65 The highest love is found in her. All of Krishna’s power, all his happiness, all his handsomeness and sweetness, all his expertise and other virtues are under the dominion of Shri Radha.66 Therefore, in my lineage we worship Shri Radha above Krishna. Our life is dedicated to her.
Krishna is the root of all happiness, yet he continues to exist only because of Shri Radha’s beauty and excellences. Overcome by her grace and his love for her, he dances in madness and declares with pride that it is she who teaches him to dance.67
Within their forests, whatever meets with Shri Radha and Krishna changes its nature. Fire becomes cold, and fresh water feels hot. Transfixed by their beauty, animate beings appear inanimate. The splendour of Shri Radha and Krishna puts brilliant objects in the shadow, while non-luminous articles become radiant. The Yamuna River flows upstream and the rocks melt.
While some in the Bhakti tradition worship Shri Radha to attain the favour of Krishna, we worship Krishna to attain the favour of Shri Radha. She is our main object of worship, and our relationship with Krishna is through her.68 As my teacher used to say, “If anyone asks me who is Krishna, I will only say that he is the life and soul of my master, Shri Radha.”69
Shri Radha’s fair complexion is said to resemble saffron that has been ground upon a slab of pure gold. Her dress is the colour of the rising sun. The shining brilliance of her face defeats the effulgence of millions of autumnal full moons.70 The flower garlands she dons on all parts of her body are none other than her excellent qualities. The dot that dazzles on her fair forehead is made of good fortune, and her heart overflows with the most astonishing transformations of sacred love. She enchants Krishna completely. My teacher explained that day, that Krishna himself worships Shri Radha. She is the Soul of his soul, superior to him in every way.
When Krishna is speaking the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna, he’s doing so as part of his own practice of loving service to Shri Radha. Krishna also has a fixed sankalpa, which he keeps a closely guarded secret, and that is to serve Shri Radha. The deeper teaching is that even the Soul of the Universe is controlled by sacred love.
How wonderful that Krishna, the Lord of Yoga and the Soul of the Universe, is bound by sacred love. He too has a story; not a small ego-centric story filled with anguish and false perceptions, but an eternal, spiritual love story beyond the play of form of this fleeting world.
Divinity is neither male nor female—but always both. To play a small part in their divine love story is the highest attainment in yoga.71
Shri Radha is the greatest yogini. The aim in my lineage is to gain her blessings, by which she manifests sacred love within our hearts. That sacred love is non-different from her own essence and being. Dedicating our life to Shri Radha’s service is the key to writing our story out of love and compassion.
This is Krishna’s most confidential yoga teaching of all, the bright illumination of the dark night of the soul, the most sublime rerouting of our despair. This is the secret he most wants to tell.
