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The Kirtan Awakening

SOWING SEEDS OF LOVING SERVICE.

By Alison McEvoy

Krishna Das, devotee of the North Indian Saint, Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), is best known for his devotional singing and chanting in call and response style – known as the practice of Kirtan.

I first encountered Kirtan during my yoga teacher training course in an Ashram up in the Welsh Hills, in 2010. I
initially wondered what we were doing, how it related to the ‘yoga’ I’d experienced in parish halls and yoga studios in
Dublin. However, those wonderings fell away when I found myself drawn into an inner presence with myself by the sound vibrating within me.

THE TRADITION OF KIRTAN

Kirtan has been practised in India for thousands of years. It is tried and trusted, loved and revered as a practice of Bhakti Yoga – a yoga of awakening the loving devotion of the heart.

“When I’m chanting, the only thing I do is sing. I pay attention to the sound… anything that comes into my mind I
don’t focus on it, I just let it go and keep coming back to the sound of the music… the mantra. I move deeply into the loving presence that’s like our true nature… If I don’t sing, I sink. So, I keep singing.”

FINDING YOUR WAY TO ‘OKAY’

Krishna Das is refreshing in the way he speaks of what Kirtan does for him as a human being. Rather than transcending being human, ‘going beyond’ the mundane, or reaching a blissed-out state of being, he describes Kirtan as restoring him to a ground of being where he feels secure and grounded.

“When I’m chanting…becoming more aware of those feelings [loving presence], you get in touch with a basic
okayness in yourself, regardless of what is going on ‘out there’, which is a big thing… We’ve lost touch with this basic feeling that ‘inside I’m okay’…it’s covered up by our stuff, our anxiety, fear, shame and worry.”

Mantra carves a way through the thoughts carrying the shame, anxiety and worry and connects to the inner loving presence within that appreciates who we are, recognizes our ‘okayness’. We do not have to analyse the thoughts, reason with them or tend to them…there is a letting go and letting be. They may indeed remain with us but without taking centre stage, without blocking our access to being okay with who we are and “a basic good feeling” about ourselves.

“When I chant, the clouds part and I’m able to enter more deeply into that place inside. What it is, I don’t know, but it feels good.”

UNCOVER A LOVING GROUND WITHIN

After a while of living in India, recounts Krishna Das, he noticed the genuine love and affection among families. For many of us in the West and in more so called ‘developed’ countries, the focus of life shifts away from family and onto career, status and the individual’s journey through life, unfolding their personal potential.

Herein may lie the loss of loving presence in and among us. Where we do not encounter genuine “love and affection
and kindness” in our families of origin, we quickly lose sight of our true nature, lose out on the experience of receiving or giving these emotional and spiritual essentials. The resulting experience of lack within, neglect of our emotional and
spiritual needs for love, affection and kindness, can lead us down so many tracks as we search for contentment, hardly aware of what we are missing in the first place.

“The family life in the West is so lacking in real love and affection and kindness. People are so driven and so neurotic… In India, no one is going to throw you out of their hearts. And that gives you a feeling that’s much richer and realer and kinder to yourself in a way…In the West we are programmed to treat and judge ourselves so harshly.”

“It’s one of the reasons the world is in such bad shape because nobody loves themselves and everybody is looking for some substitute for self-love; power, fame, money, sex, love, stuff…”

“Chanting practice pulls you out of your stuff and moves you in the direction towards the place within that is just ok by itself, always has been, always will be.”

So many of our choices in life stem from not feeling ok with who we are, what we truly feel, and what we genuinely want. It can be hard to realize at some point in our lives, that what we have; the job, the relationship, the friendships, the roles and positions we play, may not be coming from our true, free and sovereign choice. Perhaps we chose these things out of an inner yearning that is deeply unfilled – a yearning for acceptance, belonging, love and affection. And sadly, the ‘stuff’ never fully satisfies these yearnings, such that the yearning and the search goes on….

It is so important to find something that connects us to an experience where we can access feelings of love, acceptance and belonging within who we are. Music, chanting, mantra is this medicine for so many around the world. Krishna Das acknowledges that when chants, he is sharing his medicine with the world.

“I share my practice that I do for myself with people…The chanting I do for myself, and people are part of the practice.”

SPIRITUALITY MADE SIMPLE

So where do we begin? How can we start restoring love to ourselves from a lifetime of seeking substitutes and not knowing what we were really missing in the first place? So often the world of spirituality is made out to be something complicated, mystical or out of reach. It is a breath of fresh air to realize that it need not be. It is perfectly within reach of hands and hearts, who want it to be so. We can all, as Krishna Das says, plant seeds in our own lives everyday, by choosing whatever brings us closer to love and kindness for self and others.

For KD, each chant is planting a seed.

“Every repetition is a seed we are planting in our own being, in our karma flow, in our own flow of life…And when
we plant a seed, it grows. You don’t stand around waiting for it to grow. You plant it, water it and then you go do the rest of your life.”

As well as planting seeds of love, kindness and affection for yourself and those close to you, it’s important to notice
where we are unconsciously sowing seeds which are not what we truly want in our lives.

“Unfortunately, every thought is a seed…twenty-four hours a day we’re planting seeds and most of those seeds
are just like weeds. At best they’re neutral but most likely they’re desire-driven, negativity planting those seeds. So, when we decide to plant some good seeds…some seeds of wholesomeness…love and caring and compassion and kindness, that’s a really big thing. Because only we can plant those seeds in our lives. Nobody can do that for us.”

THE ROOT OF SPIRITUALITY = SERVICE

Contrary to what we hear that spirituality is an individual journey, Krishna Das shares the perspective of his guru, that while “we thought the spiritual path is about me… it’s not.”

Oftentimes, the battles we face can be overcome by reaching a place of service to the world and others.

Our inner battles through fear, shame, anxiety and guilt cannot be fought alone, nor within the mind with thoughts.
It takes inspired action, action infused with heart, with love, with service to our higher selves and the higher selves of others.

“How do you find God? Serve people. How do your raise Kundalini? Feed people.”

Indeed, this strikes a chord. I’ve noticed, since becoming a mother and since having an older parent, that I am less occupied with myself. The devotion, the cooking, the feeding, the tending that I’m engaged with on a daily basis, has carved pathways in me that I could not explore before. No workshop, retreat or practice ever brought me this level of humility, self appreciation, courage, softness and grace. Just when I had to stop searching, I found what I had been seeking. Life gave it to me when I tended to myself and the people and circumstances around me.

THE PARADOX

We also need to remember that we are ‘people’. This is where the inner loving ground needs to be established. If we give from a place of not feeling good enough – giving to feel ok or giving to ‘be spiritual’ – then we are using spirituality as a substitute.

Krishna Das continuously includes ‘ourselves’ in the words of wisdom that flow from him. We are not to be forgotten in the giving. We are not to be martyred or sacrificed or our needs abandoned. We are as deserving of the service of our loving thoughts and actions, as every other human around us.

“If we allow our hearts to be completely destroyed by the amount of negativity we find in the outside world, then we are not good for anything. We can’t help anybody, we can’t help ourselves.”

“So, regardless of what’s going on out there, we have to find a way to meet each moment without fear, without shame
and without anxiety. We have to find a way to stay available to ourselves and others… That is our work and if we can do that, then we’ve done a lot.”

For Krishna Das, it is singing and chanting that lands him so deeply into himself, his inner core of loving presence, from wherein he can serve the world. For, you it might be spending time in nature, creating art, dancing, writing or any number of things that cut through the inner and outer noise of life and connect you to the feeling that you are okay just as you are. It is from this place where we are best positioned to show love and kindness to ourselves and to others. This is enough. This is already living a spiritual life. “It’s really not our world to run. It’s our world to live in and do the best we can.”

JOIN IN THE MAGIC OF MANTRA

Krishna Das will be in Dublin for a night of mantra magic on Saturday March 28th at the RDS, followed by an afternoon
gathering on Sunday March 29th, where he will share the stories, insights and teachings of the heart he has learned along the way. See positivelife.ie/events

krishnadas.com