Connect to the Rising Energy

As students, we have a responsibility to continually connect to the depth of refined energy that is transmitted through the teacher. This requires some discernment, because the energy that moves through a lineage is perpetually purifying and refining itself.

In any authentic practice the energy is like water running down a mountain, finding its own path. As it does so, it purifies its external connection, as well as the people that it is drawing to itself. This is a continuing source of nourishment for those who can connect and attune to the changing energy.

Unfortunately, as that shift takes place, everyone’s drama, resistance, and a myriad of reasons for not making that shift seem to arise and be perceived as valid. We must therefore be sure that our commitment to growth is expressed through disciplined action. It’s not enough to have the abstract desire of wanting to know God — we must cultivate the disciplined capacity within ourselves to not be caught in the resistance that will show up as a shift is being required of us by our teacher.

Sometimes this is a verbal requirement, but more importantly, it’s a matter of energy shifting, ascending, and functioning on a higher level. A student must recognize this without the teacher having to say, “Now I’m going from level 12 to 14, and I’ll meet you there.” You have to feel the energy as it’s rising. If you can’t connect to it, you cannot keep looking where you’ve been looking. If you keep heading for level 12 and the energy is now on level 14, you’re never going to get there.

How Purification Takes Place

That rising energy is trying to free us from our own constriction. But, like when making ghee, as the heat begins to purify, the debris in the melting butter comes to the top. If you don’t wipe it off, you don’t end up with a clear pot of ghee. The exposing of our inner impurities is a gift. Our resistance, tensions, dramas, needs, and self-absorption get exposed to us so that we can simply scrape them off. This is what allows the purification to take place.

This type of work takes ruthless honesty and that’s where discernment comes into play. We must be willing to recognize and admit our own resistance, which will manifest in many ways. As my teacher Rudi used to say, resistance is like a leprechaun. It shifts from one thing to the next: My life is this, my teacher is that, my kids are this, my husband is that, my job is this. . .  and all this mental and emotional activity consumes the very energy that is being made available to us by the energetic shift taking place in the practice.

The teacher’s role is to simply be a vehicle for the transmission of energy. However, as the energy in the practice refines itself and attracts new people, some will fall away. When the nourishment isn’t being drawn, the energy will find the people who truly want it. It will continue to feed the people who not just say they want it but have the discipline to allow it to grow them.

Be Sensitive to the Shifts

So, the sensitivity we must bring to our practice is the discerning capacity to be able to feel the shifts as they are taking place. The responsibility for each of us is to ask, Am I holding on to some level from where I normally engage my practice or am I making the shift?

And if you find yourself disconnecting, it’s important to ask why, using incredible discernment: Am I disconnecting from this teaching out of doubt or has the teaching served me as much as it can?

After observing students for over five decades, I feel it is rare that someone needs to ask the second question. Lao Tzu said, “When the student is ready the teacher appears, and when the student is ready the teacher disappears.” In other words, the teacher comes and holds us with absolute responsibility and when that responsibility is fulfilled (meaning when we as students have extracted all that’s available) the teacher is gone. We no longer need that support.

Be very, very thoughtful if you feel this is the case. In our practice we have a relationship with an amazing lineage: not only with Rudi but with Nityananda, one of the greatest masters who walked on earth in the last hundred years. We have been granted this supreme gift. Decide if you’re going to find the humility and the surrender in yourself to never let anything start to diminish or clog up that channel of energy.

Surrender is vital. As our own stuff is exposed, it’s very easy for us to begin to label it. And that’s often in terms of what the teacher has (or has not) done, or that there are too many demands in our lives. Remember that in every moment the energy is providing you with the very opportunity to surrender your projected idea of what life should look like. The path of surrender is two-fold: There is an internal surrendering that allows the purification of energy to perpetually refine its own pathways, and the surrender that allows our life to show itself in its perfection.

And remember: That perfection of life is not for the purpose of making you comfortable or rich — nor will it be displayed as a change in the conditions you face. It is for the single purpose of freeing you. Stay attuned to the energy of your practice and let your life be freed. Let the power of that energy carry you along.