Tapas – it doesn’t matter if you’re cold already

It doesn’t matter if you’re cold already 

What matters is that you understand the urgency of the situation.

Every day we wake up, born again but alas, still blurry…still doing what we are programmed and commanded to do- by our families, jobs, conditionings, karma…endless ways we stay in the comfortable prison box.

But I say get up. In the dark early morning – and face the shock that ultimately is inescapable anyway- face it. Die by your own hand. And do it daily.

Face the ice water bath. Get fear out of the way. Command yourself. Reprogram your nervous system.

Personally, I sit submerged under the ice water and do tummo meditation- it’s how the (real) yogis – dissolve the ice around them in the Himalayas – by becoming the flame. I do it because I’m obsessed with death and I’ve been traumatized repeatedly in my life – nothing works like the nonverbal messages we send out subconscious mind- nothing works like getting down to the bare bones of the problem.

We all face the same problem. We forget our power to burn through the lie. The truth lives within us as a flame.

This flame burns in your cauldron. You have to give it a reason to burn more brightly.

It’s you. No one else can do it.

I’ll offer you simple things. Like courage and reminders – of who you really are. 

An an inextinguishable flame in a world of (false) warm and comfortable darkness. 

But it’s going to take some (real) tapas to shine like that. Sharada Devi

22 thoughts on “Tapas – it doesn’t matter if you’re cold already”

      1. That’s true! I just had a thorn in my fingertip and because I had been practing facing fear of cold, I felt like digging in. And I got that sucker out!!!!!!!

  1. Sharada Devi

    I would like to make an amends to you, and to a lesser extent, to your friends, on your blog. I can’t remember what I said in my last post to this blog, but I do remember that my attitude and words reflected anger and toxicity aimed at Sharada Devi.

    So it was projection on my part, the anger, projected on to another human being; as well as expectations not being met, which is also a projection from the false self.

    Recent findings based in self-inquiry reveal to one, more and more, how separated out all of us are, based on the power of ego-illusion, or what I am in this case calling Maya.

    If you do not accept my apology or amends, Sharada Devi, or anybody else, I will understand. Not out of being a martyr, but out of an understanding that people just are free to accept or not accept apologies. It’s as simok as that.

    Blessings to all.

    Live the journey totally as best you can.

    1. Hi Patrick,

      Thank you – but I don’t really know what you’re referring too- so I’m not upset. Anyway, I don’t take what people say personally at this point- or I would have imploded by now…

    1. Wow, not an answer I was expecting, Sharada Devi. I do appreciate your response in any case.

      Hmmm..

      Ok. Just processing it all.
      I must have made all that up in my head.

      Go figure

      I do hear ya as far as not take by anything personally. And this is good, to not take stuff personally. Otherwise immanent implosion.
      I have imploded much lately. Perhaps implosions will slow up as I decide more and more to stop taking stuff personally.

      Yeah. Other people’s realities are just their realities. They see themselves a certain way and they see me a certain way. And I do the same.

      How I am seeing reality is how I’m seeing reality, and the buck stops here when I remember that I won’t implode when and if I remember that shit.

  2. Yes! Face annihilation over and over again. Birth and death cycles of self. Maybe that which is indestructible was never born and so cannot die.

  3. Omg I’m hogging all the sharing here. Starry eyed over me and my own attempts at man splaining.

    Whatever.

    One last thing. Promise.
    The mind is so powerful and one believes it.
    What if one just saw through it and saw the space. The sky. Like, all the time, or close to it.

    Bye fer now.

    1. Just take the ice water bath first thing every morning – before it’s light outside….

      For 40 days in a row-

      Then let me know where you’re at.

      That’s my prescription for you.

  4. Patrick… I recall you mentioning that you were leaving the blog… I can’t remember why, but whatever. I don’t recall any toxic talk… I always liked your thoughts and ideas.
    Cold water is where it’s at. People think I’m nuts because I dip into the Pacific without a wet suit. When I enter it… it takes my breath away. It reminds me that I am alive right now… and reminds me that being here is precious. Some day I will be gone from this earth. I’ll be 62 really soon but hope to be submersing myself in this salty cold liquid for at least 30 more years… but My heart may stop today, tomorrow or the day after. Maybe my last breath will be in the cold salty water…I can only hope.

    1. Annihilation is going to take the repetition
      that only comes from discipline.

      Otherwise it’s all talk.
      And anyone can do that.

      So keep it in mind – as the benefits far outweigh any momentary lack of comfort…

  5. You haven’t posted another,
    since this post about the icy bath.
    I understand the urgency of your message, but before this year is past.
    I just wanted to say thank you,
    for everything you are.
    and how you touch my spirit,
    even from afar.
    That basket of stringed white lights, set demurely in a basket while you YouTube sang ,
    gets conjured up in my inner eye,
    when I need to cleanse my mind.
    And even though you took it away,
    my favorite photograph remains to be,
    That one of 3 gauze dresses blowing in that window sill,
    So free

  6. I might have erred a couple times, in my literary precision.
    But that’s the thing about improvisation,
    you risk getting burned in the flare of quick decision

    1. Thanks also from me. Discipline and creating the environment of shocking your system by your own means: crucial. Everything is so easy these days it’s making it harder and harder. Crazy stuff. So….

      thanks!!!

      Keep GOING y’all, and remember to stop and smell the flowers. But keep the flow. ❤️

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