Sadhana is My School
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Michael Neutrino
I've been practicing my own morning sadhana without missing a day for almost 15 years now. Looking back at my life, through all of the good and rough patches, the one thing that has remained consistent through it all has been my early morning sadhana. Sadhana has been the rope that I've held onto as I have been pulled into all manner of experiences.
I have practiced my sadhana through career changes, births and deaths, marriage and divorce, and through many geographical moves. I have practiced on a train, a plane, a boat, a small car, a tent, and 5 star hotels.
My mind's motivation to practice sadhana has morphed and changed over time. At the beginning, I practiced sadhana to please a teacher and my spiritual community—to show I was pulling my weight.
Then it was to fix a current problem and to heal all of my broken parts.
Then I practiced sadhana out of fear that I would be a victim to negative energy and to gain a competitive edge over others.
This morphed into practicing sadhana for the students that were coming to me so that I could be a clearer channel for the Divine.
This shifted to a desire to prove myself to GOD—that I was a good spiritual teacher and deserving of all good things if I did my sadhana.
Now I practice my sadhana from a place of self-love with no fanfare, just an automatic habit that I don't think about anymore. Over the years I've grown to enjoy this precious time for myself and imagine I will have practiced my sadhana the day I take my last breath.
I cannot begin to express the importance of sadhana for me. I would not have been able to go through the many challenges had it not been for sadhana. Sadhana has been an invaluable place of learning for me. Each morning, I learn about my mind, ego and emotions.
Through my experience, I now know that when I am super resistant to my sadhana and the ego is flooding me with negative self-talk, it only means that there is a painful emotion that is just about to surface. I now know that if I wake up with judgement towards another person, it means that my Soul is calling me to connect with that person.
Resistance to sadhana means that I am afraid of facing some deeper hidden aspect of myself. I have learned to welcome and accept whatever I am feeling each morning and just allow the technology to do its work. I have learned that a state of hell can shift into a state of heaven in less than an hour if I show up for my sadhana.
Sadhana keeps me in the game of infinity. Without a sadhana practice and with the many distractions of the information age, it can be easy to fool ourselves that we are being authentic and dwelling in the vibrational frequency of Sat Nam. A daily sadhana practice makes it impossible for me to hide from myself. Sadhana is my touchstone—a daily check-in with my CEO—my Soul.
Sadhana is not a guarantee that life becomes easy with no challenges, but it does enable living life with ease; the same things are happening but my perspective has changed. Sadhana gives me a wider vista to see what these life challenges represent which are always opportunities from the Infinite to grow and expand past my limited self.
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Michael Neutrino
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