CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this chapter we dive into the Death of Ego. Yeah, no big deal, right? Well, it is possible and possibly simple. Specifically, we will look the tendencies of Ego called Craving and Aversion. In episode three of The Road To Dharma, we arrive at our first sacred peak, Kedarnath, which represents Shiva and Death. Shiva isn’t a religious hell. Nor is Shiva a right or wrong. Shiva represents death/destruction. This is the destruction of the pitiful little “I”, this “What about me?”  that has lost its power to circumstances. But, we can get our power and freedom back! When we transcend this, we are Liberated (in that moment) to a greater sense of self, a greater freedom.

We'll explore these wisdoms and show how Elle quantum leaps out of her bubble, how Fred embodies character virtues of Honesty, and how Jen Perseveres and has the Courage to go beyond her failing body and mind, finding freedom by using a sacred mantra.  Video snippets from each of the characters, the special never before seen full-version of Anand’s talk at the lake above Kedarnath, and the audio meditation practice for the strength to transcend, are all yours to enjoy on your Road to Dharma, Chapter Three.

HOW THESE CHAPTERS FLOW

Although I explained this in Chapter One, I’ll review it again here as this Chapter Three is the free chapter that some people are jumping right into for the first time.

First, you’ll watch the episode, knowing what the general topic of the chapter is, and you’ll see the lesson on freedom jump out at you. Then you’ll read the Chapter where we explore the wisdom of freedom in real down-to-earth language and detail. Then we break the wisdom down into bullet points for your easy reference. Next we explore how the characters in the show embody that wisdom by showing you video clips and discussing the virtues/character strengths they exhibit. By watching and relating to them, you can cultivate these virtues for your own freedom.

Lastly, we finish off by taking you deep into the journey in the Himalayas again, with the unseen bonus footage filmed during The Road To Dharma. These deep discussions are with master yogi Anand Mehrotra. As you can imagine, only pieces can make it into a show, but now you get to see the whole thing, as if you were right there on a journey. And then finally we’ll leave you with an audio meditation practice that combines pranayama, kriya, and mantra. The goal of these powerful yet compact practices is for you to feel and shift your energy to embody this aspect of freedom, and do realize you can do so in a matter of 20-30 minutes.

Now, I am a realist and I realize that you might just binge watch the whole series at once and then come back and read the chapters. That’s fine. Get into it. Take the journey. Then, when you come back and read a chapter, watch the episode again. You’ll experience the episode in a very different manner. The teaching will deepen. And the power of watching a real journey is that you feel emotions, the mind actually has neurons firing like you are there, you empathize, and you receive the experience. And so, if you are watching with the wisdom in mind, then you are translating the experience into deep understanding even quicker. And then one day, perhaps you can see your life as objectively as a movie that you are here to learn through… but we’ll talk about that later.

EACH CHAPTER INCLUDES:

• The Episode from the Road to Dharma Series
• The Key to Living a Life of Freedom Wisdom: Creator and Narrator of the Road to Dharma, Adam Schomer, takes us deeply into this aspect of Freedom, using real world examples and examples from the series.
• Simple Wisdom Breakdown: For easy reference on this aspect of Living in Freedom.
• Character Virtues: How the characters experienced the wisdom, how they showed positive character virtues, how you can adapt those strengths: (Courage, Humanity, Transcendence, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom.)
• Unseen Bonus Footage/Deep Dharma Talk: The Full Interview/Talk with Anand at the sacred site.
• Meditation Practice specific to practicing the Key to Living a Life of Freedom.

CHAPTER THREE: FREEDOM FROM EGO

I’ll start by relating an experience from my first documentary film, The Highest Pass. So on this documentary film I had a co-producer. We were in post production (editing the film) and along the way it was super clear that we were not going to meet our deadline date for having the first edit of the film. This is important for keeping within the budget of the film. And this clearly stressed out my co producer. But that’s not the exact point, in fact feeling that pressure or stress is quite natural. What was most striking was that whenever we faced the reality of not meeting the looming deadline (and it happened a few times), he would come up with a new strategy for meeting the deadline. Sounds normal right? Not if the new strategy is completely impossible as well, and we won’t meet those new strategy/goal posts.  But what did the new strategy achieve?  It made him feel better in the moment, like all was good and under control. But it was really a lie. It was total escapism. He never had to actually deeply feel the reality of us not being on schedule (the circumstance). He went right to aversion of that feeling. And then created a strategy that would make him feel good again; craving.  But in reality nothing changed. Same story. We were late and the lie of the Ego feeling good for a while continued onward… as Anand says in Episode three “It’s been going on for ages, what’s new.”

Craving and Aversion – this is the pattern of the ego mind – it is the constant seeking of a secure and most comfortable space.

How much of our time is spent trying to imagine, secure, or create the future that is safe/secure and won’t make us ever have to feel an “averse” state?

And likewise, how much of our energy is set up trying to have the thing we “crave?”

So much mental energy is used on this! How often do we fight the current situation and strategize out of it (which is escapism), rather than embracing and feeling and being with it all. Is it possible there is something else there to see/learn, rather than escaping to a time or place that will feel better? Maybe what one person perceives as “lost and afraid,” another person perceives as “beautiful, quiet…” That’s what Aizhan was going through at the top of Kedarnath in Episode Three. She felt lost and afraid, while others thought it was beautiful. How is that possible? Because one person is in a triggered craving/averting state and the other person is simply being and seeing what is.

One person is in conflict with what is and one person is at present with what is.

I really feel we need to say this again. It is so simple. This could save your from really blowing up a situation up, and better yet, could guide you to using the moment for living a life of freedom.

One person is in conflict with what is and one person is at present with what is.

And so, Anand hits us with Craving and Aversion right at the beginning of Episode Three. It’s so profound and simple: Craving and Aversion – you see it everywhere – this has been the battleground of the mind for ages, and for our whole lives. Yet, it’s not that we are born this way. Yes, we are born and programmed for survival, which one might see as craving and aversion on some level, but society reinforces a false craving. What is this false craving? Usually it’s rooted in the conditioned feeling of ‘not enough’ or ‘needing to prove’ or ‘things should be different” or “comparison.” And to me, the pilgrimage is a perfect way to push the comfort zone so that the hidden demons come out and we get to work with them. The demons are the hidden violence waiting to happen. The violence is always there lurking. And to me the most inviting and exciting thing of being a yogi is that we purposefully go looking to expose the craving and aversion, the ego, our demons…this is a true search for freedom.

Hiding in the ultra comfortable or hiding in a cave, neither is the way in these modern times. But if we first look at modern times, it has really spread this notion that the ideal state or “freedom state” is to create total control and comfort. Just look at how controlled our lives are to avert feeling bad. Heated seats in the car, the perfect outfit for each weather condition, hoarding of money and resources so we never feel threatened… And that is all the false sense of freedom as laid down by law in modern times. And secondly, I would say society normally pins judgment on the yogi as the person in the cave not willing to really “deal with life.” There are times when retreat is necessary, but my view is we are in time of bringing the awareness out of the cave and letting it hit the pavement. So, we are realizing the modern ideals are false – comfort won’t bring freedom.  And realizing the modern yogi must be out of the cave with both feet in the world and willing to (like in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions of the Himalayas and the Yogic teachings of Anand’s Himalayan lineage) face the demons and bring them up and slay them. It might be easy to be at peace when you don’t do anything challenging, including staying in a cave…  but go take a quantum leap, do something out of the box, and commit to the learning and expansion... Then your demons will come up. You bubble will burst. And there is Shiva, helping you destroy it. I’ll outline what Shiva is all about later in this chapter.

In general, Shiva wont’ be pretty, you might see yourself as disgusting along the way, might feel terrible… but in the end we come out gold, because after the death via Shiva is the regeneration via the feminine and that’s what we see in Chapter Five; Freedom in the Gap. There, we see that the creation sits above the destruction at the sacred peak of Tungnath. But for now, it’s the exposing of the demons… and their destruction!

And the first step in destruction, in death, is allowing one’s self to actually acknowledge what’s occurring. To become aware of the truth. To become aware of the patterns of the mind, of craving and aversion, and to be able to stop that cycle.

So instead of reacting to Craving and from Aversion, we have to actually Accept what is occurring and accept how we are feeling.  Those two things are key.  Eventually transformation will occur. Transcendence is probably even a greater word to use. Transcendence will occur. We go beyond it. First we must be Aware of, then secondly we Accept/Allow, thirdly Transcend. I tend to use the word Allow instead of accept, as accept feels too passive for most people in our modern culture. Allow is what I’ll use from here on out.

Usually us humans we might, and I do stress “might,” do the first step and “become Aware of the circumstance, feeling and reaction.” But we rarely even do that. My co producer, he felt stressed. That’s for sure. But was he aware that he kept averting that feeling? Doubt it. He was aware on some level he was stressed. I mean look, we are aware of the discomfort but are we aware it’s just the mind? Are we aware of our responsibility to the reaction to the craving and aversion?

We must be aware of that! We must have awareness of the pattern before we can realize the main hindrances that are stopping us from transcendence and ultimately true freedom.

What are those hindrances that stop transcendence?  We tend to BLAME and we tend to ESCAPE. Blame others. Escape through strategy , through future, through substance, through anything other than watching the mind and actually feeling.

How do we get past these hindrances and develop a practice that positively reinforces awareness? How can we rewire our brain for awareness? And how can we practice Allowing?  Meditation.  But let me be clear, not all meditation brings this clarity and insight. A guided body relaxation meditation for 20 minutes is helpful, but won’t bring us to insight, or deep transcendence. It might give us glimpses of peace and help reset the brain, which can aid awareness. Yes, for sure, no doubt. And honestly the first meditation I ever encountered (at age 18) was a body relaxation meditation. However, I am inviting us now toward a focused meditation that integrates enquiry. In the meditations in this course, we use a lot of pranayama, kriya, and mantra to shift the energetic body quickly. This is key for realizing the power we have and bringing about expanded awareness. And beyond these audio meditations, I invite you to take longer time on your own, to be in silence and enquire as to the true nature of yourself and the mind. Noting the pattern of the mind. Not needing things to change and thus watching/observing our needs.  Then having the courage to not change/react. The courage to be, and the courage to see what happens.

Let me offer a bit more on this. The Road to Dharma meditations, which use Mantra, Kriya, and Pranayama, shift our state – so we feel beyond our normal self, so we touch that place and get expanded. This can really help us then be more Aware. How? Because as we are expanded, on an energetic level, we have more aptitude to be with a feeling. Why? Because we feel bigger than it, bigger than the little circumstance. We feel more connected, enlivened, and thus less identified or attached to a feeling. Thus, we have a chance of Allowing a feeling. Like the parent who is balanced and in a good mood, the kid acts out and there is some patience and ability to deal with the child lovingly, rather than react to the child in a trigger themselves. We can cultivate that. We are the parent. Our ego is the child. That’s what the meditations/kriyas that we have in each chapter are helping to do. They help us expand, so that we can have the courage to be with a feeling. We won’t need to change or react to it. Then we can see what might occur when we allow it...  Will we really die from that itch? Does life fall apart if we don’t do something now… or is the world fine? Does the pain or anger or feeling transform? Or is it our relationship to it that transforms? Practice and see. You must see for yourself and realize the power you have to choose.

This is key: Just by being with it, you are choosing to be beyond it and choosing to evolve. This already is courage. This already is freedom.

This approach to life starts to really rewire the brain dramatically and take hold as experience. What approach? When we use the challenges (as shown by craving and aversion) to grow us rather than to satisfy the itch. That is the key approach. Then, with practice, a sense of strength and ability grows.

Your capacity grows! A sense of freedom from circumstance grows. Your capacity for Freedom grows.

You begin to be Living a Life of Freedom.

We see all of this in the characters arcs in Episode Three. We will explore those in the Character Virtues Section so that you can see it in action and draw on that experience and relate it to your life.  But first we want to outline the wisdom teachings from Chapter Three in a simple format that’s easy to reference. Trust me, we need to reference this stuff. It’s an ongoing journey and reminders are great. It’s also why later I will offer you the chance to watch the longer talks from Anand in the bonus footage.

WISDOM BREAKDOWN

EXPOSE THE BUBBLE

Become aware of the false identification and Transcend into Freedom.

• Take on a challenge that exposes you.

  Something that is beyond your perceived limits. Pilgrimage is an example.

• Awareness

  Bringing attention to the false bubble of perspective, of identification with circumstance. Guess what is a good beacon to know it’s happening: Craving and Aversion.

• Allow

  Be impersonal to the bubble burst and simply observe, watch and feel. You gotta allow yourself this, without the “How can I fix it?” In fact you can observe how badly you want to fix things. Be with that too.

• Transcend

  While you allow, this will naturally occur.

  • But you can also inquire into the source of the suffering and into the question “Who am I?”
  • And you can, as we see in the show, leap into the “You” that is already existing beyond the circumstance, the you at top of mountain.
  • You can use mantra to help retune your frequency. See the “Bonus Footage And Mantras” in this chapter.
• Expansion of your Capacity and Worldview This is what then happens. Your capacity grows. Your worldview expands. You are more free. And this builds from moments to days to months to an evolutionary life.

CRAVING AND AVERSION

• The Ego

  Ego is a frequency that seeks safety, comfort, security and easily lives in fear because its based in the small “I,” the “what about me.”

• The Ego Craves and Averts

• It’s Not Personal to You

  This has been going on since the dawn of mankind. It’s a conditioned sense of self, tuned to an Ego frequency. It is NOT your identity.

• You can still discern

  Don’t misunderstand craving and aversion has having no intuition or experience of the world, no discernment or judgment. That would feel impossible. In fact, you get more discernment when we are aware of the fear based cravings and aversions. We become wiser, more discerning.

• The Death of the Little “I”

  • This can be scary because it’s not the secure based choice. In fact it’s like leaning into the unknown.
  • But choose to move from a place that doesn’t need security and you expand, you are free.

WHAT IS SHIVA

• Shiva is the annihilation of the “What about me,” of the conflicted self.

• Shiva is radical Freedom

  Freedom from:

  • Circumstance
  • Opinion
  • Judgment
  • Pain
  • Pleasure
  • Flattery
  • Insult
  • Fear
• Responsibility

  It’s making a choice and taking absolute responsibility for it. Not escaping to Blame or Victimhood.

That’s a quick snippet from the beginning of Episode Three that you could watch anytime. It hits the nail so on the head, so quickly and efficiently.

CHARACTER VIRTUES & SPECIFIC MOMENTS WE SEE THE TEACHINGS

When we watch stories on television, we empathize with characters. We feel scared with them, we hope for redemption for them, we cheer for them, and something about them resonates with us. Hopefully what resonates are their virtues and strengths. Here is a reminder of the six major virtues and their sub virtues.

Why? Because then we will be motivated to cultivate those virtues. Am I saying that by watching TV we can improve ourselves? Yes. That’s what story at its origin was meant to do, not dumb us down and make us addicted. Conscious media will unshackle you. You walk out empowered. That is the goal of The Road To Dharma., To entertain you and also to unshackle you! To help you find your freedom.

Here are the main virtues/strengths as laid out by the VIA INSTITUTE ON CHARACTER, a global leader in the practice of character, and as seen in the deeply insightful book: POSITIVE PYSCHOLOGY AT THE MOVIES 2. It is a set of virtues that those in the media world and beyond have come to understand make for a better human being, that we would all want to cultivate… and thus would want to show in stories to teach people how to be better people. Let’s have a look at the six major virtues and their sub virtues.

• COURAGE: Bravery, Honesty, Perseverance, Zest.

• HUMANITY: Love, Kindness, Social Intelligence

• WISDOM & KNOWLEDGE: Creativity, Curiosity, Judgment, Love of Learning, Perspective

• TRANSCENDENCE:Gratitude, Hope, Humor, Spirituality, Appreciation

• JUSTICE: Teamwork, Fairness, Leadership *I personally like the word Inclusivity, which I feel falls in Teamwork and Fairness.

• TEMPERANCE: Forgiveness, Humility, Prudence, Self-Regulation.

These are also qualities to reinforce and that give us greater access to freedom. Let’s see how the characters embodied this (or didn’t.) and how it brings to light the wisdoms and realizations of the episode. Also note that for your ease, we have included the specific clips from the episode, so you can easily watch the section again without scrolling through the video.

ELLE’S QUANTUM LEAP

COURAGE: Bravery, Perseverance

TRANSCENDANCE: Spirituality (Trust of her spirit, not just the mind and body).

At the beginning of Episode Three, Elle decides to not wait until she is a good rider to embody this energy. It’s something Anand taught her in Episode Two and she now really took hold of. Riding in mud like this is hard for even seasoned riders, but she embodied the energy of calm, she took herself to a place beyond where her mind was fixed. She leapt before knowing! This is so key. This is Brave. This is Perseverance. I’ll say it again another way. She leapt into the unknown. She trusted before she understood. This is breaking out of the bubble. This is going beyond the story into the unknown. This is the death of the old (the Shiva) and emergence of something greater. This is Transcendence. To leap, one lets go of the old, it dies. And of course to do that she must go beyond the craving and aversion. Craving of what?  Craving the feeling that she thinks others might have that are experienced riders. She would think that to them it feels so easy and like a joy ride.  Aversion of what? Aversion of the pain in the body, the fear of death, and of the reality that you can fall.  Of course we want to skip the hard work and just feel like it feels once we are experts and never have to push through the fear of the failure… but we can’t grow if we don’t go beyond this false idea of waiting for conditions to be right before you leap. Growth means you leap before you know.

The beauty of Elle’s story in this episode is that it’s clearly not a goal or endpoint. What I mean is we don’t just leap once and its all good. “Like yeah, I leapt, now its all good. I did The Highest Pass so I’ve conquered all my fears.” Apparently, I haven’t yet. You know this if you’ve seen Episode 9 and Episode 10 and my experiences there. So, the leaping is continual.  And so we see that later in the episode when confronted again with craving and aversion while climbing to the lake, Elle loses her cool. This is when she blames me.  Instead of showing Transcendence, the falls into blame. She seeks to escape. No Courage. No Transcendence. And we learn again that the demands of evolution are never ending.

FRED’S SHIVA HELL

COURAGE: Honesty, Perseverance.

WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE: Curiosity & Love of Learning

TEMPERANCE: Humility

Why do we keep loving Fred so much in this show? Am I right? I think it is that Courage to be Honest in his quest to continually Learn… even at age 75… learning from a man (Anand) half his age.

We respect and admire this because these qualities will lead him to wisdom, to freedom. And this is something we all want. Yet are we willing to be Honest, Humble, wrong? How can we really find this road to truth if we are not willing to be Honest. That is a key virtue. And then willing to Persevere when the truth hurts.

Here is the wisdom we are reminded of through Fred’s Honest inquiry to Anand at the base of Kedarnath (“Shiva is Hell right?”): Anand tells us that Shiva isn’t a hell, its not from a religious “do or don’t”. Shiva is death of the self-serving individual, the pitiful greedy self-concerned ego. We rarely release our hold to the ego, our attachment to it, in order to let it die.

What is the ego though? It’s such a broad topic, but we define it as a frequency of fear, lack, and need for safety. It’s a frequency like a radio station… that we tune into. Much like the stories are frequencies on a radio, as we spoke about in Episode Two. Ego is the frequency of an overarching story that we often take as identity. But let me be super clear, identity is not ego. Ego is a frequency, that our identity (and subconscious mind) sometimes latches onto as our main “who am I.” When our identity latches on to that frequency often enough, we start to think it is us. We identify with it. And we feel like we have become a being that always seeks to avoid fear, seeks safety, and is greedy/self centered in its lack. But I am not the Ego. You are not the Ego. So we don’t have to destroy our identity, but we must unlatch our identity from the frequency of ego.

So it is this ego, this frequency of thought that must die (be detached from identity). Otherwise we will bow at the feet of craving and aversion forever.

However, if we do let the ego die then we will find a life of purpose, as we see in Chapter Eight… Freedom leads to purpose!

JEN’S EPIC HIKE UP KEDARNATH

COURAGE: Perseverance.

TEMPERANCE: Hope

TRANSCENDANCE: Spirituality.

Half way up through the hike to Kedarnath, Jen is super tired and asks Anand for help. Anand explains to her that she must first know that she is already at the top of Kedarnath. In fact she is at the top, the bottom and right here… they all have already occurred. So if she embodies the “Jen” that is already at the top then she is, like Elle, making the leap. She is Transcending the body/mind and embracing the spirit of the Jen that is atop. She is also embracing Hope. And with that Hope she then asks Anand what to do when the mind starts going array.

Anand gives her a mantra she can repeat in her mind for the next 4 hours of a steep, intense, and cold hike. She stays with that mantra. She Perseveres and she goes so fast up the mountain that her husband Jeff cannot catch her. And one thing we did not capture on camera, but Jen spoke of, was that she had uncontrollable tears when she got to the top. Crying and crying. When we go beyond the aversions… something will alter, will Transcend… the crying could be the death of an old sense of self… or could be the outward affects we see of something transforming.

Personally, I love a good cry. It means something is shifting… finally.

DHARMA WISDOM TALKS by HIMALAYAN MASTER ANAND MEHROTRA

But lets digress from emotion and characters and give you access to some further wisdom. As you can imagine, the talk Anand gives the group at the lake above Kedarnath (13,000ft), had to be condensed for the show. But now you have you access to the entire talk in its original form. I can honestly say that I have experienced this talk over ten times and continue to find more depth, to be cracked open (often to tears), and brought back to a simplicity that I consider true power and strength.

In the talk we hear about:

• Aizhan's triggered mind: Triggered mind always uses life to justify itself.
• Craving and Aversion
• Disconnect vs. Connect
• Elle's Issues with Adam: Blame and Escape
• Anand's hike up Kedarnath as a 14 year old boy in flip flops
• The old woman on pilgrimage: Freedom is not choices or wealth.
• The point of pilgrimage: To see your programs.
• Self Mastery is the key: Masters lead you to you, not to them.
• You must go through the fire, through Shiva.
• Violence: It is in us all.
• Two Types of Honest People.
• The rocks sing.

MEDITATION/MANTRA: TO TRANSCEND CIRCUMSTANCE AND FEAR

INTRO TO THE COURSE MEDITATION PRACTICES: Please Listen to this First. In this intro I explain how important the actual practice is and why. I then outline the structure of these audio meditations and why we use breath, movement and sound (mantra) to help shift the energetic body radically.

CHAPTER THREE MEDITATION PRACTICE:

In this audio meditation I’ll first get us incredibly grounded and strong in our spine. We need this strong sense of self and spine in order to stay present when circumstance hits. We start with the eight-part breath of Sukha Shunya, which really demands our focus and helps stop the wandering mind. Then we bring in Agni Sara that uses strong pumping with the breath is in inhaled and exhaled retention. This develops a strong sense of the true self. Then with focus here we will bring in the mantra for transcending circumstance. You’ll remember that Jen used this mantra, so you know it works.

OM NAMAH SHIVAYA

(Ohm Nah-Mah Shee-Vai-Ya)To go beyond the circumstance, is to call on that which is beyond time, that part of you that isn’t small, that part of you that knows you are greater than you think. OM NAMAH SHIVAYA is a Shiva mantra.

By chanting OM NAMAH SHIVAYA we are asking ourselves to rise up: I am beyond the body, beyond the mind, beyond the circumstance, not bound by time. I am awareness. And as the circumstances dissolve I see that I am timeless, boundless, I am the infinite. I am free.

I surrender my lower self into the true self. I die to all ignorance. I recognize the fierce freedom within me.

This is a great mantra to use in challenging times.