Nayaswami Jamuna Snitkin
Swami Kriyananda’s study course Material Success through Yoga Principles has been a major focus of my teaching for the past two years here at Ananda Seattle. 2010 is the third year of teaching this course and I find that the experience just gets richer and deeper with each go-around.
Recently in class, we were discussing Lesson #9, The Importance of Human Values, and Lesson #10, How to be a Good Leader. These two topics are well paired together. In the first, Swami encourages the reader to appreciate the fact that people everywhere share the same basic human values and needs. In the second lesson, he explains that a leader should take into account not just the project and its goals but the feelings of those whom he serves and his own inner feelings. Avoid, he writes, becoming “thing-oriented.” What we hold in our consciousness greatly affects our experience. Being open and caring is the true measure of refinement. Each of us is responsible for the attitudes we hold and the opportunity to become a positive force in our environment. This will increase our spiritual vibrations and the outward success of our endeavors. “True success requires sensitive awareness of realities outside the narrow confines of your egoic existence.”
We then launched into a review of Patanjali’s yamas and niyamas (the universal, spiritual “do’s and don’ts”). The first of the yamas is ahimsa, non-violence. One of the students told a story about his own encounter with facing the fear of violence with calmness and faith in a rough neighborhood.
He had to walk to public transportation several blocks from his house through this neighborhood. One morning, he witnessed an attempted mugging where the intended victim ended up beating up the mugger! He approached to help and alerted the police but the experience was disconcerting, to say the least! After this and for several months, he walked his morning route with a knife in his pocket, ready for self-defense. Finally the built-up fear was too much.
So, first he got rid of the knife, then came the idea of a slight alteration that could make his route safer, and immediately his fear was replaced by a feeling of grace and protection. Is this not the power of ahimsa? Please join the discussion by posting a comment – What attitudes might you be holding in your work environment that are drawing negativity to you?