The notion of dukkha, if it sinks in deep enough, provides you the way out to a better place: a much better place beyond all too many hassles and never quite enough love and kindness. Suppose you get it. Say, you really get it: “You know, maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye. Maybe conventional society and all my cultural heritage and baggage don’t provide all the answers?” What next then? Well, throw a rock—anywhere, anyway. Wherever it lands just begin.
The truth is that it doesn’t matter much what flavor you choose—traditional, alternative, eastern, western, scientific, commercial or spiritual. These are all just trips—ways of organizing your mind. They give you a framework to get outside the box that modern culture wants to keep you stuck in forever. But you get outside to the fresh air only if you have the skill to finesse the trip you choose to your own ends.
So, that’s the rub. First, there’s no hope for you at all unless you know you’re caught in a lost cause—a mad chase for some cheap amusement that champions the moment and youth and beauty to the exclusion of deeper truths and joy—friends that won’t betray you and desert you along the way. And second, once you’ve wizened up to the plot and chosen a suitable life path there’s still no hope unless you learn and apply tools to open up your heart space and inner world.
Opening up
It has always been the same but now it is even worse. There are too many voices. Everyone has an answer for how to take the inner journey. But just think for a second. How can they all be right? Can they? Likely not: good luck finding your way through the forest to Light these days. The rub is this: all the answers have become too superficial themselves. They echo society and the mess it wreaks.
The way out? Start with a tested approach to higher awareness, one that can at least boast of some true success stories. By this criterion, any of the traditional yogic or metaphysical paths will do. These pages tease out and then knit together the best of three great eastern yogic praxes—Hindu, Tibetan and Daoist. However, just go with what speaks to you. The information here will still apply since all metaphysical paths use more or less the same tools to get to more or less the same place. Of course, there are differences; but during the first few legs of the journey it's better to understand how all traditions share common ground. Discerning subtle shades of coloring remains the province of experts. So, wait until you're a spiritual expert yourself before tackling the humongous task of classifying and clarifying all the highways and byways of different spiritual streams of evolution.
Okay, it should make sense so far but what's an arudha lagna? Well, this beastie captures, in toto, your life story: it sketches and hues all the many voices that have shaped you: all the familial, cultural and social voices that have found their way into the bedrock of your psyche and heart; all the energetic imperatives and persuasions that have chiseled out your life in society and this world. Whether you're a beggar or a banker, destitute or a star, sickly or glowing with health, it all shows up in the arudha lagna.
