Spiritual attending and other "priorities"

Yagna in the kitchen! by Barbie Robinson

When I was a young philosophy student under my traditional teacher, I remember saying to him one particularly busy week that I did not have time for spiritual contemplation. He asked me what else asked my energy and attention. And I listed many important things—family commitments, work demands, social events and the like. And he gently asked me why I felt that spirituality was separate to “other” priorities. Does that mean that the rest of my life is un-spiritual he asked.

This is how spirituality has become in our times. It is an option, like going to the gym, a social event, recreation or technique. Perhaps it is something we add to our daily routine like brushing our teeth or we feel happy when we tick off 30 minutes of a spiritual “technique”. Or it is a “nice to have but not essential” dimension. In the first situation we allow a mind-dominated approach of repetition and mastery and in the second we have a mind-dominated approach of hierarchy where spirituality is a luxury, a “lifestyle choice” as I have heard some people disparagingly describe it.

At the same time, spirituality is not an escape. When life gets challenging, people retreat into spiritual retreats—a break from the mechanical lives, a respite or a temporary avoidance.

In the Goddess tradition, spirituality at its simplest embodiment is “Yagna”. It is the everyday, every moment unfolding of our movements and actions from a consciousness of sacrifice of self-interest.

This is not martyrdom, but of the nature of Earth Herself. It is like the trees than grow and offer every aspect of their bodies and Rasa (life essence) to all other life and nature. It is like the insects whose lives are offerings to the interdependent web of life.

And we can only sense Yagna consciousness of the Divine/Nature/Goddess when we step out of the mind-created and self-serving narratives we have developed to “describe” life and Nature.

Yagna is not always convenient, nor does it comply with our innate need for rewards and outcomes. At the same time it is also not suffering and darkness and “shadow”. It is simply attending to the unfolding of reality in the moment. And that takes energy and attention.

For example, when I dance with women, some of them inevitably come with information about philosophy and the Divine which provides a comfortable roadmap. It proposes that all we need to do is to enact the story of the Divine that we already know and “achieve” spirituality. My invitation to them is to leave the stories at the door of the practice room and to enter free of “knowing”. In that spacious and unbound realm, reality dances and reveals. This is the Divine Consciousness. We cannot be attending to the moment when we inhabit the known.

Attending in Yagna is not an option—it is what underpins the unfolding of our life. Yagna cannot be a part-time activity, it is a state of being. It is the consciousness from which our movement in our lives is sourced. It is not a text with a set of rules that one applies conditionally depending on one’s convenience.

When we allow Yagna to blossom in our beings, there are no hierarchical priorities. There is only an infinite dance that holds wisdom to be in each moment what that particular constellation of reality requires.

Reality is the eternal and infinite Goddess. And She is also our Yagna Consciousness that mirrors the eternity and infinity of Reality.