CHAPTER 1: MAHA SHIVA RATRI 2024 (2 min 42 secs)

Before Maha Shiva Ratri 2024, I created some guidance for our Yogic Mystery School that I also shared with our email list and on Facebook. Maha Shiva Ratri is a big wave of devotion we can piggyback. Not everyone will engage similarly: some will have a mild interest, others moderate, and others will be passionate. In this presentation, I share my insights, practice, and process regarding Maha Shiva Ratri in India. I am usually not here at this time.

CHAPTER 2: SHAIVISM, A MASSIVE WAVE (2 min 58 secs)

Shiva is a powerful word that means many things: although Shiva is a personal God (Lord Shiva), the word also carries an expansive sense of mystery. The night of Shiva occurs regularly in alignment with lunar cycles. Shaivism is a significant Hindu stream and has roots in the hunter-gatherer period. Adherents to this tradition, known as Shaivites, connect deeply to these “events” regularly as they occur in the lunar calendar. So, once a year, during Maha Shiva Ratri, the “Great Night Of Shiva,” there is a massive wave of devotion that we can plug into, the way surfers might watch for the big one and take advantage of the moment.

CHAPTER 3: PURGATION, ILLUMINATION, UNION (5 min 28 secs)

What brings us to our practice, especially when we connect to a big wave like Maha Shiva Ratri, is everything in our lives, on the one hand, and what immediately precedes the event, the past month or two before it. In this section, I share what it is we engage in our Yogic Mystery School around the Sacred Masculine, which connects to the Shaiva Agama tradition, which is what the Brahmin priests in the inner sanctum of the temples of Tamilnadu also practice and share when people visit the temple for darśan (the seeing). In the Western spiritual tradition, a sense of purgation leads to illumination, which leads to union.

CHAPTER 4: PUTTING ON THE MIND OF SHIVA (4 min 49 secs)

One of the insights that clarified itself this Maha Shiva Ratri is how teaching spirituality can impair the practice of teachers. I was able to approach my practice on this auspicious day with a new perspective, a sense of freedom that the typical influences upon my mind, especially during my practice, were no longer having the same degree of influence. I share this because even you, whoever you are, and whatever you may do, may need to change the degree of influence of something that influences you greatly during your practice. We may need to take a bit of risk, venture into the fog of unknowing, to begin with a beginner mind.

CHAPTER 5: THE START AND END OF PRACTICE (14 min 29 secs)

In this final segment, I share the ending of practice, which, in Shiva temples, is the mantra pushpam, a chant we learn in the Sacred Masculine. The start of our practice, which is also the mantra we hear chanted as we enter a Shiva temple, is the holy panchakshara, the five-syllabled “na—ma—shi—vaa—ya” that is intoned a particular way, the OM gliding into the sacred syllables, all strung along a single exhalation. You can learn how to chant this way from the guidance in this section. I also share how important it is to funnel all of one’s consciousness and resources into one’s practice because, if you are a teacher of mantra or meditation or Yoga, it is often the case that not 100% of your mental and spiritual resources are being funneled into your practice.