For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish

For more videos and instruction, visit me at: patreon.com/yogawithnishAlmost all spiritual traditions around the world insist on "renouncing the world" in order to mature spiritually.What is there to be renounced? Why would you even want to renounce it? And finally, how do you go about doing that in this day and age?I will explore the way different religions present renunciation as an ideal and then propose that the true meaning of renunciation is NOT an outward "show" of giving things up but instead, it is a deep, inner renunciation of allowing the patterns that no longer serve you to dissolve. I will give you four techniques to do this in your own life!Enjoy!Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

For more episodes and instruction, visit me at patreon.com/yogawithnish Do you have free will? We look at a few ideas from Yoga and Tantra and compare them to similar ideas in Christianity and Kantian philosophy to investigate this age old question of what free will really is. I will show you that you (as the Jeeva, Individual) are a completely determined being and that is an incredibly freeing concept with regards to the personal suffering you feel. And yet, You as Shiva or Brahman or Atman are in fact completely radically free!Check out Swami Sarvapriyananda's (from the Vedanta Society) treatment of this subject on free will! My talk extends from some of the points the Swami made and approaches the issue from a Kashmiri Shaivite/Tantrika angle!Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Here a few of my favourite ideas from ancient Indian philosophy to whet your appetite for a deeper dive into these profoundly transformative, eternally relevant and heartbreakingly beautiful South Asian schools of thought that can help anyone anywhere live a more meaningful life. Welcome to For the Love of Yoga, a podcast series where we explore various topics in Yoga, Vedanta, Tantra and other spiritual traditions around the world.For more episodes and instructions, come join me at patreon.com/yogawithnish Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We suffer because we cling on to three perceptual errors. I will present some arguments to loosen the hold of these misperceptions in an effort to free you from their sway!For more episodes, visit me at: patreon.com/yogawithnishSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We discuss how "spiritual awakening" works in order to dispel the myth that there is a "progression" or "a set amount of work you have to do" to become enlightened. After all, you cannot BECOME enlightened because you already ARE that now. It is your fundamental nature. All it takes is one Insight. In an attempt to give you this insight today, that is, to prove to you in the immediacy of your own awareness that you are not your body nor are you your mind, we discuss the Duality of Patanjali Yoga and why Patanjali, Plato and Descartes all make the same mistake. Then, I explain how Tantra, Plotinus and Spinoza all solve this mistake with the concept of Non-Duality. In short: in this episode we move from Duality, to a much subtler more mature understanding of philosophy.For more episodes and instruction, visit us at: patreon.com/yogawithnishCORRECTION: A few minutes in the video I cite Tantra Illuminated by the wonderful scholar Christopher Hareesh Wallis but I mis-spoke and said "Williams" instead. So sorry for the slip of the tongue, my dear friend!Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

God is the blissful awareness of your own Being, God is only thing that exists and the Universe as we see it is just an emanation of diversity arising out of the one Unity that you Are. And yet! We still experience ourselves as a separate from the world around. We experience suffering and contraction. If we are indeed God, how could this be? Why don't we immediately intuit our nature as the Absolute? To answer this question we look at the idea of Maya, the Cosmic Measurer: the power of God to manifest the Many and conceal the Unity within that diversity. We explore Kashmiri Shaivism to study the 5 Kancukas or the 5 "veils/armors" that limit us and hide our true nature from ourselves and finally we conclude by saying: to the unenlightened, Maya is Bondage; to the wise, Maya is a great Work of Art!For more episodes, visit us at: patreon.com/yogawithnishSupport the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Perhaps one of our deepest discussions yet, today we explore the concept of Atma Bodha (Self-Realization)/Brahma Jnana (Knowing God)/Nirvana/Perfection/Enlightenment etc. to figure out what the ultimate goal of spiritual practice REALLY is. We explore a Tantrik creation story to explain why the world as you see it came to be and what "your" role in it is. Who are you really? And why are you here?All this in today's discussion on What Is Enlightenment?Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

The Shamanic Roots of Yoga, the Core Teachings of the Upanishads, the story of how Yoga first came to the west and the brilliant life of India's Greatest Saint: Swami Vivekananda!Support our work here: www.patreon.com/yogawithnishNaturally, one hour is not enough to capture to beauty and brilliance of Swami Vivekananda, India's foremost saint and beloved disciple of Paramahansa Ramakrishna, World Teacher and Avatar. To honor this incredible spirit, I wanted to share with you the story of his life which is really a story about how the spiritual ideals of India came to the West for the first time in the late 19th CE. We discuss the Shamanic Roots of Yoga and the core philosophical teachings of the Upanishads and Vedas in order to fully expound the earth-shattering Universal, Non-Sectarian Truth of the Upanishads which is: Truth is One, though it may be called differently and the paths to get there are many.Swami Vivekananda gave his whole life for this truth, to show mankind our innate divinity and unite us all under the banner of Non-Dual Awareness. Happy birthday, Swami-ji! And this one is for all our "sisters and brothers of America!"Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

Today we talk about the Problem of Suffering as articulated by the Shakyamuni Buddha in order to understand what it is exactly that we're trying to achieve in Yoga. Naturally, we discuss the subtle ideas of Yogic phenomenology (the study of how we perceive the world around us) to show that we are projecting our universe into existence through our mental representations (vikalpas). Then, we take a deep dive into some of the most profound philosophies from the 15th CE text Drg-Drsya-Viveka, "Discrimination Between The Seer and the Seen" to prove to you in one argument that you are not only the Body nor are you really only the Mind, you are in fact something much more...Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM

We discuss Shakti, the Goddess: the fierce, fiery, powerful principle of the Divine Feminine as expressed by Shakta Tantra. We compare conceptions of the Female with mystery traditions like 15th CE Alchemy and Occultism, Taoism and Mesopotamian mythology. We make frequent visits to modern gender politics and Jungian psychology to see what relationship the psychic principles of Yin and Yang have to physical sex and psychological gender.Support the showLectures happen live every Monday at 7pm PST and again at Friday 11am PST Use this link and I will see you there:https://www.zoom.us/j/7028380815For more videos, guided meditations and instruction and for access to our lecture library, visit me at:https://www.patreon.com/yogawithnishTo get in on the discussion and access various spiritual materials, join our Discord here: https://discord.gg/U8zKP8yMrM