Episode 11: The Power of Sangha

Welcome to Mental Hygiene, a space to care for the mind like we care for the body, daily, gently and with love. Posted by Yogicaru and Susan Huu, this podcast brings ancient Yogic wisdom into modern life, offering practical tools to cleanse the mental clutter, restore inner stillness, and reconnect with your true self. Take a breath, you're exactly where you need to be. Welcome to Mental hygiene. Hello everyone, welcome to Mental Hygiene Podcast. My name is Susan and I'm with my teacher and friend Yogicaru here today. Today we're going to speaking about how to use the right association, the right community, the right Sangha to help us find that piece of mind. Yes, welcome everyone. I am Yogicaru, I'm very honored to be here to explore this Sanskrit term. Sangha, what does Sangha means and how to go about it, especially in 2000, 25, these times we're living in. Yeah, I feel like every single one of us naturally, it's such a human tendency. We want to be a part of a group, whether it's we believe in a certain type of political, we have a certain type of political beliefs, we support a certain sports team or even if I am a team, I phone or I'm a team, enjoy humans, we like being a part of something so that we feel like we're not alone. And when it comes to the mental hygiene for our spiritual evolution, Sangha is such an important thing. It's such a big pillar of our personal growth, but also how do we never get our day to day life. So Yogicaru, you found a more traditional way. What does Sangha, this word even mean? So it means a congregation of like-minded people who are doing something spiritual, that's what it means. So previously, if you wanted a Sangha, you had to leave home and maybe go today, Himalayas are the bank of the Ganges River to find that spiritual Sangha. Otherwise, if you were just living in your own village and town, there would most likely be a temple there. And ever known, an amenic ant would pass through and give some talk and inspire people. And then people would then start to have a small little Sangha in that village to the temple together, they agree. But then when someone really wanted to go deeper, let me go and find, in the forest where everyone there is dedicated to their spiritual practice. So it's people who are in search of controlling their senses, in search of how to control their mind, in search of how to connect to God in the heart. So what Sangha really means, it was a spiritual gathering to be with people who inspire you to evolve spiritually. So that in other words, Sangha is really an opportunity when we're able to associate with people who's working on evolving their mind, their consciousness, their philosophy, so that we can make every single day an opportunity to work with our spiritual evolution, to work with our mental hygiene. And even though it is a group, it's a group of people, but it's not to separate us, but rather to help us learn to unite come together and start to also recognize the divinity in every single person, even if they are not technically in our Sangha. That's right. And that's what's the difference between a spiritual Sangha and a Josa, a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club or a club. And that's the difference between a spiritual Sangha and a club or a club or a club or a club or a club. So, the association, what the spiritual Sangha, we're trying to connect to divinity in every aspect of life form. And why is being a part of a Sangha or having a Sangha so important? So, the association is very important when you want to control your senses and mind, because, especially in this time, the cycle we're living in, the season of the universe is called Kali Yuga. Kali Yuga materialism is stronger than spiritualism. So, we see a lot of people practice some kind of form of spiritual practice, maybe on one day a week, maybe two days a week. But then they practice materialism, seven days a week. - Twenty-four-seven. So, when you come on the spiritual Sangha then, in this age, it's like you're swimming up river. And it is very hard to swim up river by yourself. If you tie a rope all of you together and help you to go across, or the better analogies, if you have one, you should have probably used the analogy of one stick. It can break a stick very easily, but if you put a bundle of sticks, it's very hard to break. So, as we call Sangha then gives us the stability to live. And the times we're living where materialism is just bombarding you. You drive, you see billboards, smoke this, eat this, animal, drink this, exploit the opposite sex this way. Just constantly, the senses get pulled, pulled, pulled. So, with the spiritual Sangha, we are able to then go inwards, help us to go inwards, go deeper, and get a higher taste from within. So, when we start to extravert out, the pulling doesn't have the same effect on us. We don't go by it as previously. If we're just, "Oh, just pull, pull, pull, if you go deep." So, the spiritual Sangha helps us to go get an inner taste, or spiritual love, a higher taste. And because there's a higher taste inside, from being around that group of evolved beings who are in that mood of serving others, serving God, connecting them, then that's what the spiritual Sangha does for us. We need that so that we don't break. And we are traveling. So, the Sangha is giving us the spiritual strength to actually do the hard work while everything else is trying to pull us away, to distract us, to take us away from our practice, to connect within. And yeah, I really love that story of the sticks. As one single individual sticks, we are very fragile, so easy to break. When we are coming together as a community as the Sangha, we have so much more strength, we can really empower and help each other to remain grounded. And there's this other story. His Holiness Rana Swami told about the red woods on the west coast. These are the trees they grow for, I think, hundreds of years. They're super-super tall. But when you look at their roots, they're actually not that deep, they're pretty shallow. But the reason they are able to stay alive and thriving for hundreds of years is because their roots are connecting to each other. So even when the wind are coming, they are able to help each other to resist the winds, to resist falling, and then they thrive as a community. That's a beautiful analogy, right? A lot of it canes and so many things go down, they're still standing for hundreds of years, even though their roots are not too deep, but they're connected to each other. That's a beautiful one. And it's almost like they are having because of their association with each other, just like we can have our association in this day and age in a spiritual Sangha to help us resist the wind of the material poles every single day. Yeah, that's right. That's the key. That's the key to the Sangha. So when do we need our Sangha? Is it a weekly gathering? We should go to church once a week. Is it something that we should do maybe once a year, taking a retreat, being with people taking a certain training? Or is there something that needs to be a little bit more constant? So how constant is materialism in our consciousness? Every single moment. So that means we need a spiritual Sangha constantly. So try to find an association where you can get together regularly, if possible, on a daily basis, if five times a week, right? And then the days that you don't meet with the Sangha, then what you learn, the techniques you get to then put them into practice for those other two days or three days. So yeah, so materialism is constant. So we need a constant reminder. And when do we need it? Now. So we have the podcast, right? The podcast is then extend our Sangha to people on the planet. And this is a nice realization, right? Back in ancient times you had to leave and go to a bank of the Ganges River to the forest, the findings evolving. But today because of technology, the Sangha can now come to your home. So you can literally get Sangha easily at home to technology. Absolutely. Yeah, I think we most of us probably spend a lot of time on our phones, on our devices. And I can speak for myself. Most of the time it's not very productive, but if we can use the technology to help us to connect with our Sangha, our spiritual friends, spiritual family, then that we're really using the technology to our advantage. Yeah, it's called Yukta Vairagya in Sanskrit. Yukta Vairagya Vairagya detachment. What Yukta means using everything in the service of God. So like previously, right, I do a meditation training. People have to fly from across the state or across the country or sometimes from different countries that have to fly to either to Hong Kong or to Australia or to New York. Wherever I'm teaching or I was teaching in Hawaii, people have to come there, do the training and then go back, which is good people get to see different cultures. But now I do a training online and then I can connect to people. The Sangha grows around the planet, right, because of the technology. So we're very grateful for those engineers who created the worldwide web. We're grateful for those who develop computers. We're grateful for those who develop things like Zoom and so forth. So Yukta Vairagya utilizes all these, but then use it for a spiritual purpose. And for anyone who's not already joining Yogi Churus, Mental Hygiene Sangha, we also have five days a week on Zoom, different offerings. And every month we have Master Yoga Asana practice, we have a Master. Actually not the Master class is not just Asana. It's Yogi Asana, Yogi Needra meditation and also monthly of a meditation for the Mental Hygiene. So if you're free, you can come online once a week or two times a week, depending on your schedule, time and yeah. You teach about group online, I think. Yes, I am right now I have a community group that I host through the Bacti Center, but it's also online. It's a similar concept of we just come together every week. We speak about a particular topic of a Yogi philosophy. Then we bring it with us for the rest of the week. Then the next week we're checking. We speak about it and then we keep evolving together. Yeah, I wanted to say that Yogi Churus, your mental hygiene, that online class has helped so many people myself included, but I know that even during the pandemic when we started to read different sacred texts, the Yoga Sutra, Spagwagida, and right now she my bag, but it's been such an incredible experience to be able to dive into those really, really sacred texts. Otherwise, probably in the ancient times people have to pilgrimage all the way for months to be able to study those things. And right now we have those literally at our home in front of a screen, we can tap into that higher vibration. So thank you for doing that. And it gives me the opportunity to share the wisdom to around the planet even more efficiently, rather than sliding up plain and teaching the Kadaswata used to do before. And I still do those from time to time, but now I can just be from one place and connecting around the globe. So Yogi Churus, I like a grateful for those beings who created these platforms from us. So we spoke about when do we need a Sangha, we need it right now, we need it constantly to find that material is and that's also constantly pulling us. We spoke about why do we need a Sangha because it keeps us spiritually grounded and empowered, whether we're going through things that's very challenging or when life is easy sometimes we forget about our practice. So what, who are the people that we want to include in our Sangha, Yogi Churus? So who should we in that spiritual Sangha. So who do we choose to associate with in a spiritual Sangha should be someone who is on the process in the process of purifying their mind, senses and heart. So the beautiful analogy given is those associate with those who are in the shower. So if you have a soccer team or a football team and it's a rainy day and the field is our muddy, but all the all of them have to go clean the mud. So when the game is over, they all covered at different levels of mud. So all of them have to go take a shower. You go take a shower, you're getting clean, you're cleaning the physical body and simultaneously cleaning your mind, you become happy when you're clean. Different players have different levels of mud on them. Some people will be able to get fully clean very quickly. Those type of people we want associate with them learn from them. Then some people have more mud than us. You want to empathize with them, inspire them and then you have some people who have same level of they're in the shower. So as you're in the show, you're getting clean, befriend those people. And so that analogy tells us, so anyone who is on the spiritual journey, you will find people who are more advanced than us who are very good at controlling their senses, who are very good at making their mind remain peaceful, who are very good at offering service to society, service to God. So when you find someone who is more advanced like that, yes, they're like the ones who already got the twins. And then the Sangha is a spiritual Sangha is a non-judgmental Sangha. Everyone in the spiritual Sangha, we know, oh, I have my mud, my thoughts, I'm getting clean of them through the practices. That person has their thoughts, their mud, they're going to it. So it's a place where people can, we see people are non-judgmental. Oh, you have, okay, let's inspire you because today I might be strong to mark today your week, I help you. You're strong and you help me. So that's spiritual Sangha. The spiritual Sangha is about inspiring each other. And so those who are very advanced, they don't have time finding the fault of them. They're okay, I've been there. I was already in the morning. No, I'm going to let me help you. Right. They don't see the external issues because the understanding of one is a spiritual being. And so this is the who we want to find someone who has a daily dedicated practice, daily practice, who is studying the sutras, studying the Vedas, studying the Bhagavata, someone who is praying to God daily, sincerely, someone who is doing some kind of services society. So when you find that association, those type of beings, resonated them again and again and again. So that's who you want to associate with because by associate what will happen, their evolution will rob off on us. We start to develop the same qualities they have. And the spiritual Sangha you want to have quality such as kindness, compassion. Community, group, as along with the knowledge, transcendental knowledge. Right. So this is large. It's a mood, large. It's a new. He would teach philosophy from he was 11. He started the Sanctitan moving from he was 11. But it wasn't just sentiment. He could teach philosophy. So he had a lot of knowledge and at the same time, when the service to society. So those start to rob off on us. We develop humility. We develop knowledge. We develop kindness and service. So we want to be people who's on the journey of cleansing their minds, their heart so that we can get closer towards our true essence of we are. Some people in our Sangha are more events. They are more clean. They've been in the shower for longer than us. We learn from them. We respect them. We get their associations so that we can have their blessings and share the knowledge and wisdom they have already already acquired. And if we see someone in our Sangha who might look like they need more work. But if they're already in that Sangha, they're in a in a in a process of it. We encourage them and empower them. So in another word, spiritual Sangha really should have be a place of non-competitive non-competition. It's not a place of judgment. But rather we help each other to get clean together. In a way, it's not that we don't compete with each other. We compete without envy. I want to do that too. So we decided to get more and more clean. More shower, more water. Yes. So also when we come to the space of going into finding your Sangha of mental hygiene, we want to evolve not just the physical body but also the mind. And over time, we want to evolve the way that we think, the way that we are intelligence, our philosophy guides us. And hopefully one day that can also connect us to that devotion in the heart as well. Yeah. So the spiritual Sangha helps us to find why we are incarnated in this life. That's what the spiritual Sangha does first. All the other material Sangha just build them. You know, for you to get more and more fruitive and get attached to material things. So as the spiritual Sangha is going to help you to understand the material assets, we need them. We're going to use them in the service of God. The material gifts we have is a gift, karmic gift from God. We're going to use those in the service of God. And when we do that, yes, we find why did I take this human incarnation? Why did I took birth on this beautiful earth planet? Why, you know, I have this amazing human form. Everyone is seeking. Like if you're a seeker, why did I get the human form instead of a cat form or a dog form? Or a tree form? Okay, so you've got this. Then why? Why did I incarnate? What is my duty as a human? That's what the spiritual Sangha is going to help us to recognize. Then we start to live a life that's actually aligned with that purpose, that Dharma, why we are here. And in kind of embark, kind of really embracing that love and devotion, which really is already a part of who we are. It's all right. You know, you get incarnated as a bird. You, you, you, you will fly like a bird. And if it is a fish, you will breed on the water. You get the incarnation of a human form. Is it just a trend? Please the senses. And how many times have we tried to please our senses? And we still don't get satisfied. So the spiritual Sangha reminds us, you get charu, you try to enjoy your senses so many times again and again. And every time it comes with a different permutation, different color, different, you know, your ignorance, convinced you is going to be better this time. No, it's not. It's the same. It's the same scenario. And it only lasts for a while. Yes. It's pleasure only lasts for a while. So the spiritual Sangha points that out to us, hey, we are all searching for an inner happiness that never ends. And that happens when our senses are then in the use and service of God and God's creation. Right. Everyone is a servant. Everyone, everyone is acting like they are master. Illusion. That's the Maya. But everyone is a servant. If you have a pet, you are a servant of that pet. Absolutely. And you do that service out of your love, not because you have to, but because of that love in the heart. Yes. And you have a plant at home. You water the plants, serve the plant, right, out of flow. When you get the human form, then you also have a service attitude to your parents, have a service attitude to society. That's why we get certain jobs. So we give back to society. Now the spiritual Sangha is going to tell us, do all of those things with a spiritual vision. See God in your pets heart in your plants heart. Parents heart and that. Oh, so yes, you are. We are an eternal servant of God eventually. Everyone you look at our own is serving something. But now just change the consciousness. You don't have to stop doing what you're doing. Just change the consciousness. Oh, I am a servant of the servant of the servant of God. And this is the beautiful realizations that have. And then it's life more easier and graceful rather than, you know, trying to exploit God's creation. Let's use them in service to God. And then the mind also becomes more peaceful because we start to recognize everything we do, whether they're challenging or they're very enjoyable. We can do it as a service. We can do it in a way to connect with that. Divinity in the heart with other living entities. And then everything becomes a part of our spiritual life, even though we're still living this material life 24/7. But we can also bring that spiritual wisdom into every single thing we do. And you made a beautiful point just now. You made a point that, you know, about their going to be the dualities of this universe, right? It's very 12 Sangha is going to help you when everything is going beautiful and fine. It's very 12 Sangha should help you to appreciate that it is a special gift from God. And then when there are challenging times in life, this spiritual Sangha is going to help you to recognize this is also a gift from God. Absolutely. A challenging one, but you can learn from it, right? Totally. Because I feel like some of us, we have different tendencies. Some people feel more connected to the spiritual practice when everything's easy than I can focus on my practice. Others might feel like I only take shelter in my practice when everything else in a material is very hard. But really spiritual life, just like material life is constantly happening around us, spiritual life should also be constant. So whether we're going through either sides of it, we should be reminded by our Sangha that keep doing what we're doing, keep doing the practice doing our service so that we continue to evolve. Yeah, that's what the Sangha does helps us big time because we are going to go through the ups and downs in life and the Sangha helps us. It's only going to last for a while. Stick with the practice, stick with the practice. Keep it going. Keep getting the taste from inside. When we're in the spiritual Sangha, the spiritual Sangha helps us to go inside and get a taste of pure love from inside and understanding God loves us from outside from in. And then when we go out into the world, what does the spiritual Sangha do for it? We're no longer pulled by the senses. We can look at the pullings and with grace and with respect, you know, we respect the material energy. We respect the pullings and that helps us to overcome them. That's the goal. And then yeah, we will come respectful to the material energy because we know material energy is strong. The reason I got to this place of detached from it and that is because I'm getting blessings from the Sangha, the association. The association is sent for us by God. God sent those people to give us the inner strength. If someone who's just starting on this spiritual journey, where would you suggest them to look for us on God that can help them keep them grounded and empowered? So it depends on where they are. If you're just starting out, right? You want them to inspire them to go take maybe a meditation class, yoga class, maybe a philosophy class. And it is rare you find places where you can get all three of those. One place. You can come to the baptism in New York City. So in New York City, you can take a physical and yoga for your body, yoga for the mind, meditation, yoga for the body. We talk about philosophy. We literally have a yoga class, a 90 minute long class, me and my friend, Jermina, Jaya, we do twice a week. It's called flow and satsang. We do 75 minutes off a back to flow where we moving of a lifestyle, adding some philosophy. Then we sit for 15 minutes where we chat about a philosophy. So we inspire each other. So not everywhere on the planet will be like the back. But if someone might just go to a yoga studio, they get introduced, they're ready to signify a yoga sangha. And as they keep going, the larger in the heart will guide them. Oh, you know, there's more to yoga than just the postures. And part. Oh, there's also the philosophical part. So if someone is sincere, they'll start somewhere. And then the larger in the heart will guide them to a place like the back to center or to a mental, mental hygiene classes online. Many, many devotees are teaching philosophy and meditation. So there are ample opportunities now with the internet, right? Like you can be in tinbox too. Actually, out of the internet, you can connect. Find something that's a spiritual sangha that helps you to evolve with body, mind and heart as they say in there. Hand, head and heart. That's beautiful. Amazing. Yoga chair, can you guide us through a sure meditation? Sure. We can visualize what I like, what's it like to be in a like minute association to evolving together in our hearts. Absolutely. Excellent. Let's come into a nice comfortable seated poster, bring the palms on the knees, touch the tip of the tongue, step off the index finger, close the eyes softly. Bring your mind into the present moment to the breath at the entrance of the nostrils. He'll air moving in and out. And the breath naturally as you are aware of it more and more, you start to get wisdom from the breath. But that you exhale has nitrogen carbon dioxide. A plant transform that carbon dioxide into oxygen, produce the oxygen for you. So you have a connection to the plants and trees. And the same thing with your animals and pets. The animal exhale carbon dioxide and nitrogen, the plant turns it into oxygen. Then you breathe it so you see that as we are incarnated on this planet, we are connected to each other through the breath. So the breath is that underlying in all of sangha. So to spiritualize the sangha, we want to connect to people who understands the breath, our lungs or windpipe, the trees, all these are created by the divinity by God. And a spiritual sangha helps us to respect and cherish God's creation. So we respect the plants and trees. We respect animals, we respect other humans because we start to see the spiritual sangha teaches us that there is divinity in everyone's heart. With this vision, we can evolve more and more with knowledge, with love for God's creation and service to God's creation. So we want you to bring the image of many people, different showers, stalls and every one of them have different layers of mud under. And as you are looking from one angle, you see someone comes out of their shower quicker than the others. And I mean that person had less amount of mud under and then some people stand here for a long time. They have more mud. So our sangha is anyone who is in the spiritual shower. Those who are purifying their mind daily, those who are cleansing their heart daily, connecting to the force of love and service daily. And as we do that, we ourselves will one day come out of the shower very pure with the free from all false identification. When we step out of the shower very clean, we understand fully. My body is a sacred temple of nine gates. My mind is a sacred temple that has the ability to accept and reject. My intelligence, through its spiritual eyes understands this whole material universe is temporary. My ego is purifying with the identification that I am a spiritual being. And I am animating the mind, the intellect and the body. And when we resonate to that higher self, finish with the pure shower, we can look at the other people in the show and help them to evolve. Find those who are on our pairs, be friends them. Find those less empathetic. Find those who are more evolved. Learn from them. This is what a spiritual sangha does for us, connects us to our higher self, the artful. And we develop a love for God, service to God's society, God's creation. We no longer see separatism, this group and that group, this sangha and that sangha. We are all God's children, in different incarnations, body, respect the birds, respect the aquatics, respect the human. Respect and love of God. Take a deep inhalation, exhale slowly, breath to normal, palms to the heart. Lower the brain, this world towards you, two amazing lungs that are bringing in and out that ear that's connecting us to our living entities to the heart. There's beating, means we are there, the spiritual being, the Lord is there as well, almost with the head of the eyes. Thank you. Thank you, Gichar, for such a beautiful powerful meditation, recognizing every element of TSO sacred and we can really, with the right association, the right song of "Can Really Evolve Together" is so much stronger. And thank you everyone for being in our sangha on this podcast. This is really a space where we want to create so that we can all come together, speaking about the topics to help us find enlightenment or hygiene, to open up our hearts, to purify the body, the minds and evolving together. Yes, so thank you all so much for being here, being a part of our sangha, share it with your friends and family. And if you have more time, you can feel free to pop into our classes online or in New York City, you can pop into the back of the center with Brenda. And so forth, keep the sangha going because materialism is constant. So we need this spiritual sangha, constant. Thank you, Gichar, for speaking to everyone next time. Thank you all, have a lovely rest of the day, Adion, that's it. Adion. Thank you for joining us with Mental Hygiene, where ancient wisdom meets modern life one breath in a time. If this episode brought you peace, insight or inspiration, we invite you to subscribe, leave a review, and share with someone you love. To go deeper, connect with Yelghit Churu and Susan Hoo, follow the journey on Instagram at Mental Hygiene Podcast. Until next time, keep your mind clear, your heart open, and your spirit is grounded. Be well, be still.