Families, Creative Work, and Social Media

Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community gather for satsang and get real about all the questions we humans want answered. Intimate, courageous, heartfelt spiritual talk about pretty much everything. So happy you are here! A podcast from Satsang with...

Show Notes

Welcome to our weekly Satsang with Shambhavi podcast. Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community gather for intimate, courageous, heartfelt, and often humorous conversations about spirituality, politics, culture, and pretty much everything. Published each Wednesday here and wherever podcasts are found.

Our podcasts are recorded at live satsangs. They are delivered to you each week fresh and new.

You are also invited to join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community LIVE for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or email [e-mail] to request the Zoom link for satsang.

Shambhavi Sarasvati is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit organization offering opportunities to practice in the traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.

Visit https://jayakula.org/ to find out more.

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Thanks for listening! And much love to you, wherever and however you are.

What is Satsang with Shambhavi?

Join Shambhavi Sarasvati for a weekly exploration of self-realization, death, love, devotion, and waking up while living in a messy world. Satsang is an ancient spiritual practice from India. It means "being in reality together." During satsang, people gather with a teacher to learn, ask questions, find community, chant and sing. Shambhavi gives satsang in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere. The dharma talks offered here are recordings of the live satsang.

Shambhavi is the spiritual director of Jaya Kula, a nonprofit organization. Her training is in the View and practices of Trika Shaivism from Kashmir and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet. She is a householder sannyasini and a devotee of Anandamayi Ma. Visit jayakula.org for her full teaching schedule and more information.

Shambhavi's books include Mother Poems and A Crack in Time (2025), The Reality Sutras: Seeking the Heart of Trika Shaivism (2018), Tantra: the Play of Awakening (2012), Pilgrims to Openness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life (2009), Returning (2015), and No Retreat: Poems on the Way to Waking Up (2016). All of Shambhavi's books are available on Bookshop.org and on Amazon.

Hi, this is Shambhavi.

Welcome to my weekly podcast about spirituality,
love, death, devotion and waking
up while living in a messy world.

The Satsang with Shambhavi podcast is recorded
live each week with students of our
non-profit community, Jaya Kula.

For more information and to find out
about attending a satsang, visit jayakula.org.

Thanks for listening.

Much love to you, wherever and however you are.

STUDENT: My family has a big Catholic attachment.

So using pain to remove
your sins is quite a thing.

Maybe my question is, how can I talk to my family
about this in a way that we can establish
a relationship of conversations

where we don't hit a wall?

Because I love them.

SHAMBHAVI: If we're talking about like formal
self-infliction of pain,
in some Christian traditions,

it's usually based on an idea of the self as being
sinful, that there's something wrong with you
and you deserve that pain.

And then the pain is somehow
salutary, it somehow helps you to feel that pain,
to suffer in the eyes of God.

Recognizing that you're a sinner
in the eyes of God.

I'm no expert on all of the different
Christian permutations.

There's so many different forms of Christianity
in the world, and not all
of them see pain in that way.

But in general, in the Abrahamic traditions,
not just Christianity, God metes out punishment.

And you can either mete it out yourself
or just have it inflicted on you or both.

But it's somehow based on the punishment
is somehow going to cleanse you.

Our view of the self is completely different.

And the pain that we experience is
a natural occurrence because we have
limited self-concept and limited emotional

range and limited perceptual range.

And we're very attached to certain ideas
of ourself and others and the world.

When those ideas,
those concepts and those behavior patterns
start to be challenged, it's painful.

It isn't punishment.

It's part of the natural process of liberation.

The only thing that occurs to me, you know,
you can't explain this to your family.

They aren't enculturated
in this kind of tradition.

They haven't gravitated toward it.

They're where they want to be and where they have
every right to be if that's
how they choose to worship.

The only thing that occurs to me is that you could
circumvent all of the View, all of the teachings
by just saying, to me, you're good.

You don't deserve punishment.
You're good.

Everyone is good.

You could just say something like that.

I don't know what kind of conversation that would
provoke, but I don't know that a conversation
about View in a philosophical sense is worth it.

I think just speaking to people's
hearts is the most important thing.

The fact is they are good.

And if you can speak to that and move them,
then that's the best thing you could possibly do.

STUDENT: I've noticed that I look
for meaning in everything.

I'm not sure what that's defending against.

What is that defending against?

SHAMBHAVI: Well, I think in your emotional
landscape, you feel lowly.

And the antidote that you've come up
with is to feel special in some way.

You bounce back and forth between feeling a lack

of value or not liking yourself and then creating

reasons why you're special and not dislikable.

But these are extremes.

Finding the meaning in things.

There's many things that could mean, right?

It simply could be something very human realmy.

But in the God realm, those meanings
are going to be transcendental.

Those meanings are going to be
something spiritually special.

Those meanings are going to designate you or your
life or what's happened
to you as spiritually special.

So the thing is, those are extremes.

The extreme of feeling you have all these
meaningful things happening
versus you're really not very worthy.

So going back and forth.

The idea is to find a middle.

Because if you're bouncing back and forth between
these extremes, you're going to be depressed.

That causes depression,
to bounce back and forth between one
unreal version of yourself to another one,

one that's like crap and one that's exalted.

That's a recipe for being depressed,
not really having anywhere to stand.

When I was in my teens, I was depressed a lot.

And a lot of that was because of gluten,
but not all of it was.

I had two parents who were kind of those extremes.

In my mother's eyes, I could do no wrong.

And I was this extraordinary creature.

And in my father's eyes,
I was always doing everything wrong.

I was kind of bouncing back and forth
between those two views of myself.

And I went to therapy because
I was chronically depressed.

I told the therapist, I don't want to take drugs.

So she said, OK, just give me six months. [laughs]

We'll work on it.

The most valuable thing she taught me was
the depression is being caused because
you're bouncing back and forth between

these two extreme views of yourself.

And you need to find what you actually think
of yourself and who you
actually are according to you.

And it helped a lot.

So I pass it on to you.
I hope it'll help you.

STUDENT: It's been a little bit hard relating to my mom
and just the condition that she's in.

She really, really suffers a lot and

from my view there's a lot of things that could be
done to lessen the suffering that she's just not

interested in like diet or self-care or
alternative medicine, anything like that. It's just
a little bit hard over time to watch her suffering

and certainly there's some disappointment and some
judgment. I don't feel really good about
that because part of me recognizes that it's her

life and respects that but it's hard to be with.

SHAMBHAVI: I think whenever we're in a situation like
that, it's usually with parents,

sometimes with siblings,
but someone with whom we're not likely to break
off relations with,

no matter how difficult they are.

We have to, I think, find our reason for being
there, regardless of what they're doing.

I don't know if you've
articulated that to yourself yet.

But just some simple thing.

I'm here because I want to do something.

And it can't involve, I want them to do something.

It's got to be something you're
doing for your own satisfaction.

And I think that might help
if you could articulate that.

Having your own self-contained reason
for being there really calms things down.

STUDENT: Sometimes I have articulated to myself
a reason of that sort that is along the lines of,
I just feel like, I guess, a sense of duty or

like, I just feel like she's mine to care for.

SHAMBHAVI: For a lot of people, a sense
of duty is coming from the outside.

Our culture tells us you're the dutiful daughter
and that's the role you have to fulfill.

If that's how you're processing the idea of duty,
then that could become very burdensome.

or not really solve the issue
that you're talking about.

But if you have a feeling like I am a person
who gets satisfaction out of being
loyal and dutiful

that's a different kind of an orientation.

It's like I have an orientation
of being a servant.

Now, if I were to like process that, for instance,
through a feminist lens, it doesn't really work.

If I thought, oh, you know,
this misogynistic culture has taught
me to serve and not be out in front.

Then I could get extremely resentful about
the whole thing about being a servant.

But the identity or the feeling of servanthood
that I have has nothing to do with that.

It's how my devotional aspect shows up.

It belongs to me and it's not
about anyone or anything else.

And so I can keep serving even
when people are being jerks.

It doesn't really matter
how anyone else is behaving.

So duty is another thing that could be part
of someone's expression of devotion,
to be dutiful, to be loyal.

Or just the idea that I want to return the favor
to the person that brought me into the world.

But it has to be something that you want, not just
something you feel you should be or should do.

STUDENT: I can very much relate like even last night I was
talking to my mom and having
a very similar experience.

I feel there is value in other ways of taking
care of our health and I want that for her.

I think there's some threads of like, she's
rejecting, but I feel like I've looked
at that and I sort of can identify that and it

doesn't bother me all that much. But I think
my question is like how to take care.

I do feel like I want to take care of her and I
don't know how because the means that I have,
she doesn't necessarily want.

And yeah, that leaves a big question
of just how to be there for her.

SHAMBHAVI: Have you ever asked her how she
wants you to be there for her?

You know, very often when we're thinking about how
can I help someone, we're just stuck in our heads.

Like trying to come up with something.
And the thing is we just have to ask. And just
keep asking in different ways.

If you only get a little bit of direction,
just follow that little bit of direction.
If we really want to be there for somebody you

have to be there on their terms unless
their terms are something that really conflicts
with our sense of what we would ever do.

Or their terms are just endlessly
participate in my realm vision. [laughs]

That's just a waste of energy.

But as long as they suggest something helpful
and within the realm of sanity,
we should just go along with it.

STUDENT: I have a question about creative work.

I feel like I kind of flicker in between being
inward facing and outward facing with the energy.

Sometimes it's very self-involved,
but sometimes it is something I love
to do and love sharing with people.

And so I can like see that it's
like this kind of impacted area.

And then sometimes I want to avoid it altogether.

I'm wondering if there's
anything I can do about it.

SHAMBHAVI: Well, I'm not knocking being inward.
At all.

There's a pulse in our lives between being inward
and being more outward,
and that's completely natural and healthy.

One thing I was trying to work on when I was
starting this practice was to not
do creative work with tunnel vision.

In other words, sometimes we do creative work
and we sort of forget we have a body and we forget
we're in a room and we forget there's anything

happening other than this thing
that we are sort of tunnel visioning.

And that's particularly true
with work on a computer.

Since a lot of the creative work I've done is
writing, you know, I've very often
been in front of some kind of machine

and in recent decades, a computer.

It did take a bit of reorienting to do computer
work and not forget the whole rest of the world.

But that is possible.

Obviously, if I'm doing creative work,
I'm being inward to some extent.

And that's fine.

But you still want to have a body and you still
want to hear noises that are happening
and still feel like you're in a circumstance.

So work on that.
Don't worry about being inward.

Being inward is completely natural and fine.

But being like, disembodied tunnel vision
brain on a stick is not really desirable.

STUDENT: Interestingly, you showed up in my dream last
night and also were wagging a finger at me.

When I was using the computer,
I was not paying attention to other things.

You're consistent.

SHAMBHAVI: Your wisdom and my wisdom agree.

STUDENT: There's like another part about just
making stuff for my personal brand.

SHAMBHAVI: Like doing creative work that's
basically focused on self-promotion?

STUDENT: Yeah, wanting to make something beautiful
in part because I think it's beautiful, but also in part
because I want to have made something beautiful.

SHAMBHAVI: Right, and you want to be
seen as having done that.

You want to be the one who has done that. [laughs]

That's really an impediment when
we're talking about creative work.

If it's a constant or nearly a constant,
it'll prevent you from experimenting in certain
ways and just totally fucking up and making

something ugly now and then,
writing something really bad.

We have to do that also to produce creative work.

We have to be willing to make false starts and do
things really badly too, and not just be thinking
about what our audience is going to think of us.

What that transmutes to in my own experience as

a creative person who's a practitioner is
that eventually I found that everything I do

I'm thinking of the impact it's
going to have on other people.

How is it going to help them to feel
something or recognize something?

And less and less as time goes by,
am I thinking about what anybody thinks of me.

Of course, we're living in a culture where it's
absolutely normal, natural,
and expected for you to work on your brand.

I didn't grow up that way.

I imagine it's harder to get out of at this
point in our history, in this place.

But it does happen.

It's just part of that process of waking into more

of a devotional feeling about everything and just
everything becomes what you want for other people.

STUDENT: I've always really struggled with
social media and then generally just
end up quitting.

But sometimes I want to have something like
that because I think that there's
helpful ways to participate too.

In the kind of situation where like literally 99%
of people are having a personal brand,
do you have any like recommendation?

SHAMBHAVI: I can just tell you what I did.

One thing about personal brand
is that you censor yourself.

There's things that belong with your
brand and things that don't.

You really highly curate what's going out there.

And I decided at some point,
I don't really remember when,
but I just decided I'm not curating anything.

If I want to say it or express it,
I'm just going to.

In terms of like how people are going to look
at me to hide things about myself
or massage people's view of me,

is not happening.

On one day, I made that decision to just whatever
I feel like expressing,
that's what's going on there.

And then I've just kept doing that.

So dropping curation is one thing.

I mean, you can make money,
you can make political allies,
you can support other people and causes,

you can try to communicate
certain things to people.

A lot of what I'm doing is trying to communicate
things to people, like particularly people
who aren't necessarily in 100% agreement.

I'm trying to inform people who don't read
the same news sources that I do,
keep certain things in front of them

that they might not otherwise see.

And I have no idea if it's working [laughs]
or what effect I'm having.

But that's sort of another part of it.

I'm just doing what I want to do.

I want more people to know what's going on.

Whether or not what I'm doing
is effective, I don't know.

But because I want to, I just do it.

It's kind of a Bhagavad Gita thing.

Let go of the result.

So I would just say, do what you want.

Put what you want on there and don't curate.

It's a good expressive tool.

I've just made so many
connections on social media.

that are really enriching.

I never had the attitude, despite my age,
that relationships formed online
are not real relationships.

I always thought that was a ridiculous stance.

So even from like really early days, I went on to,
like we didn't have social media then,
but I went online.

There was definitely social
things happening online.

With the attitude that these are real
relationships and these are opportunities to talk
to people I wouldn't ordinarily get to talk to.

That was super fun.
I mean, just having fun is another motivation.

It doesn't have to be all, like, serious business.

STUDENT: Yeah. Yeah, there's cool people online.

SHAMBHAVI: Absolutely. You know, the fact that
I get to talk to people who are actually living
in Palestine, I just find that kind of miraculous.

And that's not the first time that's happened,
just getting to talk to people
in lots of different circumstances,

places that I wouldn't normally have
access to find out about their lives.

I think it's important, too,
for the future of our lives here that we have
those connections, that people literally really

get to know each other, not just these
soundbites of things we think about other people.

So I think it's part of why there is a global intifada
starting to come about right now.

People actually really do know things and have
real feelings about people that are in Palestine.

Not necessarily people they know personally,
but people whose lives they're following
almost every day feel attached to them.

And I think that's a huge part
of the engine of this whole thing.

So there's so many things that can happen.

Satsang with Shambhavi is produced by Jaya Kula,
a non-profit community offering opportunities

to learn and practice in the direct realization
traditions of Trika Shaivism and Dzogchen.

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