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Holistic Living
By the Light of the Moon: A Yogic Perspective
by Laura Plumb
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” – Buddha
Those of us who live yoga are reminded often that the supreme goal of our practice is to unite. “Yoga” literally means “union” in Sanskrit. Mostly, in America, this is said to mean that we unite body and mind. We integrate the parts and return to wholeness.
But what are those parts? What was not whole that becomes whole? And where is our mind that it gets disconnected from the body?
“As above, so below.” – The Vedas
The women and men who lived in the fertile Himalayan valleys many thousands of years ago studied the sky, and from their observations learned much about life on Earth. Many years before Copernicus, they were able to perceive that all planets revolve around the sun, our principle light and energy source.
The sun is our beginning, our sustaining power and, ultimately, a fire capable of consuming all. From the sun, all emerged; without the sun, there is nothing. In this, they realized that the sun is truly the heart of our world.
By night, these sages contemplated another reality. Without the light of day, you can see where the sun lives, its “heart space,” as a glittering, seemingly infinite realm, like an endless ocean. The sages saw that the heart light occupies a field of intelligence and beauty that we can only begin to peer into.
In this vast realm, they saw that while the sun is very regular in shape, occurrence, and motion, there is a light in the night sky that is irregular in all the same ways.
Most importantly, this moonlight is not self-generating. It is bounced light, reflecting the sun in the same way that water reflects light. Its reflection changes daily, waxing and waning, growing and shrinking, rising and falling in an ever-changing, rhythmic arc through the night sky. The sages saw the moon like a beacon of mirrored light in that cosmic ocean of space.
In studying the variations of the moon—mobile, subtle, sensitive and dualistic—the sages realized that it is like the human mind. In fact, the English word “moon” comes from the Sanskrit word manas, meaning mind. “Man” and “human” have the same root, suggesting the moon-like, varied nature of human existence.
Like the moon floating in outer space, our “atomic” mind is a point in a larger field of consciousness—one of many points of light in the infinite field of awareness that life presents. What’s more, our mind is not even the light itself, but a refection of the light of experience, wisdom, and knowledge.
Sometimes this mind of ours reflects the “light of the heart” fully. But most of the time, it reflects the heart light only fractionally. Occasionally, we have dark moons, just as we can sometimes feel like our mind is dark, full of doubt, confusion and fear.
As scientists of the cosmos, the people of the ancient Vedic cultures developed Jyotish, or the “Science of Light,” which amazingly describes the soul, like the sun, in its journey through time and space. How well an individual is able to reflect this inner light, the “sun” at the individual heart, can be mapped through this yogic science.
Specifically, through Jyotish, we can determine our mental/emotional nature by looking at the exact location of the moon in the sky at the moment of our birth. From the quality and placement of the moon, a good Jyotish Master will understand the strength and stability of one’s inner nature, and how available one is to nourishment—as the moon represents the water element, and water is the nourishment of life.
If the sun represents the soul, and is the core of the self (the Self within the self), then one with a weak moon is not naturally anchored in their light, their truth, their essence, or their pure being. There may be a lack of self-esteem or direction for these usually sweet-natured people. Money, food, and love are often not “metabolized“ well. These forms of nourishment may be in short supply or they may enter but don’t integrate, support or serve us well.
We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us, that they may see, it may be,
their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer,
perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet. – W.B. Yeats
Yoga was created as a science to unite the aspects of the moon and sun in the individual human universe. When describing the tools of this mastery, the sages called it Ha-Tha. “Ha” means sun and “Tha” means moon. So the practice of yoga was the deliberate, personal unification of the inner sun and moon elements, the fire and water elements, masculine and feminine duality, spirit and matter, expanded awareness and responsive thought.
In this context, yoga is the technology of clarifying and expanding awareness so that our mind fully and wholly shines the light of our heart intelligence.
Have you ever seen a full moon hanging low over the ocean, or glimmering upon an immense lake? A simple exercise to return the mind to its fullness and purpose is to close your eyes and picture a calm lake at your heart center, with a full moon reflecting upon it. As you breathe in, allow your inner gaze to focus on the light dancing upon the water. As you breathe out, sink your awareness into the darkness of the water. Drop your awareness deeper and deeper into your heart and try listening to the silence there.
When we gaze at the light of the heart, we focus on the radiance of our inner spirit. When we listen to the silence of the heart, we access the ocean of infinite being. Ultimately, our mind can be a pure reflection of this vast vibratory field, an experience of aliveness without differentiation, a knowing of what is beyond all that is. My husband sings, “The ocean refuses no river. Spirit refuses no seeker. Heart light refuses no lover.”
Laura Plumb is a teacher of yoga & Ayurveda. She offers trainings, retreats, and workshops on life mastery, conscious leadership and conscious wealth in the United States, India and Europe. She is the co-founder of the Deep Yoga School of Healing Arts (DYSHA), based at Ginseng Yoga San Diego and the new Deep Yoga Sanctuary, opening next year in Point Loma, CA. DYSHA is hosting a children’s yoga workshop and Sacred Chants concert with Snatam Kaur at the Corky McMillin Event Center at Liberty Station November 14. Learn more at www.DeepYoga.com or contact Laura@DeepYoga.com.