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“Be the Love” A 21st Century Yoga of the Earth by Sofia Stril-Rever
A 21st Century Yoga of the Earth
by Sofia Stril-Rever The celebration of International Yoga Day, each June 21st on a planetary scale, gives a human face to globalization by highlighting the timeless mind and body practices of yoga. Born from multi-millennial India, yoga nowadays inspires and relieves our souls worldwide. From the banks of the Ganges, clad in splendor and light in Rishikesh, to the skyscrapers reflected in the mirror-like waters of the Hudson River in New York City, the Yoga Sutras have traveled a long distance in time and space. Their everlasting wisdom appears untouched, beyond ordinary contingencies.
These unparalleled teachings are gently blending with today’s culture, fulfilling our yearning for sacredness and transcendence. In our finite human form dwells an insatiable desire for infinity and yoga reveals the unlimited at the very core of our limitations. Yoga practitioners embark on a journey towards a state of union beyond the dualistic delusions and divisions. Union, in the ancient language of India, is one of the meanings of maitri, a word which also signifies “love”. And since yoga is a practice of union, it is a practice of love as well. Here, love should not be restricted to its romantic or sentimental or affective sense, but rather understood as the pure, luminous energy of our true nature, the life of our life. When we were babies, our physical growth required our mother’s tender love as much as her milk. The early development of our cortex has been wholly dependent upon the affection received during our first 24 months. Infants deprived of love often do not grow to their full genetic potential and the number of cells in their heart muscle may be critically reduced. In truth, a heart can grow only in the presence of another heart. We were born to receive love and give love in return.
According to scientists, empathy and compassion emerge early and universally in our early development. Yet empathy may be plagued by cognitive biases and negative emotions, such as competition, hatred, or jealousy, born from the we vs they mentality. We consists of the group with whom we identify. They refers to the others viewed as despicable, because of their different religion, country, ethnicity, ideology or social status.
To correct this self-centered, limited mindset, yoga practice infused with the energy of maitri is recommended by Patanjali (Yoga Sutra 1.33). By connecting practitioners to the ultimate, yoga deconstructs the relative, made of historical and collective identities which we usually endorse unknowingly. What makes it possible to eliminate borrowed identities? It is the force of love that prevails over all pretense and brings to light the core truth of our deepest being.
The words “being” and “truth”, in India, have the same root, sat. And the ultimate truth of being, or sat, is love. Martin Luther King was not mistaken, when he translated satyagraha by “the strength to love”. In the service of the highest consciousness, satyagraha is an experience of oneness with all living beings thus described by Rumi: “I, you, he, she, we – in the garden of mystic lovers, these are not true distinctions.”
the Mahatma Gandhi. His gift to the world flourished in the soul of heroic women and men, calling for social justice and the awakening of the heart with loving speech and nonviolent action. Many grassroots movements across the globe are led today by changemakers who claim themselves of Gandhiji’s call Be the change you want to see in the world. As I was wondering what Mahatma Gandhi meant by these words, it dawned upon me that the radical change he was advocating is love. I then adapted Gandhi ji’s sentence by saying Be the love you want to see in the world…
In his introduction to “Hind Swaraj”, in 1921, the Mahatma highlighted love as an active driver of politics. One century later, adopting love in the political arena has failed and the normative of love is banned from public discourse. And yet aren’t all the emergencies of our time pointing to the lack of love?
Love is needed to eradicate the structural causes of hunger, extreme poverty, and loss of biodiversity. The 17 SDGs can’t be achieved without the force of love that doesn’t tolerate the injustice of depriving so many people from a decent livelihood, when resources do exist to feed and care for everyone worldwide. If we revived the breath of love, its energy multiplied 7.8 billion times, would generate a force of action, paving the way for fairer, happier days.
In these pivotal times, if we want to survive as a species, our last chance is to shift our thinking patterns, from pathological individualism to altruistic love in the service of the common good. Nothing should be undertaken these days, including writing this article or reading it, without the intention to benefit others through a deeper understanding leading to disruptive actions. In the face of the present challenges, love is a revolutionary driver that can trigger a momentum of our collective consciousness towards a civilization of love. All our power as humans lies in our regenerative interactions for the welfare of the living.
Our power of creating bonds has a name. It’s love. More than learning how to manufacture tools, anthropologists have found evidence that it was taking care of one another and providing mutual support that drove human cognitive developments. And the next (r)evolutionary leap in our 3,5 billion years history, should come from realizing that we are one, that existing is co-existing.
To contribute to a new era of reconciliation by infusing universal love in our DNA, I have created the Be the Love medit-actions, providing keys of conscience and experience to shift from individualism to altruism and accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda towards a civilization of love. This protocol is a 21st century samagra yoga or “integral yoga”, a yoga of the Earth inspired by Sri Aurobindo. It’s my heartfelt wish that yoginis and yogis nurture the seeds of love and unity, for the new dawn of a loving humanity to shine on our beloved Mother Earth.
