Our Content
"The goal of all of humanity is only to obtain perfect happiness. No one does not deserve happiness. Knowing our true nature, which we have forgotten, is sufficient to regain our seemingly lost happiness."
Sadhu Om
Truth is one, sages call it by many names. Our focus at sutranovum is to keep our attention on what liberates the mind.
Whatever we do, all is done in the service of our primary inspiration:
Our inspiration is to create a brand that serves to remind us of why we are really here.
"La Tierra" sculpture de Totila Albert
The Hero's Journey
Joseph Campbell, the Comparative mythologist, said of the hero path that all of us are walking:
"We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known ...we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a God. And where we had thought to slay another we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.”
And as individuals, we are influenced by the larger story of the times we live in. There is the mind of man and the mind of the age. Handling the darkness of the world and the darkness in our own minds is hugely important to live a sane happy life. The two are not separate.
Paul Tillich, the philosopher wrote:
"I would say the most universal expression of the demonic today is a split between the control of nature by man and the fate of man to fall under the control of the product of his control. He produces, and then he falls under the power of what he has produced, the whole system of industrial existence. It has liberated him, it has given control over nature and now it puts him into a servitude in which he loses more and more of his being, his person.
This form of dehumanization was what we fought against in Germany; we must continue this fight now on a much larger basis."
That sums up the systemic management errors that govern our species-wide patterns of ecocide and psychological illness (think of any fragmented movement that is not based on the holistic thinking that defines humanism and all encompassing love).
The late Robert A Johnson, a Jungian Psychotherapist, said that as far as he could tell the attacks on 9/11 were about too much "upness" and that was born of an imbalance between forces in the world [in 9/11's case Islam vs the West (predominantly Judeo-Christian)]. When that dis-ease is not seen, and attended to, you get what our current news cycle repeats to us over and over again:
“We are presently dealing with the accumulation of a whole society that has worshipped its light side and refused the dark, and this residue appears as war, economic chaos, strikes, racial intolerance. The front page of any newspaper hurls the collective shadow at us.”
R.A. Johnson
Living in the wider story of fragmentation and conflict demands intelligence, fortitude and compassion. Mostly it calls for composure, self-awareness and wisdom. The father of Western civilization, Parmenides, speaks directly to us today, across the oceans of time, about the challenges that humans perennially face in the first line of his famous poem (as translated by Peter Kingsley):
“The mares that carry me as far as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast and dark unknown.”
Like Parmenides, we all must navigate an uncertain world and that is done through knowing or self-awareness. At Sutranovum we draw upon wisdom from many arenas to celebrate the heart that defines us.
Statue of Patanjali, the Scribe of the Yoga Sutras
The Yoga Sutras by Patanjali
covers 4 chapters:
1. What is the mind?
2. How do you cultivate it?
3. What are the powers that come to a cultivated mind?
4. What is the most important focus of the mind?
A good way of translating this is by employing these metaphors:
1. What is money/attention?
2. How do you make money? How can you cultivate or use your attention?
3. What can you spend your money on? What powers come to a cultivated mind?
4. What is the most important thing to spend our money on?
What is the most important use of our attention?
At sutranovum, in terms of content, we are primarily focused on the significance of this focus of the 4th Chapter in the yoga sutras, that is:
What ends sorrow and uproots the causes of suffering in the mind?
How to correct misperception and come to Self-Knowledge.
It was what Ramana Maharshi, Socrates and Jiddu Krishnamurti dedicated their lives too.
Any sane mind is primarily preoccupied with the same domain of focus.
What we draw upon
We might reference the Holographic Theory of David Bohm, the Physicist, to look at the nature of the universe or we might cite Jiddu Krishnamurti or excerpts from the Tao Te Ching or the Stoics or insights and stories from the life of Ramana Maharshi or wisdom from the Yoga Sutras.
We might draw from Buddha's Four Noble Truths:
1. All of life is suffering. While one is trapped in the wandering mind that grasps at things, ideas and habits.
2. At the root of suffering is insecurity, craving and attachment.
3. Suffering can be brought to an end when we let go of grasping and craving.
4. When one is devoted to seeing through illusions, suffering can be brought to an end in the individual who is attentive.
Or the wisdom of the Course in Miracles:
"Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. But though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you it is important. ⁵It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. Perception is a result and not a cause. And that is why order of difficulty in miracles is meaningless. Damnation is your judgment on yourself, and this you will project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to recognize which one you chose. The world you see but shows you how much joy you have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as yours. And, if this is its meaning, then the power to give it joy must lie within you."
Terminology
Joseph Campbell said that mythology is the study of other people's religions. Religions are stories of gods and heroes and villains and demons. All these reflect potentials in the psyche of man. God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. At sutranovum, wherever possible, we aim to avoid language that is religious. We do use the word "ego" and "Self" as we find these terms to be most free of weight and prejudice. Our focus is healing, psychotherapy and liberation of the human mind, not the promotion of yet another conflicted belief system.
