AoH Learning Lab Yogic Term: Shraddhā
Shraddha is a yogic and Sanskrit word. It may be translated as faith.
Personally and professionally, I see this faith as a devotion to the practices that connect us to the purest, inner-most part of the Self: the soul. That is to say, the place within us that is beyond mind and body.
A criticism of religion is that it asks for blind faith. Yoga is not a religion. It is an evidence-based science; a practice of purification. So, it may be said that Shraddhā in yoga is an evidence-based faith. Through these practices - some 5,000 years old - we gather evidence through actions (karmas, Samskaras and kriyas) - which show us that ALL the answers are within.
Our societal conditioning has us erroneously believing that the answers lay in the external world. This conditioning may have begun some 10,000 years ago when totalitarian agriculture began, i.e., our love affair with control. Some will spend their entire lives living in this veil (Maya), pleading, begging, needing, justifying, wanting, hoping and explaining to the outside world in a futile attempt to connect with Soul.
Others will find “the” path, which may not necessarily be yoga. But, is one where tools are offered to suture the chasm caused by duality. I do believe that most, if not all, religions began from this place of purity.
As above, so below: the duality we harbor in our individual self spreads and creates collective duality. So, it can ALSO be said that individual growth in consciousness spreads to collective growth in consciousness. As the yogic scriptures teach us: as long as there is duality, samadhi* cannot exist.
We are constantly offered a mirror - via the external works - showing us where our individual self is at on the path. Some of us see our own duality reflected as we use politics, religions, etc., to polarize into one “team” or the other. These are called attachments (ragas) in yoga. They keep us separated from our individual pain but they also keep us separated from love and ultimate connection: oneness.
From a psychological perspective, this polarizing is a “splitting” away from the core of who we are. It can lead to full-on psychosis where we create our own states of reality (a way of living away from the pain). At this extreme level of duality, we are neither living in the abode of our heart nor among the outside world - we feel lost, misunderstood, alienated and marooned - there is simply no where to turn for peace. The pleading here, may change form into a rage against the machine, whereby one is - in a misdirected way - literally screaming at others.
Indeed, yoga warns us that pleading for the duality to cease can become its own form of an attachment and/or addiction. For example, calling out how crazy supporters of politics are; blaming people for being apathetic and ignorant. From a quantum physics perspective, this is only adding to the energy of the duality of which you are pleading to stop; it is increasing the consciousness around said craziness. We are in essence, criticizing the criticizers.
Western appropriation of yoga has us believing it an external practice of love, light, beads and elephants. These are byproducts of purifying the Self by means of burning (tapas) through the illusions (mayas) and it’s cousins, personas. To turn all that is reflected from the external world back to the Self is by no means an easy path. It truly is one of ultimate self-responsibility, and so it is not for everyone. I feel very strongly - especially now - that paths which offer tools and practices that traverse the inner landscape are critical. For those who choose to endeavor there, Shraddhā is the vehicle that keeps one keeping on.
*A state of mind free from karmic impressions (samaskaras).