The Golden Braid - 03.18.10

“There is a Golden Braid that’s well known in esoteric tradition. It’s a beautiful metaphor,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And when this Golden Braid is complete, and completely braided, it makes the achievement of Liberation very, very easy. But most of us have only one or two of the strands of this three-stranded braid.” And these strands begin to develop as the ego-mind begins to mature and its care spreads beyond itself. “And so the first strand is that of Love: love for the Supreme Self.” But, that love is not enough. And so the next strand is “an intense desire to know the Real Self.” And, “the third essential strand of the braid is dispassion, detachment from the worldly pleasures. . . . And when you’re freed from those anchors, then the Love—and the desire to know—will draw you up into the innermost core of Being.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 18, 2010.