The Pull Outward, The Turn Inward

On orientation, practice, and the quiet art of coming home

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For a long time the teachings frustrated me more than they helped, not because they were wrong, but because the language never quite fit what I was actually experiencing. There was something I could feel in my body: the sensation of giving too much, of being depleted, of losing the thread back to myself. In plain English I called it being too engaged or less engaged, present or absent. But those words felt thin, like they were pointing at the surface of something that went much deeper.

It wasn’t until I began studying with my teacher that something began to open, and even then it didn’t open all at once. There were sessions that went entirely over my head, teachings I couldn’t hold, concepts I couldn’t feel, moments where I simply disengaged because I didn’t understand and didn’t want to pretend otherwise. I still have those moments. The difference now is that I have learned to bring my confusion to my teacher rather than carry it alone. I have learned to question.

What changed, gradually, was the way the Sanskrit terms were explained: the context, the depth, the nuance that English simply couldn’t carry. Something about sitting with those words, pronouncing them, feeling them in my mouth and throat, unlocked a register I hadn’t been able to reach before. The emotions were always there; what was missing was a language precise enough to name them.

When I first understood pravṛtti dharma not as engagement in the generic sense but as the specific pull outward, toward action and the world, something in me recognized it. And when I understood nivṛtti dharma not as disengagement but as the conscious turning back toward oneself, that recognition deepened further. These were not opposites. They were a conversation, a balance that needed tending. I knew this not as a new idea, but as a name for something I had already been living without knowing what to call it. That recognition was the beginning of embodiment, not understanding something intellectually, but feeling it in real time, as something already woven into my experience.

Because the world pulls, and I am not immune to its pulling. There are days when I give too much outward, when I am so turned toward the noise and the needs of everything outside me that I lose the thread back to myself entirely. When it tips too far, I feel it as a kind of exhaustion, a slow forgetting of what I actually stand for. And so I have learned that what protects me is not just discipline but orientation, knowing where I am, and knowing how to find my way back.

The two things I hold most closely in any day are how I open it and close it. These are not routines in the way that word usually means. It is more like taking a compass bearing, something I do at the start and at the end, so that whatever happens in between, I know which direction I am facing.

There is a ritual I have been practicing for some time around the edges of the day. The night before, I soak cumin, coriander, and fennel seeds in a glass of water (known as CCF) and 5 almonds separately. In the morning I add a splash of lemon and drink the water, remove the skin from the almonds and eat them.

The whole thing takes a few minutes, but it has a quality I can only describe as ceremonial, not because I have made it precious, but because it arrives before the day has asked anything of me. In those quiet minutes I am simply present to myself.

From there the morning unfolds gently: a short practice, a warm shower, and then I sit at my altar, light the candle, and move through my chants. It is what grounds me and feels like coming home.

What happens after that depends entirely on the day, on how I am feeling, what is being asked of me, how far outward the hours take me. There are days when the pull becomes too strong, when the noise outside starts to drown the quieter signal inside, and on those days I reach for small things. Not because I have scheduled them, but because I have learned which gestures bring me back when I have drifted. Sometimes it is sitting with mantras playing softly in the background. Other times it is spending a few minutes with the flowers I always have somewhere in my space. Something in their fragility, in the way they open and then let go so easily, steadies me. These are not things I do every day. They are things I know I can reach for, and that knowing is itself a kind of anchor.

The teachings speak of this balance directly. Pravṛtti and Nivṛtti Dharma, the outward and the inward, the engaging and the returning. Tip too far toward one and you lose something essential: too much outward and there is burnout, exhaustion, a slow forgetting of who you are; too much inward and you become disconnected from the living world, from the people and the moments that need your presence. The art, as far as I understand it, is in knowing which one the moment is asking for, and having practiced enough to hear the answer.

And so the evening matters as much as the morning. Before I sleep I lay out tomorrow’s preparations, the quiet practice of soaking the seeds and almonds, the supplements organized, the small things already waiting, and in doing so I am offering something to my future self, trusting that she will feel it when she wakes. I step back from social media and return to the quieter rhythm, not rigidly, but consistently. Because this closing of the day is not about what I stop doing. It is about knowing that the thread I picked up in the morning has held all the way through to night.

I share all of this not as a prescription but as an honest account of what orientation actually looks like in practice: how imperfect it is, how responsive it has to be, how it is never really finished. The joy I spent so long searching for was not waiting at the end of some achievement. It was here all along, patient and unhurried, woven into the water I prepared the night before and the candle I light each morning.

The practice, slowly, teaches me to notice it, and in the noticing, something opens that feels unmistakably like being at home in your own life.