The Golden Triangle
Flowchart for harmonising life's energies.
One of our organisation's central teachings is called the Golden Triangle. A flowchart — containing a triangular image, in which four of the most important theories from the Yogic scripture of Patañjali's Yoga Sutras are woven together into a single system. This creates a map of the energy dynamics of daily interaction that can be applied to any interaction with others or within oneself.
Within the symbolically colour-coded system of the triangle, the theories of yama, niyama, kleśa & the guṇas, together create a roadmap for transmuting problems into liberation, shadow into light. In this way, the effect of a fully mastered practice of using the Golden Triangle, is like having a manual for navigating life's challenges.
In another sense, it is also a guide for streamlining your own moral conscience by simply making the energy dynamics of a situation work more harmonically.
View a large image of the Golden Triangle here:
(file opens in full screen)
The flowchart brings these four theories from Yogic philosophy into synthesis:
Guṇas
As written already more comprehensively on this page, the guṇas are the three modes of energy, that describe the behaviour of energy. Each branch of the Golden Triangle represents a guṇa. By learning to recognise these contracting (tamas), expanding (rajas) or stabilising (sattva) dynamics of energy in each situation, you can identify in which branch of the triangle to start looking for answers.
Kleśa
The kleshas, or afflictions, are the result of past situations that have left lasting impressions on your consciousness, which still work out negatively in your life. There are five of them: five grades describing the gravity of the tamas mode of energy (contraction) influencing a situation.
Yama
Yama is the restraint of your actions (rajas, or expansive mode of energy) to ensure they constructively relate to the situation in which they are done. The Golden Triangle shows the opposite, or ayama, behaviours. Behaviours as they need yama in order to be brought back into balance. In this way, the triangle's rajas branch, shows a graded system of the gravity of destructive behaviour in five steps.
Niyama
Niyama describes, also in five steps, the realm of harmonic stability (sattva), leading from purity into surrender to the Divine. Having moved from tamas and rajas to sattva, it is now important to grow and expand this sattva, until it aligns with the nirguṇa (beyond the guṇas) state of the Divine Reality. This is what the niyama branch of the triangle is for.
A Jacob's Ladder
As a whole, by integrating these four theories as interrelated aspects into a single system, the Golden Triangle functions as a type of Jacob's ladder. A ladder that connects humanity to the Divine Reality. A multidimensional ladder in and out of troubles. Into them, to learn about your shadow. And out of them, to transform your shadows into light.
This ancient idea of the Jacob's Ladder, mentioned the Biblical book of Genesis, has spoken to many Souls for centuries, as a symbol of the ascent and descent of Souls. Of the process of transformation and realisation through expansion of consciousness, offered by a constructively wholesome spiritual life.
Climbing the ladder
Through comparing the modes of energy as they work through the many types of Yogic methods, techniques & other teachings we offer with the systematics of the triangle, each student has a practical guide for their growth, which they can apply to any and every detail of their practice. No matter how big or small.
Even though all our spiritual practices can be understood through the Golden Triangle, in the light of what is said above, especially the wholesome work of energy direction — in which the guṇas are consciously influenced towards and beyond sattva — becomes an extra powerful and insightful tool for our members to use.
