The Kitten and the Monkey
[Level 1: Transitional] What if you're too tired to awaken?
I was lying face-down on my mat, too exhausted to even sit upright.
Two feet of snow.
Eight hours without power in single-digit temps.
Days alone in a house that got down to 51°F.
Shoveling everything solo while my spouse was somewhere warm.
The final straw? Realizing a framework that felt like a revelation a couple months ago had a flaw. Because if that was wrong, what else was I wrong about?
I spiraled. Thought about deleting the Substack. Then I just felt it—the bone-deep exhaustion of it all. Emotionally (from surviving the coldest week of winter so far), physically (from shoveling), mentally (from work), and spiritually:
I don’t want to be in the messy middle. I’m already tired, God.
But I didn’t want to stop either:
I can’t awaken if I’m lying down to rest.
Then I was promptly proven wrong.
I’d collapsed into a franken-asana—reclined bound angle (supta baddha konasana) but prone on props, forehead resting on hands with arms in crocodile (makarasana). The relief was immediate once I stopped resisting the fact that I needed an emotional and physical reset.
My mind finally surrendered because I was too tired to do anything else. My heart was still clinging—still devoted—but I stopped trying to make it happen.
Then strong jolting kriyas started. The kind I thought required sitting upright, both from what I learned from Dr. K and from everything I’d experienced... up until that point.
Apparently there are caveats.
Thank God for that. Because if that’s true? Then there is samadhi for the rest of us.
The false dichotomy
Most spiritual teachings imply you have to choose between being disciplined and effortful (active striving) OR surrendering (passive trust).
Either you’re the baby monkey clinging to its mother with its own strength as she leaps through trees OR you’re the kitten going limp while she carries you in her mouth.
Either you earn your awakening through years of dedicated practice OR you surrender and let grace do the work.
Pick one. Commit. Don’t try to have it both ways.
This binary showed up in 13th-century Sri Vaishnavism debates. The Vadakalai school argued for “Monkey Logic”—human effort is necessary to cling to God’s grace. The Thenkalai school argued for “Kitten Logic”—grace is spontaneous and requires only total surrender.
They argued for centuries about which path was “correct.”
But what if they were both right—just talking about different parts of the system?
What if the heart and mind have different jobs in awakening, and the mistake is trying to make them do each other’s work?
That’s what I discovered after almost 4 years of accidentally jury-rigging my own practice without reading the manuals.
Monkey logic
Back when I first started meditating in April 2022, I didn’t know about “the way of the baby monkey” (Markata Kishora Naya), but I was living it.
The path of raja yoga that I learned from HealthyGamer—disciplined, effortful, taken for years diligently (Dr. K had spent 7 years in monk training)—falls squarely into this category.
It means:
It’s on YOU to meditate regularly.
It’s on YOU to learn the techniques.
It’s on YOU to be disciplined.
It’s on YOU to earn your way to “enlightenment”.
The baby monkey clings with its own strength. If it lets go? It falls.
This is incredibly demanding. It’s the hardest thing you can do in this life because it requires everything. It requires clinging to the path above all else. It can’t just be a hobby you pick up and put down—it’s a lifestyle.
Loosen your grip? You’re back to the old patterns.
This is all too easy when you’re already tired. Tired from work. Tired from family. Tired from just being a human in the modern world where every ounce of productivity is squeezed out of us until we’re husks of our old selves.
When you’re at the end of the rope like this? You’re often forced to rest.
That’s when the second path appears.
Kitten logic
The “way of the kitten” (Marjara Kishora Nyaya) is what can arise once the striver dies and surrender begins—once the baby monkey stops needing to cling so tightly anymore.
It’s passive, effortless, and requires surrender... like how a kitten simply goes limp while the mother carries it with her own strength.
This is what I accidentally discovered AFTER spending so long clinging, striving, and trying to earn my peace instead of just... resting into it.
The texts point to this:
Yoga Sutras 1.2
“Yogas Chitta Vritti Nirodha”
Translation: “Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind.”
Not: “Yoga is the relentless effort to stop the fluctuations.”
Cessation. Letting go.
Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48
“In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.”
Awakening is “pursuit of Tao”, which requires dropping, not adding. Letting go.
They’re not mutually exclusive
Here’s the kicker: these paths aren’t opposing forces. They’re complementary operations happening simultaneously.
The “path of the kitten” is meant for the mind.
The “path of the monkey” is meant for the heart.
When you first start meditating, everything is effort. Your mind is trying to focus. Your heart hasn’t connected to anything yet. You’re purely in monkey mode—clinging to the breath or mantra, clinging to the technique, clinging to the idea that if you just try hard enough, something will happen.
This is necessary. This is raja yoga—the disciplined path. Without this, nothing ignites.
But somewhere along the way, if you keep showing up, something shifts. The heart catches fire. Devotion arises—not as something you do, but as something that happens to you. You fall in love with the Divine, with the Silence, with the Presence that shows up when you sit.
This is bhakti. And bhakti naturally clings—naturally cleaves to God.
The heart doesn’t need instructions to cling. It clings on its own once devotion awakens.
The mistake is when the mind tries to do the heart’s job.
When the mind clings—trying to control the experience, trying to make something happen, trying to earn awakening through sheer force of will—it creates the exact tension that blocks the flow.
The mind’s job isn’t to cling. The mind’s job is to surrender—to go limp like a kitten in its mother’s mouth and let the heart’s devotion carry it.
What I’m slowly learning
You can’t do your way to being.
You can’t strive your way to surrender.
You can’t exhaust yourself into awakening.
The trying is the obstacle. While it helps at the start, once the flame ignites and the heart naturally clings on its own, the rest is simply rest.
Liberation isn’t waiting at the end of the path; it’s what shows up when you’re too tired to keep walking.