A fact of life, is it is full of strife
Refuse to strive, so that you may thrive
Not on flights of fancy, or mounds of misery
But on flowing freedom, in a sovereign kingdomFriday, August 24, 2012
Light
Light of the day, you illuminate all that is seen
Knowing not what it is that I am so keen
Casting shadows of doubt, that none can lean
Until one knows, light & shadow, is just to glean
Thought
O thought, I seek to find thee source
As thee meanders to twist & turn
In labyrinth paths, with endless force
Pray show me what I yearn to learn
Take me deeper & far beyond the dross
To the restful state, where there is no returnSurrender
On the spiritual path, surrender is the most
wonderful thing that can happen. It is a state when one learns to trust
God or the infinite power of being to take care of everything, from the
mundane to the meaningful. It is surprising, but
for most people for a very long time, this trust doesn’t come easily as
the ego keeps obstructing the natural process. It is like beating one’s
hands & legs while in free fall – there is nothing really to do but
to just be & relax, yet it is incredibly hard
since one is hurtling down at tremendous speed & seemingly there is
chaos & destruction which requires one’s constant action &
attention. After a while though, one knows that once the fall has
started (fall used not to convey a downward or negative trend),
implying once the prarabdha karma that constitutes one’s life has been
set into motion, it takes care of itself. Most people choose to strive
with their mind rather than sit back & enjoy the movie.
However, once there is complete surrender, then
thoughts no longer lead one into multiple directions. There is pure,
choiceless awareness at every moment. To be choiceless is freedom itself
– freedom from having to make choices which present
themselves to the normal ego ruled person at every instant of time.
Making choices dictated by the mind is always tricky, as the mind never
knows the full picture & can never tell what the best choice is. One
standing 6 feet tall can never really see the whole
road & all the routes to know what lies far ahead & decide now
which route to take. However one on a tall building, or more
appropriately, on a moving helicopter, knows exactly which road to take –
which keeps changing constantly. This is the state of pure
being which where everything happens spontaneously & only the right
thing happens – rather, one may say there is just 1 path & no right
or wrong path.
Practically, how does this work & how is this
restful state brought upon? There are numerous well known paths to
liberation, so there is no need to get into those. The most direct path
is that of self enquiry. Whenever thoughts trouble
oneself, it is enough to watch them & enquire ‘to whom do these
thoughts arise’. The answer obviously is ‘to me, to I’. Then one further
enquires ‘who am I’ or ‘who is this I’. One doesn’t answer this
question in any way – though it may appear to some that
I is the body or mind or brahman/being in a theoretical sense. So every
chain of thought is led to this question & then there is silence.
After a while the silence remains of itself without explicit need for
the self enquiry. This restful state feels much
like deep sleep, except that the body is fully functioning and aware of
the waking world. The body does what it is supposed to, at exactly the
time that it is supposed to. As a very simple & routine example, say
one needs to go & get water from the cooler
in office. Now this is not something that normally needs to be planned
as it is straight forward. But while in the pure state of being, this
simple activity is so perfectly timed, that the exact person one needs
to meet also appears there, with the exact conversation
that needs to happen taking place. It is almost as if the whole of life
is running according to a very detailed script which auto adjusts &
takes care of everything!
Surrender to thee
O dawn, I surrender to thee
That you may show me what to see
O wind, I surrender to thee
That you may take me where you flee
O sky, I surrender to thee
That you never make me feel, blue
O fire, I surrender to thee
That you consume what I need not, with glee
O earth, I surrender to thee
That you keep me unshaken in this milieu
O space, I surrender to thee
That you make me infinite, so I can just beTuesday, March 13, 2012
God is everywhere
This is a frequent excuse I’ve heard from people as to why they don’t need to visit any holy places. While it is true at the highest level, that all that exists is indeed a manifestation of God, it is also true that there is a factor called Maya which covers God, thereby making it appear that everything is a discrete, separate entity having no continuity or underlying commonality.
However, there are places on earth & people on earth where the covering of Maya is very slight or even non-existent. These are the revered, holy places or holy people meant to give hope to humanity that there is something beyond the sometimes mundane, sometimes beautifully perceived matrix that we live in. By frequently visiting & attuning ourselves to such energies in holy places, one is gradually able to attune oneself to such energies even without visiting the places or people in a physical sense.
Nevertheless, there is a discrete ‘opening’ in Maya, perhaps what can be called as an opening in the time-space continuum that wraps itself around us so closely all the time. Thus, the rejoinder to ‘God is everywhere’ is that ‘Maya is nearly everywhere’ & those places/people where Maya isn’t, are most sought after, like jewels buried in the sands of time-space.
However, there are places on earth & people on earth where the covering of Maya is very slight or even non-existent. These are the revered, holy places or holy people meant to give hope to humanity that there is something beyond the sometimes mundane, sometimes beautifully perceived matrix that we live in. By frequently visiting & attuning ourselves to such energies in holy places, one is gradually able to attune oneself to such energies even without visiting the places or people in a physical sense.
Nevertheless, there is a discrete ‘opening’ in Maya, perhaps what can be called as an opening in the time-space continuum that wraps itself around us so closely all the time. Thus, the rejoinder to ‘God is everywhere’ is that ‘Maya is nearly everywhere’ & those places/people where Maya isn’t, are most sought after, like jewels buried in the sands of time-space.
Of real dreams
Quite some time back, I used to have a recurring experience during sleep which I thought was a dream. It was a feeling of actually floating around & travelling by flying as I moved past cities & all kinds of scenery beneath me. I wasn’t in a flight, nor was I in any vehicle, but I was just flying by myself. There was no one else in the dream & the most pleasurable part was the act of flight itself. It felt very real & refreshing to think about it in the waking state. Sometimes I fly high, sometimes low. The ground beneath is very real with all the scenery that we see typically. The freedom of flight by oneself, un encumbered by the physical body is indescribable. I had no explanation for what this joyful experience really signified.
Recently on reading the book ‘Journey of souls’ which is a must read book examining the life between lives using hypnotherapy to regress subjects to the past, I found the answer to what this very real dream experience meant. This is also mentioned in the other highly inspiring book 'Conversations with God'. It seems the soul or jiva sometimes dis engages itself from the body & roams around freely. It leaves a part of its energy behind in the body as an imprint, to return as quickly as needed. This happens during sleep state & also for babies that are still in the womb.
So, incredulous as it may sound, this experience was my jiva or soul roaming around in an alternate reality which was neither my waking universe nor my dream created universe! It felt so ‘real’ because it was real in the sense that it actually happened beyond the imagination projected by the mind. To use a different expression, it is also an ‘out of body’ experience since the body is fast asleep, with the mind dis engaged from the senses. As one advances far along the path, progressing spiritually, one is able to consciously disengage from the body & leave the body behind. There is even a technique by which one can exit the body from the Ajna chakra or the spiritual eye.
Recently on reading the book ‘Journey of souls’ which is a must read book examining the life between lives using hypnotherapy to regress subjects to the past, I found the answer to what this very real dream experience meant. This is also mentioned in the other highly inspiring book 'Conversations with God'. It seems the soul or jiva sometimes dis engages itself from the body & roams around freely. It leaves a part of its energy behind in the body as an imprint, to return as quickly as needed. This happens during sleep state & also for babies that are still in the womb.
So, incredulous as it may sound, this experience was my jiva or soul roaming around in an alternate reality which was neither my waking universe nor my dream created universe! It felt so ‘real’ because it was real in the sense that it actually happened beyond the imagination projected by the mind. To use a different expression, it is also an ‘out of body’ experience since the body is fast asleep, with the mind dis engaged from the senses. As one advances far along the path, progressing spiritually, one is able to consciously disengage from the body & leave the body behind. There is even a technique by which one can exit the body from the Ajna chakra or the spiritual eye.
Thoughts that create life
It has been a very long time since I wrote a post on my blog. It seems I’ve been too caught up in ‘doing’ things all the time. Though there is always a reflective under current to my state of mind, none of it has made its way into writing for so long. Unfettered, unedited writing is the mark of a free mind flowing without stopping to examine the thoughts along the way.
Over the past few months there has been an accelerated learning about the lessons of life in general, without actually going through that many variety of experiences. It seems when you’ve learnt the lessons, or actually, remembered that you already know it, then many of the experiences that are meant to teach you those lessons become unnecessary.
One of the greatest learnings for me or rather unlearning a concept that was quite deeply ingrained in me, was about the idea of free will vs fate. Some books I read such as ‘Journey of souls’, ‘Destiny of souls’ & ‘Conversations with God’ have contributed immensely to this new found clarity.
My earlier understanding on this topic was to somehow shirk away from responsibility of all kind by attributing everything to ‘fate’ as an extraneous factor over which I have no control. This helped in many ways to learn acceptance of events, people & circumstances without fighting to change them. This could also be because none of the recent events have been adverse, implying there was no real need to struggle against the tide.
But the current understanding is that there is such a thing as free will. It is just that this free will acts in an unconscious way for most of us, most of the time. In fact, if there was no such thing as free will & if everything was pre-ordained then there would be absolutely no purpose for life. What fun is the whole drama if every single thing is already scripted? Even in theatre or a movie, the actors improvise on spur of the moment actions to even surprise the director. So the questions becomes, is there free will consciously? The answer to this is that most of us don’t employ free will consciously because we don’t observe & control our thought patterns which constantly create life for us. By bringing our whole mind under the radar of conscious observation, we can really become masters of our own destiny. Hold a thought, any thought long enough & it becomes powerful to create the reality we seek. It is another matter that sometimes, bringing the thought into physical manifestation may need another lifetime, which makes it appear that free will has failed.
If I examine my own life for some such ‘thought patterns’ which led to circumstances or events which I couldn’t explain, I clearly see a few such examples. For instance, for a long time I used to hold the thought that I hate computers & everything that goes with it. This led to a need to get away from computers as something evil. This thought manifested itself as pain in the hands during intense hours of work (within normal hours of duty!). I had even written a blog about this at http://anandanubhava.blogspot.com/2006/11/suffering-due-to-computers.html .While one can spend lifetimes digging into research material on the mechanics of physical injury due to computer usage & its prevention, none of that is practically useful as long as one doesn’t change the primal thought generating behaviors & circumstances for its outward expression. So the cure is extremely simple – to just hold the positive thought that one is healthy in all ways. Care should be taken to see that one doesn’t hold the negative of the negative thought – such as ‘I am not ill’ since this doesn’t work like Maths to make it a positive affirmation.
Yet another example in my life is the reinforced thought due to prevalent literature & studies based on statistical evidence, that running can be injurious to the knees. Just adopting this thought since it is so widely prevalent leads one’s own body to start running in such a way, unconsciously, as to produce the effect of knee pain. I now realize why I sometimes used to get knee pain – it didn’t matter how much I ran, where I ran, what I wore, how frequently I ran or what warm up/cool down exercises I did as much as what I thought running would do to my body. Then one has to go to great lengths to retrain the mind & the body to consciously run with the proper posture. It is so much easier to just observe one’s own mind & remove this negative thought.
Until one becomes a master in observing, controlling & changing one’s own thought patterns to create the desired circumstances in life, one has to be incredibly careful on what material the mind is exposed to. For example, most people read incredibly bad news which is all there is in the newspaper, first thing in the morning. So the thought gets ingrained into their mind that ‘it is a tough life’ or ‘how meaningless life is’. Then they struggle through the day since difficulties inevitably get presented to them & they find it hard to discover any meaning for why they must struggle so much. Without washing the mental cloth each day, the fabric of the mind becomes so dirty that to imprint one’s own thoughts on it becomes a challenge.
So what thought should one hold? To each, his / her destiny, hence each person should hold the highest thought they are capable of. However, in the relative world, the highest thought one can hold is about oneself, rather than any other object. That highest thought about oneself is ‘I’m self realized & I’m infinite’. This is no new thought, nor is it born of fiction as it is a primary thought expressed in the Upanishads as ‘Aham Brahmaasmi’. Only now do I even comprehend clearly what the steps of the Upanishadic self enquiry mechanism involve when they talk about ‘Shravana, Manana & Nidhidhyasana’. Shravana is simple & many of us do it – it is being exposed to such lofty thoughts input through the senses – listening to discourses, or reading scriptures. Manana is to constantly circulate such a thought in the mind & Nidhidhyasana happens when the Manana has become deep & constant, leading to self realization upon reflection on the highest thought.
Over the past few months there has been an accelerated learning about the lessons of life in general, without actually going through that many variety of experiences. It seems when you’ve learnt the lessons, or actually, remembered that you already know it, then many of the experiences that are meant to teach you those lessons become unnecessary.
One of the greatest learnings for me or rather unlearning a concept that was quite deeply ingrained in me, was about the idea of free will vs fate. Some books I read such as ‘Journey of souls’, ‘Destiny of souls’ & ‘Conversations with God’ have contributed immensely to this new found clarity.
My earlier understanding on this topic was to somehow shirk away from responsibility of all kind by attributing everything to ‘fate’ as an extraneous factor over which I have no control. This helped in many ways to learn acceptance of events, people & circumstances without fighting to change them. This could also be because none of the recent events have been adverse, implying there was no real need to struggle against the tide.
But the current understanding is that there is such a thing as free will. It is just that this free will acts in an unconscious way for most of us, most of the time. In fact, if there was no such thing as free will & if everything was pre-ordained then there would be absolutely no purpose for life. What fun is the whole drama if every single thing is already scripted? Even in theatre or a movie, the actors improvise on spur of the moment actions to even surprise the director. So the questions becomes, is there free will consciously? The answer to this is that most of us don’t employ free will consciously because we don’t observe & control our thought patterns which constantly create life for us. By bringing our whole mind under the radar of conscious observation, we can really become masters of our own destiny. Hold a thought, any thought long enough & it becomes powerful to create the reality we seek. It is another matter that sometimes, bringing the thought into physical manifestation may need another lifetime, which makes it appear that free will has failed.
If I examine my own life for some such ‘thought patterns’ which led to circumstances or events which I couldn’t explain, I clearly see a few such examples. For instance, for a long time I used to hold the thought that I hate computers & everything that goes with it. This led to a need to get away from computers as something evil. This thought manifested itself as pain in the hands during intense hours of work (within normal hours of duty!). I had even written a blog about this at http://anandanubhava.blogspot.com/2006/11/suffering-due-to-computers.html .While one can spend lifetimes digging into research material on the mechanics of physical injury due to computer usage & its prevention, none of that is practically useful as long as one doesn’t change the primal thought generating behaviors & circumstances for its outward expression. So the cure is extremely simple – to just hold the positive thought that one is healthy in all ways. Care should be taken to see that one doesn’t hold the negative of the negative thought – such as ‘I am not ill’ since this doesn’t work like Maths to make it a positive affirmation.
Yet another example in my life is the reinforced thought due to prevalent literature & studies based on statistical evidence, that running can be injurious to the knees. Just adopting this thought since it is so widely prevalent leads one’s own body to start running in such a way, unconsciously, as to produce the effect of knee pain. I now realize why I sometimes used to get knee pain – it didn’t matter how much I ran, where I ran, what I wore, how frequently I ran or what warm up/cool down exercises I did as much as what I thought running would do to my body. Then one has to go to great lengths to retrain the mind & the body to consciously run with the proper posture. It is so much easier to just observe one’s own mind & remove this negative thought.
Until one becomes a master in observing, controlling & changing one’s own thought patterns to create the desired circumstances in life, one has to be incredibly careful on what material the mind is exposed to. For example, most people read incredibly bad news which is all there is in the newspaper, first thing in the morning. So the thought gets ingrained into their mind that ‘it is a tough life’ or ‘how meaningless life is’. Then they struggle through the day since difficulties inevitably get presented to them & they find it hard to discover any meaning for why they must struggle so much. Without washing the mental cloth each day, the fabric of the mind becomes so dirty that to imprint one’s own thoughts on it becomes a challenge.
So what thought should one hold? To each, his / her destiny, hence each person should hold the highest thought they are capable of. However, in the relative world, the highest thought one can hold is about oneself, rather than any other object. That highest thought about oneself is ‘I’m self realized & I’m infinite’. This is no new thought, nor is it born of fiction as it is a primary thought expressed in the Upanishads as ‘Aham Brahmaasmi’. Only now do I even comprehend clearly what the steps of the Upanishadic self enquiry mechanism involve when they talk about ‘Shravana, Manana & Nidhidhyasana’. Shravana is simple & many of us do it – it is being exposed to such lofty thoughts input through the senses – listening to discourses, or reading scriptures. Manana is to constantly circulate such a thought in the mind & Nidhidhyasana happens when the Manana has become deep & constant, leading to self realization upon reflection on the highest thought.
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