Promise of a new world.

The world of the senses has run me ragged. The weariness tore me away.

One day, not so long ago, the world and I began to move at a different speed. Still close, right here. But I'm not very interested.

I've slowed, floating on an inner current, flowing, going nowhere.

Sinking, the gurgling sounds just above me, the sunlight a vector, an unchanging stillness, a direction becomes dance, the promise of a new world.

The oldest, essential, purpose, preserved... in the deep, dark, depths of my heart.

Bhagavad Gita: The Four Yogas

My sadhana has been juggled around, and is moving in a new direction. I believe my Guru has been leading all of us up to and through this change.

I have to realize that actions that attempt to use discipline to overcome my limitations and delusions currently never work for me. I have spent my whole life disciplining myself and wildly grasping with super-human effort to try to get the grand experience I have been seeking, and to address what has been missing, and my misery about this.

For me, the "dos" like disciplining my activities with specific goals about meditation and other practices, as well as trying to keep spiritual experiences permanent, are not the opposite of sadhana. ALWAYS using my life and moments to try to create a new and permanent state is based on a delusion that I am lost, unfulfilled, away from God. Grasping and doing for my own limited results has created huge karmas and samskaras for me.

I found myself writing about how Karma and Bhakti Yoga--and much of Jnana Yoga--have come to the fore in my sadhana. The fourth Yoga, Raja Yoga, is a synthesis, with elements that form a system based on discipline, which is not helpful for me.

Krishna talks about how an individual will find that some yogas will work for them better than others.


1) KARMA YOGA~THE YOGA OF ACTION: Any time I am grasping or pushing, trying or making myself do anything, I am jumping on the great wheel. The harder I push and hang on, the harder I'm going to fall when the wheel goes around the other way. Rajas creates karma. I've got way too much longing made into rajas in every moment!

My path is not doing, and it is not not-doing. HOW? Through dharma/duty. Lord Krishna has taught me about Karma Yoga, and this knowledge and yoga is very important to my sadhana.


2) BHAKTI YOGA: Bhakti Yoga is a new emphasis for me. It is divine love, longing, and worship in a personal relationship with a chosen form of the divine. This is the "doing" that I offer, avoiding karmas (Karma Yoga). Commitment to experiencing love and worship for the Divine fills me with an intensity of shakti that is burning my impurities away.

A short description of a very powerful yoga.


3) JNANA YOGA: The focus of my sadhana for the last few years has been to notice and name the elements of my mind in action. I challenge delusion by noticing what arises and holding what will bring delusion. When I hold a train of thought or etc., it naturally dissolves. Consciousness dissolves into consciousness.

I have for the most part eliminated self-pity, collapsing (giving up), and self-hatred, and I at least notice many things such as jealousy, anger, and competitiveness. I especially have benefited from noticing when I begin to make a story about what is happening in the moment, with the assumption that it is happening to me.

My mind has become much more still and centered.

Other parts of Jnana Yoga which have been important are recognizing what is transitive in my reality and letting go my attachments to these things. "That's not real," and "that isn't permanent" are my mantras in using my mind in this way. I also practice "seeing" the world of the senses as consciousness, and remembering it may promise many things, but none of it will be truly satisfying or permanent.


4) RAJA YOGA: Royal Raja Yoga is a higher yoga that incorporates elements of the other yogas in a powerful synthesis. It is based on meditation and other tools to work with the mind.

Systematic and disciplined is not helpful or useful to me at this point in my sadhana. When I meditated, I went after dinner. I wanted to meditate. I ran down the steps to the kriyaloka meditation room at the ashram, sinking into my spot, my consciousness dropping into the depths of me as I settled in.

"It's almost 7:00, time to meditate doesn't work for me, at least not now. I have to wrestle with myself about it, my intention, and my fear. It is very unpleasant. It runs me, and I am stuck with it.

I need to go around this stuff. I realize almost all(?) yogis do this. I think I did so much of this in a past life that this time I am doing something else.

Consciousness check

S H O R T

Guru, worship

I see the world from within myself, a transparent play

I see my attachments as illusion and futile, painful

I withdraw my senses, hold my shakti

I love my appetites, and slip off the hook

Shanti shanti shanti

Brahmacharini tapasya,
the unmarried version of Parvati

L O N G

Choose the world of the subtle body... inside... falling backward...

See the world from within...


Now, instead of concepts and story...

Breath, mantra... posture, subtle body...

Floating, meditation...

Love and worship and longing...


My Self, my Guru, Lord Krishna...

Mata Durga, Sree Parvati, Maa Brahmacharini

Paramashiva, who is Shree Kundalini at play...

Love and worship, longing and consciousness...

Now.

Brahmacharini tapasya to become one with Shiva

Effortless

Every few minutes... every few hours...

My mind spins down. So whisper soft as it comes to a stop.

And I become soft, my eyes gently close as I float in effortless meditation.

The quality of Nandi

Nandi Temple in Khajuraho

From an interview with Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev

Nandi is a symbolism of eternal waiting, because waiting is considered the greatest virtue in Indian culture. One who knows how to simply sit and wait is naturally meditative. Nandi is not expecting Shiva to come out tomorrow.* He is not anticipating or expecting anything. He is just waiting. He will wait forever. That quality is the essence of receptivity. Before you go into a temple, you must have the quality of Nandi – to simply sit. 


You are not trying to go to heaven, you are not trying to get this or that – you simply sit.

Some Nandis have one leg ready as they wait

People have always misunderstood meditation as some kind of activity. No – it is a quality. That is the fundamental difference. Prayer means you are trying to talk to God. Meditation means you are willing to listen to God. You are willing to just listen to existence, to the ultimate nature of creation. You have nothing to say, you simply listen. That is the quality of Nandi – he just sits, alert.

This is very important – he is alert, not sleepy. He is not sitting in a passive way. He is sitting, very active, full of alertness, full of life, but just sitting – that is meditation.

Brihadiswar Temple Tamil Nadu 

Meditation essentially means the individual person is not doing his own thing. He is just there. Once you are simply there, you become aware of the larger dimension of the existence that is always in action. You become aware that you are a part of it.

Even now you are a part of it but becoming aware that “I’m a part of it” is meditativeness. Nandi is the symbolism of that. He just sits and reminds everyone, “You must sit like me.”

___________

*NOTE from Jana: Nandi is Shiva's "vehicle," and is traditionally found at Shiva temples. His qualities are related to the qualities of Shiva, who is often portrayed as the master yogi sitting in meditation. Nandi is also considered a deity in his own right.

Prayer

Listening to God is meditation. Asking God is prayer.

If everything is just a method then there is no point in prayer.

Rishikesh

Prayer is the cry of a soul. To whom you pray is not important. 
When there is longing, true prayer happens by itself.

Quotes from Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Bliss and equipoise

Radha Krishna ~ a divine love

Every moment, I feel my mind, my ego shirk as a little more of me is pulled away. Another tiny rent in my attachment to the play becomes another little in-rush of freedom, spinning stars and stardust on timeless breath. 

Kriyas and spontaneous meditation. Head falling forward.

So often the shakti of "Chidvilasananda" visiting me as the ashram. I hear the silence there, see the golden gleam of low light on the spotless floors, feel the close mantle of love and protection about me. 

I belong "there." "There" belongs to me.

I play the mantra always, very quietly when I'm asleep. I repeat the mantra until I am floating on the bliss.

I am undone from within. I feel limp, very tired. I shuffle backwards when something grabs my attention. I do not surge forward. The anxiety I usually keep under control is flowing around freely. It hurts but I experience it as consciousness being released.

I control nothing. I experience it all as coming to a single-pointedness of bliss and equipoise.

Radha Krishna ~ a spiritual love

Bridge to the inner country

Me: Why do we chant and meditate?

Guruji: To see the greatness that lies within, a whole new world inside of yourself.




Me: What will happen?

Guruji: The bridge that you are building to the inner country will grow ever stronger.

"As you chant and meditate, you begin to see the greatness that lies within you; you begin to catch glimpses of a whole new world inside yourself.  

As the bridge that you are building to the inner country grows stronger and reaches further, you begin to feel the glory of the Supreme Self; you begin to see the divine light, the radiant Lord. Then you know the true worth of a human being."

~- (my Guru)

Only breath

All I want is to be where there is no sound, no sensation, only breath. 

I can't remember ever feeling this way.

image: pathofbhakti

HH the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1924–1981)

The 16th Karmapa was a dynamic, world wide influence similar to other spiritual masters who expanded their lineage of spiritual paths and teachings into India, Asia and the West. These include Swami Muktananda, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Parahamsa Yogananda, Osho and Lakshmanjoo.

The Karmapa lineage is the most ancient tulku lineage in Tibetan Buddhism, predating the Dalai Lama lineage by more than two centuries. 

"Mahamudra meditation aims at actualizing this true nature of mind, allowing the mind to settle in its uncontrived naturalness where there is, in fact, nothing to remove and nothing to achieve because it is pure and perfect in itself at all times. The essence of this practice, along with the complex tradition of philosophy, epistemology, ritual, and meditation, has been transmitted in the Karma Kagyu tradition until the present day."

(From History of the Kagyu lineage on Wikipedia)

"Yet despite this ignorance and its workings, mind’s true nature is always pure. It is buddha nature, unceasing emptiness and luminosity free from all afflictions and defilement." ~ Saraha 

More about the Karma Kagyu lineage and the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje here

More about the Karma Kagyu lineage and the 17th Karmapa Thaye Dorje here

More about the Karma Kagyu lineage controversy here

All opinions, loyalties and understanding are here respected.

"Beru Khyentse Rinpoche holds a distinct minority view, saying he believes both Karmapas are legitimate. He states' it is possible that there can be two Karmapas in order to benefit sentient beings because the Karmapa can manifest in many different forms' and writes that the 14th Karmapa highlighted that 'in many universes a hundred million Karmapas have manifested. The Karmapa is also the Buddha's emanation, thus until all the thousand Buddhas have come and their doctrine is not diminishing, my activity of the Karmapa emanations will not end.' "  ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmapa_controversy

Karma Triyana Dharmachakra

I had the darshan of such a sweet, strong and steady consciousness when I visited the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Buddhist monastery in Woodstock New York

It all comes from the Guru

The Inner Presence of the Guru meditation at the Ashram

We were meditating on the Guru inside. Jnaneshwar wrote about this in the Jnaneshwari.

I focused, but couldn't see the Guru inside. Not helpful. I quit trying, I thought maybe the Guru was a place.

Immediately I could see the kriyaloka meditation room at the ashram. For the first time, I realized the deep feelings I had there had a quality of presence. And this presence was the Guru.

Like a velvet blanket of hushed awareness enveloping me from without and within, no difference, I dived so quickly to a deep place each evening after dinner, moving swiftly down the hallway and then running down the stairs to the smaller meditation room for ashramites with kriyas. There was usually the same two people there, me and a man I never spoke with, but smiled at a few times when passing.





I am experiencing that all of my spiritual experiences come from the Guru. Intimate. Purposeful. Drawing me to her inside. Inside. It is her always, all the time.

I know these insights seems obvious. Recently my spiritual life has been completely reordered. I have moved my mind out of the way, and I am relearning everything at a much deeper level.

I have had so many profound spiritual experiences, all of which I now look back on with a whole new understanding. Solid.

When I experience moments out of each day when the ashram is "reaching out" to me, uplifting me and my state... that is a spiritual experience.

My Guru unseen tapping on my shoulder playfully as I sat with visitors for lunch was a spiritual experience (she had mentioned she did this, which came up casually in our conversation; the look in their eyes at my immediately wide eyes and open jaw with such a quick intake of breath!)

The ashram welcoming me when I first arrived with an experience of seeing all of the ashram as a siddha sees it, as my Guru sees it as I wandered around, (phone booths were hysterically funny!!)

Those are all spiritual experiences. And they all come from the Guru, they are the Guru.

We are all one. Everyone is being affected by the Guru, the source, whatever each may call the will and presence of God. 

The Guru is universal. The Guru is the grace bestowing aspect of God.

.............................................................

*Part of my challenge (and confusion) has stemmed from the fact that I am both Mormon and a yogini with a Guru. Family is Mormon. Spiritual sangham is Mormon on the one hand, and Siddha Yoga on the other. I have kept these both separate for as long as I can. My siblings would be upset and judgmental, sure that I've been lured by the devil to a cult (can Kool-Aid be far behind?)

Now that both of my parents have passed on, I have relaxed a little bit. I'm not sure if they've come across my many projects online, and found this blog, for instance. We rarely communicate. I don't know what they know. I suspect I should get over this separation with siblings. But I do keep (my path in Hinduism) hidden from my Mormon church folks.

Your sadhana is beautiful

Even Lord Shiva spends his time doing austerities such as meditation and japa mala (beads)

Sādhana (Sanskrit: साधन), literally "a means of accomplishing something," is the regular adherence to purifying, ego-transcending spiritual practices known as tapas, or austerities. Sādhana includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Sufi traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives. ~ Adapted from Wikipedia

I saw in my mind just now a summer blouse flying gently on a clothesline, the fabric playing upon itself in the sun.

A significant image that gives me pause. A clothesline figured prominently in a symbolic dream I had at age six about losing myself because of abuse.

I have arrived at the beginning, the circle of this lifetime closes, then opens... to all possibility.

What I have craved. Is now.

I had a gentle little rebellion. I was disappointed, and sad. 

Before... I had felt so clear and steady in my state, ready to go with equipoise established, with steadiness in everything large and small. I danced with the ripples of bliss that came up from within, that opened every place I touch with a familiar bliss...

Before... I felt I finally understood what life was, what it was to be finally reaching my potential as a spiritual being.

Then I felt I was back in the soup.

I don't want this, I thought. It's not worth it. Who thought up such an existence? To suffer delusions it has taken most of my life to throw off, then continue to seek this freedom which comes and goes as mere minutes between hours?

This is like having a tantrum because my billion dollar jackpot was a day late.

Listen... I have learned to stay steady inside. I've learned not to push, not to try to control. I am out of the way, a huge feat! And one with so many rewards.

Now, a moment of insight, of her strong shakti touching me inside...

This is it... she says gently inside. What a beautiful story, like one of your (written) stories. Complex, light and dark, joy and freedom from suffering done and karmas laid aside, fuel for the fire of a life of purification. It is all beautiful, and it all has meaning, the meaning you give it.

Your sadhana is beautiful. Your sadhana has the meaning you give to it.

Grace never forgets you

"Through dhyāna, meditation, you allow yourself to become more subtle. As the kundalinī energy moves through you, you get rid of whatever you don’t need.  

Then meditation doesn’t just happen at a given time, it happens constantly. As you go about your daily actions, you are recharged.  

This is a very high yoga. Once it catches you, it never lets you go. Even if you forget grace, grace never forgets you. It will always be following you."

~ Mahāmandaleshwar Swami Nityānanda 

Turning towards home

I was in the checkout line at the grocery store, when a strong feeling of stillness arose in me. All around me were signs of movement and an unbelievable amount of noise I was only just now noticing. But I was gently, firmly, unwaveringly still, a sea change in my consciousness.

Later, as I thought on it, I thought, at last.... will I finally stop chasing all this around? I felt the weariness of it, and a mind that is tired. I wished to feel it slip away, leaving a deeply refreshing, healing stillness.

I used to share a compassionate, knowing little smile with other yogis when a yogi would hint that they were having great attainment in their meditation. Those who listened knew that this feeling of attainment came early on, and was discarded as a distraction when the role of grace became more clear.

And yet, here I am. I went through a long period of feeling I was having some amazing attainment. It's not that I didn't have attainment. It is knowing that it is all because of grace. Without grace, I'd be mucking about, trying to get free. It's knowing that I am comparing myself to others, and thinking I am getting ahead of most other people in their return to God. Ahead of others in merging our hearts in one.

I have come to see that I am not near as special in attainment as I thought I was. I see now that people (animals too) all over the world are being transformed by grace, are held by grace in any given moment. I am a part of that. I am not particularly special, though I know I am special to the guru, who is and knows my heart. As he/she knows every heart that is turning towards home.

Only Guru's grace

To me, bhumisparsha means touching, standing upon
the witness of the earth, the unchanging truth

There is only one being here. This is all One pretending to be many.

This is not a know. It is there when I get my mind (story) out of the way.

It is my experience. A now made of incredible bliss.

How? Guru's grace. Only guru's grace.

To me, Bhumisparsha means seeking only, and grounded only in truth

It is real

Happy, so happy, contentment that none can take away.

I know now it is the gift of my guru. There is nothing to do except love her and acknowledge her grace.

I can stop my mind analyzing. I can stop it slipping into the past or the future.

I finally realized the yantra I see when I close my eyes is something to take the help of when I open them. Sri Kundalini, the voice of my Lord, beckons to me. Be free... be free....

Sri Yantra

I have never gazed at a yantra before, but this one quiets my mind and centers me in the inner stillness, what is real. Then I look about and rejoin maya already in progress. I look at it at various times throughout the day, slipping back into meditation.

I want to be established in this, what is real.

Things that I have spent hours and years on, creating new karmas of concern, worry, perfectionism... I focus this clear consciousness on them and add the willingness to let them go, gently nudging them, slipping them off of me, off of my mind.

Nudge.... slip. I watch them dissolve. They seldom return. They slip away as I stay in the now.

If this takes more than a nudge, I stop. To push on it is a do, it creates story, my mind takes it up, and new karmas begin. No more.

Your words are pure nectar...

My guru's shakti. My guru's shakti. It permeates my subtle body as profound bliss and love. Sometimes I gasp when so much playful bliss pushes up through me... bliss, bliss, bliss.

My physical body sways slightly, completely relaxed. I breathe a little deeper. Every breath.

My guru's shakti. It is an infinite gift. She gives to me. She is giving me everything, all that there is to give. I don't know why.

I am giving her my everything. She is dissolving all that I no longer think of as me. I think enough has been dissolved that the bottom has dropped out. Lucky me!

It is the best experience, beyond any description or measure.

I no longer question, as I have obsessively questioned everything, all of my life.

I no longer question. It is real.

Brother Eknath, I touch your feet

I am returning

I feel as though I have a hidden cache of the solution to every problem, the solution to even having problems. That which my soul craves. All I have ever dreamed of, longed for, felt a soul-stinging lack of, lamented with no relief, none.

Oh yes, I whisper to myself every time I reach for all that I have ever desired, here in my soul.

I carry the living shakti of my Lord, paramashiva. He lives in my heart. He isn't in my mind, (except as mind), I don't perceive him with my senses, though I do feel the emanating bliss of the eternal flowing through me in waves.

This is real. Not because I decided it is.

I have chased so many things in this life. But I only found the idea of all of these things, including God. I loved God so much as a teen, but I felt separated from God, empty and profoundly unfulfilled. I tried everything, tried escape in fiction. Everything was bright, shining cardboard. I felt so empty.

Look, I say to myself. This treasure... This universe without end in my heart. The gift of shaktipat, of endless love and shakti. Thank you...

And I slip into it like dark, cloudy cotton, like fresh and fragrant sheets, so cool. I slip into the chosen place between two worlds, the place where I become.

My treasure. There... whenever I reach for it. It doesn't go away!

When I offer pillow mantra. When I mediate throughout the day, my eyes open meditation. Always there, whenever I reach out (in).

I am rich beyond every need or desire, so far beyond any, any.

God lives in me. God answers my touches with bliss and more bliss. The bliss is changing me, dissolving me.

I love this inner darkness measured by light years of travel, of flowing, of not moving as the universe dances around me. Not as thoughts. Not detected by the senses. A living reality, my source.

I am accepting the gift of freedom. I am becoming free. I am returning. I am home.

Stillness

I've stopped doing. I am cradled in stillness. This is moving, but I am not. How good it feels to just stop.

I need not move

I stopped searching and closed my eyes

A focused point at the center of the play of action

Duty is what remains

Lurching

It is an attainment to not reach for siddhis* when they arise. This attainment is worth a thousand siddhis. It is real, a place and means of being that is unshaken, even by the gift of magical powers.

This and all attainment comes from grace (sorry ego).

I am steady inside. Things lurch. That's what they do.

Hmmmmmmm.

Nope. I'm not that. Why did I ever think I was that?

Why did I ever even think I was that? So strange, the things that are falling away.

Inside I am steady. The lurching about, way over here, which means the pendulum had to swing way over there... has finally reached stasis.

For how long, who knows?? One never does, that I do know.

But now I am experiencing solid stillness, with the usual lurching around me, pulling at me.

Occasional slips bring a HUGE BURN. Poof! I am still again.

Poof!!

________________________
*"Magical powers" that arise from austerities, spiritual practices such as meditation, yoga, etc. Sadhus who can be buried alive for days and emerge with no damage for example. These skills are known as siddhis. They are often described as distractions from the ultimate goal, which is realization.