Key learnings in Life so far ...

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it" - An Old saying

Letting go

Letting go of attachments causes lot of relief and brings peace of mind. Attachment is bondage and detachment is freedom. Affectionate detachment is the key -- to prove love by action than being flooded by emotion -- that is true love. Affectionate detachment is a spiritual power.

I have made a list of things, people and stuffs that I'm attached to. Just listing them and being conscious of the things my mind is attached to itself is bringing me lot of peace. I'm becoming more and more aware of those areas of mind where awareness tends to identify itself with what it is aware of. Once awareness is free there is a huge amount of willpower to accomplish anything in the physical world be it material progress or spiritual progress and it is towards this that I'm aiming constantly. To not get attached to any area of mind and to remain a free soul, a free awareness.

Cycles of recurring karmas

When things get too peaceful and when awareness is detached, there is a tendency in the ego which can make awareness to get strongly attached to the next thing which awareness becomes aware of in the subconscious mind (which previously the awareness wasnt that attached to). So in a nutshell--- the greater the detachment, the greater is the tendency to get attached. Some karmic cycles are recurring in monthly frequencies, some are short -- weekly frequencies, some are much longer -- one year/6 month cycles. its these cycles that i need to watch out for very very carefully. By observation and experience its possible to predict the next experience that will come and take active steps to keep awareness centralized.

Example : Lets say you were attached strongly to some person -- and after a while you managed to detach yourself of those thoughts and somehow managed to be successful. Once your mind becomes a little peaceful -- there is a strong tendency to get attached to the next thing -- such as watching a lot of TV for example, on getting detached from that, a strong attachment to listening music may develop and so on.

Discipline

There are days when spiritual progress is at its best with all the learnings, japa, meditation going in full vigour and then there are days when there is nothing what so ever -- as getting up from bed itself becomes late. A balance has to be cultivated which brings us to discipline. Its important to make a solid plan and stick to it regularly. Only by regular meditation can the benefits be really reaped, same thing applies to intellectual knowledge as well. Its discipline and persistence that makes our hard work finally pay off. Same thing applies to eating -- somedays eating frugally and other days over-eating -- this is ignorance and has to be avoided. As noted there are many many pitfalls in spiritual progress.

The Second Superconscious experience

Last night i had a wonderful super-consciousness experience, it was around 3 a.m when this happened. I want to remember this experience so i want to put it here, as i remember it clearly now. By definition, we enter the super-conscious mind when awareness is not attached to anything in the subconscious mind. In other words, when awareness remains as pure awareness.


Before i describe that experience i will first write about yesterday evening. I attended the lecture of Swami Sukhabodhananda at Malleshwaram grounds with my cousin. His lecture had a deep impact on me. His Words which still linger in me are

• It is important to have desire but not attachment. Desire is the spiritual quality which accompanied with will, makes all our inner goals a reality.

• If I am attached to an object -- it only means i refuse to remain happy without that object. Attachment arises when we come in contact with sense objects and repeat it over a period of time.

• The enlightened can be compared to the man on top of the hill (mountaintop consciousness) as for him, he can see both the past, present and future simultaneously. Whereas a man on the bottom of the hill is compared to a normal man who is always torn between past and future.

• Awareness flows through certain chakras during the emotions that we experience. For example: During sexual thoughts awareness flows through the "Muladhara chakra". When reasoning with the intellect -- the " Svadhistana chakra", when in fear of anything, of life, career or of future, a persons awareness is flowing in the "Atala chakra". When in anger, awareness is in "Vitala chakra" and when in jealousy -- "Sutala chakra". When a person is in love with another and experiencing the selfless love feeling, awareness is in the "Anahat chakra". Personally i have experienced/been experiencing all these states in my own life and everyone would at some point of time in their life.

Super consciousness

Just before sleeping, i was trying to detach myself from areas of my mind which i know I'm attached to. This includes people whom i love, places i love, favorable experiences of past, unfavorable ones, the things/people i don't like etc. There are so many and with time i discover more, more things which i thought didn't matter to me but in reality i was really attached. This was the only simple exercise i did before sleeping, seeing all areas of mind with a detached eye without identifying myself with what i was aware of. i guess this continued in my sleep subconsciously as i don't remember when exactly i fell asleep. The next thing i remember is my breath slowing down to the point of no breathing, mind extremely calm and body extremely relaxed, a high frequency 'eee' sound which i can constantly hear in my brain suddenly became loud, so loud that i was only aware of it and nothing else. I got scared for a moment and opened my eyes and immediately i was back in the conscious mind. Clearly it was not a dream, as after i closed my eyes -- this experience happened many more times, easily 3-4 times. After which i consciously started breathing -- taking deep breaths in order to avoid going to that state. It was scary as it was the first time i consciously entered the super conscious mind, and naturally anything new which is not accustomed to our awareness is scary when it happens the first time.

Moments later i started realizing that entering this super conscious state was happening naturally without any efforts on my part, i was entering a new world with sounds and light, and getting scared by this new experience and withdrawing my awareness to the conscious mind.

The only effort i did -- was to deeply breath so that i do not enter the state due to my being scared of it. Then i woke up completely drank water,became fully conscious of my body -- nervous system to be specific and mind and entered sleep -- next thing i know was i was having random thoughts in the subconscious mind when my alarm rang at 6, and my breath was irregular at that time.

The lesson i learnt from this experience again confirms what my guru used to say, that we should not get afraid of the super conscious mind (which is natural to a beginner in the path of sadhana). It is just another area of the innumerable areas of mind but more refined due to the fact that there is nothing awareness can get attached to in this area of the mind, that's the beauty of this area of mind. in the instinctive and intellectual areas of mind this is not so --- awareness always tends to identify with one or more objects there.

Wishing your karma was better ?

He with whom neither slander that gradually soaks into the mind, nor statements that startle like a wound in the flesh are successful, may be called intelligent indeed.

~ Confucius

Off late life gave me certain experiences which made me strongly wish that my karma was better. The natural tendency of the ego is to blame the people involved in whatever injustice happened to it. But the bottomline is -- everything, both good and bad that happens to us is a result of ones own making. When karma is cheerfully endured, spiritual evolution takes place. When reacted, it results in re-experiencing those karmas at a later point in time or at a later life on earth.

TAKE RESPONSIBILITY

Wishing you karma was better?

The wise never blame God, for they know misfortune to be the return of man’s self-created karmas, difficult but necessary experiences for his spiritual evolution. Whenever we are injured or hurt, we understand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a karma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karmacycles around, will be the injured. If you take responsibility for all that happens to you, then you will have the power to deal with your karma through the grace of Lord Siva. He will give you the intelligence to deal with it as you worship Him in the Siva temple, contact Him within as the Life of your life and find Him in meditation.

Let’s take an example. Say I am holding a plate of rice and curry and I pass it to you. All of a sudden the plate drops on the floor between us. I blame you, and you blame me. I don’t want to be responsible for dropping the rice and curry, and you don’t want to be responsible either. So, we blame each other. The rice and curry is scattered there on the floor. No one is going to clean it up until one of us takes responsibility and says, “I’m sorry I dropped the plate of rice and curry,” and gets down on hands and knees and cleans it up. In the same way, only by taking responsibility, by recognizing what we have done as our own doing, can we begin cleaning up the results of our actions. Those who do take responsibility for their own karma have all the help in the world. The sages say, “Bear your karma cheerfully.” Each time you blame another person for what has happened to you, or cast blame in any way, tell yourself, “This is my karma which I was born to face. I did not come into a physical body just to blame others for what happens to me. I was not born to live in a state of ignorance created by an inability to face my karma. I came here to spiritually unfold, to accept the karmas of this and all my past lives and to deal with them and handle them in a proper and a wonderful way.” Then a sense of strength will come up within you, a sense of independence and peace. Mental arguments will stop. Arrogance will vanish.

• Accept all your experiences, good and otherwise, as the result of your own karmas in this and past lives.
• Avoid blaming others and instead take responsibility.
• Express gratitude for all that you have in life. Be thankful for the simple blessings that fill each day.

Shedding the personality

As events from the past come up from the subconscious due to the shakti power of meditation, i re-discover every time that the only way is to face and resolve them in the clear white light through understanding coupled with the vasana daha tantra.

These past happenings come up in the least expected moments and in dreams where there is no control over awareness. In those areas of the mind, the desires remain unfulfilled, and are peppered with fear, fear that life may not have much to offer than what has already been offered, subtle forms of jealousy arised due to unfulfilled desires, anger, lust and so on. These regions of mind have always remained (and will always remain) and affected mankind and its entirely up to me to renew awareness and centre myself instead of getting caught in the "glue" of these areas of mind. Many people today live in these areas of mind. Predominantly these areas of mind are of the lower chakras below the muladhara --- anger, jealousy, fear, lust and so on. Any of these emotions belonging to the lower chakras -- also called the "lower mind" or "lower astral body" make me (the awareness) identify myself(itself) with those areas, leading to reactional responses in the ego. (Translated: Awareness tends to identify itself with that which it is aware of ---- instead of being pure awareness)

Ancient Indian Yogis even used to wear a sacred thread blessed at the temple -- around their waist, to constantly remind them that they need to keep awareness in those chakras of the spine above the waist (that is --above the muladhara chakra). However for this to be highly effective, it is said that one must take the blessings of the God of Muladhara which is Lord Ganesh. I have decided to do this.

Through understanding comes the realization that the intellect which is so tightly programmed for having affinities for certain set of people and events, favoring certain attitudes for other, or certain zodiacs for other -- all these is in itself a major bondage. Bondage in the mind. The bondage caused by the intellect is more difficult to unwind than the ones caused by the instinct as the bonds caused by it to people are extremely deep rooted and extremely subtle. But it is also easy at the same time, because it doesnt take much time to centre oneself --- all it takes is willpower. Upon this realization however it is possible to shed the personality which was based on that intellect, using the finer intellect. The way to do this is by accepting that we are in this state and that we have identified ourself in this state. Proceed next by renewing awareness, by bringing awareness out of those states of mind --- then and there when the thought arises followed by centering and making awareness flow in other refined areas of mind leading to refined areas of consciousness.

The Conscious and the Subconscious Mind

In the goal for the self, we shed the instinctive mind first, the intellectual mind next, the personality we thought we were next, the subtle things which make up the little you next and so on. Everything has to ultimately be shed and remain as pure awareness if real progress has to be made and i just realized this fact recently. I'm gonna do it from right now and do it every moment as i do take up this resolution on this holy night of Lord Shiva -- the Maha Shivarathri. Aum Namah Sivaya