Chennai Visit

It was a wonderful meeting with Bodhinatha gurudeva at Chennai at the GRT Grand Hotel. Some of the key takeaways from that appointment are

• See and Love Siva in everyone, remember that each has that potential of Sivaness yet to be realized.
• Pay full attention without any internal chanting when in a conversation, this will make sure others don't feel that you are pre-occupied.
• Pay attention to the few crucial problems / complaints from the many if they are thrown at you.
• Perfection in Willpower automatically leads to direct cognition. And willpower cultivation means – finishing what you start and making sure you do things to the best of your abilities, putting more effort in every step possible. It doesn't matter if the work being done is trivial like washing a vessel, cutting a vegetable or advanced as developing software or designing a complex algorithm. Willpower can be applied equally in both.

I am also reading a book called “Effortless Meditation”. The wonderful thing I realized about it is that if a thought is coming spontaneously in your mind and if you perceive it that it came (without getting into the thinking aspects of it) then you are in stillness and in effortless meditation. The idea is to be in Effortless meditation all of the time.

Life with Shum is good!

It takes a while to understand that the past or the future really doesn't exist. I was working on solving a complex problem today and at the same time practising Shum in my mind. I observe that the awareness moves into the various strata of mind such as vumtyeudi and there is a lot of intellectual aggression towards solving the problem. Then awareness briefly moved into la and lam states. Then into the uuu state and a lot of thoughts and concepts are interrelated. I wasn't able to solve the problem. Then it was lunchtime, and consciously took awareness into the laf state while gobbling rotis. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, I intuitively found a solution for the problem which had kept my mind boggling for hours. When we are involved with the world and its ramifications it's easy to forget simple solutions to complex problems and there is a tendency to get carried away. Consciously bringing mind into focus into the laf state is the key to get solutions for those problems.

The more I practice Shum language the more I understand the importance of practising it. When things don't work your way awareness quickly switches to the future, which can be quickly detected through Shum.

Designing your life

Ever wondered how our own belief systems design our life and how it can be changed? MIT has the answer

click below

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Athletics--Physical-Education-and-Recreation/PE-550Spring-2009/LectureNotes/index.htm

or

http://bit.ly/cJPEMV

Summary: Everything that we are facing in the present is a direct result of our belief systems (or theories) which have gone in our subconscious mind in the past. We can change the future anytime by changing our current beliefs & theories we have about oneself, others & towards the world.

Fate versus Karma

A friend tries hard to succeed by taking a big risk in his career by quitting his current job and trying to win a better job, at the end all his plans are foiled and he loses the job he was seeking for to someone else, along with the earlier semi-stable job. Meets his friends and relatives and shares his agony with them – about how unfortunate he is and how fate is playing a big role in his life – and something doesn’t allow him to move past a particular point in life. He also loses faith in all the temples and gods he visited and the numerous Guruji’s & prophets who had promised him success. I have seen many people start hating God and denying that there is no such thing called god existing.
In the past - I have encountered similar situations in my own life – I try hard to correct a problem – it backfires or just doesn’t work no matter what I try. On some days it seems like a very smooth sail, on other days no matter how hard I work the storm just keeps getting worse.
Here is the answer for such questions from my gurudeva: Consistency is the key to the conquest of Karma. Whatever happens to us in life is not due to fate. There is no such thing called fate. Whatever happens to us – good or bad is a result of ones own making – ones own beliefs, lifestyles, past grooming, the way one lived life since childhood, past lives etc. We alone are responsible for the good or bad decisions as well which we make as we sail through the river of life.
I heard Vivekananda’s saying once which says : Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached. Another guy called Randy Pausch – a very famous professor from the Carnegie Mellon University - said the same thing. The stumbling blocks that come to stop you from reaching the goal come for a reason. They want to know how badly you want your goal ! They are there to stop the others who don’t want the goal as badly as you want ! The famous Japanese guru (Pai Mei) from the movie “Kill Bill” screams at Uma Thurman -- during the Kung-Fu training when she cries in pain while hitting the wooden blocks with her bare fist - ‘Hit  it harder, The wood should be afraid of your fist !”
To summarize – consistency and willpower are the keys to the conquest of karma. There is nothing called fate. We make our own fate through setting positive or negative patterns in life.
This inspiring story of Abraham Lincoln portrays one such example:
A common list of the failures of Abraham Lincoln (along with a few successes) is:

• 1831 - Lost his job
• 1832 - Defeated in run for Illinois State Legislature
• 1833 - Failed in business
• 1834 - Elected to Illinois State Legislature (success)
• 1835 - Sweetheart died
• 1836 - Had nervous breakdown
• 1838 - Defeated in run for Illinois House Speaker
• 1843 - Defeated in run for nomination for U.S. Congress
• 1846 - Elected to Congress (success)
• 1848 - Lost re-nomination
• 1849 - Rejected for land officer position
• 1854 - Defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1856 - Defeated in run for nomination for Vice President
• 1858 - Again defeated in run for U.S. Senate
• 1860 - Elected President of the United States (success)

Here is the famous Pai Mei training scene from Kill Bill

Beautiful Language – Shum

Learning this beautiful Shum  language. Helps me figure out where exactly my awareness is at any point of time. Right now it is at “La” which is the vibration associated with the second dimension of mind.
When I’m thinking I’m in “lam”. Its all emotions, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, concepts, partial concepts, things which we think again and again and give it a sense of permanency.
Then I feel this beautiful “simshumbisi” , the sound of ‘eee’ sound which is actually heard when the thread of awareness moves (“nimf”) from  “kaif” to “iikaif”.
“lam” state is always not a good place to be in, especially the thoughts are so many and the mind in this state adds to itself, full of ramification. We are we only are responsible for giving any thought a sense of permanence. We can goof up things as if its the end of the world – or live in the present – go with the flow – and treat it just as an experience.
Observing objects with pure perception (no thoughts) is the “niif” state. “kalibasa” is the area of the mind where breath is perfectly under control. (pranayama) With inbreath of 9 counts and outbreath of 9 counts.and a hold of 1 count each.

Have received requests on how to learn this language: below are some tips:

1. Make a start here 

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/html/livespiritually/become-student/materials/shum_18colors.pdf

2. Use Anki Droid App for memorizing the colors associated with Shum

I have created a shared deck for interested students, this deck can be imported into AnkiDroid

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1341912134

3. There is also a Master Course group in Facebook, you can learn more from how others are learning it. Below is the link for the group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mastercourse/?ref=bookmarks


Hope this should help get started