View Single Post
  #33  
Old 20-07-2017, 06:43 AM
Shivani Devi Shivani Devi is offline
Master
Join Date: Nov 2015
Posts: 10,861
  Shivani Devi's Avatar
Namaste.

I've been in very deep thought and rumination all day about my whole lineage and sampradaya. I say that I am Aghori because I worship Siva in the form of Bhairava, I am also a Tantrika, but I don't associate with The Trika School of Shaivism and I'm much closer to being a Jain than anything else.

I don't believe in eating dead people to prove a point and I don't smoke cannabis either (or very rarely), I do not have a human skull as a begging bowl, but apart from that, all the Aghora rites and rituals are also my own, but there's also a lot of Puranic influence in there as well and at times I am praying to Siva in full-on duality, at other times I am recognising myself as Bhairava...so yup it can be confusing to know whether I am Arthur or Martha most days...so I check the whole Saivite Lineage tree thing again:



Oh, I see...I worship both the Puranic and the non-Puranic form...I am both Shaivadvaita and Shaivasiddhanta in fact, the only thing there is in common with any of it is the 'Worship of Rudra'.

So, I forget about trying to put myself into a nice little box because I belong to all of those Shaivite schools, yet I come unstuck at the incongruous teachings...and how do I reconcile ANY of it with the Vedic concept of Brahman, which I strongly disagree with due to experience?

Then, I was steered towards a particular concept I have been trying to get my head around for days on here, as I reply to threads about 'spiritual sovereignty', 'discernment', 'is god's nature 'in house'? I reply to all these threads trying to put my finger on what I am trying to realise for myself, yet just slightly missing the mark every time.

...until just now!

The concept of God I am most aligned with is called Svatantrya:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svatantrya

This proposes that God exists as separate from our will/ego, but we can avail ourselves of His Will and Grace (good name for a TV show) at any time, simply by acknowledging it thus and it is impossible to 'become' it without acknowledging it as something we already are and yet, it still exists independently from what we are as well...it wouldn't be Siva if it were any other way (as per the Puranic viewpoint).

So yeah, pretty much still Aghori, as that comes the closest, but it's not quite it either. I'm still fondly embracing the duality until non-duality is achieved, then going back to embracing duality again...I mean, why do realised souls still worship the Gods anyway? They should all be just sitting in meditation in that state of Samadhi for the rest of their lives...but nope, even the Aghori, after realising they are Rudra still do the Rudra oblations as if to 'worship themselves' somehow and I often think 'why does God need to worship and love Himself? talk about Divine vanity here...' but that's a topic for another day.

Aum Namah Shivaya
__________________
I am the creator of my own reality, so please don't get offended if I refuse to allow you to be the creator of it instead of focusing on creating your own. Thanks.
Reply With Quote