Sri Vasudeva on Meditation

[Uma]

A personal reflection about Sri Vasudeva's Day 28 of the 2015 40 Days Observations

This talk was about the soul's cosmic relationship to the Divine. In it, Sri Vasudeva gets to the heart of what's going on behind ALL relationships. He gives the exciting promise that if you understand this teaching, "you have the secret to all relationships and the freedom in relationships."

A cosmic relationship
He spoke of the "play" or "playground" of life in which my "I" or "ego" is having a relationship with my body, and also having a relationship to that which "I" experience as external to my body. It all feels like it is me and something that is "not me":

"We are aware of our individual play so it’s difficult to experience that the collective is a part of us," ~ Sri Vasudeva

The cosmic relationship has something to do with the collective "I". Nature is this gross body of God who has an "I"...but there is a transcendental cosmic relationship also. This is harder to grasp. He is talking about three basic "I" relationships:

"There is a cosmic play that is happening and there is a cosmic play happening with two: the one that initiated the play, the one who is the second in the play, and the field of the play. So there is one who initiated the play, it has to create a second and then be in a relationship with the second in a field – because once you create a second you have to relate to the second in a field that joins the two so two can communicate. So now there are three: there is the one that has extended itself into the two, and there is a field." ~ Sri Vasudeva

God-transcendental and God-big-"I"
The one I am trying to be in surrender to, in alignment with, is the collective "I" that is God actively projecting its being into the universe, AS THE UNIVERSE. But the one I want to merge into eventually (in the final total "death" of mahasamadhi) is the transcendental God in which no more "I"/ego can exist. That is pure consciousness. Everything else is consciousness with an "I" in it. A big "I" made up of lots of little "i"s.

The one with lots of little "i"s is the one I am concerned with in every moment. That "I" is the creative one in the field, while the other is (well I don't know this yet) but a kind of Void that is just pure bliss without the awareness of itself. Self-revelation comes through the God-with-an-ego.

I am trying to avoid all the Sanskrit terminology he uses to keep things simple. I hope my interpretation is making sense.

"One of the powers of the consciousness [is] to create two [out of one] and to have this power of power of self-revelation, revealing itself in a relation of two." ~ Sri Vasudeva

Sri Vasudeva has spoken before that we live in a holographic universe. A holograph is an image projected on a space in such a way that if you take any piece of it away, it still projects the entire image. It's like the idea of cloning - you can clone an entire being from one of its cells. Self-revelation is only given to the human being, not the other animals. It's what allows me to discover who I am.

The other quality of God-with-an-ego that he pointed out is bliss. Bliss is one of God's powers (shaktis - in Sanskrit): "Not only is it able to create two but to create two out of bliss," Sri Vasudeva.

And some other qualities he pointed out:

• knowing what is happening (intelligence)
• the ability to manifest out of its power of intention/will
• and creative power

I am a spark of a powerful divine fire!
We are sparks of that one God, sparks of a divine fire. Everything that God is, we are in miniature, like a cell that can be cloned. I think that's the idea. This is the wonderful part. We can do all these things, same as the Universe. The universe sprang out of a divine intention into a big bang so too we come out of bliss into an intention to incarnate and we can use that intention to create things and do stuff... We have these same divine powers but on a smaller scale. Like Jesus said "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can tell a mountain to move and it will move." He was talking about that, we are all a spark of the One with the same divine powers, and bliss and all that.

Limitation - yuk

"But when we come into the individual consciousness, when it comes down into creating the individual, it looses that sense so it’s placed in a maya, in a grip, that that is lost, that cosmic awareness is lost. The individual is created and when the individual is created it’s created with less powers." ~ Sri Vasudeva

Having lost that connection with God we have also lost our powers - we have some of them but not to full capacity. Those who are fully awakened have all powers restored.

Going back to his promise that the secret to all relationships and the freedom in relationships is linked with realizing one's cosmic relationship - he says that having lost most of our powers, being overwhelmed with the false notion that "I am my body" in the ordinary human experience, this little "i" of mine is now stuck in limitation. And Sri Vasudeva says "This limitation is going to create relationships but it is not able to perceive that the cosmic play is still holding and going on, that the bliss field in which this is happening and the cosmic is continuously creating individualized beings, continually putting people/beings in the play."

Enlightened "clairvoyance" sees the Divine in everybody and everything and in every process. This is my take on it:

In every relationship the enlightened have only one relationship, that of soul to Source.

And that's my understanding about my relationship to God based on this teaching. Really I've got to realize that I'm a character in a bigger dream that God-with-an-ego is dreaming - one part of a collective, that is my Higher Self or Higher Power, and to learn how to play masterfully in this dream until I've had enough and am ready to merge into God-transcendental. Even in that merging I will never be able to be omniscient as long as I exist with an "I".

Finally he says,

"Only those beings who can retrace and go back and move away from the individual and begin to say “What is happening inside of there? Where is this coming from? Where is this play coming from?” only then they begin to see the cosmic play and they begin to realize….That cosmic relationship is happening on the inside in a field of bliss but the individual now held in maya is going to create relationships in the maya and all the relationships will be bittersweet until it’s able to go back to the cosmic awareness." ~ Sri Vasudeva

The only way I can understand this is to think of myself as living in a dream with dream characters having dream relationships with them. It is only when I wake up that I realize that all the dream characters were really me.

Happy Gurupurnima, Dear Sri Vasudeva!

[naturesflow]

SO do you have freedom in relationships Uma in all this beautiful sharing you have offered here?

A lovely shared creation I might add.

[Uma]

Originally Posted by naturesflow

SO do you have freedom in relationships Uma in all this beautiful sharing you have offered here?

A lovely shared creation I might add.

Some days free, some days captured naturesflow. I'm a work in progress Thanks.

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Uma

Some days free, some days captured naturesflow. I'm a work in progress Thanks.

Thankyou that helps me a little in all this.
Does that mean you have healthy connected relationships with others in your world in part or more complete as you appear to me to be in yourself Uma? I am confused by the word captured? does that mean you discern or avoid or love your own company one with others in part?

Please don't feel you have to answer me I am naturally curious critter who moves according to the movements of my own interconnected relationship within me.

[Uma]

some days free means times I interact in my world from a space of self-awareness, knowing that everyone and everything is God speaking to me.

some days caught means times that I interact in my world from a space of forgetfulness - caught up in this identity or the other, such as "I am the body" - for example driving on the highway, I'm focused on the road, maybe not saying my mantra, maybe not fully in the divine consciousness, so somebody cuts me off and before you know it a curse shoots out of my mouth - oops I'm caught in the play. I forgot all is Divine.

That's what I meant

[naturesflow]

Originally Posted by Uma

some days free means times I interact in my world from a space of self-awareness, knowing that everyone and everything is God speaking to me.

some days caught means times that I interact in my world from a space of forgetfulness - caught up in this identity or the other, such as "I am the body" - for example driving on the highway, I'm focused on the road, maybe not saying my mantra, maybe not fully in the divine consciousness, so somebody cuts me off and before you know it a curse shoots out of my mouth - oops I'm caught in the play. I forgot all is Divine.

That's what I meant

ah I see now what you mean thankyou I understand where you took this.

I suppose I meant more about your relationships with others more directly. Knowing your own and others as divine how do you connect to people and others in this awareness? Does it come easy for you or being in this way of you being all this is it more difficult? If your not entertaining a lot of life being in the conditioned illusion of themselves, are you able to maintain relationships in your world with other like minded people or people who might still be less aware than yourself?

When I speak of the inter-being/interconnected in myself, I suppose I mean more our interconnected state of being that and how that moves and relates to people ?

Which I think is important to your beautiful creation and sharing above.

[naturesflow]

When I read this part that you shared.

The only way I can understand this is to think of myself as living in a dream with dream characters having dream relationships with them. It is only when I wake up that I realize that all the dream characters were really me.
I suppose the real wake up call is if all characters are me living in this dream state having dream relationships with them. Do you continue to dream the real dreams of this life free from your own illusive nature and relate more directly to others for real?

Knowing that the illusion is really just a shift in perception when you reach this state of being to do so, then life becomes a little more real, well it did for me. The waking up was really only the beginning of what was coming to live out my life as I then choose to live it.

SO really your own relationship to being awake or more present with your true essence, one can decide for itself how it relates to life from that point of course, because naturally in me this interconnected or inter-being state speaks to me of inclusiveness in my world and in me as one. Not just in myself alone. So naturally its not just about self alone in me in this way of being and relating.

So I was curious how you do that?

[Uma]

Dear naturesflow,

I replied to your questions on your thread about relationships https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1461948 It's basically how I try to walk the talk in relationships with others. I thought we might continue the conversation there if you have more questions.

Enlightenment is a gradual process. "Knowing" is also gradual. Knowing life is a dream begins as an intellectual idea but gradually becomes a lived experience. I have to keep pinching myself in this ordinary reality to remind myself that this is not my true reality - practicing best behaviour and being in the witness (mindfulness in present moment awareness) as much as possible. In the meantime, I can only practice the teachings. Eventually there is no more "practice" because it becomes the new reality.

I'll be writing more posts on this topic. Sri Vasudeva spent at least a week on karmic relationships. There is a lot to say. Stay tuned.

Peace,
Uma

[Uma]

Reflections about Sri Vasudeva's Day 29 of the 2015 40 Days Observance

Having described the soul's karmic relationship with the physical vehicle and with the cosmos, Sri Vasudeva's teachings now turned to troubleshooting.

My brow chakra and relationships
Until I come to the realization that I am carried by the Divine in every moment, until I am able to allow the Divine to control my every action, until I am completely centered in my crown chakra - I need to use the next best thing - which is my intellect, to help me to act in the smartest way in every relationship. Sri Vasudeva says that the intellect is the mind's greatest tool, and the chakra that governs this part of the mind is the brow chakra. But the mind has other tools and is impacted by other parts of itself. The brow chakra manages all the other chakras below it. I need to manage this vehicle pulled by six horses (root, sacral, navel, heart, throat and brow).

This is a metaphor for my soul. My individual ego drives, my passenger is my Higher Self.

The mind involves all six chakras
In meditation I am often caught up only in the head area - because that's where I want to go, right into the crown chakra. In this talk Sri Vasudeva is saying that the mind is impacted by all the chakras and in order to clean up the mind, I have "to go to every centre where I have some mental experience involving that part of my being."

"When you caught up only in the head and only in the mind you’re forgetting that this mind is connected to all these things here [(chakras below the brow)] and [it (the mind)] builds stories with all these things. And whilst you are staying here [(the brow/crown)] those will pull you. While you push them away and you’re struggling here [(brow/crown)], it might well be that you have to go down there [root/sacral/navel/heart/throat] and see what is happening." ~ Sri Vasudeva

I'm not going to go anywhere without all six horses working together as a team. All need to be trained, groomed and in fit condition to give me that power, that mind power, that power of intention, to move into the crown chakra.

All of these chakras have what Sri Vasudeva calls "stories" that the mind creates about them. In a very basic sense, my root chakra informs the stories I tell myself about my body, my sacral chakra informs me about my gender and sexuality, my navel chakra informs me about my physical vitality, my heart about my experiences of love, my throat about self expression and my brow about how I identify myself. So I need to be chakra aware just to be able to know where these stories are coming from and to rewrite them if need be. Doing so will empower me in relationships. In fact this is a change mechanism in narrative therapy.

If all this self-exploration and self-change were all that I needed, I would already be enlightened by now, but now, there is strong resistance to it. Resistance from inside of me and resistance from outside of me. Sri Vasudeva next spoke to this resistance. I will only mention the first part of that in this post.

How reactivity can hurt me
Sometimes I think "OMG why do I have to work so hard in relationships?!" Here is my teacher's response:

Some of us ask “Why should I change my behaviour towards this person?” “This person is continuously acting this way….Well, is your behaviour creating wellness within you? Is it promoting disease within you? Is it creating stresses inside of you? And if it does then it’s well worth the while to look at yourself and clean up YOUR act because your world and your life is about you not anybody else. So it’s extremely important to see how you relate to the world around you regardless of how the others are operating. Because the moment you get caught in somebody’s play you become like them. The moment you get caught with anger, aggression, negativity coming from another, you’re caught in the play. And the moment you detach yourself and say “I’m not going to be caught in anybody’s drama,” then you have a chance to evolve, to detach, to transform the relationship." ~ Sri Vasudeva

I recently posted in another thread https://www.spiritualforums.com/vb/showthread.php?p=1461948 about striving to live up to the standards of The Golden Rule and Mahatma Gandhi's example of "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Most people don't get it why I'm doing this. It's not to be a goody-goody, or to sound off like I'm so morally superior to anybody else. Far from it. My reasons are far more selfish than that! I strive and strive for perfection because I know that I can't get to heaven without that, I can't get more into the crown chakra without that, because all my actions to the outside impact my inside. If I produce negative, negative remains within me.

I believe this is the deeper teaching of The Golden Rule. This is why Patajali teaches that the do's and don'ts of right conduct (the yamas and niyamas - that I've posted about before) are essential to a meditation practice. It's because every negative action I do leaves its shadow imprint in me. And then karma boomerangs it back as well from outside making things worse! No no no…I want to be squeaky clean. I take off my shoes before entering a sacred space. I leave my dirty laundry at home. I can only enter the crown chakra if I am truly clean and pure - or pure enough that I can enter. In order to sit on cloud 9 I must weigh as light as the cloud. Even intellect is not allowed to enter heaven. Concepts don't even exist at that level. Thoughts weigh heavier than consciousness.

My mind is made up of every chakra, not only the brow and it all has to be washed, scrubbed, dried, pressed, folded… If I carry other people's baggage in me, I have (in Christian terminology) brought the devil with me into heaven. That can't happen, as far as I know. I can't be negative to any degree and expect to be liberated. It just doesn't work that way (God's rules not mine.)

Here's a great piece of advice:

"You should be well aware that when you maintain these demeaning postures, these negative postures, they get stronger and stronger every time you use them until they become monsters inside of you until you don’t even like yourself. And then you need to go to a therapist because you can’t help yourself.

The truth is you are best therapist that you can ever be or you will ever be or you will ever meet. The moment that you can deconstruct, the moment you begin to observe the danger of these thought forms in the mind, the moment you begin to deconstruct you are on your way to freedom and to happiness and to wellbeing."
~ Sri Vasudeva

I have nothing against therapists and neither does Sri Vasudeva who has lectured to therapists. I studied to become one myself but I don't think they know everything about the mind. They are missing quite a bit of crucial information. And I have never needed therapists - although people and situations have driven me to the point of nervous breakdown many times (which I won't get into here so don't ask). I have always been super vigilant of my behaviour as an intuitive-sensitive, but in a more proactive way ever since I met Sri Vasudeva and studied his teachings, and even moreso ever since God gave me glimpses of heaven, glimpses of my possibilities - and yours and everybody's. So the Divine is always inspiring me to do more, to clean more, to work harder even when I'm ready to throw in the towel. Sometimes there seems to be no end to the purification that seems to be necessary. I am always uncovering more faults in me. The more I think I've attained something, the more life shows me "nope you're not there yet". But I have to tell you it's all worth it. What else can I say? It's all worth it. All the heartache, all the **** life throws at me - it's all worth it.

To be continued...

[Uma]

Reflections about Sri Vasudeva's Day 29 of the 2015 40 Days Observance (continued)

From reactivity in the domain of thoughts to the chain reaction on down the line of the chakras…

…through the brow chakra:

"When you begin to keep strong and negative impressions about people what do you think happens to the brain? What do you think happens to the physical organ?" ~ Sri Vasudeva

..through the throat chakra:

"When you begin to be abusive and negative towards people with your language, what do you think happens in this area?" ~ Sri Vasudeva

...through emotions (heart chakra controlled limbic brain):

"…and observe what happens when you get caught in emotions, and the emotions are negative in these relationships based on these triggers, what do you think happens to the organs in the chest area, the immune system gland, the lungs, the heart…" ~ Sri Vasudeva

... to the physical body (navel, sacral and root controlled reptilian brain):

"and when you carry patterns of fear and insecurity what do you think happens to the navel? And when you carry strong patterns of ego in the second chakra in exploitation or abuse or being abused – what do you think happens there to the organs in that area?" ~ Sri Vasudeva

Be good (be spiritual) or else!
Many things are happening when mind is out of control, when mind is allowed to run rampant like a bull in a china shop. I am hurting my own mental and physical health. I am hurting the other person or the space around me. I am creating what I call boomerang karma that's going to echo back to me whatever I put out there my own $%%^& plus the reactivity of the "other". This is bad! It's really bad to be bad! This isn't just about morality and ethics. This is about protecting myself from my own mind!

Speaking of bulls, I love the zen story of meditation to enlightenment (nirvana), taming the bull in stages. Mind is like a bull that I first need to tame, then to transcend.

Until enlightenment be mindful
Enlightenment is going to solve everything, is going to make my behaviour perfect, and create wellness on every level, but what do I do in the meantime? Even to stay healthy, what do I do?

The way to well being has to be wellbeing in relationships, wellbeing personal. It has to be in the way that we look at ourselves, looking at the patterns of behaviour that we have lost control over and beginning to take the responsibility to transform them. The moment you say to yourself (to the Universe, [your] Higher Self) “I need help, I sincerely need help” the Universe sends the help. ~ Sri Vasudeva

This is the way of the bhakti (heart path), to pray for help when the will is weak. Another teacher I admire, Tony Robbins, said in the documentary I Am Not Your Guru that in his own life transformation story it was a combination of willpower and grace, that without the grace he could not have overcome his own personality struggles coming from an abusive home. He also said in that film that it was because he descended to the darkest places that is able to lift people to the highest places. (This is not Sri Vasudeva's point but I think it has merit.)

"When you achieve things, it comes from incredible, obsessive focus; it comes from massive action and figuring out how to execute and do things effectively; and it comes from grace. I never forget that that's a part of the formula for where my life is today." ~ Tony Robbins, quoted in Business Insider, April 11, 2016

It may seem like I'm jumping around from Zen to Robbins to Vasudeva but the common theme for me is hard work plus grace. And this goes back to the "no free lunch" teaching from a while ago. I guess I've been working on changing myself for so long I need to dwell on this a lot, but I also meet with a lot of people who think they are so spiritual but do not do the work and do not walk their talk. So it's important. It's important because this is one of the things he speaks about so often.

As long as I can see positive in the negative, as both Robbins and Sri Vasudeva teach, focusing on the Light/Grace (that gift however it shows up in my life), then how can negative thinking, feeling and acting even exist in me? Sri Vasudeva is always seeing positive and has trained me to see every challenge as an opportunity to keep striving for greater self-mastery. And when I kind of tired of challenges, I can pray for help and I can also raise my hand and say "God please stop. I need a time out." And then I get a rest and a recharge and a time to reflect and look for the support that always comes...

The promise
Clearing the mind of negative tendencies is the homework that makes silencing of the mind in meditation more perfect, makes me more receptive to grace, makes it EASIER to meditate… once again the first step Patanjali said - do's and don'ts (yamas and niyamas). And when I do that there is a promise that my slate will be wiped clean, wiped clean in an instant!

"The moment you begin to clean yourself of these, all relationships around you change – all of them: the way you relate to your body, the way you relate to your sibblings, the way you relate to your parents, the way you relate to your children, the way you operate with your loved ones, it changes - because when you change yourself you see the world differently." ~ Sri Vasudeva

Willpower and prayer
The way I see it, prayer is the preferred meditation method of the heart while concentration is the preferred meditation method of the brow. I see these as two sides of the same coin, only the hand postures are different (if one needs to use them). There's no reason I can't combine the two, and that's why I love Sri Vasudeva's eclectic approach - mixing methods.

He gave another teaching in the guided meditation part of the talk, a teaching that takes all of the above to a next stage, a higher level, a profound level - but it's too long to go into here, so I will have to continue in the next post…