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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Meditation

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  #21  
Old 02-04-2015, 03:15 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jyotir
Hello Uma,

There is much that is useful in this thread, including your example of a constructive self-giving.
Thank you.

~ J

Thank you Jyotir. I was hoping that others would also contribute with their own self-giving too! I'm only 1 point of view here... I've been trying to integrate his teachings for what seems like forever but sometimes all it takes is one alternate view that might give me a breakthrough!
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  #22  
Old 03-04-2015, 01:56 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish 4/1/15 - Day 7 - The Joy of Moving from "Doer" to "Nondoer"



I have to say that Day 7 is my favourite talk so far - it has cleared up a lot of confusion for me about this "enjoying the play of life" business my teacher talks so much about. He's been trying to get through to me for years. I think finally I "get it". (I'm always amazed how blind I can be to the obvious!)

The MP3 and video can still be accessed for free for a few days (see the links I gave in earlier posts).

This was a remarkable talk for me because of the way he guided the meditation as an example of how what we can do in meditation is what we can practice when we are not in sitting meditation, just out in the world doing our thing. (As within so without principle.) He is always doing this, but this talk made it really really clear to me (or maybe my head and heart were more clear this morning). It's one I'm going to have to listen to a few times, there is so much wisdom in it. I'm sure you would find something there that touches you, that is meaningful for you.

I'm fascinated at how he explains so much highly technical stuff in the simplest way (what scripture and learned people can make sound so complicated and boring). In this one meditation he went through a whole string of highly advanced yogic tools, making them all accessible/easy to grasp. This is, to me, one of the signs of a highly advanced master teacher, a teacher's-teacher.

I couldn't do justice to this talk by trying to condense it here so I'm not gonna, so there!

What I'm joyfully taking away from it for the moment is how non-doership removes my burdens and allows me to sport in the play of life. I'm going to practice this a lot! Yup yup yup! Now I understand how to do it.

Now I understand, more fully, why meditation is like weight-lifting building the spiritual muscle, or like learning a new language, building new neuro-pathways in the brain because, as Sri Vasudeva illustrated so beautifully, I get it how God plays hide and seek with us. The game of life (as in meditation) is to spot and capture Him (that is all the doer-ship that is required). (Okay don't get hung up on the "God" word - "Him" is just a convenient metaphor for my own Essence, your own Essence - That which is supreme and unknowable)... So, in essence (in ESSENCE), I try to find That and try to capture That and hold on to That. In this game, if I let go my attention even for a moment, He disappears, vanishes into thin air, and I need to look for Him and capture Him all over again. That is the sporting in the play, the fun part.

Oh God, it's been too long since I had any fun in this world! I really needed this talk...

This "Good" Friday I was thinking "What's so good about it?" especially when Christians the world over mourn the brutal and wrongful execution of a beautiful and innocent messenger of the Divine, Jesus? How fitting that on this day I should discover this particular teaching about how to find and grow the Light in the midst of darkness! Hallelujah!

So to me, this teaching goes to the heart of living in surrender, to the heart of attaining the most beautiful energies and qualities in meditation and keeping them throughout the day and night... to live in bliss, to feel carried in every moment by the Divine and to enjoy whatever life throws at me (like playing a video game but a million times more orgasmic) because this talk enables me to see the play...or to understand how I can build the spiritual eyes to see the play better...and to dance in the light...or tiptoe through the tulips...

No earthly/materialistic goal I could ever conjure up myself (as doer) could compare with this (doing the non-doership work).

To face my karmas without fear, to boldly go where no one has gone before, is one of the promises of enlightened perception:

Quote:
"There is a web of karma that pulls you into the play, but when it pulls you, because you will have already been placed in it, just let it be, be carried in the play, and you will have the most wonderful experience of working through the past karmas in freedom."
~ Sri Vasudeva

Enough talk... time to go have fun!
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  #23  
Old 04-04-2015, 10:42 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish Day 8 - observing the power of the mind to create its reality

Four days ago someone posted a pianist video on Facebook. It made me think, "Wow I haven't played piano in years, maybe I should start again." Later that day I got a reminder phone call from the piano tuner to schedule a tune up. Synchronicities like this remind me of my creative power in the play - and to be more mindful of what I give attention to, because it tends to manifest in my life faster the older I get.

Today's talk focused on the power of the witness, that part of us that watches while another part of us acts. This talk was about mindful perception - seeing things without judgment, without fear, without identification - like a baby... yet knowing "this is not my absolute reality".

I used to have lucid dreams - when I would become aware that I was dreaming while still in the dream. That's when I was able to play in the dream without fear, creating things that manifested instantly. I think the lucid dream is meant to show us what is possible to perceive even in ordinary "waking" reality.

The power for speeded up synchronicity comes through knowing it is a play and we are only actors.

In meditation practice it is truly tempting for me to get caught up in the ideas that come up - insights come, the mind is itching to play with them... And then as soon as I allow that to happen, the desires come and the emotions and soon enough I have lost the meditation and I'm just fantasizing and stuck in the astral dimension....again...a world of thought forms...patterns of light and darkness, ephemeral reality, not the real, not absolute truth.

Homework: To center myself in the reality that never changes, to become anchored there, so that it is safe to come out and play.
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  #24  
Old 05-04-2015, 10:11 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish 4/3/15 - Day 9 - the 4th state

On Day 9 Sri Vasudeva spoke about the space that is timeless/eternal, the now consciousness, the transcendental space - beyond change. Time is the measurement of change. The transcendent space is beyond time, beyond change.

We all know about at least 3 states...
Waking - reality feels solid, the self-aware mind is able to think about itself.
Dreaming - active mind, looking around, creating stuff, not quite as self-aware or not at all.
Deep sleep - no awareness. No rapid eye movement. You wake up feeling refreshed.

The transcendental Witness is the 4th state, the one that includes the other states, the rapturous Witness, the one that feels carried and held by the hub of Existence. And the centre of it all lies in the heart.

He spoke about various one-pointedness techniques from different cultures, all focused on attaining this state.

The goal of the yogis is to attain it and hold on to it whilst in the waking, dreaming and deep sleep. He summed up this state quoting the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Hindu scripture:

Quote:
"He who sees inaction in action and action in inaction is intelligent amongst men."
Can you take your greatest "high", your happiest moment and hold it, float in it, yet be anchored to the ground? That's the greatest challenge of meditation!

He also said, "No matter what chakra you're in, Existence holds it all, and the heart is at the centre of it, as it is in the body in the centre, what he calls the hub or the eye of the storm." (paraphrase)

Love takes you there. One-pointedness and love.
Once you have experienced this, even for a second, it changes you forever.
You will want to have it again and again and again, and never lose it.
Nothing earthly can ever compare.
We can all experience this.
It's important - it's our possibility.
And then spend a lifetime or lifetimes trying to recapture it.
It is real, not imaginary.
(((sigh)))
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  #25  
Old 06-04-2015, 01:05 AM
Miss Hepburn Miss Hepburn is offline
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OMG...that baby!!!
Perfection.
__________________

.
*I'll text in Navy Blue when I'm speaking as a Mod. :)


Prepare yourself for the coming astral journey of death by daily riding in the balloon of God-perception.
Through delusion you are perceiving yourself as a bundle of flesh and bones, which at best is a nest of troubles.
Meditate unceasingly, that you may quickly behold yourself as the Infinite Essence, free from every form of misery. ~Paramahansa's Guru's Guru
.


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  #26  
Old 09-04-2015, 01:20 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish 4/4/15 Day 10 Centered in the Space Beyond Forms

Today's talk had a beautiful Easter prayer in it that I might transcribe and quote elsewhere.

I was reminded today to spend less time in the mind, intellectualizing, and spend more time focusing on centering, opening up my consciousness to the actual experience. Too much thinking can be counterproductive.
Quote:
"When we are caught up in forms it's so difficult to let go of burdens because we fear the unknown, but we need to take that RISK, when we are so caught in the form, that there may be another possibility of experience."
~ Sri Vasudeva
"Form" refers to the physical body and the mental bodies that are (to put it crudely) like underwear and layers of clothes that the soul wears, the "naked" soul being pure essence.
Quote:
"It's not by reasoning that you will experience it but by grace. May that grace unfold you as you open your mind to a possibility of existing in a formless state, but yet holding the forms."
~ Sri Vasudeva
Grace is what wakes me up to be able to experience my essence.
Intellect only takes me to the door.

This is the promise that the ancients captured in the Sanskrit phrase "Jivan Mukti" - It means that you can be a sentient* being yet be free from it

*"sentient" means a body that has feeling - because the bodies provide us with senses, both physical and subtle
- Freedom from the senses doesn't mean you lose them. In fact, in the experience of essence they become transcended, heightened, expanded, like super senses, beyond form…

But these are just words. Words that have no power. Intellect is only a tool that takes you to the gateway.

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  #27  
Old 13-04-2015, 11:50 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish Apr 5/15 - Day 11 (Easter Sunday)

Today's message was, appropriately, about Jesus
Quote:
"He was so firmly established in his Being that nothing could touch him"
~ Sri Vasudeva
...a great soul who came to show us our possibilities through his example
Quote:
"We get to share that experience not through the senses [but] by going to that place where He was - that's how we share that experience....really coming to that place that he spoke about, that he lived from, and that he left from, that liberated space that one can be in even whilst in the body."
~ Sri Vasudeva
It makes me wonder:
What space do I speak from?
What space do I live in?
What space will I enter when my earth-life-sentence is over?

To answer these questions I think of Jesus' words he mentioned:
Quote:
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure lies your heart is also"
~ Mathew 6:19
The space where I speak and live betrays my heart's desire
and my heart's desire keeps me anchored accordingly.

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  #28  
Old 14-04-2015, 12:32 AM
TesseLated
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Thanks for all your posts here Uma...!

I will be reading through them for some time since I just found the thread...and looking at the website....
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  #29  
Old 19-04-2015, 08:07 PM
Uma Uma is offline
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Fish Mar.31/15 - Day 6 - Introduction to our 4 bodies/states

Quote:
"It is the unmanifest that traps all the seeds in the manifest that is sleeping that drives the whole thing. The matrix universe, when it sleeps, those seeds are still there that drive the next cosmic cycle."
~ Sri Vasudeva

Sri Vasudeva spoke about our 4 energy bodies corresponding to the 4 states of consciousness, and 3 cosmic powers within us corresponding to the 3 knots at 3 chakra points, and how the Hindu pantheon of gods presents a metaphor of powers within us. All of this philosophy is very useful because it illustrates what's going on inside.

Each god is a metaphor for a power within us.

I like this model because it is simple to grasp, and explains to me what underlies all other models.

So before the BIG BANG of the universe there was the Rudra power saying "Time to wake up!" (because the seeds or patterns of thinking and feeling have to sprout) and the unmanifest universe exploded into manifestation for another cycle of karmic experience.

Quote:
The universe is always alive.
~ Sri Vasudeva

So too in the individual. Every night we go to sleep and it is the seeds or patterns of desire (attachment) that wake us up in the morning.

So too when we shed the physical body, we live in our energy bodies and in the deepest layer are more seeds, more unfinished business, so we have to incarnate again.

Those darn seeds.

This is how we are trapped in a wheel of life, because of the seeds inside.

The greatest goal of meditation is to move into the transcendental space where those seeds can no longer affect us. In the meantime we suffer, or we learn to endure, and we keep trying to break the spiritual knots that keep us from self-mastery.

This is a theory of everything in a nutshell.


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  #30  
Old 22-04-2015, 08:55 PM
rideforever rideforever is offline
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Meditation is not "simply" about observing.
As if you observe a beautiful vase on a table.

YOU are the vase.
And you should BE the vase rather than watching it.

The Observing faculty is actually part of the ego-mind.
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