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Why all the Misery?

Published by shirley on January 1, 2009 under Uncategorized, Yoga

Misery give you a very crystallized ego. In misery you are crystallized. In happiness, you are diffused. You must live moment to moment entering the unknown. Can you see this? If you are miserable there’s something solid to relate to, the misery!

Misery makes you special. No one has your specific misery. Happiness is a universal phenomenon, there’s nothing special about it. Trees are happy and animals are happy and birds are happy. The whole existence is happy, except man. Being miserable, man becomes very special, extraordinary! Wouldn’t be extraordinary to see a miserable squirrel? Now that would be special! Nothing extraordinary about a happy squirrel.

Misery makes you capable of attracting people’s attention. Whenever you are miserable you are attended to, sympathized, loved. Everybody starts taking care of you. Who wants to hurt a miserable person? Who is jealous of a miserable person? Who wants to be antagonistic to a miserable person? That will be too mean.

The miserable person is cared for, loved, attended to. There is great investment in misery. I notice if my children were not miserable, they might get totally forgotten. Sitting being happy, you don’t get much attention. Just a little misery and the whole house comes running! If you’re miserable you’re not so alone, one has a family, friends.

Nobody likes a happy person, because the happy person hurts the egos of the others. The others start feeling, “So you have become happy and we are still crawling in darkness, misery and hell. How dare you be happy when all are in such misery!”

There are reasons we are attached to misery. You just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what are the reasons. And then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy. And then see what differences are there. Notice: when you are miserable you are a conformist. Society loves it, people respect you. You are conforming to something that does not fit you, and you’re miserable. But you are respected by society. People feel more friendly towards you. Another reason people are miserable is because if you’re happy, people will be jealous of you. You will have less friends. They will feel cheated around you. So we have even learned to repress happiness and to express misery! It has become our second nature.

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life. We have to learn a totally new language. We have to learn the language of health, wholeness, happiness.

Happiness needs talents, genius, creativity. Only creative people are happy. Misery needs no talents; anybody can afford it. Only creative people are happy. Happiness is a byproduct of creativity. Create something, and you will be happy. Create a garden and when the flowers bloom, something in you will also bloom. Create a painting, and something in you will start growing. As you are completing the painting, suddenly you will realize you are different, not the same person anymore. You have changed. Something new is in you! Write a poem, sing a song, dance a dance, and you start to become happy.

Life is an opportunity to be creative. If you are creative you will be happy. It needs intelligence to be happy. It will be arduous. But when you’ve reached the peak and you lie down, whispering with the clouds, looking at the sky, the joy that fills your heart, that joy comes always whenever you reach any peak of creativity, you will know happiness.

It needs intelligence to be happy, and people are taught to remain unintelligent. Society does not need intelligent people. Society needs stupid people, because stupid people are manageable. An intelligent person is not necessarily obedient, they may or may not. It will up to him or her, you see? The stupid person needs somebody to command him or her, because they have no intelligence of their own.

Without intelligence there can be no happiness. Man can only be happy if he is intelligent, utterly intelligent. Meditation is a device to release your intelligence. The more meditative you become, the more intelligent you become. And when I say intelligence, I don’t mean intellectual. An intellectual knows nothing, that’s why he is an intellectual. He is not meditative, he is a robot, repeating, repeating, repeating what he’s read, studied, been told. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon. It comes from YOUR center. It wells up in you, and with it many things start growing in you. You become happy, creative, you become rebellious, adventurous, you start loving insecurity, you start moving into the unknown. You start living dangerously, because that’s the only way to live!

May you have an interesting life, and a Happy New Year!

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The Mysteries Of AUM

Published by shirley on December 18, 2008 under Yoga

When the mind is totally empty, without any clamor of words, without even a ripple of thought, even then the sound of the void remains. The void also speaks; the void has its own sounds. Go and stand in a very secluded place where there is not a single sound and you will find that emptiness has its own music. Seclusion has its own kind of sound, and in this silence only the basic notes remain – a-u-m. When all words, all sounds are lost, these basic notes remain.

In the emptiness of the mental body the resonance of aum is captured. If the meditator makes use of this aum there can be two results. All planes have two possibilities. The repetition of aum can bring about a state of sleepiness, a state of sleepy trance, and this state can be brought about by repetition of any word. The modulated repetition of any word has the same impact on the mind as gentle strokes on the head that produces drowsiness and sleep.

 

If this state is brought about by repetition of aum you become lost in a world of dreams and imagery which is the natural potential. It will then be a hypnotic sleep in which you can see whatever you want to see. You can travel to heaven and to hell or have a vision of God, but all this will be in dreams. you can experience bliss, you can experience peace, but all in a dream; nothing will be real.

The usage of aum happens more often, because this is easy. To produce the sound of aum loudly and be lost in it is very easy and enjoyable like pleasant dreams. The quality of the mental plane, as given by nature, is that of imagination and dreams. If the mind wishes to dream it can dream; this enjoyment is possible for it. The other possibility is that of will-power and visions of the divine.

If aum is used only as repetition upon the mind, its impact brings hypnotic sleep. What is called yoga tandra is brought about by the repetition of aum. But if aum is pronounced with the witness well established within; if you are fully awake and are listening to the sound without drowning in it, without getting lost in it; if the sound is on one plane and you are standing on another as the listener, the observer, the witness; if you are fully awake to the sound – then only can work on the second possibility of the other planes begin. Then you will not go into yoga tantra, but into yoga jagriti, wakefulness.

I personally strive to keep people away from using mantras. The chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that the person will go into an imaginary trance. And it can make it more difficult for the meditator to become successful later on. If one is used to creating a dream state within themselves and calling that meditation, then the nervous system begin to develop groves that his or her consciousness takes habitually, and this can be difficult to overcome.

The greater possibility with chanting and mantras is that your mind with its tendency to dream will at once, by its very mechanical process, fall into dreaming. But if you are fully awake and witnessing inside, observing the sound of aum without merging into it, without losing yourself in it, then you are practicing the mantra correctly.

 

Now, there are also some dangers to using aum as a mantra. Aum is a symbol of the last body, what some call the seventh body. On the last boundary line of words, where we leave all words, the last word heard will be aum. So aum is the last word in the realm of speech and the primal word in the realm of no-word. It is at the boundary line between the realm of words and the no-word state. So while using the sound of aum, the meaning should remain symbolic. It can be detrimental if one begins to take their sound of aum for the actual sound. One might believe they are hearing the deepest sound, when in fact they are not. The meditator might become confident that he or she has reached the highest plane. He or she takes this to be the journey’s end; thus, great harm is done on the psychic plane. the meditator then stops here.

Just remember: Aum is the purest sound. In fact, our tongues are unable to properly pronounce it. It is too pure to be uttered by the physical body. It is a word that begins where the tongue becomes meaningless, where the body becomes useless. Therein lies its resonance and this resonance vibrates on its own. It can be experienced; it cannot be created. Therefore, aum has to be experienced and not pronounced. So if you use aum as a technique be careful not to impose your own articulation upon it. Be the witness to the pure manifestation. Use the word aum to attune your body to the aum in reality. By continued practice the actual resonance will come. Then you will be able to hear the pure reverberation of aum.

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Do you have any questions or insights you’d like to share?

Published by shirley on November 24, 2008 under Yoga

Please use this section to ask any question that you have or insights you’d like to share with others.

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I want to learn to meditate. Where do I begin?

Published by shirley on August 27, 2008 under Yoga

Meditation is an art and it is good to know where to begin.  It is just like saying, ‘I want to be a dancer.  How to begin?’ 

 

If you are just beginning meditation, a good place to start is watching the breath.  

When the breath comes in and down, hold it a second and become aware of the silence there.  Then when the breath goes up and out, again, hold it there and become aware of the silence.  This exercise is to accustom you to silence.  When the breath is moving you will see mind…do not try to stop that.  But when you hold the breath for brief moment, there you can penetrate your awareness into the silence.  Just five minutes, practice.

Also watching the activity of your mind is beautiful meditation practice.  Your mind is always doing one of five things:

Right Knowledge

Wrong Knowledge

Imagination

Memory

Sleep

Sit with your eyes closed and focus your mind on the sensations you feel in the moment (air at nostrils, buttocks on cushion, birds singing, anything that is actually happening in the moment).  This is called: Right Knowledge.  Your goal is to bring your mind back to right knowledge whenever another modification has arisen.  While your mind is practicing Right Knowlege, other modifications WILL begin to arise.   Allow yourself to see them and label which modication you see.  You are either:
1.  seeing a memory…something that has happened before.
2.  you are imagining…something that might happen/you want to happen/something not real.
3.  you are reflecting wrong knowledge.  A fact that is not happening right then. (for example, you might actually have paper work on your desk at that moment, which is a fact – knowledge – but it is not a sensation at that moment.)
4.  Or you are experiencing right knowledge. A fact that is happening right then, like air on skin, buttocks on chair, fingers touching, sounds, breath at nostril, etc.  Right knowledge means your mind is in reality.  This is where you’d like it to stay, but you recognize when the other three are happening.  Enjoy watching them and label them, and come back to right knowledge.
5.  Is sleep….this just enjoy!  You may even be in deep concentration at some point and even see yourself sleeping.  But as beginners sleep may just occur.  No need to fight it.  Rest, enjoy.
Spend five minutes a day just watching this, and you will gain abilities to go deeper into the art.

Another exercise you might try is:  Emphasis the Exhale.  Mind creates such tension.  The inhale is life, and life is tension.  So to relax the mind and body, we exhale and hold it out for a moment.  Not until our body is in panic, no.  Just exhale ratio 1:2 or 1:3.  Exhale is death, relaxation.  It will give your body and mind extraordinary rest.  Try it for just five minutes.  You will see! 

These exercises look simple, but they are highly effective! 

I wish you perfect success in your practice.

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