GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SWAHA

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OM GUM SHREEM MAHALAKSHMIYE SWAHA

We wish to invite you in the New Year to start a 40 day practice of the Lakshmi Mantra.

Please go to the link below, download the mantra and start chanting this Mantra for 3o minutes a day, followed by 15 minutes of silence.

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Happiness

"The reason why happiness eludes us is because we do not look at the ways how we create our unhappiness. There is no need to pursue happiness. We need to stop all the ways of generating unhappiness."

Sutras For Contemporary Times

http://www.amazon.com/SUTRAS-FOR-CONTEMPORARY-TIMES-ebook/dp/B003NE6DDI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324130200&sr=8-1

Sutra is a term used in ancient times in Asia. It has multiple meanings. Literally it means thread. But it also means collection of aphorisms or teachings and was often used to present spiritual insights. The writings in this book are the result of my passion for the world of meditation and almost 40 years of spiritual practices.

Of course, one might ask, how could one be passionate about meditation? Good question. It compares to asking how could one be passionate about digging holes in the ground? Well, it is about finding diamonds and gold and other gems that are of great preciousness. I turned my attention to the inside of my being and as a result of that, great treasure was revealed to me. Therefore, I love to turn inward because there is always something new and of great value to be discovered.

And why 'for contemporary times'? We need a new spirituality that unites intelligence, common sense, compassion and kindness into a vehicle that really takes us to frontiers that are not just new, but also enjoyable and satisfying to reach. We need a spirituality for contemporary times.

Explosions of Consciousness

Whenever I find myself in a mode of talking about experiences of Samadhi, the Opening of the Inner Space, I end up utilizing words such as Explosion of Conciousness, Nuclear Event, and so on, simply because within the context of my experience, this is what takes places. When consciousness really happens, it comes at you with the subtlety of a nuclear explosion and any description that does not utilize those kind of terms, to me simply indicates we have not had lift-off. Awakening is not a mellow event. It is nuclear, a TGV, a Bullet Train going through your living room at 300 miles per hour.

All your values reverse. Night beomes day and day becomes night. Black turns white, white turns black. The instant there is only 10 seconds of this is immediately followed by the entire system struggling to integrate the event, because even if one has been trained for it, prepared for it, the event leaves one reeling and dealing with this explosion and the need of connecting it with the continuing ordinariness of life … which does not stop.

The event terminates the complete artificialness of our daily perceptions and flings us into a modality of infinite spaciousness and if the flinging is really thorough, there does not remain anybody flung.

The first time this happened to me, I was 20 years old. I had spent only two years of high-intense training with a Yogi by the name of Mahindra, who taught me the classical yogic path. The path had the experience of Samadhi as its goal, so I had entered into this climate and everything I did, the books I read, they continuously pointed toward that experience. And the more I allowed this climate into my life, the more I knowingly wanted this experience. I felt the arising of a longing inside that went beyond the mind modalities of intellectual curiosity.

Therefore, it can be said that I was consciously trained for the experience so that when it came, theoretically, I should be able to sustain the impact. However, when it did come - shocking for me and also the Yogi who trained me - I felt utterly unprepared for the event. The drop disappeared into the ocean and to say that the event in a way was traumatizing, (to the mind/body system that lived in the mode of separation, of duality) would be putting it mildly.

The event brought about the revelation of infinite space, the disappearance of the mind, and the cessation of any sense of self, the experience of the Void. Therefore, as per my experience, I must say that when the Buddha talked about the experience of No-Self, Anatta, this is the best and most concise way of expressing it, much more concise than using terms such as God or Self Realization. The latter words are not as concise to me, because they suggest a Something or a Somebody, while the actual event is more the utterly electrifying experience (hair standing on end underscores it nicely!) of Nothing and Nobody, and a whole Infinity of that. The event will trigger an aliveness, more alive than anything you can imagine, close to putting your fingers into an electric outlet - that alive.

So, while I was trained for it, as said, when the explosion came, I felt utterly not ready for it. So, who or what is not ready, specifically? First, the body is not ready. The experience is felt in every cell of the body and it feels as if the very flesh, the blood, the bones undergo transformation, as if every atom of the body is giving birth. There is a sense of expansion that is extremely physical. The body itself is used to a long-held modality of dual perception, contraction and limitation. It is comfortable with that and very used to it. However, a full-on awakening wave destroys that. Hence the feeling of trauma to the body.

So, I was lucky to have had several years of training before the first major samadhi. It gave me a foundation that allowed me to deal better with those events, even though they “blew me away” each time anyway. One could not feel more out of control under the impact of Samadhi arising and the complexities that come in the wake.

Nowadays I run into people sometimes who tell me that they very much want to have Kundalini experiences. I look at them and I feel they really don’t know what they are asking for, and are mostly infinitely less ready than they believe they are.

It is no co-incidence that U.G Krishnamurti calls his awakening process the “calamity.” He calls it that way, because of the incredible amount of problems that arose for him in the wake of his awakening. And it is equally no coincidence that when he asked Ramana Maharshi, “Can you give me this experience (of awakening),” Ramana replied, “I can give it, but can you take it?” This reply is tremendously significant, with most of the implications of the answer invisible like the major portion of an iceberg.

Also, if you read the autobiography of Suzanne Segal, Collision with the Infinite, you get the same impression. Her consciousness blew open as she stepped into a bus in Paris. In her case there was no training (not in this life, anyway) and she spent the remaining years of her life struggling to integrate, very traumatized, trying to come to terms with what happened to her, only to find out that what had happened to her was the experience of the Buddhas. I was near tears when I read her story. She got the Cosmic Gift, and suffered it day in, day out for years.

The reason why I am “lucky” is because of this ongoing training, being in the presence of adepts that helped me, having Buddhas come to me in waking and dream, touching me and exploding my consciousness over a long period of time (35 years) many times. There is a certain level of getting used to this. I meet Osho, the Dalai Lama and others at night. They touch me and explosions take place. Then the explosions subside and integrate.

This has created a particular modality of life for me, one in which I have left average human consciousness a long time ago, but also one where I have not joined, in a sustained way, the Consciousness of the Buddhas. I reside in the land between. I travel to the Land of the Buddhas, not really having control to gain permanent access (you cannot control GRACE). And then I come back, but you really cannot entirely come back, you never really merge again with Human Consciousness after that. One hovers between the worlds and then kind of functions as a form of medium for the Buddhas, without completely being one. This is complex and subtle, difficult to describe.

What I have found truly peculiar, over the years, is the observation that the awakened modality, sustained or short-term, comes in a tremendous broad spectrum of presentation. One could reach the awakening mode from the angle of the atheist, or from the angle of the lover of God. Both approaches are possible. It really does not make a difference. Ultimately, Awakening is not a religious experience, but it is an existential one. Consequently, because there is so much leeway for the angle of approach, it creates completely different background modalities of the awakened person, to the point that 2 awakened beings could massively disagree with each other on just about everything. (One is a monk, like the Dalai Lama, no sex, no meat, no alcohol --- the other (for example Gurdjieff) likes to party and all of the mentioned). One does mantras, the other rejects mantras as useless. One prays, the other does not.

It is crucial to understand this and to comprehend that one modality does not make the other modality wrong. It does however take a very high degree of Mastery to realize this. Many spiritual teachers do promote their way (which worked for them) in an absolute kind of fashion, meaning, only their way works and all others are dead-wrong. Here we have the human element still going strong (I am right, everybody else is wrong) and perhaps we still have to wait for a bit more wisdom to arise in that teacher.

This brings us to realize that awakening is one thing, but teaching is another altogether. One can be awakened and a inefficient teacher, because for the awakened one to become a skilled teacher, another learning process must be activated.

Generally, people to whom awakening kind of just happened without the recollection of a prior process or by interpreting that process to be irrelevant, make terrible teachers, in fact are capable of keeping people away from awakening, because they are clueless as to the mapping of consciousness.

Here the awakened person is capable of very unawakened and unintelligent interpretations and of not being wise.

I am fully aware that the above information is not relevant for the majority of mankind and that it only will be looked upon as meaningful by a small number of people. It remains my honor and privilege then to know the diamonds in life.

This concludes today’s entry. I hope you find it helpful.

Writings of Raylene Abbott

Raylene Abbott is a wonderful and prolific writer.

Please see her work at

http://www.sacredjourneyeurope.blogspot.com/

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Raylene+Abbott&x=0&y=0

From my heart to yours

Dearest Friend,

You are in a position where you could reach out to the world and make a genuine, powerful difference, adding to the process that efficiently alleviates suffering and brings life-altering insight concerning the fact that mankind is in grave danger right now. Mankind is very close to a very serious collapse, due to an incredible amount of accumulated greed and ignorance that is now reaching critical mass.

This collapse is about to take place on many levels simultaneously, financial and economical, environmental and political.

Many people, however, remain in utter blissful oblivion of this or, if somehow perceiving these dangers, believe they will not be affected by the coming changes (this is called normalcy bias, a socio-psychological term).

We are close to the collapse of civilization, as we know it.

Time will show us that affording ourselves the luxury of not responding to the disturbing signs everywhere to the full extend that we could, remaining at the sidelines in this war between light and darkness for strategic and tactical reasons that we believe will protect our career, continued social climbing to reach the top of success ---- will be a huge mistake the depth of which will only become clear as we mature more as souls. Or simply put, time will tell.

I deeply sympathize with the focus on the next step, a step that will bring us… well, what? Bring us … more of what we already have? I too was in that position once, of calculating the next step that was designed to bring me more and more. Until one day I lost $1,000,000, which changed my life and made me realize that I had gotten off the path, that I was lost in WANTING MORE.

What loss does one require to awaken to that which is most essential in life?

How much is enough? How much more do we want from life and the universe before we make a decision that now is the time to give to the world and no more just take from it?

It is important to reflect if our taking is well balanced by our giving. It is important to remember that we depended on people helping us to get where we got and in mindfulness of that to reflect if we have become helpers to others.

I am free to speak my truth. I have found freedom in ways that you cannot even imagine. I have discovered detachment from the world, from what people think about me and in that discovery I found something totally shocking: I found happiness.

I never thought happiness was connected to detachment.Therefore when it came, I was amazed. Detach from desires, from wanting, from people’s approval and their responses and immense freedom and happiness will result. We think happiness will come if some outer condition changes, if something is less, something else is more – then happiness will be there, it will be greater and better.

Big mistake. It does not work that way.

This is a letter of a different kind, one of those not often seen in life. We are not impressed with fame and wealth. We are only impressed by seeing powerful action from the radiant core of the soul, where there resides the electrifying courage to take substantial action in the face of that which is recognized to be evil. We are impressed with compassion in action that is based on acute awareness of what is taking place in the world. The moment we become aware of something we know is wrong, we become responsible. We become a participant and our silence becomes supportive of that we know is wrong.

We are impressed with compassion in action that is fearlessly courageous and ready to fiercely enter the battle for those values that reside at the sacred center of the sentient soul. We know those values to be kindness and love. And we know that to stand up and act on behalf of those values is not for cowards and the faint at heart. We know this requires a lion heart, the ability to move against all kinds of societal currents, the currents that are dominated by indifference and unconsciousness. It requires the living ability to move against dark threats, real or imagined. It requires awe-inspiring civil courage.

One of my favorite sayings is “Evil Grows Where Good People Do Nothing.” The world is full of those good people. Don’t be one of them.

Sincerely,

Andreas

What is the nature of a behavioral program?

A behavioral program can be likened to a specifc vibrational frequency that operates in and through us. It is by nature rather vaporous, like air if you wish, you cannot really grasp it by ordinary means. Just like a computer runs through programs written by lines of code that are not visible on the desktop, so do we function along the lines of invisible codes. If we run into a program that malfunctions or that does not serve us well, the only way to change it is by shifting our attention to the invisible codes of the program that determines our behavior. That requires special training and focus that needs to be learnt.

These invisible behavioral codes that govern our life are created in multiple ways, some of them are genetic, others are by constant watching others' behavior, which then becomes our own by default, others again through quasi hypnotic and repetitive messages told us in our upbringing or by daily media bombardment.The ancient yogis knew about this and they called our behavioral trends SAMSKARAS. They went even further in the description of the samskaric sources by saying that they can be traced back all the way to past incarnations.

Either way, the only way we can begin to shift our behavioral programs is by first becoming CONSCIOUS of them. For example, by asking ourselves, what is my greatest self and purpose defeating characteristic? This is not easy, since we are now diving into modalities that are not necessarily easy to admit. But it is important to look at those modalities as mere programming codes, they are not really who WE ARE, but rather they cover and conceal who we are.

Again, we need to observe our behavior and identify those codes underlying and embedded in our psyche. Gurdjieff worked with this intensely. He stated that as we are, we are utterly asleep robots, functioning along the lines of programs the source of which we are not aware of. His work was greatly focused on the recognition of our limiting behavioral programs and bringing consciousness and consequently, freedom from the underlying codes.

Any genuine spiritual work will bring us this freedom and any genuine work on this level is most challenging.