MEDITATION BEATS HOLIDAY STRESS

December 8, 2011 By
yoga123

Here are basic meditation tips to help you relax: Pick a word, short phrase or prayer that is firmly rooted in your belief system that will help you focus. Try words like “peace,” “one” or a religious word or phrase. Sit quietly in a comfortable position. Some prefer yoga positions as practiced in the East. Others prefer a more Western stance: Sit in a chair where your spine is straight and your feet are comfortably flat on the floor. Hands should face upward on your lap. Close or lower your eyes. Breathe slowly. Exhale through your mouth and inhale through your nose. Other thoughts may cross your mind, but it doesn’t mean your session needs to end. Say to yourself “later” and return to your breathing and/or visualization.

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Try to meditate for 5 to 20 minutes, preferably twice a day. Meditation is a discipline. So try to practice it at the same time every day.

Holiday to-do list:
Buy and wrap gifts
Send greeting cards
Bake cookies
Decorate Christmas tree
Light the menorah
Visit family
Entertain relatives.

Oh, cripes, the kids need to be picked up from soccer/basketball/French horn practice, and the post office closes at 5 p.m. Long lines at the store aren’t helping matters, and it’s going to take more than watered down eggnog to take the edge off. Maybe what you need is to just stop the world, have a comfortable seat and catch a few ohmms. That’s right. Want to feel better and maybe chase some of that negative inner dialogue away? Meditate. Two decades’ worth of research suggests meditating — be it visualization, prayer or shutting yourself off from your surroundings — can significantly reduce stress levels.

A busy lifestyle is no excuse. In fact, meditators say that’s why you need to do it. “If you take the time to meditate, you actually create more time in your life,” says Cheri Eplett owner of Indialantic’s Aquarian Dreams, which specializes in books and CDs about meditation. “You are more efficient because you’re less stressed. So meditation is a good investment of time.” Perhaps the biggest meditation motivator lies in a recent, small scientific study that suggests locating the ohhhm can make you live longer.

Last month, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital released a study showing areas of the cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain — were thicker in the participants who regularly meditated. The study, which appeared in a recent article in NeuroReport,
described results from 20 people who meditated regularly. These people had four regions of cortex — the part of the brain,
associated with higher functions like memory and decision making — that were thicker than in 15 subjects who didn’t meditate. In addition, researchers found signs that one area of the cortex seemed to have aged less quickly than it did in the folks who didn’t
meditate. Researchers are doing follow-up studies to see how meditation might effect behavior. Dr.Wasim Niazi, a neurologist at Wuesthoff Rockledge, says more research needs to be done to confirm meditation’s anatomical changes on the brain.

But he does agree mediation results in relaxation, which has been proven to reduce stress and help people focus better during their
waking hours — and sleep better at night. “But all modalities of meditation have something in common in that they are about disconnecting yourself from the impulses you are receiving — the noise and the worries,” Niazi says. “Consider that 100 impulses reach the brain every per second and most are subconscious.” Al Rapaport, founder of Melbourne’s Open Mind Zen Center says it’s
such impulses that “make us subject to a monkey mind,” he says. “Meditation helps us slow down that internal dialogue.”

But meditation practitioners say studies only reinforce what they already know. “We’ve known for nearly 20 years that meditation effects the physiology of brain chemistry and this (Massachusetts study) is the first one I’ve seen in which meditation directly effects the brain,” says Rapaport, who also is author of the book “Open Mind Zen: A Guide to Meditation.” “But for meditators, the laboratory is our own body and mind. We get the results through our experiences.” The Zen center specializes in group meditation, but Rapaport
encourages people to meditate at home as well. “All the techniques are designed to help focus the mind,” Rapaport says.

Eplet prefers to use visualization techniques and sit in a comfortable position, feet flat on the floor, her palms upward in a receiving position. Others prefer to focus on breathing. The goal is to practice daily — but don’t worry about being perfect at it.

“A lot of people don’t meditate because they are under the impression they must clear their mind and think of nothing for 20 minutes,” says Andrea de Michaelis, who publishes the Brevard County-based Horizons. She meditates twice a day. And she gets better at it each time, she says. “When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is make myself sit when my mind is still in that foggy place,” de Michaelis says. “Once I start the process with the breathing, the cobwebs start to clear. If a concrete thought or worry crosses my mind I can release the thought by saying the word ‘later,’ which satisfies the concrete mind that wants to hang on to something.

Don’t worry if you can’t schedule a 10 or 20 minute stop-action timeframe. “Meditating for three minutes is better than nothing,” she says. “For people with kids, it can be a matter of locking yourself in the bathroom and take a bath — and hope you won’t be interrupted more than 30 times.”

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Mysticism – Abusing Power – Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz

December 8, 2011 By
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Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz:

We want to be all things, not just to gain power over things — how infantile! The challenge of power is how to use it and not abuse it. When you abuse it, it reverses on you and it hurts you. When willpower is not guided, it’s terrible. Hitler had a lot of will. But he used it for destructive purposes because he lacked wisdom. Power, people are obsessed with it. You can take a nice person and turn them into a slob, into an insane being, craving power, destroying anything that stands in their way. People want power but not wisdom. Power without wisdom is a very dangerous thing. Better to have wisdom first. Without wisdom, power tends to destroy the one who wields it.

Without wisdom, a powerful person does not become more powerful. Their power will turn back on them and eventually destroy them. So those who are truly wise become most powerful. Whatever you want you can get, when you understand the secret of will. But wisdom is needed so that you do not use your will abusively because you’ll get hurt. Say, for example, you develop the ability to make parking meters disappear. It’s probably easier to put a quarter in it. That would be the wisdom on the subject. If you use your will all the time, then it runs out. You deplete yourself and then, when you really need it, it’s not there.

If you try to pull too much power through too soon, you will injure yourself. Some come to a teacher for power. They still have all the desires, angers and jealousies of an unevolved person. Consequently, they become destructive both to themselves and to others. The big problem with power, of course, is obsession. Once you get some of it and feel it, it dominates your whole life and it’s all you can think about. That doesn’t have to happen. We must control the tendencies within our being that are destructive, when we want to slam somebody else, hurt them, injure them, or push them out of the way.

A reverence for life needs to be developed, in which all things are sacred. Someone who really wants to discover themselves has to be particularly careful about the use and abuse of power. But even your average human being just passing through another life has to be careful. A person who has power doesn’t seek to challenge others, their battles are within. Only the fool wants to go into battle to beat someone for the satisfaction of beating someone. When you abuse willpower you waste it. There really is not an infinite supply of it at your disposal. There is an infinite supply of it in the universe.

The person of power uses their power to open up their mind to higher levels all the time, which creates tremendous happiness. Power is something that is abused. I suppose use and abuse are in the eye of the beholder. There is a difference between willing and forcing. Willing something simply means you are not being lazy. Forcing something means you are trying to do something inappropriate or in an inappropriate way. I would define the proper use of power as something that creates happiness for yourself and others. The abuse of power takes happiness away. It is not necessary to wrap people up. The reason you’re doing it is because you don’t have enough power. If you had enough power, you could unlock your own personal power, you wouldn’t need to control others.

It takes a lot of energy to manipulate someone and keep them on a string. We see a lot of people who decide to go out and teach meditation. They become so wrapped up in it that they stop progressing themselves and they really don’t have that much more to teach. It is a tremendous waste of energy to try to block anyone else. That same energy could be applied to furthering your own success. When we use power to cause someone else not to succeed so that we can succeed, it slows our vibratory frequency. It slows us down. When we slow down we experience unhappiness. A student of mine is an actor, he used to go into these interviews and sometimes not get the part. He was “taken out”. Someone would use power in a way that would cause him not to succeed.

We learn to avoid blocking others, interfering with others, because that will decrease our happiness, slow our vibratory rate and generally bring us down and make us miserable. You have to look at your own thought forms. Are you sitting around and thinking a lot of negative thoughts? These injure the subtle body. When you hate, when you are angry, you bring that energy through you. When you become angry at someone, your anger will actually have a power. You can hit somebody in a non-physical way and it can injure that being. You must control your anger and jealousy and possessive nature or, as you become more powerful and your will increases in strength, you will injure others.

When you think an angry thought about someone, it’s like hitting them. If you hold a negative thought, then it will become more powerful and not only will it send bad energy to the person, but it will crash your consciousness. People who have power who think negatively of others and seek to injure them are practicing a kind of voodoo, a lower sorcery. Those who practice lower sorcery hurt themselves the most because they interact with negative thoughts and apply power to them; they devastate their own consciousness and their own lives. Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it’s going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.

If you get in a battle with someone, you don’t get their power if you win. Power is something that you have to acquire yourself, through self-inquiry and the practice of meditation. The bully on the block who beats up somebody doesn’t become more powerful. All they do is walk around inside their own mind with an inflated ego. You have been imprinted by people in this world who take power from others. Most people drain each other. Or, what is worse, they are draining you right now, psychically! Most people abuse power. They use power to dominate others. They use power to destroy others. Ultimately when you do this, you lose it.

You can take power from others; you can steal it. It is not a very high-grade power. It will give you a certain amount of access to a better life; but it corrupts the individual. The person who takes power will never be happy with those things they gain. They have lost their essential balance and innocence. And without innocence, nothing can further, as they say in the I Ching. It is silly to drain others; for when you drain others, you also pick up their vibratory force. People who want to go to power places all of the time and want to be around powerful people, they don’t last long in the study.

When you do things in a selfish way, let alone a destructive way, your state of mind will go down. You will find yourself becoming depressed, nervous, anxious and upset. If you have gained some powers by your entrance into other dimensions and you use them to attack others, then power reverses on you and pulls you apart because it is not supposed to be used that way. I don’t put much stock in powers that people have to hurt others, in sorcery and all this nonsense. There are murderers and there are dictators. That is just a part of life. The intelligent use of power in yoga can assist you avoiding that side of humanity.

Angry people, unhappy people, people that seek to injure others, these people all have something in common. They waste energy. They don’t conserve it and they don’t know how to increase it. So the intelligent use of power is to never interfere with anyone else’s success. Use the power you get to just be more successful yourself. When you manipulate others your attention level drops and you become prey, for you have dropped to the plane of manipulation. The abuse of power that seems to create the most unhappiness is when a person uses personal power to get ahead without regard for the welfare of others, or when power is used to go into lower dimensions.

If you abuse power, you will be burned and then you will learn.if you live. Jealousy, anger, fear — these are ridiculous emotions that drain your power. You need to control them by being content, trusting that life knows what is best, accepting with an even mind whatever is presented to you. How do you overcome the negative karmas and problems and misery that occur to people who abuse power? You stop abusing power. The teacher has nothing to do with people who use their mental powers to block the enlightenment of others. These people lack control. What can you teach someone who lacks control?

Some people travel to other dimensions in their astral bodies when they meditate. Astral traveling doesn’t bring a person lasting happiness. If astral traveling is not done properly, it can be quite dangerous. Meditation is not this kind of spacey stuff that makes it difficult to orient your life. If that’s your experience of meditation, you’re not meditating. You’re tapping into the lower astral planes, which is not a healthy place for human beings to tap. There is a large difference between spacing out in the lower occult astral planes, weird, junky, fuzzy energy, and meditation. Meditation is sharp, clear, precise, perfect, luminous, shiny, happy, etheric, cosmic, and dissolute. The world is wonderful. It is beautiful when you are in a correct level of attention.

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Who Was Rama? – Rama the Teacher – Quotations by Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz

December 8, 2011 By

Zen Master Rama, Dr. Frederick Lenz: “If you think it makes a difference if I have ten thousand sports cars, ten million girlfriends and lead a very flashy life…I don’t think you should work with any teacher because you don’t know what it is all about yet. I’m a Zen Master. I’m an occult teacher. I teach people how to become that, how to be perfect. I think the most miraculous thing is learning. I get out of the way and let the students learn. Then you get to watch this amazing thing happen. I am a teacher because teaching allows me to observe the universe at work, that moment when wakefulness suddenly occurs. While I am here I would like to experience as many of the beauties of the world as possible and help others to do the same.

Since there were others, a long time ago, who were kind enough to give me a hard time and allow me to study with them, I try and express the same Buddhist courtesy. I just felt that it was my responsibility, since so many people had taken the time to help me along, to do the same for others. I teach meditation and the pathway to enlightenment because I know that there are other people who, like I did a long time ago and continue to, want to climb that mountain to the highest light. I don’t believe in anything, yet I believe emphatically in almost everything. It all depends on what seems appropriate at the time. I am an expert in the world of the supremely happy because I am happy. I’ve never met anybody as happy as I am. That, in itself, should make you unhappy. I personally have fun with enlightenment, the study and the teaching of it. I get a kick out of doing it different ways because I don’t think there is a “way”.

I have often discussed the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path in talks I have given about meditation. But, since I also teach Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist mediation, I have a very eclectic approach to the subject. One evening you may learn about enlightenment, koans, meditation and personal power. I may discuss contemporary cinema, how to shop at a mall without losing energy, how to use the power of mind to increase career and academic success, the Zen of sports, reincarnation, karma, sex, the experience of “suchness” or a new book by Stephen King. I teach Zen, tantric mysticism, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, Tibetan mysticism, occultism and psychic development. I also teach poetry and literature, film and many other different things. I am very interested in the enlightenment of women. Very few teachers of advanced self discovery work with women, and if they do it’s usually in a very second handed way. They treat women as second class citizens. While I enjoy teaching people on the basic and intermediate levels to work them up to advanced levels, my real talent is for the advanced students. You could say that I’m like a ninth-degree black belt in martial arts. The way advanced meditation is taught, the way I teach it, the way all enlightened people teach it, is through transference. We transfer light and power to someone else.

Transmission does not have to take place physically. The student doesn’t have to be sitting across from you. But it’s easier if they are because the vibration of the teacher is strongest in the physical proximity of the teacher. Many of the people I work with I’ve worked with in other lifetimes. I moved to California because I knew that many of my students from past lives were in California. I’ll go to a city, a school, and give a lecture because I can feel someone there. I inwardly see first their is someone there who is waiting. Where they’ll show up or not, I don’t know. That depends upon many factors.. I was a traditional teacher for a time, but my students would ride the energy. I wanted to free people not give them a placebo. I can take an individual and I can change their awareness. That’s easy. But how long will it last? Their whole life will begin to shift, from their first physical contact with you. Sometimes their immediate reaction is to want to run away because they realize inwardly that the transpositions their life will go through will be remarkable, change everything.

Part of them has grown very attached to a certain way of life. I’ve moved a lot of my students into a high state of mind, but they don’t do the things I have shown them how to do. So then, they drop down into a lower stage of attention. Some come to a teacher for power. They still have all the desires, angers and jealousies of an unevolved person. Consequently, they become destructive both to themselves and to others. I no longer teach meditation, only software design. I’d love to find some people to teach advanced meditation to. I’ve been looking for many years. There are a few around. Once in a while I run into another one. It’s a very limited league at this time, in this world. When someone says to me “I want to be enlightened.” I immediately take a vacation because I know that the person isn’t serious. If I ever write an autobiography about teaching meditation in the West, I’ll call it “Pissing In the Wind – Teaching Buddhism in America”. It’s very funny.

People do not want to achieve liberation or be happy. This is the basic guideline they teach you in spiritual training school. People love misery, they love to feel sorry for themselves and they definitely don’t want to be enlightened. That’s the first thing they tell you at boot camp, in the higher worlds. Don Juan in the teachings of Carlos Castaneda makes the same point. You have to fool people into seeking knowledge. People will not do it of their own volition. There are some great stories in The Second Ring of Power about how Don Juan and Don Genaro found their apprentices and what they went through to fool their students into seeking light. I’ve never met anyone who’s serious about enlightenment. The next best thing is to work with those who are not quite there yet to bring them up to that level. If you want to be liberated, if you choose to be what I am, then you’ve chosen freedom. You can do this. That’s my sole purpose in life is to sit here today and tell you that you can do this, in any life. You can do this in one of your past lives, in a future life, or right now. I prefer now. I select people to work more closely when they are prepared to, and I see that. They don’t have to tell me. I know. I will give them a task of some type, and that task becomes the koan between us. A teacher had two types of students. One type of student is a close student. The other is also a close student, but not in the sense of physical proximity. The close students rotate a lot. Most of the teaching I do is not verbal.

It’s in every movement of my body. It’s in my dance. It’s in the way I lift a glass of water. It’s in my voice tone. It’s in every aspect of my life – because it isn’t my life any more. When I sit with my students and meditate with them, I channel the kundalini directly into them. I bring them to plane after plane of consciousness. What they would do in 100 years of meditation, I can do in an hour with them. The kundalini comes in two primary forms when it comes forward from a spiritual teacher. The highest octave kundalini is the golden light which occurs in the supraconscious; it is the supraconscious. It’s what they call Sat Chit Ananda – existence, consciousness, bliss…full consciousness. The mystical kundalini is very different. It is a much more intense transformative energy which, when used, allows a person to make tremendous spiritual leaps in a short period of time. The mystical kundalini is something that I normally use when we’re on field trips, when we go to a place of power.

The mystical kundalini is aided by that place. For most persons, the mystical kundalini energy is easier to initially perceive, unless you’re extremely sensitive. It’s more of a rush, a flash. There’s an electric quality to it, a burning heat. There’s lower mystical kundalini and higher mystical kundalini; there’s ranges within the range. The mystical kundalini energy has some, I don’t know if you’d call them limitations, but there are certain operational factors which you should understand about it. When you are subjected to this light, depending on how strong the dose is, you will have two or three days in which you can make tremendous changes within your self, in the structure of your being. This light unglues the formation and structure of the being for a certain period of time. It will reassemble automatically.

After two or three days, the door will close and you will not be able to make those changes as easily. A human being can only absorb a small amount of the mystical kundalini, you can be exposed again and again to it, but it won’t really make a difference. The higher octave light that comes from samadhi, the kundalini of samadhi, this you can absorb continuously. You can never overload. It can never hurt you. Neither is detrimental, but the mystical kundalini is a bit more raucous. Not all teachers utilize both forms of light. In certain circles, those teachers who can manifest the light of samadhi but not the mystical light have put down the mystical light. They have said this is a lower level. Ridiculous! They’re really both the same light, just two different forms. If you had to pick between one or the other, I can’t say which one is better, but I would certainly say, in my orientation, the light of samadhi is all-pervasive. Samadhi will free you. Samadhi is the highest octave spiritual light. Not the best, but the highest octave.

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Yajna means ‘oblation’, a magical sacrifice

December 8, 2011 By

According to the Upanishads there’s no higher knowledge than transcendental experience in which the sadhak performs the yajna of the sacrificing of mental thought. Shakya the Muni and Maharishi Patanjali agree with this. Yajna means ‘oblation’, a magical sacrifice – the devine sacrifice of the cosmic Purusha – the model for all sacrifices. The purpose of the sacrifice was to ensure fertility and the well-being of the individual, his family and domestic animals, and ultimately the whole community as enumerated in the Grhya-sutras. In fact, Sri Buddha blew to bits the presumed efficacy of the burnt offerings of the Vedic Brahmins! It is a fact, needing no further explanation, that magical sacrifices, including all cermonial performances and shows, tantric or Vedic, are totally ineffective and useless against birth and death and rebirth. The practice of deep meditation that is transcendental is the only means of aquiring merit in this life – sacrifice your own thoughts man!

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Ask Yourself: What Do I want?

December 8, 2011 By

The most important question to ask yourself is, “What do I want?” It means asking this at the highest level of your desires. There may be many things you want in the external world, but here you want to have a key principle that you, yourself are seeking at the deepest level of the inner chamber of your heart. It needs to be your word, not just that of somebody else, something that was read in some
book, or is popular in the culture. If you say you want meditation, enlightenment, Self-realization, or to know God, when that word or phrase does not really excite you personally, deeply, then it will not serve you at all. You will just be parroting something you feel you are supposed to be wanting, even though you really don’t.

Choose a keyword for yourself, some word or phrase that really captures the spirit of what you are longing for. It’s probably hidden
deep in the inner world, underneath all of the seemingly countless other desires and words that have been programmed in as acceptable, proper desires. It’s a longing that has been there a long time, a very long time. It was probably there in early childhood. It was with you in adolescence. It is still there. But what do you call it? What is that single word or phrase that draws you back to that felt
longing.

Just by having that word or phrase drift through your mind field, that deep memory is no longer latent, but stirs in wakefulness with a
passion in the heart. There is a certainty about the purpose of life that suddenly emerges with clarity. Find that keyword that works for you and never, ever let it go. Write it on little notes around your house; maybe even on your arm, under your shirt. Be innovative in the ways you constantly remind yourself of this one keyword that captures the highest level of what you want out of life. It is your word, your phrase.

It may contain the many other lesser ways of saying the goal of life, or the steps along the way, but this one, this keyword or phrase
pulls you, draws you to the stance where you know who you are and you know where you are going. How to get there will emerge, on its own, through effort, and remembering your own keyword that captures the highest answer to the question, “What do I want?”

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Hierarchial and holistic: Synthesis

December 8, 2011 By

The patric religions and ideologies envision a hierarchical worldview, in which the levels (whether they be chakric, or corporate, or social, or political) build on top of each other. Each succeeding level is held in higher esteem than does the preceding, and each succeeding level is held to be closer to the truth than the preceding. The matric religions and ideologies envision a holistic worldview, in which the totality of human beingness is held in similar esteem and seen to be worthy of nurturing and existence.

I am of the belief that the two must combine, in a way that checks the disagreeable features within each other and synergize to create the best of all.The hierarchical worldview is frequently visualized as a triangle, or a pyramid. The holistic worldview is visualized as a circle, or a sphere. The complete worldview I see as being visualized as a triangle within a circle, or a pyramid within a sphere.

The hierarchical and holistic approaches are both ways of attaining at divinity. Both the pyramid and the sphere are perfect, and
indestructible. It is impossible to destroy a sphere because there is no space in it to invade it and shatter. It is impossible to destroy a
pyramid, because its sides are arranged in such a way as to make destruction impossible.

Both are perfect; but both are also incomplete. Both likewise possess capacity for right and capacity for wrong. The hierarchical model leads to excellence, but also leads to cruelty and coldness and contempt for what is held to be lower levels. The holistic model is encompassing, but lacking the quality consideration ends up seeing all things as equal and thus fails to lead to improvement and excellence. In combining the two it becomes possible for the two models to check each other in capacity for wrong and to synergize in a way that makes the best of both.

From the perspective of the center of the sphere, every place on the sphere is equidistant. To the sphere, all things are equal in worth.
The triangle however increases in worth as it rises above the foundation. The combination of the two arrives at a correct conclusion:
That all things are equal in inborn worth (sphere) but entirely distinct in accomplished worth (triangle). The sphere enfolds, nurtures and gives life to all levels and the entirety of human beingness. The pyramid motivates and structures and leads toward higher places. When the two combine, life is served; so is improvement. The sphere prevents the pyramid from becoming cruel and oppressive and instead imparts beauty and goodness and kindness toward life at all levels. The pyramid prevents the sphere from becoming ensnaring and static and therefore guides toward excellence.

Both the sphere and the triangle serve and take away freedom. The sphere frees from cruelty and coldness but also is capable of being
devouring and entrapping. The triangle frees from ensnarement but also is capable of stomping, controlling and brutality. The freedom is served, as it does in the government of checks and balances, when the two levels must compete with each other and check each other’s wrong, while combining at what is right to achieve a greater state than each is capable of doing.

The two levels of attaining divinity therefore must both work together and work to check each other. The holistic gives life and goodwill to all and makes the process beautiful rather than cruel and soulless. The hierarchical motivates toward self-improvement and guides people to make the most of themselves and the most of all. Like Quaballistic pillar of mildness and pillar of severity, the sphere and the pyramid work together to make the most of human existence: To make the lost of human experience through the the sphere’s awareness and goodwill and kindness, and to make the most of humankind through the pyramid’s rigor, motivation and demand.

In combining the sphere and the pyramid, are combined two great approaches to wisdom. Both, I repeat, being perfect; but both being in and of themselves incomplete. The two complete each other and check each other’s capacity for wrong, while together combining to do what each is in of itself incapable of doing. It is held in holistic approach that the heart is a way toward knowledge and wisdom – that, being created in divine image, it contains in itself blueprint for truth. It is held in hierarchical approach that the mind is a way toward knowledge and wisdom. Both are capable of knowledge and wisdom; but they know and are wise in different ways. The way at which the mind and the heart both attain at the same truth, is to be seen as the consummation. In the interim is
possible wrong in both cases; and in checking each other in doing wrong, while guiding each other to consummation, both the holistic and the hierarchical reduce the wrong done while improving each other and helping each other be its best and make the most of life.

The holistic and the hierarchical, the heart and the mind, like female and male, are of equal truth and of equal value. They synthesize to
make the most of each other and most of self and to make likewise what has not existed before. The holistic nourishes and heals and
replenishes; the hierarchical motivates and guides. When the two come together in mutual understanding, is achieved a state of affairs that’s both kind and excellent. And as they check and balance each other, what is eliminated is the wrong in each other, while allowing the right in each other to blossom and achieve more magnificent state of affairs than one of which either is capable.

The result of this combination is complete humanity and complete human experience, where life is made best it can be as are the living. People are motivated to be their best; they are also given (and give) goodwill and love and nourishment toward that purpose. The mind is improved; so is the heart. And the mind and the heart, both being made their most and both as such imparting of their fruits to the living, work together to make the most of human experience, both for humanity and for each human being.

Checking each other in each other’s capacity for wrong, and synergizing in where they are right, the hierarchical and the holistic express and give life to and empower and challenge and vitalize the totality of human beingness – leading toward most of human existence and most of humankind. Through its own efforts, humanity becomes its best and makes the most of human experience, bringing together both the holistic love and the hierarchical excellence to make life the most it can be. Love is served; so is improvement. And the result is the best of all worlds.

In holistic and hierarchical working together in synthesis, or synergy within the framework of checks and balances, is achieved the optimal state of humanity and the optimal state of life.

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Spaciousness

December 8, 2011 By

When liberation or enlightenment and meditation is mentioned, you will usually hear terms like stillness, silence, spaciousness, etc.  They are something you would feel.  Spaciousness.  An enlightened being is aware of spaciousness; something not normally even noticed although always present.  Some teachers say it is because we focus on and identify too much with what is “not-Self” and therefore can’t notice the “Self” that is always present.

In an analogous experiment, get a glass filled to the brim with water. Where is the space?  Can you sense it?  When you empty the glass it is easy to see the space, but it was only the matter and our concepts about matter that impeded our ability to sense the space.  Each atom is mostly empty space.  Each molecule also has empty space.  Matter is mostly empty space – something you might remember being told in school.  One could recognize the space in an empty glass and a full glass, for there is little “real” matter that separates the two.

We are the same.  The Self is always present – as some call it, spaciousness.  The problem is that we are focused on what is not Self  the little bit of matter and form.  We identify with our bodies, our minds, our possessions, our troubles, etc, etc.  What lies underneath all this is spaciousness.  The enlightened feel this spaciousness and realize the Self that is always present.  Be aware of space.  Boxes, cups, bowls, pipes, etc. are only useful because of their “empty space”.  The space around you and within you – from our normal prospective and the space at the atomic level.  You can feel the spaciousness in your hand – it is mostly space after-all.  This space is the same space found outside your physical form as well.

It is like the light of a projector when you are watching a movie. With all its varied forms, it is all still really the same light underneath it all.  You could identify yourself as one of the characters on the screen and think anything that is not this character is not you and separate from you, but in reality all is one and the same light.

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Contemplation

December 8, 2011 By

I think that we’ll all agree on the definition of “contemplation” to what you try to explain as non-concentration tech in TM. And this is what the “dhyan-chohan” (not ‘dyhan’) do when they “make” the Universe: They contemplate to the pt of “making it grow”. But that’s another story, Theosophy.

Contemplation, though, is an inherent phase in *any* type of med tech, if one carries it to its finish line thru its distinct diff phases: Relaxation, Concentration (easier when relaxed), Meditation (thinking reflectively, while being concentrated deeply) and Contemplation (the transcendental phase of the concentrated mind, (hopefully) to the point where there is an effortless convergence (as you say, of course, since it’s ‘contemplation’, not a “from me to/on it” stage of being concentrated) of the observer with the observed, and the duality is “smashed”, transcended, into the unity.

But, to reach that pt, even in TM, one needs to be concentrated, there is no doubt in my mind about it. You cannot contemplate (this is the state that you describe) w/o being concentrated, this is the sequence of actions in any kind of med carried to the pt of contemplation. I think that we can agree on that.

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What is Nyasa?

December 7, 2011 By

Nyasa is a Sanskrit word which translates as “placing,” “applying,” or “touching.” But it is much more. Nyasa is the conscious act of touching or placing the fingers or hands on sacred, sensitive, or medicinally active points of the body. In hindu tantric meditations and pujas, the practitioner lays his hands on himself in each of these places, in special sequences. The meditator infuses each location with a special mantra, visualization, or feeling, which is spoken aloud or mentally conjured.

In the case of nyasa during tantric maithuna (sacred sexuality), the male anoints each part of the female with aromatic oils, ashes, or
sandalwood paste, and the touching and mantra infusion both sanctifies each body part, arouses it sensually, and creates empathy, or
connection, between the partners. In modern western terms, nyasa creates mind-body connections by linking together neural networks, merging physical sensation in the body with thoughts and feelings of sanctity, joy, devotion, protection, and warmth. It is the predecessor (by thousands of years) of the practice of “anchoring” thoughts and behaviors in modern Ericksonian hypnotherapy and in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).

In eastern spiritual terms, nyasa is a consecration, a ritual protection (through invocation and the creation of sacred space *within* the body), sensuality and foreplay (in the case of maithuna), and a physicalized meditation on divinity of the the body itself. Interestingly, the guided relaxations taught at the end of most yoga classes today, and called “yoga nidra” (yogic sleep), were originally
complicated mental nyasa, in which the practitioner would relax on her back and mentally “place” the sound of a mantra in each part of her body, accomplishing relaxation, connection, and sanctification all at once.

In the early 1960s, Swami Satyananda Saraswati of the Bihar School of Yoga decided that the religious overtones of this practice might repel many westerners who might otherwise benefit from yoga. So, by his own admission, he created “yoga nidra” by combining traditional yogic technique with western hypnotic relaxation and the information he read in Herbert Benson’s seminal 1960′s work “The Relaxation Response.”

Before 1960, “yoga nidra” did not exist. There was only nyasa and the dream yoga techniques known as “nidra yoga.” To experience a simplified, non-religious western nyasa, try the following:

First, close your eyes visualize a yellow smiley face, just like the ones made popular in the seventies and now seen on email “emoticons.” A big, happy smiley face right in your palm, and the size of your palm. Look at your imagined yellow smiley face until you start to smile. Now, with your eyes closed, “place” that smiley face in the center of your chest, by touching your palm to your chest, rubbing your palm in gentle circles, and saying the word “happy” a few times out loud. Then repeat this “placing,” this time on your belly, placing the smiley face in your belly by rubbing your belly gently with your palm, visualizing the smiley face laughing out loud, and saying “happy”.

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Book and Teacher about YOGA

December 7, 2011 By

All yoga teachers, I mean the true ones, know that YOGA cannot be used to earn money.This is because of PARIGRAHA. Parigraha is a must. Without it, no yoga is possible! It becomes something else, like any simple sportive act say like  boxing, or running, nothing more!

And therefore I always keep saying that a real teacher never wants his/her students pay money to him/her. If the teacher wants money, it is clear that this person is not a real teacher. He/she is a  sales man /woman. But when you get a book, things are quite different WHY? for the following reasons:

1  -  For a yoga book students are not obliged to pay money. Because
there are several places a yoga book could be obtained; libraries,
friends, clubs , exchange etc.

2  -  Any teacher belongs to a group, and that group`s teaching is only
one way of looking at any yoga style…Even the names might be diffrent
  for the same ASANA. NYASA and although it might be the samething.

3  - Throught a book any serious student by comparison can see the real
meaning of that particular ASANA ,or whatever it is.

Therefore Mr. Lawson and Mr. Stu should try to see any event in this world from different points, only then a student can get into the real act of yoga. Owise, he/she is under the spell of his/her teacher who, in many cases , is a real cheater, particularly if he/she
is expecting MONEY from his/her  students…examples, SHAJA YOGA and TM. Their followers are under their GURUS SPELL, so that they can even not see this simple facts regarding yoga. Because these gurus`students are under the TRANCE, I can easily understand that they are not aware of this. It is very normal. Same thing is true for OSHO, he was another cheater for sure…But his students
are under his spell. Another cheater is SATYA SAI BABA , he has been shown by  HINDIAN GOVERNMENT for CHILD MOLEST. These are the cheaters, and always their students were put in a continues TRANCE.

If we yoga students can not see these simple truths , how then we will learn such a vast knowledge named YOGA! YOGA is such and act that gives us a very CLEAR VISION REGARDING any person,including all the cheaters. By having different books one can learn the different aspects of the same ASANA or KRIYA or even PRATYAHARA or PRANAYAMA. So this is the only way to look at the same
act of yoga from different points. Teacher can give you the secrets of a yogic VISION as he/she is only one way person, if gets money for teaching he is a cheater too. It is up to the student, to prefer a cheater or a real yoga guide.

My words include only money receiving teacher for teaching yoga, if teacher does not want money, then he might be a real teacher.

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