SLOKA 25 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT DOES LORD KARTTIKEYA’S VEL SIGNIFY?
The lancelike vel wielded by Lord Karttikeya, or Skanda, embodies discrimination and spiritual insight. Its blade is wide, long and keen, just as our knowledge must be broad, deep and penetrating. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
The shakti power of the vel, the eminent, intricate power of righteousness over wrongdoing, conquers confusion within the realms below. The holy vel, that when thrown always hits its mark and of itself returns to Karttikeya’s mighty hand, rewards us when righteousness prevails and becomes the kundalini serpent’s unleashed power thwarting our every effort with punishing remorse when we transgress dharma’s law. Thus, the holy vel is our release from ignorance into knowledge, our release from vanity into modesty, our release from sinfulness into purity through tapas. When we perform penance and beseech His blessing, this merciful God hurls His vel into the astral plane, piercing discordant sounds, colors and shapes, removing the mind’s darkness. He is the King of kings, the power in their scepters. Standing behind the temporal majesty, He advises and authorizes. His vel empowering the ruler, justice prevails, wisdom enriches the minds of citizens, rain is abundant, crops flourish and plenty fills the larders. The Tirumurai says, ”In the gloom of fear, His six-fold face gleams. In perils unbounded, His vel betokens, ’Fear not.'” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 180 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
In summary, Hindu parents should make decisions for their children and refrain from giving them choices until they are educated and about to leave the home. Offering children freedom with money has similar problems. By giving adolescents financial independence too soon, parents breach the protective atmosphere of the home and invite exploration of who knows what in the world. It begins with an allowance that they can squander any way they want. They soon learn that by putting heavy demands upon parents they can get more. Then parents add gifts for good behavior, a form of bribery not recommended. In training adolescents, any money they handle should be accounted for and the change returned to and counted by the caring parents. This teaches honesty, accuracy and cooperation with the core group, the parents.
Many times I have seen an allowance lead to a desire for a summer job or to work after school, more independence, more time away from home and family. The summer job taxes the child when he or she should be playing, resting, going to school or doing wholesome extracurricular reading. The early-morning paper route or the job after school takes precious time away from education. Adolescents should not be allowed to handle their own money or to earn an income until their high school education is nearly complete. Then any money earned, the full amount, should be given to the parents, and all spending money accounted for. This will mold the young adult into a frugal, income-producing person.
One choice young people can and must participate in is their profession. A jyotisha shastri, Vedic astrologer, will help in this. In principle, the karma of the child is to accept the profession of the parent. He had a choice and could have been born into another family. He chose you. So, don’t compromise him or her, and be sure that you have unanimous agreement with all members of the family when the choice of profession or occupation is made. The ideal, of course, is for the children to work in the family business and develop the wealth that can be passed along to others in the family, generation after generation. This is the way Hinduism has persisted through trial and tribulation, siege and battle, oppression and subjugation for the past 10,000 years. Let’s not allow it to stop now. It is all up to you, the mom and dad, and how you phrase your direction, how you discipline with love and patience as their growing-up process continues. Raise your children right, and you will be rewarded by the justly fair law of karma when you are on the other side of life, about to experience moksha. Don’t raise your children correctly, and you will be born again into an unwholesome, adharmic household and learn by feeling how they felt under your neglect.
SUTRA 180 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
NURTURING ALL FAITHS EQUALLY
Siva’s devotees who are parliamentarians grant equal boons to each spiritual sect under their aegis as if it were their own. They know a society is only as free as the freedom enjoyed by its minorities. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 180 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
NEVER FEAR THE PAST
Generally people start meditating and do fairly well in the beginning, for their great desire to unfold spiritually propels them within themselves. But when the subconscious mind begins to upheave its layers–as it naturally must for the unfoldment process to continue beyond an elementary stage–meditators become afraid to look at the subconscious patterns of their seemingly not-so-perfect past. To avoid facing themselves, they stop meditating, and the subconscious subsides. The once-meditating seeker returns more fully to the conscious mind and becomes distracted again in order to forget ”all those terrible things.” At the time, the remembered past seemed to be terrible because the impressions were strong, magnified by sensitivities awakened through meditation.
For many years thereafter the one-time meditator can be heard to say, ”I’d like to meditate, and I do sometimes, but I don’t have time, really, to meditate. What he is actually saying is, ”Most of my time is use up distracting myself so that I won’t have to meditate anymore and won’t have to face my bothersome subconscious.”
On the path to enlightenment, you have to face everything that has gone into the subconscious, not only in this life, but what has been registered in past lives. Until you do, you will never attain Self Realization. Your final obstacle will be that last subconscious area that you were afraid to face, looming up before you in the form of worries, fears and repressions that you will wish to push away, hide from, so that neither you nor anyone else can see them.
To hear of the Self is a great blessing, indeed, but to desire to realize the Self means that in this and your past lives you have gone through all of the experiences that this Earth consciousness has to offer. You have died all of the deaths and had all of the emotional experiences. You have had the good of the world and the bad of the world, and the mixed good and bad of the world through all of your many lives before you come to the life where you say, ”I want to realize the Self in this life.” Now you begin to tie up all the loose ends of past experiences that have not been fulfilled or resolved, because those loose ends are what bring you back to birth.
