SLOKA 94 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
\nWHAT ARE THE CHILD-BEARING SACRAMENTS?
\nThe essential child-bearing samskaras are the garbhadhana, rite of conception; the punsavana, third-month blessing; the simantonnaya, hair-parting ceremony; and the jatakarma, welcoming the new-born child. Aum.<\/p>\n
BHASHYA
\nConception, pregnancy’s crucial stages and birth itself are all sanctified through sacred ceremonies performed privately by the husband. In the rite of conception, garbhadhana, physical union is consecrated through prayer, mantra and invocation with the conscious purpose of bringing a high soul into physical birth. At the first stirring of life in the womb, in the rite called punsavana, special prayers are intoned for the protection and safe development of child and mother. Between the fourth and seventh months, in the simantonnaya, or hair-parting sacrament, the husband lovingly combs his wife’s hair, whispers sweet words praising her beauty and offers gifts of jewelry to express his affection and support. Through the jatakarma samskara, the father welcomes the newborn child into the world, feeding it a taste of honey and clarified butter and praying for its long life, intelligence and well-being. The Vedas proclaim, ”That in which the prayers, the songs and formulas are fixed firm like spokes in the hub of a cartwheel, in which are interwoven the hearts of all beings–may that spirit be graciously disposed toward me!” Aum Namah Sivaya.<\/p>\n
LESSON 94 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
\nSETTING INNER GOALS<\/p>\n
If we plan our meditation goals unrealistically, we create unnecessary problems. For example, it might be unrealistic to say, ”I am going to realize the all-pervasive Sivam in two months.” The seeker setting this goal for himself may be far too externalized to face the resultant reaction in the short period of two months. Ten years, however, may be a more realistic goal for him, providing time is spent regularly every day in meditation as he directs awareness in and in and in, day after day after day, until all of the forces of the nerve currents of the inner body begin to respond.<\/p>\n
As they respond, something new happens. He gains firm confidence in his own abilities to fulfill positive goals by using his willpower. As each inner goal is established then met, the pattern of his life is changed and refined. The conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the superconscious areas of the mind come together, and a spiritual dynamic occurs. All aspects of his nature work together to strengthen and deepen his meditations. Doubts and fears loosen their hold on him, allowing awareness to penetrate to the core of mind substance. The mind becomes quiet enough to turn back upon itself.<\/p>\n
In the early stages of meditation, it’s very difficult to sit without moving, because that has not been part of our lifestyle. The subconscious mind has never been programmed to contentedly sit quietly. We didn’t see our families doing that. Perhaps we haven’t seen anybody doing that. No example has been set. Therefore, we have to be patient with ourselves and not sit for too long in the beginning. Start by sitting for ten minutes without moving. In a few weeks extend it to twenty minutes, then a half hour. Thus we avoid being fanatical and allow the subconscious to make its necessary adjustments.<\/p>\n
These adjustments are physical as well as emotional and intellectual. The nerve currents rearrange themselves so that prolonged stillness and absence of external activity is comfortable. Similarly, the philosophy of the path of enlightenment fully penetrates every layer of the subconscious, adjusting previous erroneous concepts of ourselves and enabling us to consciously intuit various philosophical areas and know them to be right and true from our personal experience of superconsciousness. This, then, may take a few years.<\/p>\n
If we plant a tree, we have to wait for it to grow and mature before we enjoy its shade. So it is in meditation. We make our plans for beginning the practices of meditation, then give ourselves enough time, several years, to fully adjust and remold the subconscious mind. Living as we do in the externalized culture of the West, we are conditioned to be in a hurry to get everything. When we try to internalize awareness too quickly through various intense and sometimes fanatical ways, we reap the reaction. Meditation goes fine for a brief span, but then externalizes again according to the programming of our family and culture.<\/p>\n
To permanently alter these patterns, we have to work gently to develop a new lifestyle for the totality of our being–physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. This we do a little at a time. Wisdom tells us that it cannot be done all at once. We have to be patient with ourselves. If we are impatient on the path, failure is in view. We are going to fail, because instant spiritual unfoldment is a fairy tale concept. It is far better that we recognize that there will be difficult challenges as the subconscious looms up, with all of its conflicts and confusions, heavy and strong. When it does, we must face them calmly, through spiritual journaling, vasana daha tantra. If our eventual goal is clearly in mind and we have a positive step-by-step plan on how to reach that goal, then we won’t get excited when something goes wrong, because we view our mental and emotional storms in their proper and temporary perspective.
\nSUTRA 94 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
\nUPHOLDING FEMININE DHARMA
\nDevout Hindu women are fulfilled in living and passing on the dharma to the youth as their special duty, unlike those who, swayed by feminist thinking, feel unfulfilled and criticize Hinduism as being male dominated. Aum.<\/p>\n
LESSON 94 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
\nEXPERIENCE IS A CLASSROOM<\/p>\n
Each experience is a classroom. When the subconscious mind has been fully reconciled to everything that has happened, when you have fully realized that everything you have gone through is nothing more and nothing less than an experience, and that each experience is really a classroom, you will receive from yourself your innerversity personal evaluation report and it will be covered with the highest grades, denoting excellent cognition.<\/p>\n
Each of these higher grades is important, for when you put them together they will unfold a consciousness of understanding, making you eligible for your graduation certificate of visually seeing the clear white light within your head while sitting in a darkened room. Yet, if you have failed a class, or several classes, not only will the marks show, but it will also take you longer to graduate. If you haven’t taken from each experience its sum of understanding, subconsciously you remain in the classroom reacting to the lesson you are learning, even though the experience may have occurred fifteen or twenty years ago.<\/p>\n
So, we have to end each of these experiences in understanding. We have to be promoted to the next deeper grade of awareness so that, with the universal love born of understanding, we can close the classroom doors behind us and receive our diploma. When we receive this first diploma of the clear white light, we are given the greater knowledge and wisdom of what this great experience of life is all about. How do we realize what life is all about? By having lived it fully we fully realize that the past is nothing more and nothing less than a dream, and a dream is comprised of pleasant experiences and nightmares. Both are just experiences, neither good nor bad, right nor wrong.<\/p>\n
But you must remember that even the greatest souls have had nightmares, confusions, heartbreaks, disappointments, losses, desires that have been unfulfilled and experiences that they have not been able to cognize. And then they have come to a point in their lives when their inner being started pushing forward to the conscious plane. In other words, they have had just about all the experience necessary to graduate out of the instinctive-intellectual world, or consciousness. The great, intuitive superconscious nature begins pushing forward to the conscious plane, stirring up within the subconscious the remnants of the past. As those remnants come up, they have to be faced and cognized through meditation, thus creating the foundation for understanding the basic laws and principles of life. Then comes the dawn of the clear white light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SLOKA 94 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA WHAT ARE THE CHILD-BEARING SACRAMENTS? The essential child-bearing samskaras are the garbhadhana, rite of conception; the punsavana, third-month blessing; the simantonnaya, hair-parting ceremony; and the jatakarma, welcoming the new-born child. Aum. BHASHYA Conception, pregnancy’s crucial stages and birth itself are all sanctified through sacred ceremonies performed privately by the husband. In the rite of conception, garbhadhana, physical union is consecrated through prayer, mantra and invocation with the conscious purpose of bringing a high soul into physical birth. At the first stirring of life in the womb, in the rite called punsavana, special prayers are <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-lesson-with-gurudeva","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}