SLOKA 117 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
\nWHAT ARE THE GOALS OF RENUNCIATE LIFE?
\nThe two fundamental objectives of sannyasa are to promote the spiritual progress of the individual, bringing him into God Realization, and to protect and perpetuate the religion through his illumined leadership. Aum.<\/p>\n
BHASHYA
\nRenunciation and asceticism have been an integral component of Vedic culture from the earliest days, the most highly esteemed path of the Hindu Dharma. Monastic life has both an individual and a universal objective. At the individual level, it is a life of selflessness in which the monastic has made the supreme sacrifice of renouncing all personal ambition, all involvement in worldly matters, that he might direct his consciousness and energies fully toward God Siva. Guided by the satguru along the sadhana marga, the initiated sannyasin unfolds through the years into deeper and deeper realizations. Ultimately, if he persists, he comes into direct knowing of Parasiva, Transcendent Reality. At the universal level, Hindu monasticism fosters the religion by preserving the truths of the Sanatana Dharma. Competent swamis are the teachers, the theologians, the exemplars of their faith, the torchbearers lighting the way for all. The ancient Vedas elucidate, ”The ascetic who wears discolored robes, whose head is shaved, who does not possess anything, who is pure and free from hatred, who lives on alms, he becomes absorbed in Brahman.” Aum Namah Sivaya.<\/p>\n
LESSON 117 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
\nTO REALIZE THE SPIRIT WITHIN<\/p>\n
When you have nothing in your subconscious that particularly bothers you, it is easy to turn the mind inward. But if you are bothered or disturbed, the subconscious acts as a barrier and makes it difficult to turn within. When you try to do so, up from the subconscious come all the remnants of the experiences which you hold on to through regret. If this is the case, you will have one more experience to go through before your mind does turn within. You will have to experience the understanding of all your experiences–not through analysis, not through, reason (although the ”whys” may come to you intuitively), but through the higher experience of pure understanding. You will find it is possible to have an understanding of yourself without going through the process of analysis.<\/p>\n
A disturbed mind which is not permeated with Sivaness is strong in a negative sense, strong in that it will keep you from the realization of God. When the mind is disturbed, it is outwardly strong. The mind that is not disturbed is inwardly strong. Your inner strength is always more dependable than your outward display of strength. When you have gained your inner strength, you will be able to sit in meditation for at least a half hour every day and practice being the guardian of every thought and the ruler of every feeling within your body. If you do this, you will realize That which is the center of your Being. You will be uplifted, elevated, through the purification that you have brought to your mind.<\/p>\n
Hold your consciousness high, keep your mind alive and alert so that your soul is alive and alert. You have heard me say many times, ”Observation is the first awakening of the soul.” If your observation is intense and accurate, your mind is not bothered and you are not regretting things that have happened to you in the past. But people who have poor observation often do hold on to their regrets, and they rationalize most of what happens to them, putting the blame for their own experiences on someone else. It is so much easier to close the door on these reactions and live more like on a spring day rather than in the dead of winter. Life is meant to be lived joyously. The awakened soul is a joyous soul with a positive mind. The practice of observation will bring you closer and closer to this state of consciousness.<\/p>\n
If you feel that your observation is not keen, begin observing things more closely. Observe the different colors in a store window. Study the shadows and the shades of color in one tree. Listen to the sounds of the city. How many can you distinguish? What do they mean to you? If your observation is already good, you can participate more fully in life and find yourself living above the dreary happenings of the day.<\/p>\n
Recognizing that all experience is but a fading dream, you are closer to the permanence within you that never changes. You can sense it. It is God. It is Siva. It has never changed. It will never change. You have all felt this permanence at one time or another, but then perhaps you find that you lose this feeling, this consciousness, and you drift out into the mind and find yourself thinking again that the mind is real. But then, maybe tomorrow, you will face it again. And as soon as you have found it, you leave it again, for the mind cannot bear the intensity of God, and you forget all about it. But then, a little later, you face that permanence within you yet again. And little by little you find that you are turning inward, opening up the inner channels more and more each day, making a greater and greater contact with God by turning within, drawing yourself ever closer to the pole at the center, the core of your Being. You will go through many different tests to prove your own realization to yourself. Face each test graciously. Welcome each test, and welcome each temptation that shows you the strength of your will over the chaotic senses. You have only to quiet all things of the mind to realize your identity with the eternity of God Siva, the spirit, the Eternal Self within you.
\nSUTRA 117 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
\nSUPPORTING RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
\nSiva’s married followers all encourage their spouses to ardently fulfill sadhana, religious service, meditation, yoga, ritual worship, festivals and pilgrimage. They never discourage such noble expressions of dharma. Aum.<\/p>\n
LESSON 117 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
\nTHE QUEST FOR SECURITY<\/p>\n
You have at one time or another watched yourself pick up a new idea: ”I shall do this and this and this!” Then, because you had a reaction over something, your enthusiasm died; you forgot the idea and bounded off onto something else. This is the way the mind works. You forget when you reach a part of your mind that has no inclination to understand. That is a part of the instinctive mind. If you run up against a habit pattern that is too strong for your will, it is like going along in a straight line and suddenly ricocheting off in another direction. But while this happens for a long time, after a lot of study and constant self-discipline–without which the study does not do too much good–the principles of the spiritual life finally become permeated through your entire being, and you become close to your soul in the eternal now.<\/p>\n
This week, when you think about it, you will say to yourself, ”I’m all right, right now,” and you will feel uplifted in knowing that this is so. But next week you will forget to do it. It makes you feel too complete, too secure. And being too secure is like being insecure, isn’t that true?<\/p>\n
I met a family from the South recently that was having quite a time trying to adjust to the security of success! The husband has been a salesman all of his life, only just meeting the more or less routine needs of his family, three girls and one boy. He and his wife had always nurtured a desire for a lot of money so that the family could live in complete security, and every month for years they had put away just a little savings, with an eye to making the type of investment, at the right time, which would satisfy their dream.<\/p>\n
Not long ago they found themselves able to buy into land with ”remote possibilities of oil.” By spending the last of their savings to initiate drilling, by remote chance they did strike oil, bringing them almost immediate affluence through a chain of circumstances that has changed the entire pattern of their life. Now they feel more insecure than ever. When their money finally came in abundance, they found they really did not know what to do with it. They were worried because they had no experience in handling it. They felt totally transplanted, totally insecure in their apparent security.<\/p>\n
After several conversations, they began to see that they had found their security in the desire for money; feeling that they did not have enough had become an integral part of the family’s subconscious. Because they were not able to live in the eternal now, they could not catch up with their new condition of life. Many people who find security in material desires are not able to become accustomed to something they are not already acquainted with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SLOKA 117 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA WHAT ARE THE GOALS OF RENUNCIATE LIFE? The two fundamental objectives of sannyasa are to promote the spiritual progress of the individual, bringing him into God Realization, and to protect and perpetuate the religion through his illumined leadership. Aum. BHASHYA Renunciation and asceticism have been an integral component of Vedic culture from the earliest days, the most highly esteemed path of the Hindu Dharma. Monastic life has both an individual and a universal objective. At the individual level, it is a life of selflessness in which the monastic has made the supreme sacrifice of <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5914","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\/5914","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=5914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revers-sun.fi\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}