The Long Time Sun

Thought while meditating this morning: The sun shines on us all equally. It warms us equally. It casts our shadows equally. We should light upon all we meet like the sun in the heavens, equally and without care or judgement. After thinking about that, it gave me new understanding of the song "Long Time Sunshine," an Irish Folk Song which is used to close most Kundalini Yoga classes. May the long time sun shine upon you. All love surround you. And the pure light, within you. Guide your way on... Guide your way on... Guide your way on.

Experiencing the Vacuum

Thanks and Welcome to Hariavtar who will now be sharing this blog. You might see a few more new faces as time goes on. Anyway, I've started officially teaching Kundalini yoga at a place called Le Studio in Hollywood. The teachers I've studied with have all spoken of this feeling that comes through you when you teach. It's all a part of that selfless vacuum I was talking about a while ago. You become a conduit for the energy of people bringing themselves to a better place. The energy of the golden chain of teachers that practiced and mastered this yoga literally comes through you as the class practices the various kriyas and meditations. This sounds really esoteric but it's really no so much. Teaching is somewhat of a selfless act. As I write this I get wrapped around the axle. So let me just put it this way... I got really freaking high from teaching these past couple of weeks. The entire rest of the day I had this bubble around me where nothing could go wrong. And it wasn't "just having a good day." I tried to explain it to a friend of mine who doesn't teach yoga and she just said, "I get it, I know the feeling of having a success. You got a teaching job, that's great." But that isn't it at all! It's an inexplicable feeling that everything is going to be okay no matter what. It has nothing to do with feeling success or triumph or getting a job. Talking about this feels like spilling sugar at the beach. I think simply that this feeling is the real time experience of the vacuum I was speaking about. Yogi Bhajan has said this many times about Kundalini Yoga and I'm really glad to have now experienced it. I wish this feeling on the entire world. Imagine?

Selfless Vacuum?

So I was re-reading some of these posts and I realized they're really long and quite a bit heavy.  Not to mention they're two months old.  (I can mention it, you probably shouldn't)  So I thought I would put some things down in more raw form as they come to me.  For example, this morning during Sadhana-meditation some stuff occurred to me.  Yogi Bhajan saying (and I can't reference the quote directly but...) basically when you serve others, The Creator serves you.  I understood it as it came to me in meditation, but explaining what I think it is, is a whole other thing.  

Here goes. When you do something self-less, meaning you forget about your own needs and concerns for a moment and serve another, your ego is suppressed.  That creates an imbalance because he whole world is duality-- pairs of opposites and when everything you see is in terms of "us and them," then it's in balance, because that's our world.  When you act in selflessness, a vacuum is created and the divine has no choice but to serve you.  I guess this is what's known as Karma Yoga.  Selfless acts are said to take you out of the wheel of karma, the push-pull of cause and effect.  So when an individual acts without regard to self, all focus is on the other and for that time there's just the one rather than the dual focus of me and mine, theirs and them.  

I think what he meant, and what seemed to come to me this morning is: that vacuum must be filled and since you're focused on another in selflessness, The Creator focuses on you to fill that void or bring nature back into balance.  It's as if helping another is helping yourself since all are one.  So give till it hurts… or rather give until someone else doesn’t hurt anymore.  

Another thing I thought was interesting is the word INDIVIDUAL.  In-Divi-Dual

In=not divi=divisible dual=a duad or pair

So the word individual essentially means (to me) one not divisible by dual(ity) or perhaps one living in duality?  

The dictionary has an interesting take on it: I always thought you weren’t supposed to use the actual word in its definition.  At least that's what I was taught.  Anyway you can see for yourself but the dictionary pretty much defines individual as person or personality set apart from society or a group.  I think it actually has much more power and meaning than that.  I think an individual being is one (indivisible) in duality.  Or One living in duality.  This is definitely hair-splitting, but it's cool when you think about it because everyone wants to be a distinct individual-- especially in this age of reality TV and instant, talentless fame.  

So what does being an individual truly mean?  Different from the rest?  One person just living in a dual world?  One apart from the society?  One in contrast to two?  By virtue of that, when an individual acts selfless, then they drop part of their duality and become one with that which they are serving.  I guess that's a lot of words to say selflessness is like godliness.  Anyway, it gets tricky no matter how you slice it, because if you're standing around stroking your hair, going, "I'm soo selfless." then it's not gonna work.  The trick is to really be truly selfless and that takes a lot of work because there are greater and greater degrees of it.  For example, your mom... and let’s say, Mother Theresa.

Selfishness? Sorry I don't have time to explore that one right now.    

Can a human be greater than God?

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.  
--Woody Allen, actor, comedian, & director (1935 - )

For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed.  --Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist (1623 - 1662)


The soul comes through the human to experience duality, the world of good and evil, opposites.  If God is so great, how can there be so much suffering?  

One of my yoga teachers was telling a story about someone in their family who, while meditating went to the place beyond time and space where souls decide to come into this life.  She related that these souls are fighting for a chance at human life.  Being human is so great that souls fight to come here to earth and angels are jealous of humans because of all they are able to experience.  Yet, when we get here, each of us suffers.  That makes no sense.  Life is cloaked in suffering.  Out in the world of duality, the world of opposites, we bounce between good and evil and we suffer.  Why on earth would a soul want to come into that?  Perhaps it is to become more powerful than God.  

God is the unmanifest potential of everything, like that black hole at the center of the universe.  Nothingness.  Nothing can escape a black hole, not gravity, not light, nothing.  It is perfect emptiness.  The perfect zero state.  God is that nothingness of the black hole surrounded by the vast infinity of outer space.   We are all the stars, points of light on that blanket of velvety nothingness.  Yes, sadly, that also includes Paris Hilton.  Think about this, though.  Everything in our experience is light and sound, including us.  In fact, the word human means light of the mind— hu=light, man=mind.  Light mind.  Yet when you close your eyes the lights go out.  Darkness.  That’s the first place you look for your true self, your soul, God.  Outer space is inner space and vice versa.  

Out of that nothingness, God becomes light.  This light is the light of the soul.  The mind projects that light of the soul.  The projection of the light of the soul is a human being.  It’s an honor to suffer because it’s only through this suffering that we ask ourselves why? In that asking is the opportunity to develop a relationship with your own soul, a pathway to the infinity, which is God.  How does a human become more powerful than God?  By developing a relationship with the soul.  In knowing the soul, you serve your individual purpose in life.  In this way you approach everything that God intends to be in your unique form.  Intent is the potential of the mind.  The human being is the intent of God.  

If you want to create something in life you must first intend it.  If it is in line with your soul’s purpose, then you’re in line with God’s intent and voila it will manifest.  So with intent we project our soul with the mind and we create.  We use the light of our soul to project the mind and create the forms we see before our eyes.  if you don’t like what you see, then don’t blame God.  It’s your problem.  You’ve got free will.  Quit bitching.  When we don’t create with the soul’s purpose we suffer at the hands of our own creations.  You and God are one.  You are co-creators of this existence, creatures of The Creator.  You drink too much, eat too much, have wrong sex, bad relationships, and do things to hurt each other, take things from each other and on and on.  You chase after worldly things and get them, then realize you don’t want them because they cause you pain, a broken relationship, a broken heart.  For what?  It’s all to get you to utter that famous mantra, “God help me.”  

All this suffering sends you back looking for the soul within you and then you can start living.  Living with purpose.  This doesn’t mean that worldly things are bad.  That’s is the ego again trying to classify in terms of duality.  Worldly things aren’t bad.  All things come from infinity and infinity is God so all things are God.  Even the bad stuff is God.  Oh yeah, the eternal mind bender.  The light of the soul, the light of God is pure Love and compassion, but that’s the same light that’s in you and me.  So you humans are the problem.  The perfection and the imperfection is all there for the asking.  It’s your choice.  God isn’t good and the devil bad.  It’s all you, baby.  

What happens is that once you get in touch with your soul and you live by your soul, through your heart, then everything on the outside becomes a projection of the light of your soul and you begin to see it all in that light.  When you see your soul reflected in everything before your eyes rather than thinking it is separate from you, then you’re in bliss.  Yogi Bhajan, The Master of Kundalini Yoga always says, “If you can’t see God in all you can’t see God at all.”  There it is.  It’s like that old joke… A Buddhist walks into a hamburger stand and says, “Say, can you make me one with everything?”  

Why then, do we not get the things we intend?  The problem is not with God or your soul, you’re not cursed or having bad luck.  If you’re not getting what you want in life it’s because the mind is not balanced and neutral enough to allow the light of the soul to be projected as intended.  The mind is too busy with its dramas and commotions and emotions—‘He said that to me, can you believe it?  I am so insulted.  I feel this and that.  You just watch what I’m going to do now.  I’m going to do something about this!  You’ll hear from my lawyer!’  We let the mind serve the ego and the ego runs it ragged with all these useless dramas and traumas.  When you have control over the power of your own mind then these dramas and commotions will drop from you like dead leaves from a tree.  

So what do you do?  Send the ego to basic training and balance the mind through meditation.  The key is to use your will power to take back and tame the mind and the only way to do this is through meditation, meditation, and meditation.  There are many forms of meditation.  Any field of action regarded with focused concentration can be meditation.  Walking can be meditation, but it must be done deliberately.  Writing can be a meditation.  Chopping wood can be a meditation, but you must use these tasks as deliberate actions to get into the flow so that the chatter of the mind stops and the soul can come through in neutrality.   The trouble is, we want it all now.  ‘Just give me a pill.  I don’t have time to sit down and do nothing for an hour.  Really, I don’t have time.’  If you want to build big muscles you have to lift weights and eat a certain diet.  You have to take the time to practice bodybuilding.  If you want a neutral mind so that you can know your soul, you have to take the time to practice meditation.  When you belong to a sports team you go to practice so you can be ready for the big game.  The game of life is every day.  You have to practice some sort of meditation, going within, every day.  Practice makes perfect.  Pressure makes diamonds.  Ashton Kutcher makes bad movies.  Sorry.  

Prayer is when you talk to God.  Meditation is when God talks to you.  In any case it’s a communication, which you go inside your self for.  When you pray or you meditate, you close your eyes.  Eyes are the windows of the soul.  When you close the eyes you shut out the world so it’s just you and your soul.  Try it.  If you’ve never prayed or meditated before it’ll drive you crazy… drive you right “out of your mind.” The ego, used to being in charge of everything is deathly afraid of the dark.  Close your eyes and go within and your ego will become impatient as a three year-old child pulling at your sleeve to go out and play.  But if you’re going to give a child a life, you teach it how to behave.  You must do the same with your ego and you do that through meditation.  If you invoke the power of your will and meditate, you will walk with grace.  

If a human walks with discipline and grace, that human becomes more powerful than God.  An openhearted life of compassion and Love gives a human power over the manifest world before his eyes.  On becoming the God in man, the human becomes more powerful than God because God needs that human to have that experience.  Without the human, the light-mind, God is just unmanifest potential.  Unmanifest intent.  The human is the manifest intent of God, warts and all.  

The funny thing is a whole hell of a lot of people will get angry at this concept.  How dare you say a human is more powerful than God?  They can’t reconcile that kind of power.  Some others who are all ego will sit back and go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right baby, I’m more powerful than God.  Who’s yer daddy?’  I can’t decide which is worse, overblown ego or arrogant humility.  The ability to be more powerful than God lies in humility.  The greatest power in the universe lies in being humble.  Great spiritual masters constantly laugh when people say, “You are so great.  Look how powerful you are.”  True masters laugh and say, “Not me.  Perhaps my master, The Father, he is all-powerful.  I am nothing.”  

So what’s the point of being more powerful than God if you can’t do anything with it?  The truth is you can do everything with it.  When you become nothing, like the unborn, unmanifest, undying God while in human form, there is nothing greater because you are then a vehicle for what God truly is… the flowing light of Love and compassion.  Out of the nothingness comes light.  That light is the light of the soul and before that soul comes into the body and the ego divides everything into two, there is nothing but that light.  If you want to heal anything in your life, if you want to create or change anything in your life, just center your mind and hold it on the concept of that pure light out beyond any opposites, duality or division.  When you do that, your soul carries that light back through the mind and projects it on the world.  You become that light.  You are being a true human—light-mind.  Then you are more powerful than God because God is nothing without you.  

Good luck with all that.  

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