The Master Course The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswamis trilogy: Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva Lesson 263 Sloka 108 from Dancing with Siva What is the Nature of Image Worship? We worship God Siva and the Gods who by their infinite powers spiritually hover over and indwell the image, or murti, which we revere as their temporary body. We commune with them through the ritual act of puja. Aum. Bhashya The stone or metal Deity images are not mere symbols of the Gods; they are the form through which their love, power and blessings flood forth into this world. We may liken this mystery to our ability to communicate with others through the telephone. We do not talk to the telephone; rather we use a telephone as a means of communication with another person who is perhaps thousands of miles away. Without the telephone, we could not converse across such distances; and without the sanctified murti in the temple or shrine we cannot easily commune with the Deity. His vibration and presence can be felt in the image, and He can use the image as a temporary physical-plane body or channel. As we progress in our worship, we begin to adore the image as the Deitys physical body, for we know that He is actually present and conscious in it during puja, aware of our thoughts and feelings and even sensing the pujaris gentle touch on the metal or stone. The Vedas exclaim, Come down to us, Rudra, who art in the high mountains. Come and let the light of thy face, free from fear and evil, shine upon us. Come to us with thy love. Aum Namah Sivaya. Lesson 263 from Living with Siva Take Full Responsibility If you take responsibility for all that happens to you, then you will have the power to deal with your karma through the grace of Lord Siva. He will give you the intelligence to deal with it as you worship Him in the Siva temple, contact Him within as the Life of your life and find Him in meditation. Lets take an example. Say I am holding a plate of rice and curry and I pass it to you. All of a sudden the plate drops on the floor between us. I blame you, and you blame me. I dont want to be responsible for dropping the rice and curry, and you dont want to be responsible either. So, we blame each other. The rice and curry is scattered there on the floor. No one is going to clean it up until one of us takes responsibility and says, Im sorry I dropped the plate of rice and curry, and gets down on hands and knees and cleans it up. In the same way, only by taking responsibility, by recognizing what we have done as our own doing, can we begin cleaning up the results of our actions. Those who do take responsibility for their own karma have all the help in the world. Pride, arrogance and an ungiving nature are characteristics of those who dont believe in the law of karma. These are qualities of those who do not take responsibility for their actions. They blame everything on someone or something other than themselves. This includes their mistakes and every unpleasant thing that has ever happened to them, is happening to them or may happen to them in the future. They live in the fears and the resentments born of their own ignorance. Only through being born in a physical body can you experience certain kinds of karmas which cannot be fulfilled or experienced in your etheric/astral body. Therefore, between births those physical-body karmas live in seed form. Only in a physical body do you have all of the chakras functioning that will allow those karmas to manifest and be dealt with. Each birth is thus a precious window of opportunity. For heavens sake dont blame your karma on somebody else and seek to escape from what you were born to deal with. That is the height of foolishness. Stop blaming and criticizing others, and take a good look at yourself. Stop excusing yourself and trying to make yourself look good in the eyes of others. Then a sense of strength will come up within you, a sense of independence and peace. Mental arguments will stop. Arrogance will vanish. Pride wont be there anymore. You will be a full person. All of your chakras will function properly. Your nerve system will quiet down, and intuitively you will be able to bear up under your karmas and deal with them positively. If it is your karma to be poor in this life, you will be rich by living within the income that you have. You will be content by having desires that you can afford. We make ourselves discontented, we make ourselves unhappy, we make ourselves useless creatures on this planet by allowing ourselves to live in an ignorant state. Sutra 263 of the Nandinatha Sutras Expressing Devotion With Song At gatherings among themselves, my devotees sing from our Saiva Church hymnal, primarily Sage Yogaswamis Natchintanai. When with devotees of other sects, they enthusiastically join in their devotional songs. Aum. Lesson 263 from Merging with Siva An Exercise in Energy Balance Control of the prana is also guided through nutrition. Food and air contain a great deal of prana. Prana is transferred from one person to another, from a person to a plant, from a plant to a person. It is the life of the world of form. We should eat types of food that contain a great deal of prana so that we are making prana ourselves. Consider the physical body as a temple, with plumbing and electricity. To maintain this temple, watch what you eat and be conscious of the areas where you flow awareness in the world of thought. The vibration of certain thoughts upsets the nerve system of this physical-body temple. Also, be careful of the people that you mix with, so that their awareness and vibrations do not pull your awareness into unwholesome areas and the vibrations of their aura do not affect your temple. This is extremely important to observe, especially during the first few years of unfoldment. When we are in ideal surroundings, in the shrine room of our own home, we can balance the passive and active currents of the body--the ida and pingala forces. First, do this simple pranayama. Breathe easily, in and out, in an even rhythm, say, four heartbeats to the inhalation and four heartbeats to the exhalation. This steady rhythm will soon begin to balance the ida and pingala. As the pingala force becomes quieted and regulated, you will hear a ringing about an inch above the right ear. This is the sound of the nerve current of the pingala nadi. And as the ida force becomes quieted and regulated, you will hear a ringing about an inch above the left ear. This is the nerve sound of the ida nadi, slightly different from the tone of the pingala nadi. The direction of energy flow in the pingala nadi is up, whereas the ida nadi flows downward. When the energy in the two nadis is balanced, a circle is formed, creating a force field in which the sushumna nadi is regulated. Now, to bring the sushumna force into power, listen to both tones simultaneously. It may take you about five minutes to hear both tones at the same time. Next, follow both tonal vibrations from the ears into the center of the cranium, where they will meet and blend into a slightly different sound, as two notes, say, a C and an E, blend into a chord. The energy of the nadis is then flowing in a circle, and you will enter the golden yellow light of the sushumna current. Play with this light and bask in its radiance, for in it is your bloom. The unfoldment progresses from a golden yellow to a clear white light. Should you see a blue light, know that you are in the pingala current. If you see a pink light, that is the color of the ida. Just disregard them and seek for the white light in the tone of the combined currents until finally you do not hear the tone anymore and you burst into the clear white light. Thus you enter savikalpa samadhi--samadhi with seed, or consciousness, which is the culmination of this particular practice of contemplation. After doing this for a period of time, you will find that you lose interest in the exterior world. It will seem transparent and unreal to you. When this happens, you have to learn to bring your consciousness back through meditation, deliberately into the processes of inner knowing and thought, and back into the exterior world through concentration. It requires a deliberate concentration then to make the exterior world seem real again to you. Now is the time for devotees who have worked diligently in concentration and meditation and in clearing up personal problems to enjoy their yoga and be happy in their attainments, to enjoy the bliss that is their heritage on Earth.
Posted on: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:58:37 +0000
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