thepeoplesashram

Archive for October, 2011|Monthly archive page

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Meditation by Immersion

In Uncategorized on October 26, 2011 at 7:13 pm

Meditation is the most powerful means that exists for human transformation.  There are many recipes for effective meditation.  Some come with religious doctrines.  Others do not.  What almost all meditative prescriptions share is the commitment to train, exercise or otherwise effect attention.  More often than not, this begins with learning to sit still.  It begins with learning how to be alone with yourself–your thoughts, sensations, concerns, tensions.  And, eventually, the absence of all of these.

For meditation practice to be fully effective, it should be accomplished twice a day-morning and evening.  It can begin with 15 minute sessions, but be allowed to evolve into longer periods over time.  If you meditate for 15 minutes a day, you’ll get 15 minutes worth of benefit–not nothing–but only a scant introduction to the power and scope of meditative transformation.

When you find yourself desiring longer sessions–an hour, two hours and more–you will confront and overcome deeply imbedded fears and concerns about who you are, about the life you have lived and will live, and about time itself.  You will only overcome the fear of time, mortality and the non-existence of a ‘personal self’ when you look them in the face and recognize them for what they truly are.

These are not simply ‘existential’ concerns.  Our fears, failures, beliefs and expectations are integrated into our muscles, our joints, and into the patterns of thought and behavior that animate the courses of our daily lives.  Only through concerted meditative confrontation, recognition and release can we truly begin to experience lives without stress and suffering.  Lives that begin to abound with effortless joy and relaxation.

If you long for an extraordinary life, if you desire the quality of spiritual, physical and emotional freedom that is the rarest of all experiences, immerse yourself into the healing waters of meditation.

How do you accomplish this?  Integrate three vital, powerful activities into the conduct of your daily life: chant, breathe and meditate.  Commit yourself absolutely to these three activities.  If you do, you will, I promise you, experience profound transformation in just a few years.

Yes, years.  You can’t expect to run a marathon without committed and disciplined training.  You cannot hope to achieve anything great and rare without dedication.

Faith will help you.  For me, my friends, there is a God.  This Goddess is who we each and every one of us already is.  The God/Goddess that we all already are will assist us in our efforts.  We need only practice effectively and faithfully and pray.  Not necessarily on our knees.  (Though there’s nothing wrong with this.)  But in our meditations, during our work days, in the middle of the night when we awaken from sleep.

Our purpose is straightforward.  Disrupt accustomed patterns of thought, of physical stress and tension.

To accomplish the first, we begin to make of our lives an on-going chant.  Here is one that I recommend that you use to begin:

limb–leem–lame–lamb–lawm–luhm–lohm–loom.

This is a chant to awaken and vitalize the root chakra.  It is derived from the muladhara seed syllable, lawng  or lawm.

Begin to chant always and everywhere, without exception.  It’ll take time and effort.  It won’t happen–won’t begin to become easier–for several months.  But trust me, it will get easier, and it will effect a powerful transformation on the ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that you assume are the substance of who you are.

Second, you must begin to breathe deeply.  Whenever and wherever you are, be aware of your breath, take hold of your breath and breathe in slowly and deeply, breathe out slowly and deeply.  Learn to be aware of your breath at all times.

Chant and breathe together.  At the grocery store line, in the bathroom at work.  Before you go to sleep at night and in the minutes before you arise to prepare for the day.

Meditate twice a day.  Set your clock.  Get into a comfortable seated position.  Preferably, on a meditation cushion and pad.  But in a chair, if need be.  Commit yourself not to rise before the alarm sounds.  Make this an indelible habit

Breathe and chant.  Begin with this activity.  Breathe long and deep, use your chant to measure the time.  When your mind wanders, take note, let go of any concern about it, and resume your chant.

Do these three things, pray and in several months you will begin to recognize tremendous changes taking place.

Like an athlete training for excellence in her event, you will first break down familiar habits and patterns.  This may be painful and stressful at times.  Work through it.  Remind yourself that profound transformation is simply a matter of follow through.  Do the work and you will transform.  The Goddess will hear your prayers and give you strength when you need it most.  When you are meditating for an hour for the first time and your body is restless and your mind simply won’t conform to the chant without constant effort, then pray.  Ask that Grace that loves us all for help to go on.  Then go on.

The time will come when your meditative muscles will have been sufficiently broken down and you will feel new strength and power.  Only, it won’t be so much “strong and powerful,” but more like peaceful and fulfilling.  Meditation and spiritual practice will begin to become its own reward.  Like the runner who has grown into his stride and can run easily five miles, ten miles, twenty.  When you sit for your meditation, peace and relaxation will come more quickly, with less effort.  You will begin to explore the real substance of who and what you are.

You will know when your efforts are taking effect when you begin to awaken in the middle of the night chanting.  When you realize that you were chanting in the dream you were just having.

You’ll know transformation is underway when you awaken in the morning, lying on your back, arms at your sides, and realize that you have just experienced the deepest sleep of your life.  You’ve awakened in a body that has so imbibed the habit of releasing tension, that even your sleep time has become immersed in the activity of meditative transformation.

To find abiding joy and relaxation, you must use your entire day to prepare for meditation.  You must meditate to prepare for your days and nights.

Your purpose is to bring all time–waking, sleeping and dreaming–into a single precious Moment.  Yes, you can experience all of your life as ONE SINGLE moment.  That Moment will be still, it will never change.  It will be quiet, it will exist without being broken by a single wave of thought or physical action.  It will be quietly, profoundly joyful.  AND, it will include everything that is happening all around you all the time.

Your life will become a performance of enlightenment.  Enlightenment is what happens NOW.  When you ARE now, you are an actor liberated to perform on the stage of life.

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One Mind, One Time

In Uncategorized on October 24, 2011 at 7:22 pm 




What truly does it mean to “thin” the mind of its content?  Certainly, it means what the words communicate: less content, less activity.  Does this mean that the simple fact of 50, 60 or even 90% less mental volume is alone responsible for the quality of conscious experience we often refer to as Enlightenment?


 The answer to that question is–well, yes–but there’s more to it than simply volume of content.


  

 What is the nature of the content of our personal consciousness?


 It’s funny that what for us is so intimate and familiar, the activity of our own minds, also succeeds in escaping our understanding.


 Consider time.

  

  

  

 How much of our mental activity concerns itself with time? Think for a moment of all the ways in which we obsess over time.  Its like a disease, a cancer.  We can’t let time go.  Regret over the past and fear for the future are like a cancer that eats away at our present.


  

 We replay, rewrite and reinvent memories ad infinitum.  Over and over.  Out of control.  Events from long ago, what happened at work yesterday, someone’s rude tone of voice just moments ago.  How things should have been, what we ought to have said, how we could or should have done things differently.

  

 We are equally addicted to expending huge amounts of emotional energy anticipating the future, trying to control what cannot be controlled, influence what is beyond the horizon, worrying whether this happens and not that, or that rather than this.


 Think about this and you will agree.  We are addicted to time.  We are enslaved by our investment in time.

  

 So we begin to let it go.  We chant mantras to disrupt customary patterns of thought and emotion.  We perform pranayama while waiting in traffic, waiting in the grocery line, watching television, walking the dog.  We dedicate our lives to breaking every pre-established pattern of thought and breath and physical response to stress and tension.


 We use the day to prepare for meditation.  We use our meditation to prepare for the day.  We awaken early to lie still and perform breathwork and release all tension before meditating.  In the evening, we meditate and retire to bed where we lie still and perform pranayama and release our physical tension.

  

 In time, our meditations, once so busy and full of waves of thought and emotion, slow down.  Moments begin to lengthen.  Intimations of silent stillness plant roots in our awareness.


 We notice that while we meditate, time seems to move in sequences of attention.  For awhile there is only mantra.  Then a review of our work day.  Then a discussion with our son or daughter.  Then mantra.  Then the discomfort in our legs.  Then what time is it?  How long have we been meditating?

  

 But with grace and effort, we are able to still the constant movements of the eyes, we are able to release the tensions in the ears and our knees and our backs no longer ache after fifteen minutes, a half hour, two hours.


 The time comes when we recognize that behind and between and above and below every thought and sensation there exists a sameness, a stillness.  We focus our awareness on this sameness.  We bathe in this sameness.  We luxuriate in stillness.

  

 We begin to see that this sameness, this somehow stillness, never changes.  Once you recognize it and begin to see that it never ever changes, it changes YOU.  This is because you realize that silent, still, velvety-delicious sameness is in fact responsible for there being a YOU at all!  Every thought, every event, the entire historical chronology of your life–the whole sum of what you thought was what made you You–wasn’t and isn’t.  You recognize that the you that you are and always were is this magical, mystical sameness.  You realize that there’s never been a moment in your life when you haven’t been aware of this sameness, that indeed, you can’t think of who you are without seeing this sameness that you are in front of your eyes.

 



 There is a timeless You that makes the time-full you possible.  

 



 It is rather like a screen, white and unchanging, whereupon your life, your thoughts and emotions and relationships, hopes, dreams and tragedies all play.

 



 But it is more than just a screen or a background.  When, in our meditations, we begin to sit and effortlessly gaze upon this undifferentiated and perfectly motionless screen, our lives are permanently transformed.  We see that time and timelessness are one, we see that self is one with Self.  We understand that we and God–that Selfsame wholeness that is at once our self and our universe–are one.

 



 We rise from meditation, go to work and return home only to perceive that the entire day has transpired in a single, unbroken moment in time.  We move from meditation to a workaday life so saturated by the lush stillness of a motionless present that the day transpires as if a single, unbroken moment. 

 



 The foundation of our awareness, the substance of our personhood, is as a vast lake of crystal pure stillness.  Life cascades around us in so many waterfalls, yet the deep and abiding tranquility of the lake of our consciousness remains still and quietly joyful.



		
	
														

			


			

					

				
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One Mind, One Substance

				In Uncategorized on October 23, 2011 at 11:24 am

				

					
The approach of tantric science to the project of enlightenment is unique from some other well known enlightenment strategies.







Tantric philosophy & practice begins and ends with your body.  It starts and finishes with the SENSATION of your body.  Why?  Because a primary tantric principle proposes that your body–everyone’s body–is a microcosm of the universe.  Furthermore, tantric science believes that in fact, all manifest reality is composed of energy, and the nature of that energy is vibration.  This means that everything we experience–all that is possible to experience–is composed of vibration.  A dynamic, creative symphony of vibration.  

   


For tantra, dynamic reality is not an illusion or born from some kind of ignorance of a transcendental reality that is somehow more real that what we all experience each and every day of our lives.  Rather, manifest reality and transcendental reality are one and the same.  As the ocean’s currents are one with the ocean, so are the immanent qualities of our experience of reality one with the perfectly silent and still ground of that reality.







The tantric philosophy and practice that comprises the perspective of The People’s Ashram believes that all the diversity of the universe can in time be traced to, and experienced as, a single Original Vibration.  A sort of cosmic big bang in the form of an original Sound uttered by an originating Voice. Tantra names this original voice, Shakti.







Imagine an orchestra with ten thousand instruments.  A thousand violins, another thousand cellos.  A thousand bassoons and french horns.  Imagine this ten thousand instrument orchestra playing a symphony–something grand like Beethoven’s Fifth.







Then imagine that the conductor brings the entire orchestra to a point where each and every instrument is playing one note–the same note.  One moment, a seemingly infinite diversity of sound–the next moment, a single, tremendously powerful note.







This is like the goddess, Shakti.  Shakti is the Mother of all the universe, of all creation.  Shakti is also named, Kundalini.  







Shakti is so enraptured by her love-making with her husband, Shiva, that she cannot help but to cry out with one long, ecstatic sound.  From this single note uttered from the rapturous joy of Mother Shakti comes all the infinite creative manifestation that is our universe.  Shakti is the primal sound from whence comes everything in space and time, for the note itself is not different from Mother Shakti, herself, who is not different from husband Shiva.  Shakti is the substance of the cosmos, from the dust of exploded stars to the stardust in lover’s eyes. 







Because all of manifest reality comes from a single frequency of vibration, tantric science has developed strategies whereby an individual can begin to recognize that the sensations of his or her own body are in fact, non different from that original Sound uttered by Mother Shakti.







Tantric disciplines, such as yoga asanas, pranayama and especially, meditation, use the sensation of one’s own body as the starting point for developing a fuller and deeper awareness of the nonduality that is our own consciousness.  Thus, the tantric path to Enlightenment suggests that one begin by attending to the ‘grossest’ or the most superficial of physical sensations and move toward the subtlest, finest sensations.   We may then, by the Grace of the God and Goddess of us all, reach that point where the most exquisite sensation is recognized as the divine substance of silent stillness.  This is the event that has of old been described as the ascent of Kundalini through the subtlest channel, the madhya nadi, of the central channel, Sushumna, to pierce the thousand petaled Sahasrara, the blissful throne of Shiva.








														

			


			

					

				
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The Peoples Ashram, Madhyanandi & Trika Yoga

				In Uncategorized on October 13, 2011 at 12:42 am

				

					
THE PEOPLE’S ASHRAM is new to Asheville.  Presently, classes are being held at Madhyanandi’s home studio.  In this way, we are able to share our spiritual practice on a purely donation basis.  In time, we hope to relocate to a permanent facility where the Ashram can offer a non-denominational meditation sanctuary,  classes in yoga and meditation, as well as instruction in the Trika philosophy of Pratyabijna, or Self-recognition.


Trika yoga is a path to freedom and enlightenment.  Madhyanandi’s teachings are based on her more than twenty years of yoga and meditation practice.  Here’s her story:


“One evening in 1994, following several years of intense yoga practice and personal transformation, I was sitting in meditation.  Suddenly, as if from the center of the earth, an energy burst through the base of my spine, rushed upwards through my body and burst again through the top of my head.  I was filled with indescribable peace and joy.  I no longer perceived myself as different from the world around me.  No longer was anything foreign to me.  I experienced the fluid connection that yokes all things together as a single, elegant Being.


From that event to the present, Mother Kundalini has led me, taught me and, at times, chastened me.  I have spent thousands of wonderful hours in meditation and devotion.  I have followed the path of  the awakened Kundalini shakti through the journey of the chakras.  I can tell you that the chakras and the subtle energies that link our microcosmic body/minds with the macrocosmic Self are real and tangible.  They are not the creations or property of the marketplace, popular culture, or spiritual self help publications.  The path of awakening Kundalini and following Her leadership from root to crown, from the evolution of ecstasies gross to subtle, is an immeasurable treasure.  My friends, I know what it is like to experience a whole new character and quality of life.  This is the gift that the divine Mother continues to bestow upon me.


My journey has not been an easy one.  Regardless of what anyone may claim, the path to utter and complete joy and contentment is not easy–simple, in many respects–but not easy.


If you surrender EVERYTHING that you believe you are–from the thoughts in your head to the sensations that comprise your bodily awareness, what you have surrendered will be returned to you a thousand fold.  You will discover a life that exists entirely in the Present Moment.  Your heart, mind and body will be liberated with the recognition that all you see and experience is your own Self–and that the Self that you recognize is the joyfully, eternal NOW.  For, the simple truth of enlightenment is that nothing exists that is not the Present Moment.  YOU ARE NOW.  Literally.  Entirely.  Joyously.


Trika yoga is a millenia-old tantric tradition originating from the Kashmir region of India.  This is an oral tradition.  The potency of this yoga is in the relationship between yourself, God (Shiva/Shakti) & the guidance of one who is awakened.  That is what I offer.  I beg the goddess, Mother Kundalini, to bless me with the compassion, wisdom and Realization that may assist you–whoever you are–in discovering that you are, as I am, that God Shiva/Shakti that is the source and substance of this Universal Now.”


INTERESTED STUDENTS:  Please come for a session and we will work a little and meditate a little.  There is no fee.  There is only one way to discover whether this or that teacher or teachings may be right for you–the direct exchange of spiritual energy.  If what you read here speaks to you at all, let’s talk about it together.

														

			


			

					

				
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Living Liberation

				In Uncategorized on October 9, 2011 at 1:01 pm

				

					
Happy Sunday Morning all.


Freedom is a living blessing.  It may take some time and effort to arrive there, but I am nearly lost for words trying to describe how fabulous it feels.


So, I’m at work yesterday, cooking away.  The chef I work with has some–well, bad habits.  He doesn’t clean as he goes.  He uses a big pot for whatever he’s preparing and when he’s done he doesn’t rinse or prewash, he just sets it aside.  For me, more often than not.


He has other less productive habits.  But I like and care about him and he’s a good chef, creative and knowledgeable.


Here’s what I know.  Yesterday, I was perturbed about certain workplace trends–mainly about how I was having to do a bunch more work than I ought to be doing–mostly due to my partner’s less productive work habits.


He noticed that I was quieter than usual.  Finally he said something.  I joined him outside for a break and we talked.


Therein lies the dilemma.


You can talk till you are blue in the face but you won’t get through.  Allow me to clarify.


My partner’s mind, like most persons, is so cluttered and obfuscated and keeps him so trapped inside his head that he is truly incapable of allowing almost anything in from the “outside” world.  In other words, his experience of personal selfhood is so powerful and overwhelming that he literally cannot see beyond the prison bars of his mental and physical selfhood to actually listen to another human being.  Much less is he prepared to suffer any kind of criticism–no matter how diplomatically presented. He cannot see, hear or speak for being overwhelmed by so much mental and emotional energy.  Thoughts, emotions are moving rapidly.  The body is clenched, in a constant state of tension.  Oxygen is trapped in breathing patterns that are alternately too short and too long and then clenched and held by the stress that has accumulated in his stomach and particularly, the diaphragm.


He is in great pain.  That is the saddest thing of all, is it not?  That is what is so tragic–to see another person’s pain at the mercy of his/her own mind/body.


What is freedom if not the liberty to live in a world where mental and physical tension has so decreased that it becomes impossible NOT to live fully and entirely in the living Present, the Sacred NOW.


When the temple of your body/mind is free from nearly constant states of storm warning activity, when you discover the sensation of peace that can be experienced in the eye of the storm, then you will–like me–praise whatever Grace may be for this extraordinary gift.


You can be free.  It requires discipline, devotion and effective practices.  It won’t take forever, I promise you.  If you donate 10% of your 24 hour day to meditation and yoga, if you practice effective breathing patterns throughout your day, if you chant whenever you are able to help disperse the established habits of mental activity that continue to imprison you, you will find peace.  Not quickly, but not ten years down the road, either.


The single most important practice that you can perform–along with the above disciplines–is to walk in the world and recognize that everything that you see and experience, “inside” or “outside” of your limited self, is your own body.  The trees, leaves, grass–this is your body.  The thoughts in another person’s head?  Your body. All is energy.  Brooks and streams and rivers of energy.  See through the trees of vibrant energy to perceive the forest that is your true self- a self not contained within a head or a body at all.  A self that is coextensive and coinclusive with the living Universe that is our true body, mind and Self.

														

			


			

					

				

				
Liberating the Mind

				In Uncategorized on October 3, 2011 at 3:41 pm

				

					
Among the first steps we can take to regain the sovereign topography of our consciousness is to thin the volume of content generated by our minds


By simply reducing the amount of content our minds experience, we can effectively alter how we experience the world.  


Less mental volume produces a more peaceful consciousness.  It also offers a quality of clarity and lack of general busy-ness that provides a more positive environment for making decisions and choices.


In time, reducing the mind’s volume of content will allow the aspirant to enjoy a simple, natural form of meditative experience.  He will discover the capability to sit for long periods of time and enjoy effortless silent stillness.


Along with this deepening experience of “quiet mind,” the meditator will emerge from meditation with a subtle, yet profound and serene joyfulness.  She will discover that she is happy for no other reason than just being alive.


He will also begin to recognize that mental content–no matter what variety or degree of emotional significance–may not, in fact, be the true ground for his personal consciousness.  She may begin to recognize that all mental content, marvelous as it can often be, is simply the creative and repetitive impatterning of energy.   


Energy, matter, is the substance of our being.  However, when we begin to quiet our minds and relax our bodies, we may begin to comprehend that all energy emerges from a single unbroken frequency that is the Mother of all creation.  In the tantric tradition, she is often referred to as Kundalini.  


When our minds become sufficiently quiet, we may perceive a single primordial frequency.  Ancient meditators recognized that a very still and quiet mind is able to hear a subtle tone.  This subtle tone was named OM.  The source of the OM is the experience of a frequency of vibration so subtle and pure that only when the mind and body begin to surrender all other tensions and distractions can it be perceived.


When the quiet, meditative mind listens intently only to this OM, soon the relaxed body will begin to feel a profound resonance.  The sensation is as though one’s body were a single, taut string on an instrument.  When the OM fills one’s consciousness, it feels as though a divine hand is drawing a bow across this single strand.  This ecstatic vibration resonates throughout one’s being. One cannot emerge from this quality of meditative experience without being transformed.  It is an unforgettable kind of experience, and one that the meditator will seek to experience again and again until that particular quality of transformation becomes a permanent aspect of one’s awareness.