thepeoplesashram

Posts Tagged ‘yoga’

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Enlightenment: for, by and of The People

In Uncategorized on November 23, 2011 at 7:27 pm

Imperialism is alive and well in the 21st century.  

It exists wherever hugely powerful institutions vie for the right to colonialize the consciousness of the human being.

Political systems, institutional religions and multinational capitalist entities all compete to dominate the bodies, minds and activities of every human being on our planet.

Our minds are structured from birth to respond to the appetites of the so-called “free market.”  Our bodies are being appended by devices created by the marketplace that demand our attention, our compliance, our obeisance.

Technology no longer exists simply to improve the quality of human life.  Science almost exclusively serves its profit beholden masters.  Lacking expectation of profit, the institutions of science and indeed, the institutionalized support of knowledge, art and culture for the sake of our evolving humanity, fade into memory.

The human being alone must reclaim the sovereign terrain of personal consciousness.  We must not allow the oligarchs of capitalism, the tyrants of religious extremism and the political agendas of nation-states to colonize away all hope of a consciousness that embodies the human being’s constant search to freely learn, grow, consecrate and perpetuate minds and bodies that are capable of exploring the entire topography of human potentiality.

 Enlightenment exists as an extraordinary gift for persons to explore, cultivate and develop the art of human being.  Enlightenment can be both a pursuit and an accomplishment that allows an individual to act in the world with the greatest possible freedom and independence.

Certainly, the word “enlightenment” can indicate differing expectations and outcomes for particular traditions.

Let me introduce you to what I mean when I use the term, ‘enlightenment,’ and the role that enlightenment can play in the project of reclaiming the sovereignty of human consciousness.

Enlightenment indicates a fundamental reversal of the foundation for how we experience the world. Typically, we believe that the content of our minds and the events of our lives constitute the nature of personal identity and provides the ground for human behavior.  We believe that the content of our minds, emotions, feelings, sense of personal history, beliefs, opinions–even our awareness of time as a chronological phenomenon, establish the foundation for our “personalities.”  We believe that our sense of well being, how we feel about ourselves and the world, is the effect caused by our mental self-perceptions, our feelings about the events of our lives, our successes, failures and everything else that dominates the space of our flow of experience.

Meditation and the various disciplines of tantric and yogic science can be instrumental in developing and establishing a quality of life that is grounded not in activity, but in silence, not in temporal chronology, but in absolute stillness.  It is possible to establish silent stillness as the predominant character of our constitutional awareness.

This new ground of dynamic emptiness initiates within the space of the mind a profound quality of unconditional contentedness.  We begin to realize that our lives dance on the stage of this perfect ground of tranquility.  When the activities of our days and nights unfold on the stage of absolute silent stillness, no longer are the events of our lives, our relationships, our thoughts and feelings about ourselves, the determiners of our abiding state of serenity and satisfaction.  When our minds and bodies are grounded in profound relaxation and stillness, we are liberated to act free from fear, doubt and uncertainty.

Make no mistake, my 99% friends, we are at war.  Allied against us are armies of advertising and media and technology at the command of the unrestrained greed of the 1%.  If we are to win the war for the sovereignty of our minds and hearts, we must use the most powerful tools at our disposal.  No more powerful force exists to defeat greed, dogmatism and zealotry than the pursuit and attainment of enlightenment.

99%ers awaken!  Reclaim your right to cultivate lives of serenity, wisdom and compassion.  Unleash your hidden powers of creativity.  Combine the personal with the transpersonal.  Recognize the world as a single living entity. Humanity holds no greater promise than a life activated and motivated by abiding joy and the natural morality that succeeds perceiving all things as one’s own undivided, sacred self.

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Pregnant Pause

In Uncategorized on November 4, 2011 at 2:11 pm

The sensations of our bodies are potent tools for meditative transformation.  Let’s remind ourselves of our goal: to steadily gather all the sensations of our bodies into a single, astonishingly powerful sensation.

Let me offer you a challenge today.  It is almost guaranteed that something will occur to piss you off as the day transpires.  (More than likely, your day will be full of small events of annoyance, and maybe one or two larger events.)  Someone will say something or do something that will produce an instant sensation of stress in your stomach, your diaphragm, your neck or shoulders.  That little sensation of dread at having to deal with a small, (or large) injury will occupy your mind.

Find that sensation of stress.  Locate where in your body you feel it strongest.  Find a time and place for a moment of stillness.  (Might be just at your desk while no one’s around to bother you.)  Isolate the sensation of the injury, the tension produced by the stress of it…breathe into that sensation of pain.  Don’t ignore it–in fact, if you need to, remind yourself of the person’s face–stimulate the sensation of the stress.

Let all the inner scripts, dialogues and replays go.  Release them.  Focus only on the sensation, the subtle energetic frequency of stress in your body.  Here’s the most important part of your exercise: USE THE PAIN OR DISCOMFORT AS A FOCUS POINT TO RELEASE ALL THE TENSION IN YOUR BODY.  USE THE SENSATION OF STRESS, CONCENTRATE ON THE SENSATION OF STRESS–AND RELEASE ALL THE TENSION IN YOUR BODY.  Your hands, your neck, throat, thighs, chest, back.  Use the energy of stress to stimulate relaxation.

If you practice this exercise daily, you will begin to realize that all stress is simply energy.  The time will come when stress will no longer cause you pain.  You will experience the sensations of your body–no matter how they are influenced by any particular circumstance–as a single, all encompassing sensation of warm contentedness.  In time, this sensation of tranquility will become the abiding character of your conscious life.

 

PREGNANT PAUSE

 

You want to

know yourself?

Consider this:

breath never

departs but that

it is returning.

You are the honeymoon

of this marriage of

flow and ebb.

Seeking wisdom,

find the erotic

sensation where at

once the breath

comes and goes–

discover that

Sacred Between

and there surrender

heart, mind and will.

Heed this promise,

you who love

truth–

a flower will grow

free from time’s

hunger,

never thirsting yet

ever in bloom–

for this, O cherished One,

is the fertile

Heart of tantra.

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Trika yoga & the Goddess Kundalini

In Uncategorized on November 1, 2011 at 12:54 am

Shakti is the mother of the universe.  She is responsible for everything that we experience, from light and color to sound and smell.  She is also responsible for there being an “us” in the first place.

Mother Shakti, according to Trika yoga, is the author of all creation.  She created the temples of our body/minds to make us the perfect beings for our world.  There is nothing in our universe but what is, in one way or another, available for our experience–directly or sometimes indirectly.  We belong to our world and our world belongs to us.

The first verse of the Shiva Sutras states,

“Universal consciousness is one’s own nature.”

The second verse continues,

“Knowing the individual consciousness as one’s own nature and not knowing the Universal Consciousness as one’s own nature, is bondage. (Or in other words, the origin and cause of suffering)

Verse fifteen of the Shiva Sutras goes on to say,

“By establishing one’s mind in the heart-the Universal Consciousness-the whole world of perception appears as one’s own nature.”

(From the Aphorisms of Lord Shiva, trans. by Swami Lakshmanjoo)

The Goddess Shakti, Mother of the immanent universe, commanded her handmaiden, the Goddess Kundalini, to move among human beings searching for the truth of their own eternal nature and to assist them in discovering their true identity.

Mother Shakti said, “teach those who will listen, who have the patience and passion, how to experience the world as their own body.”

Then the Goddess Shakti created a seat for Kundalini in the base of the spine of human beings.  Shakti commanded her handmaiden, Kundalini, to teach humans to recognize the living sensation of their own universal personhood.

“Teach any with ears to hear and eyes to see,” the Universal Mother said, “to recognize that at the Heart of all things, no matter their size or variety, is the luminous, abiding bliss that is Shiva, the God whose Light animates all existence.”

The word, “kundalini” has come into popular use both in the Western world as well as in the East.

Allow me to suggest that wherever spiritual energy assists individuals in discovering truth, peace and compassion, the Goddess Kundalini, handmaiden of Mother Shakti, is at work.  The power of spiritual energies to effect personal change and enlightenment exists beyond the artificial barriers that humans erect between this or that religion or tradition.

For Trika Yoga, however, the mission of Kundalini is very specific.  She is the goddess who exists to take the aspirant by the hand and lead him or her to the Heart of one’s Universal Self.

In practical terms, this means that the mission of Kundalini is to teach the seeker how to recognize that everything she perceives, everything the senses apprehend, is his OWN NATURE.

She begins by asking us to believe, to have faith, that everything that we experience with our senses is real and divine, but if we learn to see beyond the surface, if we learn to surrender our conviction that what we see is all that can be perceived, then we can begin to journey into the Heart of all that is real and experience the One Energy that is the author of the universe of energy.

The Goddess Kundalini asks us to listen with our eyes, to see with our ears and to feel from the inside of our skin.

Mother Kundalini knows that when stress and tension is released, when the maelstrom of the mind is calmed, the seeker can begin to see, hear and feel anew.  The aspirant is able to perceive more subtle qualities of his/her energetic existence.  She can begin to feel the existence of the chakras that begin at the base of her spine and continue on up and beyond the crown of her head.  He can begin to sense the subtle friction caused by the movement of the serpent Goddess Kundalini throughout his body, directing his attention here or there, helping him to know where he must concentrate and intensify the energy to unseat pockets of pain and knots of stress.

Steadily and certainly, the aspirant evolves.  With the ascension of Kundalini, comes an ever greater capacity to perceive and experience the world on subtler levels.  An existence ruled by the tyranny of an ego protecting itself by any and all means necessary ceases.  As one embraces a life not ruled by emotions, or in fact, any kinds of thoughts at all, one experiences finer qualities of quiet joy and peace that owe their origin and existence to nothing more than the marvelous fact of being alive now, in this moment.

If we are willing, Kundalini will lead us to the recognition that our perceived, “individuality” is in fact, only possible because the Goddess Shakti, who indeed we all are, is the goddess of will, of knowledge and of action.  We are creative beings because we are that Goddess whose existence is the creation, maintenance and eventual destruction of all things.  We will recognize that we are in truth, not delimited by our bodies at all.  Our body is but a loving expression of our Universal Self.  The privilege to perceive, to recognize, to see, hear and feel–to exist at all–is possible because our eyes and ears and hearts beat with the Light that is the Source and Substance of One Being.  We all are the universal nature that animates us each as the individuals for whom Life is that singular Stage upon which we all perform.

We look at the trees and see our own limbs.  The crickets chirping are our own thoughts.  Behind the eyes of another person exists the Light that we recognize as the one and only Light that animates all the infinite expressions of our Universal Personality.

All of this and more is possible by allowing the Goddess Kundalini to take us by the hand and lead us along  the path of purification and wisdom.

And it all begins with the sensation of our own bodies.