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Ma Durga
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Ma Durga
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Ma Durga
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The last 7 days had been so amazing ever since I started the workshop on divine feminine consciousness!
Some of you may have read my previous article on “Woman & feminine consciousness” dated June 2013. In that article I made a conscious decision to help women to heal and raise themselves, undoing the damages done by the unconscious society. I am so happy that finally this is happening, Cosmos is fulfilling this intention of mine in ways that I am feeling so in awe.
Just to give the context of the divine feminine consciousness to those who are new to this sacred concept. In Vedic tradition, the ancient rishis and masters realised that from the Source, the undisturbed existence of pure consciousness, a primal alteration happened, the process of evolution finally reached the state of a perfect cosmic unrest, a state that allowed unlimited manifestation of form. The first two inseparable yet distinct aspects of existence emerge. They are called the Siva Tattwa and Sakthi Tattwa which are the beginning of cosmic evolution. Both aspects remain ever present, every prevalent and cannot exist without the other. They are also known as Purusha (cosmic spirit) and Prakrithi (the cosmic substance). The entire world is nothing but a manifestation of the cosmic spirit and its substance. Every form, subtle and gross, is nothing but the cosmic principle in an assumed or derived state.
Prakrithi, the cosmic substance is the divine feminine consciousness that is responsible for everything you see and experience. Worshipping this energy is called the mother worship. Mother worship is unique to Vedic tradition, it is a gift to planet earth. All sacred things are looked upon as feminine in Vedic traditions. For example, the energy of Knowledge is Goddess Saraswati, the energy of Power and Courage is Goddess Durga and the energy of wealth and abundance is Goddess Lakshmi. In Hinduism, the river Ganga is considered to be sacred and is personified as a goddess Ganga. The source of divine or creation is mother energy, in each of us there is an energy which constantly gives birth. That energy is divine feminine consciousness.
In this workshop, I could see how the powerful nurturing space of Cosmic Mother opened up the inner most part of each participant which enabled them to heal their patterns of fear and self-doubt created by the societal conditioning. The process gave women the space to connect with the innate creative force through fun expressions like dance, movements, art, poetry, yoga, pranayama and Vedic chanting, so that they can be as they are. One lady shared that she remembered an incident that caused her to suppress her creativity when she was once told by her art teacher that she drew like an elephant with no finesse. The words created a huge self-doubt in her inner space which made her believe that she could never draw. It was in this workshop that she re-discovered that creative dimension in her again.
Another lady shared that she had suffered all her life a fear of showing herself and her talents to the world because of a big self-doubt pattern developed from a traumatic experience when she landed on this planet. She was left crying, she felt unwanted and rejected by the world because nobody received her with love and warmth. That wrong cognition started the pattern of fear and giving up on herself. In the past, she would run away from new possibilities because of this fear. Through this workshop, she was inspired by one participant who was a self-taught artist. This artist discovered her talent only during her lowest point in life when she was depressed and suicidal. It became a major turning point for her which made her who she is today. It was such a great inspiration for many other women. The sharing helped this fearful lady to become aware of this incompletion of fear, she decided to drop this fear and embrace her possibilities.
Through this work, I realised a few important lessons: 1) each one of us has a life story which can inspire others to get back to the Source of who we are, 2) It is in the nurturing space of the Cosmic mother that healing happens because she is always non-judgmental, forever compassionate and receptive, 3) When we just exist as we are, we are connected to the energy of Cosmic Mother, 4) It is by healing and awakening the suppressed feminine consciousness in women that they can start to become a powerful change agent for the humanity.
In essence, women have a better role to play on raising the collective human consciousness instead of creating infrastructure like men; we are the living models and examples of intense passive life energy. Let’s connect back to the nurturing space of Cosmic Mother. Namaste 😀
Do you know there are three sources of right knowledge?
In Yoga Sutra Verse 7th, Patanjali gave us the three sources of right knowledge: Direct Perception, Inference and Competent Evidence constitute right knowledge. If one were to read this sutra without the right context from an enlightened consciousness, he or she will not be able to grasp the underlying truth behind this sutra.
I have the great fortune to hear the Yoga Sutra from a living incarnation, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) who not only shared the sacred secrets of this sutra but also gave the techniques to experience this sutra. In Yoga, it is absolutely important that you catch the right Guru. By having the right Guru, I can say 99.9% of the work is done because he will be constantly reminding you of your original divine state. You only have to remember, reclaim and live it. That’s all. Instead of wasting time experimenting from the wrong knowledge and create more and more stupid bondage for yourself.
Swamiji told us that direct perception means the perception, when your five senses are fresh, alive and pure, gives you the ability to grasp the reality as it is without any perversion or tiredness. If your senses are tired, overworked, overwhelmed, they cannot give you the right perception because you will be reacting from your incompletions and patterns. What would happen? You are likely to end up picking a fight or argument with someone or thinking how to get out of there quickly. To keep our senses constantly in its peak capacity, He taught us the power of authentic listening, Yoga and Pancha kriyas for purification of the body and five senses so that we are constantly ready to have direct perception.
The second way to gain right knowledge is by the cognition that happens through the senses. Cognition means when you perceive through the five senses, you analyze and process the information internally and take it to a logical conclusion and finally you make a decision. Swamiji went one more step further by gifting us a powerful Science called Science of completion which purifies the mind by removing all the past hangovers which is nothing but a cloud of ignorance. Next he revealed that 4 tattvas or spiritual principles of Integrity, Authenticity, Responsibility and Enriching. When we live these four tattvas, we awaken the four powers: Vaak Shakti (power of words), Mano Shakti (power of thinking), Prema Shakti (power of feeling), Atma Shakti (power of living). The entire intellect becomes so sharp for the flowering of right cognition.
The third way to gain right knowledge is the competent evidence which means the words of an enlightened Master. All the words of an enlightened master, whether you perceive it with your senses or not, whether you cognize it through your mind or not, are right knowledge. The words that come out of an enlightened master are straight, complete right knowledge. However, in modern day, humanity can only accept that perception through the five senses and cognition through the five senses is right knowledge, but they don’t believe the words of an enlightened Master can be a source of right knowledge. People constantly demand proof and they don’t have the patience to wait till the Master comes to the conclusion and give them the experience. An enlightened Master is one who has already experienced it and he is trying to teach you in the language in which you will understand which takes time. You just have to be patient for the transfer of knowledge to happen naturally. Patanjali says “The words of an enlightened Master are a way to gain right knowledge. Till you experience it, respect His words and go with them, they will become your experience.” If you are intelligent enough to do a little research, you will notice that all the traditions which accepted the words of an enlightened Master as a source of right knowledge, they lived ecstatically and radiated enlightenment.
To recap, the direct perception without perversion of senses, inference from right cognition and competent evidence from the words of an enlightened Master are the three sources of right knowledge. Catch it! Namaste 😀
- Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.
Do you know that your life is affected by your memory you carry inside you?
Are you aware that all diseases and disorders are related to your past memory?
Memory means the ideas, thoughts, imagination, visualisation which you have collected and which are still alive inside your system. It is the fifth modification of the mind according to the 6th Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. I remembered my first initiation into understanding memory happened in July 2009 when I was attending my first Inner Awakening program, a 21-day yoga and spiritual retreat conducted by a living enlightened master, Paramahamsa Nithayananda (fondly known as Swamiji). He said that memory is such a powerful thing, more powerful than the first 4 modifications of the mind – which are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination and sleep! With the right knowledge, it can give us suffering or joy only if we act upon it. With wrong knowledge, only our response to it can create joy or pain. With imagination, only the support we give to imagination can create joy or pain. With sleep, only when we cherish sleep, we will have joy or pain. But with memory, we don’t even need to do anything because it is independent of us and it pops up by itself and puts us into joy or suffering, anguish or peace. The scariest part about memory is it can lead one to anything on its own for no reason. In short, memories are like uninvited guests in our inner space.
Swamiji also gave three basic concepts of memory: 1) Table Memory relates to the daily details we access for every day functioning or the things that you are interested like your name. 2) Cupboard Memory refers to memory we need to think and access for e.g. bank balance or bank account number. 3) Archive Memory refers to those memory you cannot access with normal techniques like those memory below 3 year-old.
Memory is called the pain body. This pain body goes and creates disturbances in our body-mind system. For example, Parkinson disease is related to excessive forcing of information into Table Memory which you don’t want in daily functioning. My late father in-law suffered from this disease because his job involved a lot of memorisation of data even though he did not enjoy it. Another common disease is eczema which is related to suppression of emotions and renouncing that part of memory. The problem is we don’t even have the right idea about our past. We remember our past only after editing it by connecting only the past incidents where we had suffering and think that the whole past life was suffering. This is called a ‘Pain shaft’ which is wrong memory. The same thing applies to joyful memories. We edit, cut, paste all the joyful incidents and memories and see our whole life as joy. We don’t look at the past as it happened and we never comprehend reality as it is, hence the complete memory is not within our control.
The key to liberate ourselves from memory is to complete with the past. The amazing result of completion of the past is that it will not lead you to any more suffering, it will only lead you to joy. Another benefit is the moment the memory of the past is complete, you will have the knowledge of your future. This is the powerful Science of Completion as revived by Swamiji! All our miscomprehension, wrong idea about the past is responsible for the wrong idea about the future. For someone who has difficulty planning for their future, be very clear, it means he or she does not have a clear vision about the past. See, any incident that happened in the past adds some understanding, juice and awareness to your Being. If you are aware of all your memories, that knowledge is added to your Being as wisdom and it continues to guide you in the future. But when you forget those incidents, when memory loss happens due to selective memory, the knowledge born out of that experience will not express itself in the future.
There is one powerful technique that Swamiji gave me which helped me to reclaim my freedom as a conscious Being. Just by making a strong declaration that “I am not going to remember anything by force! I am only going to have fun in life”. I say “No” to society which forces me to store unwanted memories and I only remember the sweet memories and living with my Table Memory. He reminded us that Man minus Forced Memory is GOD. By living your Table Memory, you are unclutched and living enlightenment.
In essence, complete with the past memory and you will simply know the future. Then you are ready for the awakening of your possibilities and extraordinary powers in muscle memory and bio memory! Namaste 😀
- Source – 108 truths of the Yoga of Enlightenment by Paramahamsa Nithyananda.