I don't know about you but the world around my life seems on the edge of one thing or another. I am hearing this from many others, too.
It all seemed to start with Monday, April 27, the first full day of a massive "all-hands-on-deck" moving party for the East West Bookshop of Seattle (moving across the street). That afternoon, a brilliantly sunny and warm day, our friend, Vajra (Jim) Madden, was struck while walking (in Lynnwood near our Community) on the sidewalk by a car that jumped the curb. [See prior blog in early May]
After a long, sweaty, muscle-bound day of moving boxes and bookcases (that later stretched into several more days) we got a call and sped to the hospital. Vajra had serious and (then) life-threatening head injuries and was in a coma. Then began many long hours and daily visits to the hospital and consultations with the medical staff, paperwork and bill paying and much more. [Now, two months later he is recovering functionality bit by bit.]
A few weeks later most of our local Ananda members traveled to northern California to Ananda Village for a historic and inspired weekend to dedicate the chapel under which is buried Ananda's founder, Swami Kriyananda. Members from all over the world gathered in a celebration of Swamiji's life, discipleship and divine friendship. As I left there to return to Seattle, I felt that a tangible, psychically tectonic shift had just occurred. The life of self-sacrifice and dedication ("tapasya") that Swami took on had just been moved from him to the next generation of Ananda leaders and members.
From that fateful day of April 27 to today, I can truly say I have never been so intensely active in my entire life. For it was just yesterday that four of us returned from a week of programs in three cities in Michigan where we have Ananda centers and members. It, too, was very inspired, even fun, and a blessing for the four of us who went. The joy of our trip and service and the wonderful new friends we made didn't make it any less active and focused. Between returning from Ananda Village in mid-May until we left for Michigan just over a week ago we had 3 sets of Ananda visitors (2 sets from India) complete with tours of the six Ananda "campuses," dinners, "satsangs," and hours of discussions.
Now, none of this compares with President Obama's calendar or that of many active, creative, and high energy people but my examples here are just taken from my own experience. I could go on about the intensity I am seeing in the lives of many, many others. A friend I spoke with today brought this question up saying, in effect, that no matter even with the many enjoyable or fulfilling activities she's involved with, there is still something "edgy" and slightly over-the-top about her life and that of people she's close to. And that's what I am talking about and wondering if something more is afoot.
So, not surprisingly, I believe something is indeed afoot. In the Ananda world, what is afoot is an increase, seemingly sudden, in our public visibility. [Many feel that Swamiji's release from his aging and ill physical form freed up an enormous wave of creative energy accessible by those in tune with him.] The trip to Michigan is a small segment of a larger and very conscious effort to send teachers and others outside our normal service areas. (For decades, Swami Kriyananda circled the globe lecturing, counseling and writing. He's gone now, so who will step up and carry on?)
In the larger world, my sense is also of high energy combined with an outer fringe of edginess and uncertainty. We've had a lengthy period of tension in our nation (and today I heard Holland has joined the racist fray) regarding police brutality in a racial context as one example no one could have predicted. Climate change seems to be intensifying. The field of potential political candidates is spreading like dandelions in the lawn. Why even the local traffic in Seattle is notably more congested than ever.
But whether in Ananda or worldwide what I feel is that "unpredictability" has suddenly spiked upward. Attitudes and actions just beneath the surface are, well, surfacing suddenly. Shifts are happening: some positive, some neutral, some not so positive. Anything, I feel, could happen and in any number of key directions, personally or globally.
The time now, in the midst of the high energy of the summer sun, is to deepen one's life of prayer and meditation. It is a time to be especially sensitive to others and consciously kind and calm ("active calm and calmly active" as Paramhansa Yogananda put it). It isn't a question of countering the intensity of our activity with rest or relaxation or retreat (though no harm in these), it's more a question of remaining centered and calm in the midst of intense activity. Not just calm but mindful and aware.
Under it all, whether at rest or active, we remain always the same. Let God or guru or the divine Self, direct our activities, restful or intense-full, at play or in service. It is all the same, for God is the Doer and this dream is His, not ours. Smile with the sun, even when it's hot for it will soon enough be not. Smile with the rain for the rainbow and the sun will appear as sure as the dawn follows dark.
Blessings to all,
Hriman
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Evolution Ends in Endlessness!
My daughter, Gita Matlock, wrote a blog article yesterday that coincides with my thoughts in preparation for my Sunday Service talk tomorrow (June 7, 2015) on the subject, "How Devotees Fall." Gita's article is entitled, "Anguishing Monotony." http://gitagoing.blogspot.com/
Her article might, at first, sound like a "downer" but it's not. She's not capable of doing "downers." (Her dad, she says, does the downer subjects.) Rather, while she states her admiration for human striving and overcoming challenges, she wonders "Is there an end to it?" What would the struggle mean if we were not aware of it being a struggle or if we didn't seek an end to it?
Self-awareness, you see, is inextricably linked with our human experience of striving and seeking. Good, bad, indifferent qualities are, at first, seemingly inseparable from the objects (obstacles and goals) with which they are identified. But, Gita writes, behind all human qualities, even the most admirable ones, is the hidden source of all qualities: Self-awareness and Consciousness. For without self-awareness, the experiences have no meaning or significance. Indeed, from a practical matter (ours, that is!), perhaps no existence at all!
Is it possible, however, to separate awareness from the objects illuminated by it? The yogis say YES! The science of yoga shows us how, by meditation, using mind and breath control, to strip away the objects reflected in the mind of the Seer. Gazing backwards into the mirror of Self-awareness, the "Eye" confronts an "I," which, like a mirror reflecting back onto itself, reveals an infinite Self-awareness.
Thus Self-awareness, stripped of all objects, is unqualified Being, and, being without name, form, definition or condition of any kind, is complete unto itself. It simply IS! It is not, however, by that fact devoid of feeling.
If you sit very still and your thoughts subside into deep silence, there wells up out of the apparent Void a rising tide of silent joy. Discover for your Self, that Self-awareness cannot be permanently stripped of feeling. When Awareness is without focus upon any external object, subtle or gross, then its Consort, Feeling, also becomes pure and without condition. Pure feeling is No-Thing less than Bliss itself.
Thus all the struggle, striving, and strain has for its aim ..... to return to our Source in Bliss!
Is Bliss some weird No-thing in No-place that is separate from time and space? Or, does Bliss permeate creation while it remains untouched by it? As the sea can exist without waves but waves cannot exist without the sea, Bliss is omnipresent, omniscient, and infinite.
When Paramhansa Yogananda, 20th century avatara and yoga master, and author of the spiritual classic and modern scripture, "Autobiography of a Yogi," was asked "What is the end of soul evolution," he replied, "Endlessness."
Though we naturally seek rest from strain and struggle, rest is but the opposite, not the resolution of effort. Ease and effortlessness lies in the center point between the two. But so also does Bliss; so also does Infinity. As an object approaching the speed of light must, by mathematical definition, become infinite in mass, so too pure Consciousness expands toward Infinity as it sheds the limiting, reflecting and reactive light of forms, emotions, memories, and attachments.
Rest, then, in the Self, even if from this Self we expand into the Great Self of God. As Swami Kriyananda, founder of the Ananda worldwide movement of intentional communities and the best known direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda put it in his landmark text on meditation, "Awaken to Superconsciousness:"
"The more you seek rest as the consequence of doing, rather than in the process of doing, the more restless you will become. Peace isn’t waiting for you over the next hill. Nor is it something you construct, like a building. It must be a part of the creative process itself.
Learn to be restful, even in the midst of activity, and you will be able to relax better when you sit to meditate. As Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “Be calmly active, and actively calm.”
Joy to you!
Nayaswami Hriman
Her article might, at first, sound like a "downer" but it's not. She's not capable of doing "downers." (Her dad, she says, does the downer subjects.) Rather, while she states her admiration for human striving and overcoming challenges, she wonders "Is there an end to it?" What would the struggle mean if we were not aware of it being a struggle or if we didn't seek an end to it?
Self-awareness, you see, is inextricably linked with our human experience of striving and seeking. Good, bad, indifferent qualities are, at first, seemingly inseparable from the objects (obstacles and goals) with which they are identified. But, Gita writes, behind all human qualities, even the most admirable ones, is the hidden source of all qualities: Self-awareness and Consciousness. For without self-awareness, the experiences have no meaning or significance. Indeed, from a practical matter (ours, that is!), perhaps no existence at all!
Is it possible, however, to separate awareness from the objects illuminated by it? The yogis say YES! The science of yoga shows us how, by meditation, using mind and breath control, to strip away the objects reflected in the mind of the Seer. Gazing backwards into the mirror of Self-awareness, the "Eye" confronts an "I," which, like a mirror reflecting back onto itself, reveals an infinite Self-awareness.
Thus Self-awareness, stripped of all objects, is unqualified Being, and, being without name, form, definition or condition of any kind, is complete unto itself. It simply IS! It is not, however, by that fact devoid of feeling.
If you sit very still and your thoughts subside into deep silence, there wells up out of the apparent Void a rising tide of silent joy. Discover for your Self, that Self-awareness cannot be permanently stripped of feeling. When Awareness is without focus upon any external object, subtle or gross, then its Consort, Feeling, also becomes pure and without condition. Pure feeling is No-Thing less than Bliss itself.
Thus all the struggle, striving, and strain has for its aim ..... to return to our Source in Bliss!
Is Bliss some weird No-thing in No-place that is separate from time and space? Or, does Bliss permeate creation while it remains untouched by it? As the sea can exist without waves but waves cannot exist without the sea, Bliss is omnipresent, omniscient, and infinite.
When Paramhansa Yogananda, 20th century avatara and yoga master, and author of the spiritual classic and modern scripture, "Autobiography of a Yogi," was asked "What is the end of soul evolution," he replied, "Endlessness."
Though we naturally seek rest from strain and struggle, rest is but the opposite, not the resolution of effort. Ease and effortlessness lies in the center point between the two. But so also does Bliss; so also does Infinity. As an object approaching the speed of light must, by mathematical definition, become infinite in mass, so too pure Consciousness expands toward Infinity as it sheds the limiting, reflecting and reactive light of forms, emotions, memories, and attachments.
Rest, then, in the Self, even if from this Self we expand into the Great Self of God. As Swami Kriyananda, founder of the Ananda worldwide movement of intentional communities and the best known direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda put it in his landmark text on meditation, "Awaken to Superconsciousness:"
"The more you seek rest as the consequence of doing, rather than in the process of doing, the more restless you will become. Peace isn’t waiting for you over the next hill. Nor is it something you construct, like a building. It must be a part of the creative process itself.
Learn to be restful, even in the midst of activity, and you will be able to relax better when you sit to meditate. As Paramhansa Yogananda put it, “Be calmly active, and actively calm.”
Joy to you!
Nayaswami Hriman
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