Creeping at Tortoise Pace

Life is short, time is fleeting: your spiritual practice (sadhana) is creeping at tortoise pace.

When will you decide to proceed a little faster? Your sadhana is like the answers you write at the examination. If you get only five or six marks, the examiner will strike out even that, saying, "What is the use of these few marks: it will take this student neither here nor there."

If you get somewhere near the passing marks, then Grace will give you just a little more so that you may pass, provided you have been a diligent and well-behaved student. Engage yourselves in good deeds, good company and good thoughts. Fix your attention on the goal.

Baba (thought for the day)

 

The root chakra is the tortoise and it is about pace and it seems saftety and home. I guess Baba asks us here to go a bit faster or to progress to the next chakra level.

I had a picture of my mother who died in my dream not long ago, today is her birthday. She was very, very old in that dream and it was only body level, kind of funny, it lead to laughing in the dream.

On that spiritual path our life becomes a reflection of reality, life is the best teacher. Therefore, if something goes wrong, it seems to reflect even years later bringing up that reality that life is the best teacher.

That is why I tried to get out of it, but there is no way I guess we get out, there is only a way to live in it and to make the best out of it.

When it is about sadhana Baba said every mantra is okay, if Sadhana is with a mantra. If we think Soham (I am that), we get aware that there is only one 'I' and that is an universal principle, but also every 'body' has an 'I', and we are identified with it.

On this path we get aware that we are not the body, but that universal 'I'. It is pure intelligence.
If we just watch the breath by observing it the mind calms down, just watching the mantra - So ... is the inhale, Ham ... is the exhale. We listen to So - in breathing in and we listen to Ham - in breathing out.

The mind calms down, after a while we transcend it and get out of the mind, that means, meditation is compared to a state of deep sleep and profound rest for the mind. 

That it feels more relaxed and good afterwards that are side effects of it and that we feel younger and live longer etc.

But in reality if it is about the 'I am that' we get aware of the core in us, the inner self and the immortal part of it. That goes beyond life and death. It is a principle and in that inner principle of 'I am that' - is that eternal and living reality we experience as 'he'.

It is quite easy to calm the mind down and to have more strength, more focus and a good feeling, but to realize that there is only one 'I', that is the main focus, because that is self-realization.
The other is just practice and calming down the mind. We have to watch and use discrimination and we have to understand it right.

We have to know the difference between illusion and reality and we have to get aware of what is real and what is only reflection and why the mind is reflecting reality in the past and in the future.

That path is demanding, it is pure intelligence, because if we realize 'who I am', we know also who the other is, he is not different from us, there is the ocean and there are waves. 

The fact that we are able to live other feelings and thoughts like our own that is part of it and belongs to the mind structure and thoughts are on the objective level around us in the air. We have to discriminate between what is mine and what belongs to others. We are all students on the level of consciousness.

To calm down the mind in practicing Sadhana is just an effect because it is like deep sleep, the real thing is the realization, 'Who am I?'.

And the answer is in the mantra 'Soham'.

Baba said in an interview, Soham means, 'I am that', 'I am God', 'I am Shiva'.

I still remember how strange it felt and he said that it opens up the mind. God is on that level not projected in a picture, it is an universal principle, a reality which is true for all, he is universal. 

We are the individual waves, God is the ocean. It is the relationship between the individual and the universal being. Self-realization is that insight that we are all part of the whole and that we are waves in the ocean.

Ceiling of desires is important on the spiritual path, because if we hold on to it, the mind is not going to be transcended and there is no way we can realize that we are the same 'I' if there is still mind, because we are still identified in the mind.

It happens not only in meditation, but it is the result of our life to get aware of who am I? 

Meditation or Sadhana are a means to get objective and to get aware of reality as it is. We have to be able to go beyond the mind conditioning to realize who we really are and that is self-realization.

It is pure intelligence. 
 

A few days ago my daughter came back all upside down, I asked her what had happened. She was vulnerable because of a relationship. But she went fully into it and that was quite unusual. 

In talking about it we felt like part of her sorrow was not even hers, but that of her friends she had talked to and they had enforced it. She was more miserable than it really could be, just because of that kind of lost state of mind of her friend.

But that is the reality of our mind. We live in an ocean and are able to catch thoughts and emotions of others and be identified with it and to live it like our own, even if it had nothing to do with her directly, she was just vulnerable and therefore, much too open and she took in their stuff too. That happens if we are not aware of the mind.

The other girl is older and in a difficult relationship and is in constant emotional problems and she came back and acted that out. After talking about it she got aware of it and got again beyond that emotional stuff, she seemed for a moment to get overwhelmed with. She had to get aware of it and that she identified fully with her situation and lived the others emotions as well. But the reason is that she is too vulnerable and too open and everything could get in and turn into a problem. 

She calmed down fast and feels okay again.

In such moments I often wonder where I am, it is like a jungle and I am just glad if we somehow get out of it again.