Today Swami talks about the body and we know it very well and that we should have the correct attitude to see God as formless and that is good for meditation.
It is the first thing we get aware of when we are born, our body and it is quite natural that we think we are that body and if someone would tell us something else, we would just wonder about it. We have only that body, so why should we not be identified with it and think, wow, that is I.
So long as one has a form, it is quite natural that they think of that form; but since that form has to be forgotten some day or the other, it is good to concentrate on the formless supreme and give up attachment to a form.
As we get aware that we have to die, in the West we usually try first to forget about it and most people like to think live and lets live as long as possible and enjoy life as long as we can.
There is only one problem, it seems not that enjoyable and natural to get to the conclusion if there wouldn't be any pain or suffering, we would enjoy it more and if we listen to Swami and Veda we get to the conclusion that it is not quite right.
Vedanta teaches us the philosophy of detachment (vairagya) to help in this process of concentrating on the formless supreme power which is behind every form.
If we have to let go of that body anyhow one day as everybody has to die, there is an art of doing it. And Veda is telling us be smart and start early with it and learn the art of not being the body. We never know when we actually are going to die and so we cannot start early enough as we don't know the time, we try to not suffer that the body gets old and whatever, with other words we try to get some wisdom.
If we focus on the formless, always young supreme power behind every form, we look at it all differently, we look at life in a different way. We focus not on the body only, but also on the soul, isn't that great.
There is a small issue though about the soul, we feel it, we are it, we hope we are it, but we cannot see the soul and we have first to believe in the soul, before we can experience it.
In the West instead of thinking that we better get aware that we are not the body as we have to die anyhow, we go on questioning it and by that we even think we are intelligent beings. We wonder what is right? Is there really a soul? Is there a God and how do we handle that dilemma that we cannot see God. Does he exist or not?
That is the West and we look at our religion and in fact we have a problem, because we believe more in science, it can be proved and that feels more safe and just believe cannot be proven and as we are modern Western beings, we usually prefer science and that means we cannot prove it and the question what to do about it is always somehow in the air in the West.
We don't want to be blinded by blind believe. And then we ask what is true and what is blind believe? So out of the simple feeling of I when we first recognized that we have a body, something difficult has resulted and it is not anymore that easy.
It is inevitable that the soul (jiva) leaves the body. This body is like a water bubble on the surface of water. This water bubble is born out of water, lives on water, and survives on water, and finally it gets dissolved in water.
As the soul is the eternal being and not the body it has to leave the body or if we are identified with the body it means we die, the body dies. If we are identified with the soul, we leave the body and if we are identified with the body, we die. It is easy really, the question is only where our identification is and if that is clear, no problem really if we look at it that way.
Who is going to die if the body is just a water bubble? We are only going to die if we think the body is solid matter and I am that body. In reality we are not the body.
It is much easier to believe if we have made the experience of it and we know it is true and as we are not the body, why should there be weakness, it is not correct.
The soul can never be weak it is just light always the same light and if there is weakness we know the sunlight is always there otherwise, it would not be daylight, but it can be covered by clouds and we don't see it and that is weakness and we just have to wait until our personal weather changes and it will be sunny again.
We know sometimes it takes time, the weather is our teacher and tells us, just be patient, it will pass and one day the sun will be there again.
It is a big difference if we know it or if we don't know it.
If we don't know it and we think we are the body, we get to the not right conclusion that this weakness is actually my state of mind or my life even and that doesn't feel good and that creates a lot of problems and that is what we call Maya, illusion, we live in the idea that we are a miserable, little bodies and we have to suffer whatever that is. It happens to everybody and in that sense it is cruel to not know that we are not the body and that we are the soul.
Even if we have not realized that we are the soul and we don't know that truth yet out of our own experience, we will patiently wait that it changes and it will feel different again and we don't make a huge thing out of our weakness by thinking that we are the body and weak.
If we think we are not okay, we can bother everybody about it and most often the family, the people we actually love most, as we are that weak and we have to live like that, what a misery and misery seeks company and that is for nobody enjoyable really, with exception to the one who thinks he is weak and enjoys to bother everybody about it.
If we don't feel well and think we are that and we feel so bad and that our life has no meaning and all those things coming up in our mind, we have to change something or we end up as muddy and negative beings. What we express is a miserable state of mind just because we think we are the body. With other words, the identification with the body as a huge influence on the way we think, act and feel.
It is very important that difference if we know or think that we are not the body and we patiently wait until it will be okay again, or we are weak and we express that weakness with the people we love most usually.
It is summer time and the windows are open and it was during a weekend and I was writing and I heard someone in our neighborhood scream out loud and going on like that for I don't know how long time and even if I didn't listen the bad energy we could feel as the window was open and I felt sorry with him and the others who had to endure that.
That is a way to make ourselves miserable and the others, and all that just because we would like to be happy and for some reason he cannot see how he could be happy just in that moment like that and he seems to be screaming it out as loud as he can so that everybody should know it. If we are identified with the body and think that this body is weak, we can get into such states of mind and even think it is normal and it is not normal, because we are not the body.
To think that one is full of weakness is not correct. The correct attitude is to regard God as formless, without attributes. We should take it that God is present in us. That should be the right attitude.
And Swami tells us to see the formless divine without any attributes.
We can experience it as pure consciousness, just pure being. It is a normal experience for someone who is meditating. We just need to close the eyes and repeat the mantra, we forget thoughts and when we are back in the mind thethoughts are back, they are part of it, only when we notice that we are not with the mantra, we begin with the mantra again and do it a certain time. It can be that some time passed, even ten minutes or more and we had no notion of it, we are beyond the feeling of time and space. If there are thought, it doesn't matter they are part of it, but as soon as we notice that we forget the mantra, we get back to it.
If we transcend the mind, there is no time and space and no I, just pure being and as soon as there are thoughts, we are back in the mind again.
We don't judge meditation and we don't expect anything from meditation, we just do it about twenty minutes. It is normal that we feel good afterwards as it is relaxing and we get in touch with the inner source, what Swami calls here the formless divine without attributes.
It feels good if we dive deep into that formless divine. If there are still problems in the mind, we meditate and forget it and if not, it doesn't matter, after a meditation usually there is more distance. It will be different and if we feel good and better and energized from the inside as we get in touch with the formless divine, it is a good feeling and in it is strength and not weakness.
The weakness is always related to the body only, when we meditate we go beyond the mind and the body and there cannot be any weakness.
That is why we get out of such an exercise refreshed and like we would have given a bath to our mind. Mediation is purifying our mind and takes care that we start every day new again. It is easy to experience the formless divine with mediation, very easy, because when we transcend our thoughts and our body feeling, there is nothing but the formless divine and we will not even be aware of it, we will just feel good and it is a realm of perfect orderliness of unlimited strength and an infinite potential, it is beyond the body, it is therefore not limited to the body, we get on an unilimited level also called the formless divine.
It is a level of all possibilities and it feels good, therefore, we don't have to do anything to feel good, our meditation will take care of it and we will feel good after the daily praxis.
It is normal to feel relaxed and energized and happy and whatever the sorrow had been before mediation, after it can be gone or less or we just forget it and go on with our life. And if it is back when the mediation is finished, there is maybe a change needed and it will make us able to look at it and to use more of our mental potential and therefore, it helps also to make better decisions and to take care of it to make us able to see it a different way and to take care of it.
Thus meditation has only a good influence and our environment benefits from it.
We are able to take care of our problems and impurities in the mind and don't burden the others with it. That is real strength and that is the good result when we know that we are not the body and we are not identified with it.
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