Monday, March 13, 2017

Concentration and Insights

Each and every one of you has a great deal of concentration. You know the art, for every task requires it and everyone benefits from good concentration. The carpenter, the weaver, the clerk, the boatman - all have it in a greater or lesser degree. Use that power of concentration for the task of directing the mind, towards its own goodness. Examine its working and train it to restrict itself to good company, good thoughts and good deeds. Practice meditation on any form of the Lord and repeat any name of the Lord with the awareness of its sweetness. That will teach your mind to be sharp and produce good music out of the joys as well as the griefs that are incidental to life. If the arena of life is entered just for getting sensory joy, you are in for all kinds of trouble. It is like sailing in a tiny boat on a storm-tossed sea without a rudder. So enter upon the path of spiritual discipline now itself.

One-pointedness and concentration what is that important, we know as well as dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi, (even intellect), the three together are samyama and that we need as advanced type of meditation with the Patanjali sutras for them to be there or as we could tell to manifest. 
But in listening to his words and thinking it over it can also happened that we get aware, but that was the reason there was the feeling of self-realization when I was only sixteen and a teenager and writing a diary, it had to do with focus. 
It was a kind of amazing experience and with that writing there was the insight self-realization and after that experience had ended, it was always kind of intriguing how I got to that feeling of self-realization and I tried to find it again, but it was not there anymore. And in listening to his words we get aware, it was the concentration and that was not only present in the diary, but as well in the parents. 
As a teenager writing a diary there were all types of insights. But there was a similar focus in my parents working together. It was a kind of dedicated concentration. As Swami is pointing out here, it is the same for an artist, it is as well for a mountaineer. It was there in their work. 




That is how we get aware of the benefit of concentration and as a teenager inspired by the parents it was writing and a diary, but it was more on the feeling level and I just did it. I enjoyed to write, put the words together, to form sentences, just writing, it just mattered to write it down and by that getting a feeling of self-realization. In the light of his words in listening, thinking it over to absorb, we feel that reality and why there was the feeling of self-realization. After all we have to get aware of it. 
It was in steps, there was a ladder and steps, what said we had to go step by step. That were the first insights and I thought that it would go on. 
But when the first step ended, to a certain time it didn't make any sense anymore to just write a diary I had to face the reality that I knew nothing about it and how I got to that experience. After I had stopped with it and I thought I would start in another way again, I had to face the fact that I didn't know how. It was inspired by the parent's house. 
It had to do with focus, so every attempt to understand it later or to get there again with a purpose to make it more meaningful, didn't work, the feeling of self-realization was already the highest possible and there was no way I could find something more meaningful. 
After I had tried about everything and I went on trying there was the point I realized it got only worse and not better and I began to watch to just have one-pointed focus at the beginning it was fun and light, but with time it began to load, it began to challenge time and our own limitations and it was not really possible telling others what I did, I just watched or if someone asked what I was looking for, I said truth, because automatically by watching it had to do with truth. 
And Swami said, truth has to come out of the heart and it was there after watching, it seemed it took time, but it was there as an insight in the dream stage, it was a very bright light and a light body and it was that beautiful there was only love and that is actually all I wanted and had been watching and waiting for. 
That was the insight and an insight is not a concept, it is not something we think, it is something we see and experience. 
The body was dark and sleeping and between the light body and the body was a gap and in that gap was a blue ribbon and in it in big letters was written self. 
That is how I knew it was the higher self. It felt good, but it needed to be understood. As it was beyond the body, the question was how to reach it as it had not a body? 
It was just that. 
First we had to get away from the idea that we know, as I was unable to we understand it, if I would have known it would not have been a problem, but because I realized I know nothing about it, I needed a spiritual master. 
The mind cannot know the higher self, it doesn't make sense, it is a paradox, that it is all we want, but we cannot get it as it has no body. 
He is the knower, therefore, he knows. When we realize that he is knower, we begin to listen to his words and he said in the insight, 'use my words'. 
When we know that he is the knower we have to listen to his words, but it is not just reading it, we listen and think it over to be able to absorb. That is how we get to inner view. 
He is telling us he is the director of the play and we are the actors and only he knows the play.  
Each and every one of you has a great deal of concentration. You know the art, for every task requires it and everyone benefits from good concentration. The carpenter, the weaver, the clerk, the boatman - all have it in a greater or lesser degree. Use that power of concentration for the task of directing the mind, towards its own goodness. 

We have to get that power of concentration that it is directing our mind towards its own goodness. 
It is that power of concentration that is present when we start with mantra repetition and it leads to transcending the mind and the thoughts and it goes beyond the mind and that is meditation and we get in to samadhi, even intellect and we know from our meditation practice, we had to go into samyama even if it was not called like that but we got there in a lot of meditation practice and in that state if we think a Patanjali sutra, it can manifest what was called the siddhi powers, it was for us to verify if we had that level of pure consciousness. 
If we go to Swami and think we can ask for everything without that we do a spiritual effort or without that we meditate, we are in the mind and if we think a sutra in the mind it is just positive thinking, it is in no way a siddhi. 
We had that story told by a devotee how he got to Swami and his mother told him as he was an overactive young boy if he wanted something he could ask Swami for it, but he had to repeat the mantra a hundred and eight times, it is like jappa, the jappa mala has a hundred and eight beads. It is also a way to get in touch with the inner divine, with the light in us what makes us one with him and only in that state the wishes get fulfilled we had trained it with the sutras constantly. 
And my ex was someone who said that he meditates, but he didn't, he just said it as his boss was into it and I was into it as well. He said it the way that we had to think he was sincere as he mentioned it when he was initiated into mediation practice, he said that he knew he would do it always and one day during traveling he told me, he never did it.
It was in that moment such a strange statement, I had no idea what he wanted to tell me actually, it was like I didn't get the message it was too bad after all. He said he was a meditator and more or less our relationship was based on that in my mind and he told me he never did it?
I didn't even got into shock, I just had the feeling to not get what he said. 
It was a kind of too bad to be able to absorb it, it was a sacrilege as we had met with Baba at the ashram and everything turned around truth and love and being truthful and what he told me in that way not only that it was not true, but that nothing was true what he had said actually.  
Just because we were into it to make us believe that he did it as well became only meaning when I got in touch with his boss and I began to realize who he was. He just wanted to please him and to look good for him to stay in touch with him and so he pretended he did it and his boss had paid the initiation as it seems for the whole office and later he said, that he paid only half of it. 
He was initiated, he was going on fooling us that he did it, the way he talked about it and also that we get only aware of in thinking over Swami's thought. 
With other words the focus Swami is talking about here was not in him, only taking advantage was in him. 
As our relationship was based on it, what he was not aware off as it seemed or he began to be abusive when he got aware of it, there was a point it didn't work anymore. 
But he still goes to India to make cheap vacation as he said. 
When he went the first time as he said his boss had told him he could ask from Swami anything he wanted, he could have his room there at the ashram as he thought he was a meditator and he went and began to feel good as the friend of a VIP. 
And for me he was playing the same role as he lived in his boss's room. 
He came with the idea that he can ask anything from Swami, it means he took only advantage of it, as he was not a meditator, he didn't go beyond the body and he had no idea about going beyond the body. 
The oneness with the divine reality of a spiritual master was not real and only in his mind and he went on pretending on the mind level that he was someone he was not and he had no inclination of being it. 
Even if he goes there every year, he tell he goes only for cheap vacation, he didn't care about putting one thing of the teaching into practice. 
There is no spiritual effort in his mind, only taking advantage of it. In the meantime he goes there since years, he didn't care about his daughter, he didn't care about duty and being a father, he is the worst example of a pretend devotee really. 
Without spiritual effort it doesn't work. 
Swami always tells us he is not the mind, he is beyond he mind if we come in the mind and as for mind pleasures, how can we expect to get it? He had also a Swami dream and he told him, 'give, give give, I will not give, you lived a dream, that is your problem not mine.' 
The giving has anyhow to do with the ego, the divine self is love and love lives from sacrifice and not just taking. The dream is also the mind as truth has to do with insights and the heart and if we get aware of truth, the reflection is right action. 
If there is no truth, it is just a dream. It is not Swami's problem, because he is not the dream, he is truth only. 
Love lives from sacrifice, so everything he did was based on the mind only and his ego and he is stupid as he doesn't get the message and it is twenty years ago we had left and by hazard we met last year at the ashram. It was good because the ashram keeps the feeling of everything is spiritual and in that sense I can understand why I had been with him, at the ashram he seemed even charming and nice, and he lost that soon when back in the US, when we had to get aware that nothing was true, it felt somehow ridiculous and it didn't feel anymore charming and nice.  
So he just imagined that it was Swami when we met and he said he knew I was the wife Swami gave him and it was a dream, it was only mind, no truth to it. 
The same with everything else he wanted, he didn't get it. It needs a spiritual effort to get there. 
If we listen to Swami's word we also get aware that when he said, you lived a dream that it is based on the mind. In listening to him we hear that truth has to come from the heart and we also realize that he doesn't know that truth. 

We left twenty years ago, the man coming in our dreams to awaken was there in the insight as truth and my ex was standing in a ruin and he said, that is all I could get in garage sales, he was dressed in a red skirt and in a black fur jacket. 
The ruin had holes as floor, the walls were crumbled and there was no roof.
The inside is not just a picture, everything has a meaning, after all the reflection no spiritual attitude in his mind, tamas is black it is the heart leve and heart chakra was in the fur jacket and black, it tamas, it is upside down, it was rich looking as a fur jacket as he pretend to be the friend of his wealthy boss and the reality of it is he got it all in garage sales for a few dollars. The red skirt is passion and the root chakra and women cloths as he is a man is a persiflage, a perverted picture of a man as he was dressed as a man in woman cloths and the spirituality or sathva was the house and he had ruined it, the floor is self-confidence, there were only holes left, the walls are self-satisfaction and that was crumbles, the roof as not there at all, that is self-sacrifice and that is what we realized last year when we went for a visit. 
He said look how much things I got in garage sales. The place was everything he got from garage sales or his sister. The bed from the sister, the shelves he got from garage sales, everything was filled with stuff from garage sales. 
At the ashram he pretended to have a good job with his former boss who had retired as he said and he waited for him to start working again. In reality he had lost his job and his boss sent him to Swami because he was unable to find something else. 
It means he was jobless when he made me believe we had not to worry as we had to go with him to the US, and they we had the big surprise in getting there and the black fur jacket shows that he made it look upside down, as his boss is wealthy and a VIP he talked constantly about him avoiding to tell the truth as it really was. Tamas is turning things upside down, makes out of a vice a virtue and vice versa and that was nothing but Tamas and how we had met, the rich fur jacket was what he got in garage sales, it was just pretending and nothing else. 
It went on and got worse and worse and I had no idea about it, I went on with meditation and he had been abusive and blamed me for everything at the end and then Swami was in his dream and told me in his dream that I had to back to Swami to make peace with him. He came to me and told me his dream, blaming me for being that stupid that I had to go and make peace with a Sai Baba. 
That is how we left and we went to India and we were unable or going back, Swami was even in the child's dream and said, if she would go back to him as he is destroying himself, he would be destroying her as well. 
Getting those insights it was all about right action and it was impossible of getting back to him. 
It was a disaster, it would have ruined us and I just didn't get it how I got into that sick situation in his presence. The truth is coming from the heart and I am living since such a long time in that truth, I had no idea that other don't do the same. 
Truth had to come from the heart and Swami said, he is the insight, that is truth and he is the following step, the reflection of truth is right action. 
If we blend right action and truth we live in peace. 
Therefore, if that reflects on his dream that I had to go and make peace with Swami as he had seen it in his dream and he didn't see it as a gift or a Swami Lila as we do usually, but something to be blamed about, that is how I got aware of his state of mind and in that moment it was a shock.  
The insight were that bad, we were not able of going back, as the insight is Swami it is about truth, first the insight and the following step is Swami as well, it was therefore about right action. That is how we get a feeling for truth and how it works together as right action and if we have those two we have peace. 
We have already three human values, truth, right action and peace, sathya, dharma, shanti and we need those three to experience pure love, prema. 
If truth and right action are separate there are only pieces left.
We had dinner together and he invited us and he paid with a credit card.
That card was some time later in the insight as what it said that it was also my mistake, always putting the blame on others and after a while I just couldn't take it anymore as it had nothing to do with truth, I was ready to take my own crap on myself, but to be blamed for his crap only was abusive. It was just for the joy as it seems to blame someone else for him, that guy was able to go to a meeting, to destroy everything we had build up for years in one moment because of some money issue and to get into arguments and she had been a Baba devotee and we thought it was a Baba Lila and he came back even if I had not been there and said, 'what have you done', with other words, I had to find the lawyer to get us out of the troubles he had created. 
That is why I had done it as he was unable to handle it. 
I had to take the blame for about everything and it didn't matter to me when I had to take the blame for him that he was unable to live in peace and I went for that reason to make peace with Swami. 
For me that was Baba call and I was glad to go. There was one more Baba dream when he Baba, sent my back to my lovely husband. 
That dream made us aware that there could be a change in view, as he was blaming me for everything and he had never felt like husband and even less as lovely husband. He was really everything else but lovely.  

But he next night the same credit card was in pieces and Swami said, when truth and right action are separated, only pieces are left. 
It is the level where truth and right action had been separated, it means no peace. If we blend truth and right action there will be peace, that is the basic of Swami's teaching. 
If we listen and think it over, we get the inner view. 
The place were truth and right action was separated was with the credit card. 
He was the one who pretended to have a job with his former boss and made it look like it was all easy and it was too charming to think it was a Baba Lila, I went for it because I thought it was a Baba Lila and that was tempting. 
We have also the insight with the ruin and the black fur jacket that makes us aware of the reality of it. Black is Tamas and as Swami said, Sathva is the path, Rajas, passion needs to be transformed and Tamas we have to give up. 
In that picture of the black fur jacket is the Tamas and that we have to give up, it is what is perverted. It was in Swami's presence during a speech in the air, 'it is perverted, you have to get a divorce' and it felt like a punishment and he said, 'you didn't listen'. 
It is really the last thing I had expected to find in his presence someone like that and instead of truth nothing but untruth and perversion and even getting into marriage with it and now we had to get a divorce, it was really difficult and there was a time I felt unable to go and sing Bhajans it was that upsetting and the other devotees made just the memory of all that crap come up we had lived in the idea of a Baba Lila.

And no peace, after four months in the presence of Swami, the peace was already gone before we left the ashram, the child was sick and we wanted to fly from Puttaparthi to Bombay what was possible at that time and we could get the ticket only with cash and we didn't have that much in cash and therefore, tying to get cash with the credit card, we had to get aware that he had canceled our credit card. We could still use it, but not for cash and we had to go with a child in high fever to Bangalore let her alone in a hotel room sleeping and she didn't noticed it lucky in that sense I knew Swami would talk care of it and I had to go and get a flight ticket we didn't get before in the idea it would be cheaper in India. 
That is the missing roof, no self-sacrifice, he didn't think of the family and child and if they were okay and he never did. 
it was the same last year when we went for a visit. 
That explains the picture of the ruin and we get now a feeling for it. 
The house of self-realization is a ruin, he has ruined it. And the credit card it he place when truth and right action were separated and only pieces are left, it means no peace. That is why I had to go and make peace with Swami. 
The ruin is the reflection of the spiritual path and sathva. 

He doesn't know what he is doing as Swami said in his daughter's dream and the child was endangered by his attitude of mind what was there even before we left the ashram, what made us aware beyond doubt that there was no way going back to him. 
He had interview and Swami told him, he still doesn't get it. 
When the Tamasic mind state hears about spiritual truth he goes a sleep he doesn't get it and that is what I had experienced afterward with him no matter how often I told him to just go by Swami's Lila it would work out okay, he didn't do it, he didn't get it and he didn't even respond. 
That is how insights become inner view, if we listen to the knower and we think it over and see it in our own life and we are able to absorb and by that it becomes inner view. 

Examine its working and train it to restrict itself to good company, good thoughts and good deeds. Practice meditation on any form of the Lord and repeat any name of the Lord with the awareness of its sweetness. That will teach your mind to be sharp and produce good music out of the joys as well as the griefs that are incidental to life. 

That is what we had thought it was, as we met at the ashram, we thought it was good company and it made us go for it. But there were no good thoughts, but the worst was really the abuse, constantly blaming me for everything and putting it on me when it was his own mistake, something I couldn't live with anymore with time because it had nothing to do with truth and he didn't want to know about truth. 
There is no self-sacrifice, the red woman skirt shows there is no transformation of passion as well, he is just living it no matter what, there is no spiritual path in that picture, but a ruin, the ruin of it. 
And by listening to Swamis words or even more by thinking it over we get aware of it and we can understand the insights and dream pictures in such a way that it does make sense.
In the meantime I have more distance and I don't get into shock or unable to think anymore when thinking it over or that tired that I don't feel like just getting upset. 
We should be able to see it as a lesson and no doubt we can learn from it, but it is also depressing and takes our energy away and that is the insight with Swami with vampire teeth, the energy monster, that is not exactly good company that person I had met in the ashram in Swami's presence, but in thinking it over getting the insights we can see why and we can learn to see it in the light of his words, no matter if it is difficult, that is depressing, loading and difficult, that is a different matter.  

If the arena of life is entered just for getting sensory joy, you are in for all kinds of trouble. It is like sailing in a tiny boat on a storm-tossed sea without a rudder.m   So enter upon the path of spiritual discipline now 

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