Living in Harmony in the World.

In our current era, we are witness to changes that occur at an alarming rate and even to the extent where many people find it difficult to cope. Much of this change is almost beyond human comprehension. The challenges we face are enormous. We see hunger, disease, over population, depletion of resources, global warming, changing weather patterns, drought, flooding, soil erosion, earth quakes and tsunamis. The world is confronted with social, political, economic and environmental challenges that are disharmonious to our existence.

Scientists are foremost among those who warn of life threatening human damage to the earth and its atmosphere. We see the evidence of these warnings in the frequent and massive earth quakes as continental plates shift; we have tsunamis, forest fires, drought, flooding, and pollution. The world’s food supply is becoming dangerously low. Our energy supply is dwindling. We are destroying rain forests which  purify our atmosphere. These and many others are signs indicating that we will face severe challenges if we continue with our present way of life.

Yoga philosophyteaches that creation is one and that all things are created from the same energy and substance; that all should work in harmony with creation.

However, humanity endowed with free will finds it often difficult to submit to any authority which it perceives as being outside or beyond itself, and must inevitably face the consequences if it refuses to respect the laws of nature and of the universe.

We have alienated ourselves from nature and from God even though, much of humanity professes to have religious affiliations.

Our acts of ravaging the earth for the immediate satisfaction of our desires and the resultant covering of the earth with the polluted waste of our life-style shows the serious consequences we are facing.

Greed is rampant amongst people and nations. Families are breaking up and many lead unhealthy lifestyles.

If we are not determined to individually and collectively make some revolutionary changes to our ways of thinking and living, we may well cause the demise of our present civilization.

Humanity must become more aware of its interdependence and live in harmony with one another, with the environment and the laws governing nature and the cosmos.

We may ask ourselves, whether the patterns to which we are witness are of a of karmic nature in which case societies reap the effects of their actions and only a change of behaviour in accord with divine order will result in a brighter future.

However if unrighteousness, violence and evil prevails, and we disregard the balance and harmony of the created universe, we may well cause even more chaos and disintegration in our society and in the world.

For a society and nations to thrive, there needs to be a common bond of community, a sense of direction based on balance, harmony, freedom and respect for all life.

Buddha taught that selfish desire, greed, fear, lust, anger, and power over the weak are the roots of suffering; that we need to live with compassion for all life.

Yoga teaches that we suffer because of ignorance. We must realize who and what we are, and live in accordance with our true nature.

Christ brought the message of love and forgiveness. He expressed, that first we must seek the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness and all things will be given unto us.

This is no time for passively standing by hoping that some outside force will save us and the world, but a time for all to take responsible right action by living righteous and productive lives.

If we have the will, much can be done. We need to examine our lives in accordance with our professed ideals, on the physical, mental and spiritual levels. If we neglect any one of these areas, we are not living in wholeness. We need to remember, that we may not be able to change the world, but we can change the way we think, and behave in a responsible manner.

The following are suggestions of what we can do.

We need to reduce excessive consumption and waste.

We need to simplify our lives.

We can improve the quality of our physical being through exercise and healthy diet and thus reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

We also can improve joint stability through regular exercise.

We can increase and improve the range of movement and flexibility through hatha yoga.

We can maintain bone mass through lifting of light weights.

Exercise and proper nutrition helps to prevent osteoporosis and fractures.

We need to reduce the frequency of eating out in restaurants, of drinking excessive amounts of alcohol and eating fast food or junk foods.

   

Avoid staying up late, and not getting enough sleep.

From a psychological perspective, we need to keep our mind active.

We can improve mood swings; reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression through avoiding unhealthy foods and through relaxation exercises.

We enhance self esteem by realizing our true nature, and in accomplishing daily little victories that tell us: ‘We are ok’.

Elderly people can improve memory through computer based exercises.

We can reduce stress through living in the present and through meditation.

We need to minimize sitting too much in front of the TV

We also need to take care of our inner or spiritual well being by realizing, that we are first and foremost spiritual beings, having a mind and body.

Spiritual well-being is a state in which positive aspects of spirituality are experienced and incorporated into our daily lives. How the effects of spiritual practice impact us is greatly determined by how consistent we are in our practice.

Through participating in spiritual gatherings or guidance, we can become increasingly self empowered and begin to realize and appreciate that even though we have issues, stresses, and challenges, they can be overcome. Often all that is required is a different way of looking at circumstances that confront us. This realization provides a pathway to greater peace, freedom of self-expression, and positive self-esteem.

The following experiences are some of the indicators of spiritual well being.

Live in the consciousness of the present moment.

Be open to spiritual influences of intuition, inspiration and grace. This occurs when we are relaxed and peaceful.

Cultivate a feeling of contentment under all circumstances.

Through meditation, experience joy and inner peace.

Taking control of our lives and solving life’s challenges in a positive and confident manner.

Participate in purposeful physical and mental activities.

Taking an active part in life rather than standing still and watching life pass by.

Be established in intimate loving and lasting relationships.

Experiencing a feeling of purpose and meaning in life.

Respect all life and live according to the moral laws.

Reach out and help our neighbour in need.

Each person and spiritual aspirant should every night before retiring ask his intuition whether his spiritual or his worldly inclinations of temptations won the day’s battle between good and bad habits.

Between:

Temperance and greed,

Self control and lust,

Honest desire for necessities or for excess,

Forgiveness and anger,

Joy and grief, kindness and cruelty,

Selfishness and unselfishness,

Understanding and jealousy,

Bravery and cowardice,

Confidence and fear,

Faith and doubt,

Humility and pride,

Between desire to commune with God in meditation and the restless craving for worldly activities,

Spiritual and material desires,

Divine ecstasy and sensory perceptions,

It is good to remind ourselves, that we can always choose a positive outlook over a negative one. It is up to us.

By right thinking, living and responsible action, we can all contribute to the wellness of ourselves, our society and our planet.

May we all be a light to the world and live in harmony and peace.

The stranger in the Body Temple.

We perceive the outer world primarily through our senses and arrange the incoming information according to our states of consciousness. Since we each have different perceptions, we see our world somewhat differently from one another. Our perceptions of the outer world, together with social conditioning and the influence of the mass media, develop much of our personalities, which become more and more entrenched as we grow in age. We believe this is who we are and that we cannot change. We attempt to convince others to think the way we think, for this gives us validation that we are right. We often like to change the people around us, but we ourselves say that we cannot change, for this is the way we are. 

Are we really who and what we claim to be- our personalities? Or are we something or someone else? The scriptures tell us that we are made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:24), but who or what is God? Can anyone with conviction say what God is and what this image is, without quoting what he or she has been told by someone else? If we cannot know for ourselves what God is, how can we claim that we know His image? What is the rational solution? Perhaps it should remain a mystery.

But perhaps there is a way to solve this dilemma. The scripture tells us, “Let us go into the closet and shut the door” to our inner sanctuary (Matthew 6:6). There we will get to know this stranger: the image of God, the real Self, and even perhaps God, as proclaimed in the Yoga texts. We will get to know that we are a reflection of His being. There we will find that this is our trusted friend, our wisest teacher, our best advisor. There we will find, the source of all goodness, all strength, all power, and all love. We will realize that God is in the deepest part of silence. He is the Holiest of the Holy. There we can feel and know the closeness of the relationship between God and ourselves. There we will get to know that only in consciousness has there been any separation where man appears as two- the ego and the Self- just as our spirits and our bodies seem to be two but in reality are just one.

God fills both heaven and Earth. This was the great revelation of Jacob in the silence. He had slept, yet in a great burst of illumination he saw the outer world as an expression of the image he held within. So impressed was he, that he called out, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not” (Genesis 28:16). God, the Divine Law, is present in the Earth and in the body. Man will eventually learn to understand that the real gate to heaven is his own consciousness.

It is the ladder, a state of consciousness similar to what Jacob experienced in his vision, which each of us must climb before we can enter that silent, secret place of the most high and find that we are in the very centre of every created thing, one with all things visible and invisible. We are a part of God’s creative process and not apart from it.

A vision similar to what Jacob experienced came to Jesus (see John 1:35-51). It is said that when the heavens were opened unto Him, He saw the wonderful law of expression whereby ideas conceived in the Divine mind come forth into expression and manifest as forms. So perfect is this law of expression revealed to Jesus, that at once he saw that all form may be transformed through a change in one’s consciousness?

Non-dual Yoga teaches that man is a reflection (an image) of God. Yoga calls this reflection the Self, the Atman, the “I am,” and the Christ within. It teaches that through meditation, through the inner way, we must first get to know the Self, the Christ within, or the Christ Consciousness, before God can be revealed to us. When we raise our consciousness from ordinary consciousness to super consciousness in deep meditation, we will realize God.

In Psalm 46:10 it is written, “Be still and know that I am God.” What does this mean? It means not only that we must be quiet and listen, but also that our minds must be stilled.

Patanjali 2^nd yoga sutra states: “Yoga-oneness with the object contemplated, chitta-mind, vritti-modification, nirodha-cessation,” which translated literally means, yoga is the result of stopping the fluctuations which normally occur in the mind.

When the body is relaxed and the mind is still, we enter into a state of super consciousness. It is here where we experience oneness, wholeness, and union.

Many of the religious teachers in my experience don’t teach the need to “be still, to be in silence.” They tell that to have a relationship with God is attained through reading the bible. This is unfortunate because just reading implies that we learn about something, but not actually getting to know it

If you ask a monk what God is, he may tell you, “He is ever-conscious, ever-existing bliss, joy, and love.” Why will he say so? It’s because he experiences these attributes when he is meditating on the God within.

Our highest purpose in life is Self and God realization. This leads us to inner freedom and peace and at the same time it will unlock our hidden potential. In the words of Jesus: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things will be given unto you” (Matthew 6:33).

 Let us pray that we come to realize that God is nearer to us than anything, for God is our own Consciousness.

“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

The stranger in the body temple if you have not already guessed is our real Self, but we have forgotten and have substituted our ego in place of it.

Peace be with us.

Conscious living in the world.

In yoga, the one Life, Being and Power responsible for the manifestation, transformation and maintenance of the realm of nature, is referred to as consciousness. It is self existing, self aware and self referring.

What we perceive or don’t perceive with our senses has its origin in consciousness.

Bible texts often give us messages that relate to duality between God and nature or the world as we will read in the bible passage of

1 John (2:15-17) which warns us, not to be caught up with worldly, material things that are only temporary in nature.

He tells us not to love superficial things. Yet this is exactly what most of us do every day and we do it, because we think it brings us happiness. We crave the satisfaction of our senses. But does this bring happiness or does it lead to even greater desires?

What does John say?

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

 Yet we are in this world and need to function in it. We experience it as our home, even if it is only temporary. It is the place, where we are born into a family and the place where we ourselves have families. We are given a body, mind and spirit in order to fully express our potential, but why should we not love the things of the world.

Does our love of the world deceive us?

Is the world not what it seems to us?

Can we love and do the will of a God we have never seen or experienced and only read about in the holy books?

Can our mind give us understanding of matters that lie beyond sense experience?

Other parts of scriptures tell us, that we need to accept the Fatherhood of God by faith, but it also tells us, that we are made in His image. If we are made in His image, Genesis 1:26 but how come we don’t know it?

Faith is described as ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.’

                                                              Hebrews 11:1

God is surely more than a substance.

What is God?

How can we know God?

How can we love without knowing?

Perhaps our dilemma in not understanding lies, in that we really don’t know who we are. We are ignorant of our true nature as well as of the nature of God.

This is why Jesus said: ’Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’, Luke 23:34, when he was being crucified.

Do we act out of ignorance? We see ourselves as body mind organisms and in this manner our attention and love is focused on material objects, on things.

We say that we love or have feelings for our spouses, our children, but we seldom love them unconditionally until we eventually realize that there is a higher level of understanding of ourselves and of the world.

Yoga offers us an approach to this higher understanding. It teaches that, what we call God, is Sat, Chit Ananda; ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss, joy or love.

It also teaches, that we are individualized Sat, Chit Ananda or made in the image. Therefore, all the attributes that are in God are in us also.

We need to realize, that we are not this mind or body, but that we are expressing through mind and body. But first, we must become conscious of who and what we are and then we will come to know who God is and that we are a part of Him.

This leads us to God and Self realization.

Self realization as defined by Paramahansa Yogananda is, “the knowing  in body, mind and soul that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it come to us, that we are not merely near it at all times, but that God’s omnipresence is our omnipresence; that we are just as much a part of Him now as we ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing.”

When we realize, that God is as much a part of us now as He ever will be, we are filled of great joy. Joy is what we experience as a result of our love.

It is by knowing who we are that we can love ourselves and our neighbour whose innermost being, the Self, is the same in all of us. It is then that we do no longer see ourselves as being separate from one another and from our source, or God, whose nature is Bliss. It is then we can love God with all our heart, mind strength and soul; It is by loving God, that we can love God in all the human family.

Self and God realization ought to be our primary purpose in life. Through it we can experience God, as spirit expression in the world and existing beyond the world.

The question then becomes, how can we experience the Self?

We do this through meditation and contemplation. It is through this process that we rest in the joy and peace within. It is the place where we experience oneness and wholeness. What is perceived in meditation is not based on faith, but on actual experience, by knowing the All in all.

 This experience of knowing is called enlightenment.

Through contemplation and meditation in AUM, we can receive answers to our questions as described in the following experience:

For a long time in talks with like minded friends I have suggested the importance that we identify with our true nature, our Self or soul and not with our ego or personality self, which causes us to perceive one another, God and the world around us and all of creation as separate. This sense of separation is the basis of our unhappiness.

Somehow, the message got lost and the general response was mostly a blank stare as if to say:’ what are you talking about’?

There needed to be a better approach to communicating this important message. One early morning I contemplated the question. After receiving the answer, I said to Jennifer, my wife, I finally got an answer to my question of how to explain the subject of identifying with the Self. Her reply was: ’Don’t say anything, I know what you are going to tell me’ and proceeded telling me exactly what I had received during the contemplation. Perhaps this shows us the oneness of mind or the omnipresence of Spirit acting in and through us.

I only mention this, because it proves the bible verses, ‘knock and the door will be opened’, Matthew 7:7; ‘ask and you shall receive’, Luke 11:9,  are true.

From another perspective it tells us, that universal mind, of which our mind is a part, responds to what we place into it.

Contemplation leads us to the uncovering of the mysteries of the universe through the expansion of our consciousness.

Finally, we come to the answer to my question?

The Self or soul is the witness of all our experiences. It witnesses the waking, dream and dreamless sleep state and even states beyond the dreamless state.

It is nothing that needs to be achieved, it just needs to be experienced and every person is a witness to his experience.

It is not a separate state, it is being, existing, it is consciousness itself.

It is ever present, non changing, eternal.

We are witness to our body, to our thoughts, the sky, the birds, the ocean, the work that is performed, all is perceived by the silent witness.

We are witness to one another, I witness you and you witness me. The witness, the consciousness is the same in as all, it only expresses in different ways. The underlying principle is it is wholeness, oneness. We see things as seemingly separate because we look at our world through the screen of our conditioned mind, but at its basis is oneness.

We become that with which we identify. If we identify with the ego, we perceive everything separate from one another and from ourselves. We see the material world as our real home and ourselves as creatures in a material world and subject to its limitations.

When we realize that everything in this universe has its origin in consciousness, we must conclude, that consciousness is the real me, the real you, the real us, individualized as the Self, or soul in as all.

All this seemingly diversity of expression of life is fundamentally one. 

We are ripples on the ocean of existence while identifying with our material nature, but in reality we are pure consciousness, pure being, in which all the laws of nature, all laws governing life, have their origin in what we name God.

Realizing this, we will know, that we are in this world, but not of it; that we are eternal, never separate from its source. We can then enjoy the world as free spirits, as jivanmuktas or liberated souls, attached to nothing.

Knowing that our nature is spiritual, we abide in spirit. Abiding in spirit we are guided by spirit, doing the will of God. ‘He who does the will of God abides forever’. Peace and Joy.