2016 Convocation – “Yoga: Discovering the Gifts of the Soul” ~ Brother Sevananda
(DISCLAIMER: These notes are my best attempt to capture the essence of what was said at this class. There is always a degree of human error involved when taking notes and I have transcribed them to the best of my ability.)
God doesn’t have to be earned. God has to be sought. We have to improve our knowing. This is what the science of meditation is all about.
We need to realize who and what we are. We are the current deep within the body.
Yama and Niyama practice leads to self control and mental calmness. It is the basis for reaching the third step of Asana. Yama and Niyama is the foundation. A yogic and scientific issue, not just a moral one.
Breaking cosmic laws disturbs our hearts and minds. We must get the mind and energy under our control. If we are kind to each other it will help our meditation.
A balanced path will give us a growing sense of peace and contentment, love, joy and happiness. A balanced and holistic approach is needed.
Sister Gyanamata wrote that the “unshakable deliverance of the mind” is the goal of life.
God and Guru are always with us. Inside of us we have the intelligence to understand and the will to overcome.
The great gift is that God gives us the strength to overcome — and this brings out our soul nature. To remember who and what we are.
There is a personal element in our search for God that is more important than mastering the entire science. This is the greatest miracle of the heart. Practice the science with the heart and devotion. Meditation is love in action.
Regarding prayer in today’s world: The goodness of one soul can affect millions!
2016 Convocation – “Faith and Intuitive Understanding: Cornerstones of the Spiritual Life” ~ Brother Satyananda
(DISCLAIMER: These notes are my best attempt to capture the essence of what was said at this class. There is always a degree of human error involved when taking notes and I have transcribed them to the best of my ability.)
Through pure intuition the soul begins to awaken.
“From this sleep, Lord, will You wake, wake me?
From this dream, Lord, will You wake, wake me?
In Thee I dive;
In Thee I rise, in Thy sea, in, in Thee.
From this sleep, Lord, will You wake, wake me?
From this dream, Lord, will You wake, wake me?
In Thee I’m born;
In Thee I die, to live forever in, in Thee.”
Brother tells a story of Krishna and Uddhava. The story comes from the end of Krishna’s life. His work is over and His time is nearly complete. He decides to communicate important principles to His people – and they gather in a public forum – the Hall of Righteousness.
Krishna warns the people about the ever rising dangers in the world. Krishna is very somber and serious in His tone.
Uddhava, a disciple, asks Krishna to take him with Him (he knows Krishna is leaving). Krishna tells Uddhava that the time for Him to go is near but Uddhava cannot go with Him. He must stay and continue the work. However, Krishna offers Uddhava the following counsel:
1. “This life is a dream, but your true soul is everlasting.”
Our immortal souls are shrouded in a dream manifestation of God. Our sleep and dream at night are very much like this dream creation. The relationship between cosmic consciousness and dreams is the same. The Dreamer, the Act of Dreaming, and the Objects of Dreaming.
As the soul becomes self-aware, the soul becomes awakened. Dream, Dreamer, and Dreaming become One. Turiya – self-awareness with the dream.
This awakening is waiting for all of us. The Guru is trying to make us self-aware.
Master’s Poem – When I Am Only a Dream – last stanza:
“And yet when I am only a dream to you
I will come to remind you that you too are naught
But a dream of my Heavenly Beloved,
And when you know you are a dream, as I know now,
We all will be ever awake in Him.”
Krishna to Uddhava: Separation is only a dream. I must go, you must stay. The world needs you. Practice daily sadhana and practice detachment.
2. “How the Soul Begins to Awaken in the Dream.”
Chapter 2, Verses 18-28 in GTWA offers a description about the nature of the soul. See also Lesson 109.
In Chapter 2, Verse 29, Krishna and Master teach us how the soul becomes self-aware in the dream. Intuitive perceptions – a higher form by which the soul can know itself.
The eyes of the soul must be opened in order to become self-aware in the dream.
The wonder of the soul can only be known through intuition by the right techniques of meditation. Realization of oneself as Soul and Spirit. Through intuitive knowing we will truly know ourselves.
Intelligence and the senses can only know what is mortal. For soul awareness we need different instruments. Seeing the Soul with the eyes of the Soul.
Use meditation techniques to go beyond thought. Put both aside and you have pure awareness. The state after meditation is a pure state.
Unfolding stages – sheathes that need to be removed.
Dr. Lewis wrote the song, “Sitting in the Silence” to remind us to take time after the techniques to sit with God.
Brother Bhaktananda advised to sit in the stillness.
The techniques help us to sit in a state of stillness. They help us to go beyond the mind.
When you reach stillness, sit quietly and be self-aware. “I am. I exist.” Intuitive perception begins to expand. We become aware of ourselves beyond energy and thought. Then we become aware of ourselves as the Buddha and Bliss.
Use the techniques to go beyond the mind. When you feel a little bit of joy – concentrate on that joy. This will begin to expand. Then you will realize that you are this Joy.
3. “Live at the top of the tree.”
Remain true to your intuitive perceptions.
Chapter 18, Verse 58 of the Gita:
With heart absorbed in Me, and by My grace, thou shalt overcome
all impediments; but if through egotism thou wilt not heed
Me, thou shalt meet destruction.
“The yogi who has his heart fixed on God finds that, through His grace, all previous material taints of his heart—the sense-bent likes and dislikes—have been eliminated. After explaining this, the Lord cautions His devotee about the treacherous ego:
“O Arjuna, if instead of listening to My advice about liberation, you continue to exalt the physical ego, which considers itself as the doer of all human deeds, you will he entangled in rebirth-making actions and destroy your chances of salvation.”
Lord Krishna did not mean that, by a single error made under the influence of the ego, Arjuna would ruin forever his chances of liberation; rather, that because of getting mixed up with the misery making ego, he would temporarily lose the opportunity for salvation. No matter how deep and long-continued a sin may be, it cannot forever obliterate the soul’s consciousness of its divine heritage.
The meaning here is that when ego consciousness even temporarily substitutes itself for God-consciousness, whether in dutiful or meditative actions, the desire for salvation is lost—and along with it, the requisite effort—whether for a short or long time, owing to the complications created by delusive egotistical desires.” ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Brother continues…
Listen to the Guru’s advice and not to the ego. Continue to strive.
Ego vs. Soul = the battlefield of daily life.
Inspiration, intuition and free choice. Use your power of free choice wisely and be true to the Guru and your soul.
Intuitional Experience: Inner peace; Love beyond outer objects; Clear guidance from conscience.
How does the ego make substitutions? You can have a wonderful meditation and then worry yourself to sleep. Don’t choose suffering over the comfort of God. The trial is there but so is the comfort of God. See how the ego makes substitutions? Don’t let this substitution happen.
Intuitive insights are never accompanied by fear. Don’t inflict suffering on yourself. When ego tries to assert itself through doubt and fear, we need to rally the soul. You shall not pass! NO! Master is waiting for you to engage.
Become aware of your real choices and begin to choose and protect what is valuable to you.
Develop a conscious conviction of the truths you believe in.
We can govern what choices we make. Make them sacred. Put them beyond the reach of the doubting mind.
Profound insight, valuable life lessons, a moment when you realize how much God loves you – capture these valuable insights and make them sacred. Put them beyond the reach of the doubting mind.
Don’t doubt the reality of your divine inspirations. Put them out of reach – make a conscious effort. They are beyond discussion with the ego.
Build a treasure trove of your blessings and keep them sacred. They will build.
Capture the inspirations that come as gifts and treat them as sacred. Your inner strength will begin to grow.
Concentrate on the feeling the blessing produces. Realize they are gifts from God. Create a sacred trust with God.
We can be our own champion of spiritual living. Side with the soul.
As the heart center begins to open, there is a shift. (Sri Yukteswar discusses in The Holy Science)
The truth comes to us from within.
Shraddha – love, unshakeable conviction, and the devoted faith in the Guru based on intuitive perception. Have steadfast, unconditional faith in Master.
The original disciples all shared this quality. They are unshaken. They know the Guru is there.
2016 Convocation – “Forgiveness: Experiencing the Compassion of God”
~ Brother Saralananda
(DISCLAIMER: These notes are my best attempt to capture the essence of what was said at this class. There is always a degree of human error involved when taking notes and I have transcribed them to the best of my ability.)
Sometimes it’s hard to forgive another person. Have you ever held a grudge? We’ve all been through these experiences. Eventually these experiences teach us that holding a grudge lessons our peace and prevents us from feeling God’s presence within.
Deep meditation, perfect control of feeling, and holding onto the deep after-effects of meditation lead to samadhi.
Forgiveness leads us deeper into communion with God.
Affirm from Metaphysical Meditations – page 80:
“Today I forgive all those who have ever offended me. I give my love to all thirsty hearts. Both to those who love me and to those who do not love me.”
We can practice these affirmations to weed the garden of our hearts. Weed out resentments.
Focus more on improving how we treat other people and less on how they treat us.
Have I created inharmony? Is there something I can learn to retain my calmness when someone else is losing their calmness?
Refine yourself first. Humbly and lovingly change yourself.
Master said, “Don’t think much about reforming others. Think about reforming yourself.”
If you can be an angel at home, you can be an angel everywhere.
To forgive means to harbor no feelings of hatred or vengefulness.
Sri Daya Mata said that when you have to speak something unpleasant to someone, do it with love. Act with love.
This will show us the clear way, the best way to deal with challenges in our daily lives.
Separate the wrong action from the doer of the action. Wrongdoer is the right word, rather than sinner. Condemn the wrong doing not the wrong doer.
Jesus – “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.”
God’s loves us no matter what we do. If we love Him with all our hearts, He forgives us.
Divine Mother loves us with all Her heart, but the law of karma is exact. Fortunately, we’ve been given Kriya Yoga and through that we can burn off our bad karma so we can live in the love of Divine Mother all the time.
Divine Mother’s attitude towards mistakes: God love every soul. Every soul is a holy receptacle filled with this divine love. Divine Mother is pouring a flood of divine love into your soul. Eternal unchanging love for you.
Divine Mother said to Master (and to us), “Always have I loved thee; ever shall I love thee.”
From The Second Coming of Christ – Discourse 71
God’s unconditional love for all his children. Visualization on page 1397:
Try to imagine the love spoken of by Jesus in these verses. Close your eyes, put your attention on the heart, and feel the greatest love that you ever felt for another person. Let that love saturate every cell of your body. Now expand the feeling of love, like an encircling sphere embracing your family, friends, all your loved ones. Feel your love ever increasing; include in that sphere all the people in your city, then all of your country. Now everything in the world is bathed in that love. The whole earth, the solar system, the far-flung galaxies and island universes—everything is floating in this vast sphere of love. Feel, meditate on, merge yourself in that love which permeates and upholds the infinitudes of manifestation—a demonstrable presence of God’s heartbeat of bliss, setting the pace of cosmic harmony and unity, and known to the devotee as the All-in-all fulfillment.
Ways to Forgive
Forgive them for they know not what they do.
Law of Karma – forgiveness of sin. We experience the consequences of our actions. We gradually learn to live according to His eternal laws.
A thought or physical act does not cease to be. They leave as impressions or samskars. We have a lot of good samskars to meditate, practice love for God and others. But the bad inner samskars can make us restless as we try to meditate and they pull us back to the world of the senses through the restlessness we feel.
Samskars produce restlessness. The only way to stop this is by removing the cause. When you deeply meditate, God’s light of divine wisdom cauterizes those seeds of undesirable karma stored in the deep recesses in the brain.
When we are praying to God, we can ask Divine Mother to roast those past seeds and to forgive our sins so we can be with Her.
Prayer to Divine Mother: Divine Mother, naughty of good, I am Thy child.”
If we make more of an effort to make God more a part of our lives, make more of a commitment for the inner life, Divine Mother will forgive us.
Make a sincere effort to practice mediation techniques and ask Divine Mother to forgive us and to reveal our true selves – a samskar BBQ!
In meditation, when Master asks how you’d like your samskars cooked – say, “extra crispy!”
Divine Mother, now I know you are the goal, please forgive some of my burdens.
The deeper we go into meditation – the better the BBQ.
If we love God with all our hearts, he wipes out our karma.
Burn away the seeds that bring us back to the material world.
At a deep level that we cannot feel, the seeds are being roasted through the grace of God and our divine guru.
Meditate daily. There’s such a redemptive karma in meditation. You are burning off more seeds. The seeds that are burnt cannot come back again and you are forgiven. We draw closer and closer to God.
Meditation is not the only BBQ in town. When we sincerely forgive others, God sees that and He burns out some of our seed tendencies. God will relax the karmic law and forgive the forgivers.
Say in your heart, “I forgive you.” The bad person is not released from their karma, but our forgiveness sends the other person love. This gives them an opportunity to change their ways. If they feel this, they may be able to change.
We can also pray to God for their forgiveness: “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” We can ask God to forgive the person of the consequences of their actions. Then we will feel God’s love in our hearts.
Nursed grievances work like acid in the fibers of your peace.
To forgive others, think of all the good, loving qualities of that person. Dwell on positive thoughts. This will help our emotional state, strengthen our good inner tendencies, and weaken our bad inner tendencies.
When a good thought becomes concentrated during meditation, this can burn up at the roots traces of evil actions.
When we realize what ill will does to us and our meditation, we will want to pull out these thoughts of resentment.
If we harbor positive thoughts and love for God, there will be this purification process at a very deep, metaphysical level. Then we can go more deeply within to feel God.
The more one establishes himself with the Absolute and never deems himself a sinner, the more one will feel God’s mercy.
Why identify yourself with weaknesses? Instead, affirm the truth – I am a child of God.
Forgiveness is an eternal quality of the soul and of Divine Mother. How blessed we are to have the inner embrace of Divine Mother and our Guru.
Hold onto the calm after-effects of meditation ~ these lead to samadhi.