Kauai Hindu Monastery Newsletter

The Master Course The lesson of the day from Satguru Sivaya  Subramuniyaswami's trilogy:Dancing with Siva,  Living with Siva and Merging with Siva

Lesson 18 Sloka 18 from Dancing with Siva What Is God Siva's Pure Consciousness? Parashakti is pure consciousness, the substratum or  primal substance flowing through all form. It is Siva's inscrutable presence, the ultimate ground and being  of all that exists, without which nothing could endure.  Aum. Bhashya Parashakti, "Supreme Energy," is called by many  names: silence, love, being, power and all-knowingness.  It is Satchidananda--existence-consciousness-bliss- -that pristine force of being which is undifferentiated,  totally aware of itself, without an object of its awareness.  It radiates as divine light, energy and knowing. Out of Parasiva ever comes Parashakti, the first manifestation of mind, superconsciousness or infinite knowing. God Siva knows in infinite, all-abiding, loving  superconsciousness. Siva knows from deep within all of His creations to their surface. His Being is within  every animate and inanimate form. Should God Siva  remove all of the three worlds, they would crumble, disintegrate and fade away. Siva's Shakti is the sustaining power and presence throughout the universe.  This unbounded force has neither beginning nor end. Verily, it is the Divine Mind of Lord Siva. The Vedas  say, "He is God, hidden in all beings, their inmost soul who is in all. He watches the works of creation, lives in  all things, watches all things. He is pure consciousness , beyond the three conditions of nature." Aum Namah  Sivaya. Lesson 18 from Living with Siva Brahmacharya In Family Life The observance of brahmacharya is perhaps the  most essential aspect of a sound, spiritual culture. This is why in Saivism, boys and girls are taught the  importance of remaining celibate until they are married.  This creates healthy individuals, physically, emotionally  and spiritually, generation after generation. There is a  mystical reason. In virgin boys and girls, the psychic  nadis, the astral nerve currents that extend out into and  through their aura, have small hooks at the end. When  a boy and girl marry, the hooks straighten out and the nadis are tied one to another, and they actually grow  together. If the first sexual experience is premarital  and virginity is broken, the hooks at the end of the  nadis also straighten out, but there is nothing to grow onto if the partners do not marry. Then, when either  partner marries someone else, the relationship is never  as close as when a virgin boy and girl marry, because  their nadis don't grow together in the same way. In cases such as this, they feel the need for intellectual stimuli and  emotional stimuli to keep the marriage going. Youth ask, "How should we regard members of the  opposite sex?" Do not look at members of the opposite sex with any idea of sex or lust in mind. Do not indulge in admiring those of the opposite sex, or seeing one  as more beautiful than another. Boys must foster the inner attitude that all young women are their sisters and all older women are their mother. Girls must foster the  inner attitude that all young men are their brothers and  all older men are their father. Do not attend movies that  depict the base instincts of humans, nor read books or  magazines of this nature. Above all, avoid pornography on the Internet, on TV and in any other media. To be successful in brahmacharya, one naturally wants  to avoid arousing the sex instincts. This is done by  understanding and avoiding the eight successive phases:  fantasy, glorification, flirtation, lustful glances, secret  love talk, amorous longing, rendezvous and finally intercourse. Be very careful to mix only with good company- -those who think and speak in a cultured way--so that the  mind and emotions are not led astray and vital energies  needed for study used up. Get plenty of physical  exercise. This is very important, because exercise  sublimates your instinctive drives and directs excess  energy and the flow of blood into all parts of the body. Brahmacharya means sexual continence, as was  observed by Mahatma Gandhi in his later years and  by other great souls throughout life. There is another  form of sexual purity, though not truly brahmacharya,  followed by faithful family people who have a normal  sex life while raising a family. They are working toward  the stage when they will take their brahmacharya vrata after sixty years of age. Thereafter they would live together as brother and sister, sleeping in separate  bedrooms. During their married life, they control the  forces of lust and regulate instinctive energies and thus prepare to take that vrata. But if they are unfaithful,  flirtatious and loose in their thinking through life, they  will not be inclined to take the vrata in later life. Faithfulness in marriage means fidelity and much more . It includes mental faithfulness, non-flirtatiousness and  modesty toward the opposite sex. A married man, for  instance, should not hire a secretary who is more  magnetic or more beautiful than his wife.  Metaphysically, in the perfect family relationship,  man and wife are, in a sense, creating a one  nervous system for their joint spiritual progress, and all of their nadis are growing together over the years.  If they break that faithfulness, they break the psychic,  soul connections that are developing for their personal  inner achievements. If one or the other of the partners does have an affair, this creates a psychic tug and pull on the nerve system of both spouses that will continue  until the affair ends and long afterwards. Therefore, the  principle of the containment of the sexual force and mental and emotional impulses is the spirit of brahmacharya, both for the single and married person. Sutra 18 of the Nandinatha Sutras Seeking Inner Light And Stillness Those who live with Siva attend close to His mystery. While others seek "name and fame, sex and money, " they seek the clear white light within, find refuge in  the stillness and hold Truth in the palm of their hand.  Aum. Lesson 18 from Merging with Siva Making Wise Decisions Life is a series of decisions also. One decision builds  into another. To make a good decision, we have to  again bring our total awareness to the eternity of the moment. If we project ourselves into the future to try  to make a decision, we do not make a decision with wisdom. If we project ourselves into the past and in  that way formulate our decisions, again they are not  wise decisions, for they are decisions made through  the powers of the intellectual or the instinctive area of  the mind. The only good decisions come to us when  we hold the consciousness of the eternity of the  moment and go within ourself for the answer. The best thing in making a decision is: when in doubt , do nothing. Have the subject matter so clearly in mind , so well thought out, that soon the answer will be self -evident to you. There will be just no other way to go.  Good, positive decisions bring good, positive action  and, of course, positive reactions. Decisions that  are not well worked out--we jump into experiential patterns haphazardly or emotionally--bring reactions  of an emotional nature that again have to be lived through until we cease to be aware of them and experience them emotionally. Each time we have a decision to make, it's a  marvelous test in this classroom of experience. We  can make a good decision if we approach it in the  eternity of the moment. And, of course, there are no  bad decisions. If we make a decision that's different  than what we would make in the eternity of the moment --we make it through the instinctive area of the mind  or the intellectual area of the mind--we're not sure,  totally, of ourself. We do not have enough information  to make a good, positive decision. So, when in doubt in making a decision that's the time  to know we have to collect up more information,  think about it more. Each decision is the foundation  for the next series of experiences. When you are in a  sequential series of experiential patterns, you are not  making decisions at that time. Only when your  experiential pattern has come to an end, and you're  ready for a new set of experiences in certain areas  of your life, those are the times when you make  new decisions. Weigh carefully each decision,  because that is the rudder that guides your ship  through the whole pattern of life. Think it over carefully. Go in for intuitive guidance.  And nobody knows better than yourself, your own superconscious being, what is to be the next set of  experiential patterns for you to go through in your  quest for enlightenment. It's all based on decisions.  Don't expect someone to make decisions for you. They are second-hand, not the best. Others maybe  can give a little bit of advice or supply a d perspective  or added information for you to make a better decision  But the decision you make yourself in any matter is the most positive, most powerful one, and should be  the right one. Do it from the eternity of the moment t. That is the state of awareness to hold.   • Email to a friend •  •

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