For a Quaker, religion is not an external activity, concerning a special ‘holy’ part of the self. It is an openness to the world in the here and now with the whole of the self. If this is not simply a pious commonplace, it must take into account the whole of our humanity: our attitudes to other human beings in our most intimate as well as social and political relationships. It must also take account of our life in the world around us, the way we live, the way we treat animals and the environment. In short, to put it in traditional language, there is no part of ourselves and of our relationships where God is not present.

—Harvey Gillman, 1988 (Quaker Faith & Practice 20:20)

What's Jnana Yoga?

Julia Tindall outlines the three main approaches to Jnana Yoga (pronounced, yana yoga) -- the path of intuitive knowing.

Have you ever felt that there must be something more to life, something beyond our mundane experience of the everyday world? From our childhood on we are programmed to conform to the reality we perceive around us, the reality that our family and friends perceive.

We are conditioned to believe that we are only our personality, our thoughts. Yet, this is not so. The conditioned mind and structured personality are just a set of energies that overlay the original Self. Then how do we discover the nature of this original Self?

Jnana yoga is a system of Self-inquiry whereby we gradually let go of our identification with the personality until the true Self is revealed. Just as hatha yoga stretches and opens the body, jnana yoga stretches and opens the mind.

As we dissolve our description of reality, we realize the world is different to what we had imagined before. Life becomes new, fresh. We become more discerning, more peaceful inside. Insights and clarity arise more readily and our lives become balanced and filled with Grace.

There are three main methods used in this Self-inquiry. The first is called “activating the witness consciousness”. Our witness is our unbiased, neutral, eternal Self. It is who we really are. In order to cultivate our witness we consciously and deliberately examine how we feel, think, and behave.

With this, we gradually strip away our layers of social conditioning and identification with the ego. We discover that the mind and awareness are not the same and that there is an intelligent part of us that can observe our mind dispassionately.

The second method is to ask the question “Who am I?’ The approach used here is normally a stripping away of who we are not, which leads us to a place beyond the mind where nothing remains to describe the individual being but the true, essential nature of the Self.

The third technique involves bringing what has been unconscious into consciousness. It's important to uncover and dissolve the hidden patterns wedged in our unconscious in order to be free of them, as the newness and freshness constantly coming to us from Source is blocked by these patterns.

Here we look at aspects of ourselves such as our unconscious behaviors, habits and addictions. We bring what has been in the dark into the light. It’s as though we have to understand the functioning of this human system fully before we can move beyond it. We own all of our parts, and then we let them go.

As we progress in our practice of jnana yoga, we take a step back and observe ourselves on the stage of life, playing our role, like watching a movie on a screen. We are the actor, yet we also get to write our own script. Our witness is really our Divine Self watching the ego living life in this way.

The more we strengthen our identification with our witness and the less with our egoic personality, the more we grow spiritually. As this process continues, we experience an emptying out, a letting go of our attachments, desires, fears, and stories.

The more we empty, the greater our Presence and our love; the less we attach, the greater our delight and joy in the mystery of life; and the more we cultivate acceptance, the greater our contentment. We experience a “lightening up”. Indeed, this is the process of achieving “en-lighten-ment”.

~ by Julia Tindall

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.

~ Robert Heinlein

“Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
-Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.
-Let me not look for allies in life’s battlefield,
but to my own strength.
-Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
-Grant that I may not be a coward,
feeling grace in my success alone;
-But let me find the grasp of destiny's hand in my failure.”

~ Rabindranath Tagore (abridged)

THE HUMAN DILEMMA

We live our lives in quiet desperation, looking for something or someone outside of ourselves to some how fulfill us. Even as we search for the mythical Mr. or Ms. Right, we operate from a degree of self loathing, created by past misinformation, misconceptions, conditioning and guilt. How can we love or be loved if we don't love ourselves? How can we break the grip of our past to create a glittering new reality? Fortunately our modern dilemma is ancient. It has been the challenge of all peoples in every age. Tantra offers a solution; to begin the search for the beloved.

ANCIENT WISDOM FOR MODERN HEALING

From within the legalized structure and rigidity of Hindu society emerged a group of rebels who believed that personal and human evolution lay beyond the restrictions of traditional castes and laws. They proved that freedom could produce excellence while Legislation only produced stagnation. They became masters of themselves, discarding moribund traditions for self-knowledge.

They included scientists who postulated atomic structure, astronomers who understood the solar system, mathematicians who created the concept of zero, negative numbers and the decimal place, and metaphysicians who discovered the aura, astral travel, and the chakras. They became masters of every craft and art. They called themselves Tantrics, which refers to expansion and weaving of energy. Their wisdom is a gift of 3000 years. By rejecting empty ritual and rigid dogma they were able to recapture the true essence of Hinduism.

Tantra and Hinduism both utilize a triad of forces to be used by the seeker: creation, transcendence and preservation. These forces symbolize steps, realizations or stages of initiation for the Tantra practitioner in the search for the beloved.



The Beloved
A Tantra Experience

An Ego Strategy to Avoid Surrender

What is conventionally called “love” is an ego strategy to avoid surrender. You're looking to someone to give you that which can only come to you in the state of surrender. The ego uses that person as a substitute to avoid having to surrender.

The Spanish language is the most honest in this respect. It uses the same verb, te quiero, for “I love you” and “I want you.” To the ego, loving and wanting are the same, whereas true love has no wanting in it, no desire to possess or for your partner to change.

The ego singles someone out and makes them special. It uses that person to cover up the constant underlying feeling of discontent, of 'not enough,' of anger and hate, which are closely related. These are facets of an underlying deep seated feeling in human beings that is inseparable from the egoic state.

When the ego singles something out and says “I love” this or that, it’s an unconscious attempt to cover up or remove the deep-seated feelings that always accompany the ego: the discontent, the unhappiness, the sense of insufficiency that is so familiar.

For a little while, the illusion actually works. Then inevitably, at some point, the person you singled out, or made special in your eyes, fails to function as a cover up for your pain, hate, discontent or unhappiness which all have their origin in that sense of insufficiency and incompleteness.

Then, out comes the feeling that was covered up, and it gets projected onto the person that had been singled out and made special -- who you thought would ultimately “save you.” Suddenly love turns to hate.

The ego doesn’t realize that the hatred is a projection of the universal pain that you feel inside. The ego believes that this person is causing the pain. It doesn’t realize that the pain is the universal feeling of not being connected with the deeper level of your being -- not being at one with yourself.

The object of love is interchangeable, as interchangeable as the object of egoic wanting. Some people go through many relationships. They fall in love and out of love many times. They love a person for a while until it doesn’t work anymore, because no person can permanently cover up that pain. Only surrender can give you what you were looking for in the object of your love.

The ego says surrender isn't necessary because I love this person. It’s an unconscious process of course. The moment you accept completely what is, something inside you emerges that had been covered up by egoic wanting.

It's an innate, indwelling peace, stillness, aliveness. It's the unconditioned, who you are in your essence. It's what you had been looking for in the 'love object'. I's yourself.

When that happens, a completely different kind of love is present which is not subject to love / hate. It doesn’t single out one thing or person as special.

~ by Eckhart Tolle (March, 2012)

Every race and every creed has its principles of right and wrong, but there is one fundamental principle of religion in which all creeds and all people can meet, and that is to see beauty in attitude, in action, in thought, and in feeling. There is no action with a stamp on it saying that it is right or wrong, but what we think wrong or wicked is really that which our mind sees as such because it is without beauty. All the great ones who have come into the world from time to time to awaken humanity to a greater truth, what did they bring? They brought beauty. It is not what they taught, it is what they were themselves. Words seem inadequate to express either goodness or beauty. One can speak of it in a thousand words, and yet one will never be able to express it. For it is something which is beyond words, and the soul alone can understand it. And the one who will always follow the rule of beauty in his life, in every little thing he does, will always succeed.

from http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/VI/VI_24.htm

What Calls the Eye to See

It isn’t that appearance is spread before and the seer watches remaining behind. It’s his ‘pulsation’ when he sees himself. ~ Jnanadeva

What you are now stands before me immortal and true. I see it in the ground underfoot, and in the clouds in the sky, and in the mist gathering among the canyons, and in the face of the old man walking his grandchild down the sidewalk.

In the robes of monks I see it, and in the rags worn by the women begging for change outside the supermarket. I see it in the sympathetic eyes of the mother greeting her young son as he returns home from the war, and in the father trying to comfort his baby daughter as he stands in line at the grocery store. I see it in the curve of my face in the mirror, and in the multitudes of stars in the sky.

I not only see it but I hear it as well. I hear it in the cries of the newborn baby hungry for its mother’s breast, and in the laughter of the old men sitting in the donut store together, and in the quiet sobs of the man placing flowers at his wife’s grave. I hear it in the ancient chants echoing through the open window of the old church, and in the ladies sitting on benches in the garden laughing with delight, and in the man working at the butcher shop asking his customers “Who’s next?”

What calls the ear to listen or the eye to see more than the surface façade that shrouds the essential spirit? Parting the strata and dross, what is essential picks its way through the manicured narrative of endless lives. In each moment of every day, Truth is not lacking or held in abeyance for some later date; it is given in full measure, and abundantly so.

Don't be afraid of what appears to be chaos or dissolution -- embrace the full measure of your life at any cost. Bare your heart to the Unknown and never look back. What you are stands content, invisible, and everlasting. All means have been provided for our endless folly to split open into eternal delight.

Awakening is all about perspective. From a narrow focus on personal identity, we awaken into an infinitely vast yet intimate view, where we see everything as it really is: eternal and sacred.



~ by Adyashanti, 2011.

“Remember that when you are unhappy it is generally because you do not visualize strongly enough the great things that you definitely want to accomplish in life, nor do you employ steadfastly enough your will power, your creative ability, and your patience until your dreams are materialized.”

Paramahansa Yogananda, “SRF Lessons”

Gampopa, Milarepa’s greatest disciple, asked him at the moment of their parting: “When will be the time for me to start guiding students?” Milarepa replied: “When you are not like you are now, when your whole perception has been transformed, and you are able to see, really see, this old man before you as nothing less than the Buddha himself. When devotion has brought you to that moment of recognition, that moment will be the sign that the time for you to teach has come.”

It is my devotion to my masters that gives me the strength to teach, and the openness and receptivity to learn, and go on learning. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche himself never stopped humbly receiving teachings from other masters, and often from those who were his own disciples. The devotion that gives the inspiration to teach, then, is also the devotion that gives the humility to go on learning.

When souls meet each other, what truth they can exchange! It is uttered in silence, yet always surely reaches its goal.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Truth comes to man's soul, and yet truth is not the exclusive property of creed, caste, or race. We are all the children of God, the Father-Mother Spirit of all that exists. And we ought to have such a feeling of brotherhood that we exchange helpful thoughts with one another all the time. We can take love and guidance from one another. Speech is not as great a help as contact; but the privilege of meeting one another is great. When souls meet, what truth they can exchange! It is uttered in silence, yet surely always reaches its goal.

Now when the bardo of this life is dawning upon me,
I will abandon laziness for which life has no time,
Enter, undistracted, the path of listening and hearing, reflection and contemplation, and meditation,
Making perceptions and mind the path, and realize the “three kayas”: the enlightened mind;
Now that l have once attained a human body,
There is no time on the path for the mind to wander.

PADMASAMBHAVA

The seer, therefore, teaches that all the things that we desire and think beautiful, we ought to produce within ourselves instead of expecting them from others. What a task that is! What great self-sufficiency there would be if every country always itself produced that which it seeks from others; what an independent life it would be to produce within ourselves what we expect to obtain from others! Instead of depending on them for something we ourselves can give them, we should experience the joy of giving, the joy of being kind to others. What joy and freedom we should ourselves find in being kind to another. However natural it may be to have someone love and admire us, are we not dependent? The wife is dependent of her husband's love; the friend is dependent on the friend's love. But in the other case we would be free and independent; for our joy would lie in the love itself, and not in the person.

We should enjoy life by doing kindness to others. Receiving kindness from others only makes the recipient expect more. He keeps saying, 'He is doing this for his own benefit; he is not considering me; he is blaming me; he did not help me; he did not deal fairly with me.' His life becomes full of grudges because he expects from everybody all the good that he wants, and he does not know that he ought to have it all in himself; that he should become independent. Therein lies the secret of character. ... If a person thinks that God is all, but the whole world is vile, he does not worship God, for God is all and God is beautiful. 'God is beautiful and he loves beauty,' the Prophet said. And as His being is in us, we are supposed to love beauty also. What is beauty? Not only the external beauty, but the beauty of personality, the beauty of character, that is the real beauty. If we did not worship it, we should not admire it in other people. We cannot appreciate anything without beauty of character.

All gains, whether material, spiritual, moral or mystical, are in answer to one's own character.

~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

When you regard your loved ones as individuals, you won’t feel disappointed or betrayed when they don’t live up to your expectations. We only see the borders of the inner landscapes of the people we care about and thus we can never fully comprehend their preferences, choices, and motivations. You grant yourself the pleasure of watching your friends and family evolve and change naturally when you allow them to be themselves. The relationships you nurture will be based on reality rather than fantasy, and your loved ones will appreciate the freedom you give them. Your acceptance is a gift that silently articulates the depth of your affection and esteem. You’ll joyfully watch your loved ones grow today when you learn to accept them as individuals.

“If you spent one-tenth of the time you devoted to distractions like chasing women or making money to spiritual practice, you would be enlightened in a few years!”

RAMAKRISHNA

One of the main discoveries of meditation is seeing how we continually run away from the present moment, how we avoid being here just as we are. That’s not considered to be a problem. The point is to see it.

—Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape And the Path of Loving-Kindness

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious.

—Albert Einstein, quoted by Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006).

There are rough as well as gentle waves in the ocean; strong emotions come, like anger, desire, jealousy. The real practitioner recognizes them not as a disturbance or an obstacle but as a great opportunity. The fact that you react to arisings such as these with habitual tendencies of attachment and aversion is a sign not only that you are distracted but that you do not have the recognition and have lost the ground of Rigpa. To react to emotions in this way empowers them and binds you even tighter in the chains of delusion.

The great secret of Dzogchen is to see right through them, as soon as they arise, to what they really are: the vivid and electric manifestation of the energy of Rigpa itself. As you gradually learn to do this, even the most turbulent emotions fail to seize hold of you and instead dissolve, as wild waves rise and rear and sink back into the calm of the ocean.

Very often people ask, 'How long has one to go on the spiritual path?' There is no limit to the length of this path, and yet if one is ready, it does not need a long time. It is a moment and one is there. How true it is, what the wise of past ages said to their followers, 'Do not go directly into the temple; first walk around it fifty times!' The meaning was, first get tired and then enter. Then you value it. One values something for which one makes an effort.

‎It is the mind that frees us or enslaves.
Driven by the senses we become bound;
Master of the senses we become free.
Those who seek freedom must master their senses.

When the mind is detached from the senses
One reaches the summit of consciousness.
Mastery of the mind leads to wisdom.
Practice meditation. Stop all vain talk.
The highest state is beyond reach of thought,
For it lies beyond all duality.

—The Amritabindu Upanishad (the name means “drop of the nectar of immortality”). Brahman refers to the ultimate reality, the supreme Godhead, beyond all distinctions or forms. Translated by Eknath Easwaran in The Upanishads (Petaluma, California: Nilgiri Press, 1987).

This MERCURY year reveals urgency to get in step with the innovative technology of the ancient, now re discovered, body/mind vibrational science. To activate "higher intelligence" of Yoga, and awaken some of those sleepy neurons with the ancient Sanskrit in-tonement of remedial mantras and devotional esoteric practises. Sanskrit being the root of all languages invoking your soul memories when diligently practiced.

Do consider this special opportunity to spend six days July 15-20, here at the Ompalace Yogavidya to study the vedic cosmology astro numerology within the context of mantra, yantra and tantra as a prayer to the planets that guide our every breath and karma here in earth school. With this systematic approach your vibrations will be refined, your understanding of the Mystery, GOD, self and other deepen and you become a vessel of light plunging into the matrix of the Divine Mother, the creatix of all that is, has been and will be.


These are the main topics that will be covered in our intensive together:

- PRANAYAMA ( BREATHING TECHNIQUE ),

-DYANA ( MEDITATION ),

-MANTRAS ( SECRET SCIENCE OF SOUND ),

-SECRETS OF PLANETS & WAYS TO GET THEIR ENERGY,

-SECRET WAYS TO GET YOUR DEPARTED ANCESTORS BLESSING FOR PROSPERITY,

-SECRET RITUAL TO BURN YOUR BAD KARMA,

-SECRETS OF YOUR BIRTH IN THIS LIFE,

-MISSION OF YOUR LIFE IN THIS BIRTH,

-HOW TO CONNECT DIRECTLY WITH GODS AN GODDESS - THE HIGHER BEINGS


The tuition is $ 1050 with a 50 % deposit. See wwwsite. Repeat students will pay only 50% of either applicable fee. I will accept a maximum of five students only and we will work with your specific data and vibrational profile the entire time. All class materials are included and ayurvedic chai and prasad are served daily There are small assignments and a ritual puja followed by an Indian dinner on the last day.

By application only.

Looking forward to hearing from you,
blessings,

The Significance of Om Mani Padme Hum:

The explanation of the six-syllable mantra, OM MA NI PAD ME HUM is as follows:

OM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the god's realm. The suffering of the gods arise from foreseeing one's fall from the god's realm. This suffering comes from pride.

MA closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the warring gods' (asuras') realm. The suffering of these asuras is constant fighting. This suffering comes from jealousy.

NI closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the human realm. The suffering of humans is birth, sickness, old age, and death. This suffering comes from desire.

PAD closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the animal realm. The suffering of animals is stupidity, preying upon one another, being killed by men for meat, skins, etc., and being beasts of burden. This suffering comes from ignorance.

ME closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hungry ghosts' realm. The suffering of hungry ghosts is hunger and thirst. This suffering comes from greed.

HUM closes the door to the suffering of being reborn in the hell realm. the suffering of the hells is heat and cold. This suffering comes from anger or hatred.

This is the Buddha's full Moon,
and a powerful one, --
referred to as one of the SuperMoons:)
enjoy the revelations ...

AUM MANI PADME HUM

Above all else, we need to nourish our true self—what we can call our buddha nature—for so often we make the fatal mistake of identifying with our confusion, and then using it to judge and condemn ourselves, which feeds the lack of self-love that so many of us suffer from today.

How vital it is to refrain from the temptation to judge ourselves or the teachings, and to be humorously aware of our condition, and to realize that we are, at the moment, as if many people all living in one person.

And how encouraging it can be to accept that from one perspective we all have huge problems, which we bring to the spiritual path and which indeed may have led us to the teachings, and yet to know from another point of view that ultimately our problems are not so real or so solid, or so insurmountable as we have told ourselves.

Ego plays brilliantly on our fundamental fear of losing control, and of the unknown. We might say to ourselves: “I should really let go of ego, I’m in such pain; but if I do, what’s going to happen to me?”

Ego will chime in sweetly: “I know I’m sometimes a nuisance, and believe me, I quite understand if you want me to leave. But is that really what you want? Think: If I do go, what’s going to happen to you? Who’ll look after you? Who will protect and care for you like I’ve done all these years?”

Even if we see through the lies of the ego, we are just too scared to abandon it; for without any true knowledge of the nature of our mind, or true identity, we simply have no other alternative. Again and again we cave in to ego’s demands with the same sad self-hatred as the alcoholic feels reaching for the drink that he knows is destroying him, or the drug addict feels groping for the drug that she knows after a brief high will only leave her flat and desperate.

As Buddha himself was passing away, he prophesied that Padmasambhava would be born not long after his death in order to spread the teaching of the Tantras. It was Padmasambhava who established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century. For us Tibetans, Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, embodies a cosmic, timeless principle; he is the universal master.

I have always turned to Padmasambhava in times of difficulty and crisis, and his blessing and power have never failed me. When I think of him, all my masters are embodied in him. To me he is completely alive at all moments, and the whole universe, at each moment, shines with his beauty, strength, and presence.

our provincial totem flower, exquisite --

Richah, Yajumshi and Samani form eight syllables and the second foot of the Gayatri consists of eight syllables. So these three Vedas constitute the second foot of the Gayatri. Whosoever thus knows the second foot of the Gayatri wins as much as that treasury of knowledge, the three Vedas, has to confer. Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, XIV-The Sacred Gayatri, 2 Prana, apana and vyana form eight syllables and the third foot of the Gayatri. consists of eight syllables. So these three forms of the vital breath constitute the third foot of the Gayatri. Whosoever knows this about the third foot of the Gayatri wins all the living beings that are in the universe. Now, its turiya, apparently visible (darsata) and supramundane (paroraja) foot is this-sun that glows yonder. That which is fourth is called turiya. He (the being in the solar orb) is apparently visible (darsata), because he is seen, as it were, by the yogis. He is supramundane (paroraja), because he shines alone on the whole universe as its overlord. He who thus knows the fourth foot of the Gayatri shines with splendour and glory. Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, XIV-The Sacred Gayatri, 3 That Gayatri rests on that fourth, apparently visible, supramundane foot. And that, again, rests on truth. The eye is truth, for the eye is indeed truth. Therefore, even today, if two persons come disputing, one saying: I saw it, and another: I heardof it, we should trust the one who says: I saw it. That truth rests on strength. The vital breath (prana) is strength. Hence truth rests on the vital breath. Therefore they say that strength is more powerful than truth. Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, XIV-The Sacred Gayatri, 4 Thus the Gayatri is based on the vital breath within the body. That Gayatri protected the gayas. The organs are the gayas; therefore the Gayatri protected (tatre) the organs. Because it protected the organs, it is called the Gayatri. The Savitri verse, which the teacher communicates to the pupil, is no other than this. It saves the organs of the pupil to whom it is imparted by the teacher. Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, XIV-The Sacred Gayatri, 4 (cont) Some impart to the pupil the Savitri which is in the Anushtubh metre, saying: The goddess of speech is Anushtubh; so we shall impart it to him. But one should not do that. One should impart only that Savitri which is Gayatri. Verily, if one who knows this accepts too much as a gift, as it were, it is not enough for even one foot of the Gayatri. Yajur Veda, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad V, XIV-The Sacred Gayatri, 5