How To Listen to Spiritual Masters

Listening is a major human faculty which we tend to not use to its maximum.

The whole Universe is always telling us something, people are always explaining something, life is always talking to us, the trees, the birds, the environments are all alive and communicating. But how much do we really hear? How much do we really listen to?

Inside our ears there is a filter, a kind of barrier, which filters out even the purest of information and knowledge and dirties it with our opinions, our viewpoint, our mindset. No matter how much somebody may be telling us the truth, the secrets of the Universe, the keys to making our life work: we cannot hear because we are not listening.

People who do not listen in life ultimately never find their destination. Even the basis of meditation is listening to words of the enlightened teacher, the Guru, who only speaks pure words, pure knowledge which is untainted by opinions or viewpoints. However, the disciple who listens to these words should give up their own ideas about life, about God, about spirituality and the Universe in order to fully listen to and hear this pure knowledge from the Guru. This is true meditation.

Spiritual masters always speak knowledge purely and untainted by the ego. The job of the ego is to confine, to create boundaries, to make the infinite finite. Where there is no ego, there can only be discussion of the infinite and true nature of the self and the Universe.

Ordinary life is always concerned with the finite and perishable. Extraordinary life is always concerned with the infinite and indestructible.

So next time you listen to a spiritual master, withhold your own opinions, drop your chattering mind and listen to each of their words and the silence in between their words. Within both of these is the energy, the awareness, the secret to unlocking your true potential.

Sat Naam.

Quote of the Day - Worry

Chintah Nah Kar

"Do Not Worry"

Jasdeep Hari Bhajan Singh Khalsa

The Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually Balanced Woman

Article By Ek Ong Kaar Kaur Khalsa from http://www.spiritvoyage.com/blog/index.php/the-mentally-emotionally-and-spiritually-balanced-woman/

In my meditation lately, I have been reflecting on the extraordinary changes that have happened in the social life of women during the last hundred years. The gains that have been made, and the road still to travel.

It was 1920 when women received the right to vote in the United States. The word birth control wasn't part of our everyday vocabulary until the 1930's. The events of the 20th century have been a continual expansion of those horizons. Decade after decade, women have gained more access to health care, to education, to career opportunities and to political power.

Within my own life, I can see the incredible difference between what has been available to me and what was available to my mother and grandmothers. I am a single, college-educated woman with my own home. By the grace of the Divine, I earn a reasonable living doing something I love and enjoy. All of this would have been more difficult to achieve if I had been born 20 years earlier. Women in my time experience privileges that women for thousands of years have never been able to access. Even now, in large portions of the world, many millions are still denied those freedoms.

Yet sometimes it is easy to forget that even the most privileged woman today carries within her the psychological scars of generations past. The scars that come from centuries of women being considered less than human. While I enjoy economic mobility, education, and legal protections that my ancestors did not have, this does not necessarily translate to having a better emotional, mental or spiritual life. Creating a society that allows women to come out of poverty and dependence is just the first step. When it comes to a woman claiming her full humanity, there are even more steps to take.

There is a great teaching in Kundalini Yoga that when you work on yourself and face your inner-negativity and problems, you liberate seven generations before you and seven generations ahead of you. Why is this true? Because the burden we carry in our subconscious minds comes from the last seven generations. Survival patterns, personality imbalances, belief systems - whatever blocks us from experiencing our pure selves doesn't start with us. It started seven generations ago. Whatever happened to our great-great-great-great-great-grand parents; whatever traumas they had to endure; whatever coping mechanisms they created; all of that got passed down and refined from one generation to another until it landed in our own subconscious.

When you think about it, it becomes rather daunting. What a person faces in his or her sadhana, the darkness and the shadows, is the psychological burden of hundreds of years of human history. No wonder it can be such hard work. Think about all the wars that have been waged. The times of famine. The rape of women. All the destructive acts that humans have committed against each other. Think about how you are the result of those people who somehow managed to survive all of it. Whatever unresolved pain, whatever defenses they created to survive, live inside of you. The difference is that when you practice Kundalini Yoga, you have the chance to cut through all of it and clear it out of your genetic line.

That is what we do when we develop a steady practice of Kundalini Yoga. That is what we fight every day on the battlefield of the subconscious mind. Can we break through all of those blocks, and experience our pure, authentic truth? Or are we condemning ourselves and our children to repeating the patterns of the past? On a collective level, that fight is, to me, the battle for the future of the human race.

In the last couple generations, we have begun to see what it looks like for women to live with economic dignity and self-determination. But we are still pioneers when it comes to women and men being raised with mental, emotional and spiritual balance. I know this is the work of the future. While I can enjoy economic privileges that did not exist in the past, it doesn't mean that I or the sisters of my generation escaped other types of abuse and oppression. The work ahead is to create a world where the physical and psychological attacks against women that can happen in the family and at other levels of society become as outdated as denying women access to education.

After spending the last 20 years engaged in my own battle with the subconscious, I wish I could say, "Yes. All of those things are healed now and I am just fine." But that is not the truth. The truth is that me and the shadows in my mind have come to an understanding of sorts. I know ultimately I can't get rid of them. Those experiences exist for a reason. But I also know that if I work with my mind consciously, I have many more choices about what to do when the shadows come along and try to take over. I have given up on the idea that mental, emotional and spiritual balance means being fine all the time. Rather, I have come to embrace a definition that being mentally, emotionally and spiritually balanced means being fine some days. And having an amazing set of tools to use when the darkness in myself, which is also the darkness of the last seven generations, decides to visit.

If I can give the future a chance to fight through a little less darkness in their own subconscious than I inherited in mine, then I will consider that a life well lived.

With Divine Light,

Ek Ong Kaar Kaur

Modern Politics and Mahabharat

After having read a lot of the Bhagavad Gita and seen the whole of Mahabharat, this post will act as my summary, which I shall also try to relate to modern politics, government and society. Sorry its not in a very readable format, but my guess is that only those who really want to know will read it anyway:

• The downfall of a society is marked by four signs: corruption within politics, the mistreating of women, people bringing children into the world who are not looked after with proper attention, and the overwork and underpay (hunger) of a society
1. When corruption comes within politics, the entire country is destroyed and war is the result. Every politician and citizen should put their country before themselves and actively contribute to the welfare of their country. In modern times, most people are selfish and only look after their own needs and never consider their contribution to their country
2. Women are the heart and blood of any society, and their protection and welfare should be the most important focus of any government. Any person who dishonours a woman has dishonoured the entire of womankind and will be destroyed by God
3. A parent's duty is to bring up children with good values and respect for others. Parents which do not have the time to bring up their children have committed a great sin by bringing a child into a world which does not care about them. Also a parent should never give their children their ambitions, but allow the child to find their own path in life, otherwise it results in anger and self-destruction
4. Anger arises within a society which is over-worked and hungry, and where the poor are over taxed and the rich not taxed enough. A society should be well fed, and people should only be taxed according to what they can afford
• Gambling can have a hold over a human being and destroy his intelligence. A lot of banking and stock market trading is like legalised gambling which ultimately leads to the destruction of society. Banking is not a horse which can be tamed by rules, it must be totally reinvented to bring the welfare of society into its core purpose instead of money.
• Truth, devotion, humility and forgiveness are the highest human ideals which should be practised at every stage of life. Truth means never speaking a lie and having integrity at every level of life. Devotion means having a focus of love, whether a project, God or a Guru. Humility means treating one's own parents, elders and teachers with respect. Forgiveness means to forgive yourself and the mistakes and wrongs others have done to you
• Even the most righteous person can fall under temptation of six things which completely destroy a human's intelligence and the ability to think with clarity:
• (1) greed (gambling or running after wealth)
• (2) lust (uncontrolled sexual activity)
• (3, 4) anger and jealousy (towards yourself or others who have insulted you)
• (5) attachment (to assets, friends, family, partners) and
• (6) ego (always thinking about yourself before society, or caring too much about what people think of you)
• Our mind, desires and senses should always be kept under our own control through:
• (1) knowledge (gyan) - by understanding that the aim of life is learning to conquer these desires, that we are inherently abundant even without anything, life is about learning to remain steady through both sorrow and happiness and continue doing one's duty in spite of it so any thought or desire which is wrong or harmful should be discarded just like a conspiring employee is fired
• (2) action (karam) - by practising self-restraint, meditation and selfless service
• Action is better than no action - and all action should be selflessly done without desiring the reward or worrying about the outcome, but rather focussing on doing your duty in the present moment to the best of your ability
• Two atomic bombs should never be used as they could destroy the whole world [Correction 06/03/2012]

Looking For More Money, Health, Love?

In this world it's easy to start to think that one is poor, lacking or does not have enough of something.

We feel unsuccessful in our lives, and success seems far away.

This is partly because we are thinking incorrectly about our life.

Instead of thinking we lack something we should start to understand that OUR LIFE HAS EVERYTHING IN IT THAT IT NEEDS. So there is no need to desire something more. It is this desire for more or better that creates a block in us receiving more or better. The irony is, that if we give up the desire for more, we start to receive more. The more we want or demand more, the less we receive.

So instead of thinking that our life lacks something, let us start to repeat the mantra "I am an abundance of love, health and wealth". Constantly repeat this mantra, believe it, embody it as the truth, that YOU ARE THE SOURCE OF EVERYTHING. Then that what you want, you have to learn to be the source of it.

For example, if you want to be wealthy, you have to imagine that you are already wealthy and start to give away some of your money. Even if you only have a little money left, give it away to somebody even less fortunate than you are. Donate. Help others out who are in financial difficulty. Start to live like you are wealthy and that you do not lack money. This is the secret to wealth and prosperity.

Similarly, the secret to happiness is to become the source of it. The secret to health is to become the source of it. This change in mind-set should be complemented with practical changes in lifestyle. A change in mind-set is nothing without action in the real world. So act like you are love, health, wealth and happiness and these are the things will start to show up in your life. The mantra can be modified to fit your particular situation.

Sat Naam.

Quote of the Day - Being Enough

"If you're not enough without it, you'll never be enough with it"

Cool Runnings

Quote of the Day - Happiness

"The time you waste in logic, reason, argument, fantasies, all that—that’s a waste of happiness"

Yogi Bhajan

Free Is The New Paid

These days, everything good is free.

For example, I recently switched to using Linux Ubuntu - a FREE Operating System: http://www.ubuntu.com/ which I found to be extremely user friendly, secure and a darn sight faster than Windows. So not only is it free, its actually better than Windows!

Ubuntu also included free 5GB of online backup space for all my files. The word processor is LibreOffice, which is free and compatible with Microsoft Office. And if there are some Windows applications I absolutely need to use (not that I have needed to so far as there are equally good free alternatives), I can always install Wine, which is also FREE, or simulate a virtual environment through VirtualBox. Nowadays fonts, clip-art, high-quality images which I use in documents are all free too. Heck, even this blog is free. So, what more could I possibly ask for? So, it's time to throw away Microsoft Windows, as well as a lot of other programs or services that we pay for!

I'd like to say a quote: free is the new paid.

Free things now have just as much quality as things we would normally pay for. So all our standards and expectations are now MUCH much higher than they used to be. This is having some interesting knock-on effects. For businesses, offering free material, free goods, free products, free services, free give-aways has become essential, but these free things must also be the BEST or they will be rejected. The exception to this is if a product is of such higher calibre or under some legal patent that it could no way be made available for free or replicated, for example an Apple iPhone or a Dyson.

Actually, this is an important point. Apple iPhone's software rival is Google Android, which is free software and (arguably) Google Android is better than iPhone's software, however, iPhone's hardware (the phone itself) is (arguably) better than the hardware of most phones which ship with Android. In other words, although the digital world has become free and high quality, we still have to pay for quality in the physical world.

Otherwise, even Pfizer offer free samples of their drugs, Microsoft offer free trials of their software, Banks offer 0% interest on loans and credit cards, Google offer Search and Gmail (to name a few), and even Facebook & Twitter is completely free to join, use and abuse.

So free stuff is used to either:

1. rope people into buying the actual product or additional add-ons, or
2. the actual product is free and monetized in other ways e.g. advertising

This leaves only a few essential things left to buy and pay for in the physical world:

• food (sustenance)
• government taxation/rates (duty to the country)
• house utilities bills/rent/mortgage (shelter)
• mobile/telephone/TV/internet services (communications)
• vehicle insurance/running costs (travel)

Living in the modern world is therefore not as expensive as it used to be, as the most essential services (a lot of which are digital) we pay for are increasingly becoming free, and businesses which try to find out how to make stuff we pay for today free, will be very successful in this modern age of business.

Why Do Action? Lord Krishna Explains [Video]

Love Yourself

People begin to feel depressed, sad, down when they forget to love themselves. And loving yourself is the easiest thing, and doesn't cost a dime either. Try this:

Bow down fully with your forehead on the ground, as if your body is in complete submission. Stay in this position for a few minutes and keep the palms of your hands open - facing upwards - to create the effect of letting go.

After a few minutes of doing this. Come into cross-legged position or kneeling on both legs - put both your hands on your heart. Close your eyes. Repeat the mantra "I love myself, I love myself, I love myself". Keep repeating and feeling your heart. See how everything changes after a few moments. Let your heart expand, flood with love.

So if you ever feel down, know that you should take some time out to love yourself and dwell in that state of love. The more you do this, the more love you will have to share with the world, the more your relationships will work, the less selfish you'll become.

Sat Naam.