Eternal Now: I Am All Right, Right Now
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: Living in the eternal now and quieting your mind lifts you into a higher state of consciousness; your soul begins to work out your spiritual destiny. Let the light of your soul shine through the layers of your mind. Living in the eternal now improves the manifestation of the future; we're creating the future by what we do in the present so we want to live intelligently in the present. To show improvement, not perfection it will take constant practice of spiritual principles, maybe many lifetimes to get to the end of the path. Look back a few years, you should see improvement in your current unfoldment. Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva, Lessons 115, 116. The Guru Chronicles.
Transcription:
Good morning everyone.
We are continuing with our "Merging with Siva" series. We're up to 1962. Have a nice story from 1962:
"Following a 1962 summer retreat at Angora Lake, Gurudeva visited nearby Virginia City, Nevada, to find a piece of property that could serve as a permanent retreat center. ( And the members had had a retreat at the lake so he wanted a permanent building.) He didn't have to look far. About a quarter mile down the canyon from this legendary boom town of the Old West, he found a large, ramshackle brewery, originally built in 1864 on the site of the famed Comstock Lode Gold Rush. It was for sale.
"Its austere Sierra Nevada mountain terrain, with its sagebrush and pinon pine landscape, something that might intimidate others, was appealing to him. It was yogic, almost desolate. It was a place where the inner was more important than the outer. His first thought, when he stepped inside, was, 'What a wonderful ashram this would make!'' He wandered through its cavernous rooms... He wandered through its cavernous rooms, on three floors, and, despite the dilapidated condition of the landmark, he arranged to purchase it.
"The building, known as the Old Nevada Brewery, was the favorite haunt of American humorist Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens (Twain's real name) was first a writer and then the editor of the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City from 1862 to 1864, a time during which he wrote his famed novel Roughing It. Each afternoon, it is said, he took refuge in the beer gardens of the biggest and most popular pub, telling tall tales to rowdy miners. And there were large crowds. In those days, Virginia City, with 30,000 people, was nearly half as populous as San Francisco (imagine that), due to the gold rush which brought people from all over the world to the Wild West to dig into the sage-covered hills.
"The landmark had been a silent memorial for half a century when Gurudeva, the new owner, stepped into its brick and fancy-woodwork rooms. Its age was showing. The resident caretaker was a grizzled old prospector who kept his mule in the basement and a pig in the shower.(Where else would you keep them? Pig in the shower.) He was hard of hearing and required more than a little convincing that his residence had indeed changed owners.
"Church families adopted the ashram at once, like parents embracing an orphaned child, pouring their hearts and souls, and their money, into it the rest of that summer to bring it up to Gurudeva's standards. Several monastics stayed as caretakers through the snow-throttled Nevada mountain winter, and plans for major renovations were made for the Spring. The ashram became the Skandamalai Monastery (also called the Mountain Desert Monastery), reflecting Gurudeva's insight that Murugan, Skanda, is the lord of renunciates, who would be its residents. It would also be home of Comstock House, a major publication and printing facility, and the new center for the burgeoning Himalayan Academy courses and programs. For years, at this remote and desolate mountain location, 6,500 feet above sea level, Gurudeva would train his renunciates and issue forth the teachings of Vedanta, Siddhanta and the Saivite religion through literature, travel programs, seminars and courses."
And end of story; it's a great story.
Back to our lesson, Chapter 17, The Eternal Now. Lesson 115:
"I Am All Right, Right Now.
"It is one thing to say 'I am all right, right now,' and it is another thing to feel it. Can you feel that you are all right, right now? Can you really believe it? Can you hold that feeling, so this affirmation becomes permeated through your subconscious mind? Let this feeling permeate so deeply through your subconscious mind that it begins working within you, the same way your involuntary subconscious keeps your heart beating and the other processes of your body going.
"'I'm all right, right now.' Let the feeling of these words vibrate within you. Then every time you abide in the luxury of worry--and the luxury of worry is one luxury you cannot afford--say to yourself, 'I'm all right, right now,' and forget about where you are going, forget about where you have been and just be where you are, where your physical body is, in its immediate surroundings.
"When you do that, you find that where you were going and what you were worried about has to do with the egotistical you--your pride and the various qualities that you hasten to rid yourself of when you think you should improve yourself. So, it is really very practical to live now and be all right in all the nows. But remember, since living in the eternal now lifts you into a higher state of consciousness than you have been accustomed to, you have to continue to feel that you are all right, right now. When you continue in the consciousness of the eternal now, something mysterious and wonderful begins to happen--your soul, your superconscious, begins to work out your spiritual destiny. When you quiet your mind, and only when you quiet your mind, you give your soul a chance. What difference does it make if you do have problems? They will work themselves out if you can keep the confusion of your lower states of mind out of the way.
"Visualize your soul now as a shaft of light. Visualize your mind as various layers surrounding that soul, covering up the brilliancy of that light. If you live in the layers around the soul, which only cover up the brilliancy of the light, you add to the confusion around the soul. But you can live in that shaft of light. By realizing that you are all right this instant, that light of your soul has a chance to shine through the surrounding layers of the mind just a little, enough to calm your future. For your future is made in the present, in the eternal now."
That's a very important point there that Gurudeva is making. We have a choice; if we live in the confusion it complicates the manifestation of our future. So, we're complicating our own future, causing ourselves problems we don't need to cause ourselves if we live in the confusion. But if we live in the eternal now it improves the manifestation of the future. That's an important point and relates to the idea of karma. Some individuals look at karma just in the sense of "what I did in the past is impacting my present karma. What can I do about it?" But this is the more proactive way of looking at karma. What I do in the present is creating my future. That's where we have the choice, right? We're creating our future by what we do in the present so we want to live intelligently in the present.
Lesson 116:
"Progress Takes Persistence
"When you find yourself with your mind calmed, your future automatically works itself out. I have had so many people ask me questions, seeking advice. I very seldom give advice, because very few people really want it. The majority have already made up their own minds, and what they are looking for is permission to go ahead and do what they have already decided upon. But if a person asks a question three, four, five times, then you know they are seeking advice. It is a rare person, however, who can take that advice.
"Often enough some people may bring to you their problems. They tell you all their troubles, and you tell them how to work them out, because you can see a little bit farther than they can due to the fact their minds are confused and yours is calm. But they end up by taking their problems right back again, and instead of working them out, they only add to the confusion. That is like going to a university, sitting in on a class, skipping the rest of the classes and expecting to pass the final exam when you have had only one lesson. It does not work there, and it doesn't work in spiritual life either.
"There are those who run from one teacher to another, staying with each one only long enough to find enough fault with him or his organization to be able to avoid the teaching and to run on to another teacher. These people are far from the stability of living in the eternal now, for as soon as they find fault with themselves and face overcoming their problems, they have to blame it all on someone else and run away.
"Spiritual unfoldment is not unlike a university in this sense: you have to go through with all it has to offer for a number of years. If you skip from one university to another and back again and expect to graduate, you find that you are always being set back before you can go ahead! It just does not work.
"It takes the average person some time before he can bring his entire mind and all his actions into the focus of the eternal now. Just hearing about it is not going to give you a birth into that state of consciousness. You will have to struggle and strive to hold the eternal now. It will take constant practice of spiritual principles to permeate the grosser layers of the mind with the clarity of the eternal now."
Gurudeva's bringing up an interesting point. The idea of a task taking time and constant practice is understood to apply to many aspects of life such as learnng to play a musical instrument. No one would expect to learn to play it in a few days up to a very high standard. However, some individuals feel that the spiritual path can be rushed, that it does not take time and constant practice. However, it does.
So I have an interesting experience in that regard, this happened a number of times. Usually an individual around, somewhere in their sixties, probably late sixties, who their whole life hasn't been interested in spiritual practices and now, all of a sudden, at age 67 say, they're determined to realize the Self in this life. "I need to realize the Self. What do I need to do?" Sixty-seven years old with no previous practice. So that shows it's not understood very well. The idea that you don't need to work at it your whole life and maybe many lifetimes in order to really get to the end of the path. Well, that's what Gurudeva's saying. It's a wonderful teaching to keep in mind and share with others when appropriate, that it's a slow steady process. We're trying to show improvement not perfection, right? Perfection is really something we can't manifest. The inside is perfect but the outside always has some imperfection. So, we're trying to improve and the time frame I use is we look back a few years. You should see improvement in your current unfoldment verses where you were two years ago. That's a fair timeframe to look for improvement. So, it's a slow process taking many years, have to reprogram the subconscious mind etcetera and that can take some time just in itself.
Have a wonderful day.