Category: Merging With Siva

The Quest For Security

You have at one time or another watched yourself pick up a new idea: “I shall do this and this and this!” Then, because you had a reaction over something, your enthusiasm died; you forgot the idea and bounded off onto something else. This is the way the mind works. You forget when you reach a part of your mind that has no inclination to understand. That is a part of the instinctive mind. If you run up against a habit pattern that is too strong for your will, it is like going along in a straight line and suddenly ricocheting off in another direction. But while this happens for a long time, after a lot of study and constant self-discipline—without which the study does not do too much good—the principles of the spiritual life finally become permeated through your entire being, and you become close to your soul in the eternal now.

This week, when you think about it, you will say to yourself, “I’m all right, right now,” and you will feel uplifted in knowing that this is so. But next week you will forget to do it. It makes you feel too complete, too secure. And being too secure is like being insecure, isn’t that true?

I met a family from the South recently that was having quite a time trying to adjust to the security of success! The husband has been a salesman all of his life, only just meeting the more or less routine needs of his family, three girls and one boy. He and his wife had always nurtured a desire for a lot of money so that the family could live in complete security, and every month for years they had put away just a little savings, with an eye to making the type of investment, at the right time, which would satisfy their dream.

Not long ago they found themselves able to buy into land with “remote possibilities of oil.” By spending the last of their savings to initiate drilling, by remote chance they did strike oil, bringing them almost immediate affluence through a chain of circumstances that has changed the entire pattern of their life. Now they feel more insecure than ever. When their money finally came in abundance, they found they really did not know what to do with it. They were worried because they had no experience in handling it. They felt totally transplanted, totally insecure in their apparent security.

After several conversations, they began to see that they had found their security in the desire for money; feeling that they did not have enough had become an integral part of the family’s subconscious. Because they were not able to live in the eternal now, they could not catch up with their new condition of life. Many people who find security in material desires are not able to become accustomed to something they are not already acquainted with.

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.

I’m 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 that 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.

Torn Between Past and Future

What is the instant? That is what we have to discover through a moment of concentration. What is the moment? We all know what the past is—many people live in the past, over and over again, and they never catch up with the present. Other people live in the future—but of course when they do, they are really only living in the past, too, and they never find the present either.

Just as an example, how many times have you gone to the temple without being fully there? Part of you was there, part of you was living in the past, part of you was trying to live in the future; and there you were, emoting over the things that happened that should never have happened, and fearful of things that might happen in the future, which probably won’t happen unless you continue being fearful of their happening until you create them!

Do you know that the ability to live right now, in the instant, is a spiritual power, reflecting the awakening of the soul and requiring a subconscious control of the mind? Your soul is never bothered with the things that disturb the rest of the mind! The mind lives in the past, and the mind tries to live in the future. But when you quiet your mind, you live in the present. You are living within your soul, or the higher state of your mind which is undisturbed by the things of time.

Also, when you live in the present, you eliminate fears, worries and doubts. Of course, you might feel a little out of place for a while, as if you weren’t anybody, if for years and years you have been accustomed to making fears, worries and doubts your cherished possessions—more important to you than anything. There are people who just wouldn’t know who they were if you took away from them their fears, worries and doubts. But if you want to be somebody, something, a state of being, you want to live in the eternal now.

There is a simple formula for attaining the eternal now. If you can remember it, you can center yourself within yourself very quickly and experience living right this instant. Imagine yourself now, worried, bothered and disturbed, and in the midst of your disturbance say to yourself, “I am all right, right now. Just this instant, I am all right.” What a shock to the disturbed part of your mind! It will not only be shocked, it will be shattered out of its disturbance when you declare the truth that you are all right in the eternal now.

You Only Have a Minute

“You have only just a minute, only sixty seconds in it. Didn’t want it, forced upon you, can’t refuse it, didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, it is up to you to use it. You must suffer if you lose it, give account if you abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it. For not to love is not to live, and not to give is not to live.” There is really very little to be said intellectually about the eternal now. You have to live in it, and in living in it you discover a higher state of consciousness than you have experienced in your life. Because the vibration of the eternal now is so very high, part of your mind and nature does not like to experience the security of the eternal now, which is really the height of security. It takes practice to maintain a continued experience of the eternal now.

Can you visualize yourself, right at this instant, balanced on the top of a tall tree? If the tree were to bend too far forward, you would fall to the ground, or down into time and thought. If it were to bend too far back, you would again fall. Balanced on the top of this tree, you can look out over the countryside and enjoy everything you see. But if you stop to think about one thing of the past, you would become so engrossed in what you are thinking about that you again fall to the ground. You find that you cannot live in a thinking consciousness balanced so high. Here you live in the eternal now, with great awareness of what is around you and within you, but with no thought on it.

Can you feel like this? Right now you are here. Right now nothing else matters. You are aware. You are alive, and you are in eternity. Finding the eternal now is a vibration even more powerful than that of sound or light, for you are in the consciousness of Being—being intensely aware, being very alive. In that state of consciousness you can see that when you begin to think, it is like climbing down the tree and walking along through the forest. On the ground you cannot see the forest for the trees. On top of the tree you can see the entire forest and enjoy it. In the eternal now you find awareness in every part of your body, every fiber of your consciousness. Your life depends upon your awareness! Here you can enjoy seeing the birds fly by, the waterfall, the countryside.

You can enjoy all that, but you dare not stop to think upon the flight of one bird, because you would become too engrossed in thought and fall into a lower state of consciousness. That bird might remind you of a pet bird you had at home, and the thinking mind would go on and on, landing you on the ground. When you become aware and start living in eternity, in the eternal now, you find that eternity is within you. Then you can see there is no life. Nor is there any death. You have transcended even the laws of reincarnation in that state, holding the consciousness of eternity, for you are beyond the soul which reincarnates and creates a new form around itself.

Anticipated Reactions

Last night we drove past Lake Tahoe and the lake was calm. That calmness is what you see within your mind when your problems are solved within you. If you were to look down in the bottom of the lake, you would see old tree trunks, tin cans, garbage and other things, which can be compared to unsolved problems. When the bottom of the lake is sandy, that is like the lake of your consciousness after all your problems are solved. As you know, there are three types of people: the ignorant man laughs and makes fun of things he does not understand; the intellectual man smiles condescendingly and criticizes, using other’s opinions he has read or heard in the past; the wise man will look at what he understands, try to understand it further and later explain it so others can understand it.

As you evolve spiritually, you go through these various states of unfoldment. You never know what state of consciousness you will come into next, since you have never evolved spiritually before. In schooling yourself to live in the eternal now, you overcome anticipated reactions of the subconscious mind, the mind of feeling and habit patterns. Many people have two conflicting approaches to the same problem: one a state of understanding, and the other born of habits of the past. Clear that situation, so that when it comes up you will not have an anticipated reaction; you will cancel it ahead of time. Remain quiet and do not allow your emotional mind to talk to you. You are lost if it does, from reactionary habit patterns of the past, if you listen. As you pray each day, learn to concentrate, meditate and demonstrate your will over your mind. Demonstrate to yourself, and everybody else will see the result. Subdue ancient habit patterns latent in the subconscious mind. Then you will react not from anticipated reaction but from an action born of your intuitive nature. That is how to accomplish understanding.

Let us watch an anticipated reaction—an example of how we think we are going to react. “I am going to be tired tonight,” we say, for instance, after a hard day’s work. You are anticipating a reaction. What are you doing? You are setting up a vibration to be tired when you get home. Instead, you can forget about being tired and jump into a very interesting situation without getting tired by living in the inspiration of the moment.

Remember one thing, we have to get our joy out of the doing, not the result. That is the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental. The Oriental receives his joy in the doing, not the result. The American rushes through his doing, thinking he will get his joy from the result, so is in a state of tension all the time. Life is a constant state of joy in doing. We will have mixed results if we look for joy in results, and our subconscious mind will be frustrated. Receive joy in everything you do.

You have a greater understanding to apply to your life today. In application you set up new habit patterns—the clear, calm sort which allow you to look in the lake and see the sandy bottom. Don’t look for your reactions experienced in the past, and life will hold continuous, joyous surprises. You will hold yourself in sufficient control so that you can concentrate, meditate and contemplate. The study of yoga is a full-time job, started on Monday and carried out twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to see results.

If you are not peaceful, you are still reacting to past habit patterns. If you don’t feel peaceful, pretend that you do. Feel peace. Feel everybody feeling that same calmness right now. Feelings rub off on other people. If you can demonstrate a constant, consistent peace, get acquainted with peace, the chemical ingredients carried with you all day long, and make others feel peaceful, you will be doing something very fine for world peace, because the world starts with you. The little that you do is important, and it will ramify and expand your consciousness and the consciousness of everybody around you. Try it and see. Hold the consciousness of peace within you. The instinctive nature of man does not want to do that. Conquer that, and that promotes peace in itself.