{"id":781,"date":"2026-07-25T13:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T23:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/?p=781"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:00:03","slug":"lesson-105-living-with-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-105-living-with-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 105 \u2013 Living with \u015aiva"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/LwS-Lesson-105.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Recording: Gurudeva&#8217;s cloned voice<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Exercising Concentration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are many faculties of the superconscious mind just waiting to be tapped by you. Only by tapping into and opening your superconscious, creative powers will you ever come to know and realize your real Self. It is not difficult, but in order to open the higher or inner consciousness, you have to gain a perfect control of the thinking faculties of your mind. <br><br>Concentration has to be practiced and perfected before meditation can begin. If you find that you are sitting and trying not to fall asleep for a half hour, you have only accomplished sitting and trying not to go to sleep for half an hour\u2014and perhaps refraining from scratching your nose when it begins to itch. But that cannot be called meditation. Meditation is a transforming state of mind, really. A person once said to me, \u201cWell, I concentrate my mind by reading a book, and when I\u2019m reading, I don\u2019t hear a thing.\u201d This is not concentration, but attention, the first step to concentration. Concentration is thinking about one definite thing for a given length of time until you begin to understand what you are thinking about. What should we concentrate upon? Start with any solid object. Take your watch, for instance. Think about your watch. Think about the crystal. Think about the hands. Let your mind direct itself toward the mechanism of your watch, and then observe how your mind, after a few moments, begins to wander and play tricks on you. You may start thinking about alarm clocks or a noise in the street. <br><br>Each time your concentration period is broken by a distraction, you must start all over again. Breathe deeply and coordinate all the energies of your body so that you are not distracted by an itch or a noise. Direct your awareness once again to your watch. Before you know it, you will be thinking about a movie you saw four weeks ago and living through all the fantasies of it again without realizing that ten minutes of your time has gone by. Be careful and gentle with your awareness, however. Bring it back to the object of your concentration in a firm, relaxed manner and say to yourself, \u201cI am the master of my thought.\u201d Eventually, your awareness will begin to do just what you want it to. <br><br>Once you are able to direct your awareness, without wavering, upon one object, you will begin to understand what you are concentrating upon, and you will find that this state of understanding is the beginning of your meditation. You are more alive in this state than you were in the noisy condition of your mind before you began to concentrate, and you come forth from your meditation a little wiser than you were before you went in. <br><br>The next state of consciousness, which is attained when meditation has been perfected, is contemplation. In the contemplative state of awareness you will feel the essence of all life pouring and radiating through your body and through the object you have been meditating upon. When contemplation is sustained, the final step is sam\u0101dhi, and that is finding or becoming your true Self, which is beyond all conditions of your mind, all phases of consciousness. Only after you have attained sam\u0101dhi can you answer the question \u201cWho am I?\u201d from your own experience. Only then will you know that you are all-pervasive, and finally, in the deepest sam\u0101dhi, that you are causeless, timeless, spaceless and that you have been able to realize this through a balance of your awakened inner and outer consciousness, a bringing together of the forces of your mind in yoga, or union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">NANDINATHA S\u016aTRA 105: SIGNS OF THE WIDOWED&#8217;S INTENT<br>\u015aiva\u2019s widowed devotees not intending to remarry wear holy ash and the forehead mark of sandalpaste, but not red powder. Those wishing to remarry may wear jewelry, cosmetics and colorful clothing. Aum Nama\u1e25 \u015aiv\u0101ya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exercising Concentration There are many faculties of the superconscious mind just waiting to be tapped by you. Only by tapping into and opening your superconscious, creative powers will you ever come to know and realize your real Self. It is not difficult, but in order to open the higher or inner consciousness, you have to <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-105-living-with-siva\/\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-with-siva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4969,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781\/revisions\/4969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}