Darshan Notes

What comes up, what comes out,

these are all expressions of love.

These are all your heart's creations.

Love them.

Love them because your nature is love and bliss and freedom.

Dharma, the law, sky and earth in their place, harmony.

Your sincere, benevolent project's themes are valid.

With compassion for yourself do them.

The inner love is the key.

The mind gets just enough gas from the infinite inner power that it can think it's in charge.

Always know otherwise.

Later: Head popping up swimming in an unfamiliar ocean, still, starlit.

Powerfully sucked away to oblivion,

I remember only that I thought I had been thinking a thought,

but not able to remember what it was.

Dharma ∝ time: in time we realize the timeless.

Give meditation and practice time.

All this is my creation, in and of love, love it.

Confused mind? Be more humble.

Methods:

• Discriminate between the eternal and non-eternal.
• Be in the now.
• Stop the storytelling.
• Stop the trying to storytell, the bound wonderment, confusedly asking, What of this am I? This sort of fits, does this fit? Looking in the mirror, oh, is this my most photogenic side? is that me? No, trust the wise mantra, not the ignorant hapless helpless traumatized questing. Poor thing, you can calm down now.
• Recognize transitive I AM: I am X - So you can reject it. Just, I am.
• Recognize suffering.
• Chant.
• Engage the heart in the heart's action: love and wisdom infinitely.
• Make sacred space and enter it. Meditate on the divine teacher's grace.
• Eagerly seek that pain of abandoning your ego, until ego is gone. Learn how.
• Cultivate the desire for liberation.
• Don't let society be an excuse for egotistic fantasies, for false identifications. Be together with immediacy of presence, with inner surrender, humility, gratitude, forgiveness, clarity of perception, removal of stultifying distorting false concepts.

Clarify your perception to see what is. Be present.

Darshan Recollection

The smells and texture in the carpet under my face, real and surprising but not shocking

Recognizing that if any experience is divine, then this moment of darshan, forehead on the carpet, is divine. Therefore...

Opening to my world of sensation and experience,

willing openness even to shocks.

Suddenly, devotional love arose.

Darshan:

The quick, flexible, snake-like cognizing intellect,

thinking it is something, has not become soft with surrendered love, yet.

Now give and give, even give the quivering and quick * inner self-knowing.

[*: even fearful and reactive thus not stilling that ego-grasping]

After that you will recognize and know you are That.

Your pure intellect does exist; its purpose is not just (to know) every kind of crap. So clear the crap out of the way. The intellect without an object is pure. The All Encompassing Heart is pure. Connect (not with ego story telling but emotionally) to each atomic experience, thus purifying both each experience and each emotional moment.

Darshan: One connection is through your innate desire and to the grace of the Divine Teacher. That connection opens and flows and supports you fully.

Be without story, predicative I/me/mine, time, or emotional regulation.

I am here to experience the Self. To become established in that. To receive the spiritual awakening that will lead me to the final goal.

Let's acknowledge that you, dear reader, you too have an ancient and lifelong spiritual path.

To connect with the awakening energy of a divine teacher in the form of uplifting practices, the awakened thought or mantra, a regular time to meditate.

Mind is friend or enemy. In the time of contemplation after meditation, we can learn from what we experienced, some lesson that can uplift us, an expression that reaches our mind or understanding, and let our mind think about it later and be our uplifting friend.

Be at the boundary. Learn something! Here, where you have a chance! Don't dismiss your power of higher insight, want to get up and go, and lose it. Footnote: discover a higher truth Now.

The Teacher is You.

The Teacher is Stillness.

Majestic, infinite, conscious, present.

Give yourself fully to begin to see.

Practice humility to keep learning.

(Inner emotional conscious) Truth is one. Contexts are many.

Oneness in action is service.

Oneness in mind is meditation.

Oneness in feeling is liberation.

Oneness in relationship is love.

Oneness in blaming is forgiveness.

Oneness in intellect is self recognition.

Oneness in sensation is flow.

Oneness in status consciousness is humility.

Oneness in virtue is non-judgement.

Oneness in breathing is conscious non-agency.

Oneness in time is now.

Oneness means oneness of emotional interpretation.

You could memorize a list for all the contexts you are in, or just focus on oneness, wherever you are.

Non-operation of your inner judge.

Innocence. Openness. Delight. Inner surrender.

Progress: Who can say, am I different from what I was? Struggling with ego has been a lifelong task, but every attempt is progress.

Progress in emotional understanding and wisdom comes in free meditation having focussed the heart on the goal.

Efforts and trust thereof: stronger discipline? I'm just a rat in a corner, if my discipline increases it's the only thing I can do. My character lets me see the walls surrounding me. My heart becomes more knowable.

What is effort?:

• The usual meanings, of course. But also...
• Surrender to the higher intention, simplifying.
  
  
• Mental inadequacy known.
• The subtlety of Om in the space between the breaths.

Discipline: I hope to learn to reside in the absolute.

On the importance of being human, and how to become a true human being: Inner divinity is not change. Become who you are, aware of your own inner divinity. Tom, Come out of your shyness and passivity.

Relate deeply. Discover God's deepest desire and vision by listening to the real one in another, one after another, and asking after it and showing it so you both see it. Thus be with that more deeply.

When you treat things with love, they become divine. Greater love, for all including ourselves. On time or not; preferentially odd numbered; traumatized or not.

Tom, polish, empty, clean, uncover, silence that inner judge!

The root of any stuckness is in an operation of the inner judge. Full freedom and emotional flow with depth is the actual reality. It is to be expected; the true default state. So root out the judge's operations.

Get yourself a redeeming mantra from your own wise teacher. These are some notes about mine, Om Namah Shivaaya.

Om: refers to that supreme pervading stillness.

Namah (I bow): releases you from all this. Na: the quick, the changing, the new. Mah: the same, the unchanging, the relished.

Shivaaya (to Shiva); to the Self. Sh[i]: Silence!, with self-awareness arising; [V|W]aa: heart opening, acceptance, release; Ya!: celebration concomitant with understanding, grace

From stillness* that quality which arises is spontaneous, authentic. Therefore use the mantra to orient toward stillness, move toward stillness, attain inner stillness, and after that allow spontaneity to flow. See if your heart's desire is not attained when you surrender inwardly.

(*: Silence, stillness sometimes seem strictly unattainable; they are nice, but meaningless, words; then this came to me.)

To give a share: Breathe throughout. Use your own experience. Share knowledge that reveals the heart. Speak simply. Refined, edited teachings are powerful. Quote with due credit. Aim for an attitude or experience. Prepare well. No or few notes when speaking.

Om. Like 2 elephants:

Bowing down: surrender.

Standing up: obedience: surrender.

Responsible dominant intellect (1): a metaphor for the power and greatness of the Self (2).

I experienced 40 minutes of tandra (a conscious but sleep-like state without body- or time-awareness), forehead to floor, with an urgent intention to stay in the khechari state

Touch, untouch, touch, study the grip of the mind, the seriousness of suffering Ownership, touch, what is this mystery?

Footnote: Must I be so serious, so committed to owning these attributes? Does it benefit me? Isn't it really optional?

What is most important to me?

1. About others: Authenticity not ideals. Why? Fake is ugly to others, doesn't teach, is painful to the faker.
2. About me: Grace in the heart. Understatedness.
3. About institutions: Cult dynamics are hugely important. A manipulating fool once said, you're not a good person unless you go do such and such volunteer service, with a big request conflicting with my life commitments, and I stayed away for 14 years. Honoring everyone not just interpersonally but in the policies and requests of a voluntary institution, in whose larger-than-life evidently-self-important form and in the scary reification of fat egos (or just scared people), retaining this humility and respect is key. My institution seems to have learned this lesson, since after these 14 years after those 14 years I haven't seen this fault again.
   
   
4. (As First Teacher taught Second Teacher) Never beg.
   
   

(Observations and impressions from a film of First Teacher:)

Three gestures upward: Lift! Open! Transcend!

Three gestures down: [Brush away, throw away] worldliness! [Release] attachment! [Abandon] suffering!

My self, First Teacher, has these qualities:

Innocence. Courage of innocence and childlikeness in speech.

Support in transcendence the way you already are now.

Childlike delight in chanting.

I understand from him, It is always there and I am completely protected.

Perfection.

The power.

Profound stillness.

Where are these tears coming from?

In the spring of 1981, I first entered the main chanting hall of one of Second Teacher's ashrams, a place I lived for four months later on that year. On the wall were large photos of several more or less naked mendicant saints from modern India, and portraits of a few clothed women saints and goddesses. Above Second Teacher's seat, in the place of highest honor, was a photo of a man, head slightly back, forehead slightly wrinkled, mouth expressionless, eyes intent with something that I recognized.

I recognized myself there, and immediately, somehow, knew that this was a picture of me. Strangely enough he didn't look much like me, but I knew without question, I was that man, he was me.

I knew because I was just a year or two out of that period of my youth which I had spent in nearly constant and intense concentration on my youthful tasks of school, sports, and other activities, overcoming my own inner insecurities by climbing my available dominance hierarchies with the greatest personal focus and effort, in order to try my hardest, do my very very best, be my best, achieve the most. (From the intensity of insecurity came the intensity of effort.) In sports or math where maximum effort is called for, and mentally concentrated intensity achieves and finds its maximum effect at the limit of one's best effort, trying even harder at such a moment brings the awareness of one's own effort and concentration, brings the awareness of the instrument of effort itself, the agentive mental apparatus itself, the part of you that tries most intensely to understand and to do. In such a long-lasting cauldron of great effort and discipline one comes to recognize, and learn as familiar, the feeling of intense, self aware concentration.

I saw in his eyes the self awareness that I knew as my own experience of myself, which I had by then for years simply referred to in my own mind as: Me. Equally intense and certain, equally self-aware. I hadn't seen it recognizeably in anyone else, but I knew it as my own essential nature, because that's what I experienced when I was trying my hardest for a long time. When you are really trying your hardest, you get to know what you are.

From that earliest date, seeing First Teacher on the wall, I always had complete faith in my tradition. Everyone has their own tradition, and I wish them faith in it. I know I am blessed to have such great faith in mine.

A Square Brown Linoleum Tile An essay on selfless service.

Your inner mission is to heal and tenderly care for yourself. You are his.

You may bow and give yourself to him (First Teacher), but you are his, already his, fully his.

If you're not sure, check that your thoughts are to the good, for the highest good of yourself and others. Check with your inner guidance: Choose love or silence for your mind, either. Maybe you do have to surrender more. But maybe you also have to enjoy the moment, go with the flow, experience the love and peace, the acceptance.

After "I bow" has burned your ownership and given surrender of it all to the Divine Teacher and nothing is left of the "mine" game, then "I bow" can be followed by "I am". Shivo'ham, so'ham, Om'ham, Om. Sh... Waa.. and the still resonance of silence. Ya! Containing the thought of serenity, and the experience of non-down-regulated emotion, liberated.

I am so empty.

All this is so meaningless.

My ambitions seem playtime games, made up.

My inner judge, so harsh, critical, uncompassionate.

Instead, give some love to sister, to mother. Send Hi to an old advocate and thanks for his teachings.

Hey at least let serenity and passion flow when they do, live fully, don't down-regulate, you mental obstacle. Shut your story-telling moral-deriving down-regulating mouth. Be fucking crazy it's not your job to be someone else's or even your own "normal". Be a lunatic poet, make no sense, laugh at pain, cry at nothing, flow all in what ever.

"Please comment about post meditation contemplation, specifically."

(7/7/20: You can measure the hell-generating part of your experience during the post meditation reawakening, by noticing if you can keep that feeling, "energy", emotional perspective, as you watch it drain out, as you come back to body awareness and mentally come back into the context of your ongoing story. The continuous re-creation of that context is the continuous binding of your emotions, the loss of emotional freedom, the creation of hellishness itself.)

Most thinking and discussion of sadhana, whether negative (e.g., calling one's profound meditation experience a "coma") or positive (about how to try to go deeper, how to let go of the mind, its negative impressions, to go deeper from here) is representative of the striving, frazzled, actually suffering, mind, it arises from your own greater ignorance instead of your own greater knowledge, which is likeliest to be experienced toward the end of an period, say an evening program, of chanting and meditation. Therefore, instead,

Sit to contemplate, after.

Repeatedly examining the oneness of consciousness while filled with the after-effects of samadhi, samadhi is attained. (Verse 19)

(Must I repeat? It says to repeatedly contemplate the oneness of consciousness during the period after meditation. Is this difficult to understand, somehow? It's the time after that matters. Pay attention during the time after. This is why darshan occurs after meditation, because you spent all this time chanting and meditating to bring your consciousness to the point that it might possibly be open to a spiritual insight, so make your relationship with the divine teacher at THAT time, go up and have darshan at THAT time, and go sit down and contemplate what all this means THEN, when you have a chance of having a higher viewpoint. Now, finally, is the time the apple is most ripe on the tree; pluck it Now! Don't think, okay the program's over, let's get back to normal consciousness and pack up and go, nothing else to do here folks. No! It doesn't take a long time to capture an insight; you have spent your evening to grow this amazing fruit, now it needs to be picked.)

So I say, upon coming out, come slowly, to keep the energy, or perhaps the inner belief system, ongoingly. Usually we get these instructions: wiggle your toes, open your eyes, come out of meditation now. You've had your fun, now it's time to pack up and go home. Actually, No. I don't want to come out; I am trying to find a greater truth through this meditation and these spiritual practices, the truth that is something permanent, always present, something subtle that I don't always see in my anxious and frazzled day to day life. Rather than "coming out" of meditation my serious purpose is to raise my understanding to be more profound in and through and after meditation.

(So especially then,) Attend to That.

Learn something, discover something. Go up to bow down to the Teacher's presence, symbolic or otherwise, and get yourself the knowledge that you came here for. Then you, then I can carry home some permanent relief, a ratchet of progress in my inner development.

Hang the pennant of gurubhava on every breath.

[Gurubhava: becoming the Guru; identifying with what the true wise teacher identifies with.]

Joy contemplation:

I was gone. Sweet.

In darshan, some pain but great great love, and tears. My goal: see my awake experience as of oneness, as samadhi. (How? Sadhana, mumukshutva; grace.)

My intention this 6 weeks has been to awaken the inner music of So'Ham ("I am That", in Sanskrit, said to be heard as music, independently played, with the breath, at a subtle level). I asked it of Third Teacher, she gave her blessing.

For 2 weeks I have been feeling it in the navel region. With inward focus the emotion of a situation resolves into its cause, the inner place of stillness and awareness and emotional presence. Mystical qualities are perceived there.

Last week, I saw that the center of breath initiation and the center of emotional response activation are the same center.

Two days ago: Attending to situation again, energy rises into heart and becomes actively emotional tied to the situation. Noticing this path of pain I re-orient to the point of arising, again in the navel area.

My sleep has been practice in so'ham all this time. Awaken in anxiety, do so'ham, about 1x or 2x, then next thing I know I'm awakening from a 2nd dream several hours later.

Chanting a holy text is a great yoga. A powerful concentration exercise. It teaches grace in all experiences. Devotional song is even more attainable since slower, a bit.

I can enumerate and classify all the elements of experience during and by means of such a practice: All are conscious emanations like sparks from the same core of being, a core experienced as stillness. All: even those I had, have, or might see confusedly, as to be identified with. The sensation of pressed brows, I once identified with Self, since that had co-occurred so much for me in my teens, is just a spark like the rest. The inner thought of myself, my enthused and bright intellect, also is a spark of the same invisible steady flame. All, I have enumerated them all, and all are from, products of, the core, none are true Identity (if grabbed and held as Me or Mine, and from there confusedly wondering what to do next or how to react to the dramas, gripping that false Identity, in my ignorance and even panicked grip on it, I imagine it might soothe me but I am hardly soothed).

No task but the awareness of I am That. The formal inner encounter with the Teacher is egoless, simple, you could say utterly surrendered, past surrendered, yet miracles continue to arise. A vision of the column of energy, like a flash, miracles and blessings, canonical [mystical] realization coming unrequested, by grace. Thank you.

See others' words as the energy that brings samadhi [stillness in meditation].

Don't just ask questions to learn, ask questions to appreciate.

Friday program's chant:

My Ego rides fearful and controlling on the reins of breath. Doesn't even know how to let go.

[The four goals of life according to Hindu philosophy, are] Dharma [duty] Artha [wealth] Kaama [love] Moksha [liberation] : In all of these is the spirit of giving. Generous charity makes one a giver, opens the heart, stops the stone-like ego from owning us, calculating its gain. In the flow of take-with-give and give-with-take is the possibility of inner surrender.

What learned and how applied? Economic and spiritual life are not non-intersecting. Renew my practice.

By means of That, from mind, the Divine Self.

My Darshan - Tonight's experience: happiness for my prosperity in giving. Gratitude. Wondering for what, out of all that is going on. Obviously for all of it. A lesson to contemplate for me.

[To clarify, I haven't normally felt a lot of gratitude for my anxiety filled miserable life. So this was a great gift, and worthy of contemplation, for me.]