God dwells in you as you. All you need to do to know this, is to drop to your knees before your Beloved and surrender completely to, whomever or whatever that is. To whomever can so love, God shows himself to you as you, and you are filled with his love.

THIS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 31, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE ONCE AGAIN FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page. Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call I recommend listening to it. It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power. This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

FINDING LOVE IN THE VOID

SATSANG CHRISTMAS EVE 2017

https://youtu.be/NoR_Z2bEF7o

THIS SUNDAY, DECEMBER 24, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page.  Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call   I recommend listening to it.  It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power.  This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

EMAIL FROM A LONG TIME STUDENT

These two emails are so loving and personal I am not including a name, but exactly describe the kind of divine love that I want people to feel, because it leads directly to the realization of your divine self within.

EMAIL 1

Oh Edji,, it is so very beautiful,.
Listening to your latest Satsang . Your every word just explodes in my Heart Center and radiates out through every single molecule of this body. 

This is so intense and I don't even begin to have the words to describe what is happening.

Every word you say is also my word.

Wow!  This love for you has entered into a new dimension, totally unexpected  and overwhelming.
I Know.

I feel.

I burn.

Pure Love is radiating out from this Void and. Into the Heart Center then spreading everywhere within the body and so intense at times to be too much to handle.

Even questions asked are my questions. I even love the person asking the question.

The kitty that sleeps with me must also feel the love as she came over and sat on my chest... The love between us is even intense.

I feel that all this love is originating and coming straight out of the Void and directly into my Heart Center..
It is just so so powerful.
I know how St. Teresa felt... Almost painful at times.

With who I don't know but I am deeply in Love.

EMAIL 2

Edji,  never experienced anything like that, ever and it was so awesome!
Voice was so full of Grace that it felt like arrows of Love piercing the I AM.

Human love is so limited compared to this Divine intervention, which is so warm and deep and all Encompassing .

My whole soul was involved. 

It almost felt like it could swallow me up.

I'll be listening to that Satsang over and over again every night.

I am so blessed to have met you 

Ed describes the process of realizing the Life Force Within, by first perceiving the Void, and within it, to feel love.  Human love then is transmuted into divine love of the other and of one's own self as the Life Force, the energy activating all life.

https://youtu.be/aIUK6f0pfSI

NOTICE, BEGINNING SUNDAY, DECEMBER 17, 11AM, SATSANG WILL BE FOLLOWED BY 30-40 MINUTES OF EMPTINESS SITTING, OR LEARNING HOW TO PERCEIVE THE VOID.

FIRST GO TO SATSANG LINK:

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

Then go to http://satsangwithedji.weebly.com

This should take you directly to the chanting page.  Go to the first section of chants, Krishna Das. When the time comes for sitting in the void, I will call out the chant.

You can either listen to the chant or mute it and sit in the Void, I will call   I recommend listening to it.  It will give your sitting added power.

The Void is the source of everything that exists and has great power.  This is not simply sitting in silence, but a direct immersion in the source of the universe, vast space filled with intense energies.

I think I will need to simplify my teachings in the future to focus on finding the Void, throwing oneself away so to speak, so as to find your true self through love.  Finding the Void is relatively easy, but is entirely preparatory to making you open enough to experience divine love through having your heart’s fire kindled by another.  Thus the chant, “Kindle my Heart’s flame with Thy flame, O sudguru, kindle my flame with thine.”  This is why we will begin to sit in silence after Satsang, and I will become the Void for you to feel and open to.

WHAT IS SELF?

 Recently I posted a comment stating that I did not have a sense of self until I was in my 60s.  People responded incredulously, asking that I experienced before I experience myself?  Before I answer that, I would like to ask a question to all those incredulous questioners.

Look inside yourself.  Look inside that internal darkness, that internal emptiness, that internal void and ask if you find a self therein.  Then I ask you, what is your sense of self?  Who are you?  How do you describe your experience of self?  How is your self different from the rest of your world of experience?

Now try this for a few days or a few weeks, perhaps a few minutes each day. Then tell me what is your experience of self. 

I think like all of the neoAdvaitins point out, you will find no sense of self within, you have only suspected that there was a self, but you cannot find one.

Are you emptiness?  Are you a sense of energy?  Are you your body or are you your mind?  Are you that which watches all of this?  Or are you the throbbing, glistening, moving, Lifeforce within?  This is what I call my sense of self: the divine within who cognizing’s the world around me. 

The world around me, I do not experience as me, like some who claim that that self is everything.  I experience the world around me as “other.”  I experience other people around me, not as me, or as no person, or as an appearance in consciousness, but as another sentient being, another bag of flesh within whom the Lifeforce looks outwards, feels outwards and acts outwardly, but is also intensely aware of its own existence within that bag of flesh, as the Energizer the creator of all movement, all loving, all actions, and all wisdom. 

Yes, although the Lifeforce is the same in all of us, so very few people actually know firsthand from their own experience the Lifeforce within, that which I call myself. This recognition came to me because I loved someone, and she love me back with all of her heart and soul.  We loved each other and in that love, myself was found.  It exploded out of my own emptiness.  But few people even know this emptiness, this Void within, the container and sustainer of the entire universe.

This is how I know without question that you cannot love yourself until you have completely, and deeply loved another.  When you find a so-called “soulmate,” one to whom you can completely surrender in utter and complete devotion, in complete and almost desperate love, which afterwards leaves only love in you, as you, you become love itself, only then will the Lifeforce reveal itself to you, as you.  In a sense, you as a separate bag of flesh with consciousness, becomes aware of the universal Lifeforce within, and you identify with that, you are the divine dynamo within that awakens your flesh, gives you life, and allows you to love both yourself and another.

Before this time, no matter how long you look within, how deeply you go, how much you witness yourself, how much you practice self-inquiry, no matter how much psychotherapy you get, you will never know that self within.

So those who ask what was your experience of yourself and the world like prior to your experience of the self through divine love, I only suggest look at your own life now, in this moment, in your own experience of your body and yourself and in relationships.  Can you tell me with complete conviction who and what you are?  Can you tell me about your own self versus everything else in your experiential universe?  I doubt it. 

I doubt you will find anything you can call yourself.  You may call the I thought yourself but it is not.  It is only a thought.  You may call the sense of I-ness inside of you yourself, but it is not, it is only a sensation that can lead to recognition of yourself through love.  But it is not self itself.

You have assumed that you have a self within, but you cannot find it, you cannot feel it, you do not know it.  Therefore, how can you say with any degree of certitude, that you cannot love another without first loving yourself? 

Come, let me take you into that void, a place where you are absent to yourself but not consciously so, that will allow you to be open to that external love which will awaken the self within you in an explosion of light, energy, bliss and love, and you will know your own divine origin.  We will go into that void every Sunday after the talking part of Satsang, and there you can know the God within.

There is an old saying that has gained a lot of believers in the West that you cannot love anyone until you first love yourself.

Not only is this overly simplistic, but from my experience, it is just wrong.

How does a toddler learn how to love him or her self?  Easy, by being loved by the mother or father.  At about age three, the toddler has reached the developmental stage where it can differentiate itself from its environment, from its mother, father and siblings.  Once this differentiation takes place between me and others, and we feel both the love from others and our own sense of self at the same time, then we can love that self-sense, our self.

Very often in this world that toddler does not receive sufficient love during this formative stage, or the love is expressed in a way the toddler can not receive and incorporate it, then that toddler may not even develop a sense of self, let alone appreciate its existence. I know that I never experienced a sense of self separate from the world until I was in my 60s through the love I received then.

If as an adult we do receive the love of a peer, a man or woman who we respect and love, then, for the first time we can both experience a sense of a separate-from-the-world self, and also we can actually let that love in, so to speak, realizing that someone “out there” in the environment loves us in a most spectacular way.

If either or both lovers are ready enough, deep enough, empty enough, the mutual love can explode into an experience of the divine within as the life force, and the life force itself becomes us; it energizes, purifies, and elevates one’s own sense of self, as well as for the other, to a realization of God within.  At this point we realize that we are God incarnated into a fragile and impermanent body of flesh loving the life force incarnated into that other fragile and temporary body of flesh.  We both become self-realized and incarnate, which brings utter humility and utter, utter surrender to the other, and we can both rest in a unified emptiness, a stillness, filled with life and love. 

This is the greatest healing possible.  But this cannot take place unless the ground is laid for such a relationship and such love.  You must be aware of being empty of self, and if one looks within, one sees/feels only emptiness, silence, the Void.  This is one’s sadhana, to empty oneself of pseudo selves through meditation, self-inquiry, and prayer, for the deepest love, divine love, seeks those who are empty.  If you are not empty, all the best you can experience is a normal, human, love affair, which is body-oriented, sensual, and manipulative.  This is pre-personal love, reactive-love, for the person has not yet realized his or her self.

FROM THE VOID TO DIVINE LOVE--VIDEO

FROM THE VOID TO DIVINE LOVE 

I can speak about the Void and tell you how to find it.  I can talk about one's sense of presence, bliss, the subtle body, your emotional body, the light of consciousness, and I can help you find them.

But now only want to speak about divine love nd how to attain it.  This love comes to you from  the Void and brings you entirely back into your body and you become "re-incarnated" after years of trying to transcend your body. You become like Christ before his Passion on the cross--vulnerable, humble, but steadfast.

Satsang December 10, 2017  LINK:

https://youtu.be/wxbNJNS87ik

SUNDAY SATSANG DECEMBER 10, 2017, 11 AM ARIZONA TIME. COME EARLY, SIT WITH ME AFTER 10:30 am

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

He warned, this past Wednesday I had a Ble Light treatment for Actinic Keratosis on my face.  The chemical and Blue Light destroy these pre-cancerous lesions as well as sun-damaged cells.  But I will look like I have chicken pox for another ten days.

The video below was of an interview I had with Ernesto of Yosoy Tumismo.  Ernesto is the leader of a Robert Adams Satsang in Spain.

Here I speak about my life with Robert, some of my realizations while with him and afterwards, but I also speak of the weaknesses of a strictly Jnan path of introspection on the I-thought or I-sense, and the overwhelming and constant need for a seeker to foster a sense of devotion and love during his or her search.  I also speak of the need to find someone to love deeply as part of one’s spiritual process, especially after finding and dwelling in emptiness, A.K.A. the Great  Void, for the love that arises from the Void is not ordinary human love, but is divine love, a love of total absorption, devotion, and surrender which gradually reveals deeper kinds of love, a path of endless worship, awareness of the internal energies of the life force, almost endless bliss, and marks a beginning of the Jnani’s return to his or her body.  Only love and surrender to another can lead the devotee to leave the Void and re-incarnate as a body with all the human vulnerabilities that entails.

When one is originally born, the original incarnation, it was not from choice. Life spontaneously appeared out of an impersonal matrix of elements and processes which becomes one’s original self.  But when one is born again out of the Void, it is done with joy, love, a sense of service and continuous worship, and totally by choice, knowing what one is getting into, even as Christ accepted his Passion.

LINK: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_6oGOCKgo

A SOMEWHAT EMBARRASSING, BUT VERY WELCOME DEVELOPMENT!

I had my first hip replacement operation four years ago in 2013 in June. My right hip had been hurting for four or five years until the pain was unbearable, and I reluctantly had surgery. The surgery itself was terrible, recovery was very slow and minimal physical therapy was covered by my insurance. And while the right hip gradually recovered functioning with no pain, the left hip was becoming more painful.

I had originally asked the surgeon whether both hips could be done at the same time, but he said the left hip had another three or four years before it had to be replaced.

But from about 2009 to the 2013 surgery, my aerobic functioning suffered as I certainly could not run and I was having more and more difficult time walking, and even use those electric carts when in supermarkets, and my weight ballooned to 235 pounds.

By 2014 when I moved to the Phoenix area, I could walk a mile a day even with my left hip hurting, but by 2017 I could barely walk 100 yards, although my weight had dropped to 210.. On October 10, of this year, 2017 I had my left hip replaced in almost miraculous surgery that had no post surgical pain at all except from physical therapy. I received physical therapy at home for eight visits and made some gains, and then my treating doctor signed me up for what turned out to be six more weeks of progressive physical therapy on an outpatient basis. As of my recent seventh session, I was doing four times the exercises as on my first session.

My God, what a change this is caused in just 3 ½ weeks of outpatient therapy.

Imagine, my lower body had not been fully mobilized for eight years, and I lost a lot of functionality in every way imaginable in my lower body, including ability to walk, get down and up from the floor, crawling under things, even I lost the ability to walk on uneven ground. My lower body effectively died including sexual functioning as well as experiencing some urinary incontinence.

However, after the second surgery, and seven weeks into recovery with physical therapy 2 to 3 times a week, and a very intense exercise program my lower body has come alive. I can feel every muscle fiber in my quadriceps in the various gluteus muscles, which has increased not only my ability to walk, bend, crouch, etc. in terms of movement, but made my bowel movements more regular and eliminated any urinary incontinence that I used to feel because that area sort of dead.

In addition, my sexuality has come alive, after not being able to have an erection for six or seven years. I would hardly recommend bilateral total hip replacement as a male aphrodisiac or ED treatment, but I did laughingly suggest the surgeon that he advertise as such.

What this has caused me is to realize identity with my body once again. The surgery, physical therapy, has reenergized my whole body and it is so difficult not to identify with it as opposed to identifying with my sense of presence, the energetic body within and without or with the totality of consciousness, but I still find it relatively easy to shift my identity any way I want.

Still, this surgery and therapy is helping me reclaim my human hood, and my identity as an ordinary human being that has explored so many rooms the spiritual mention that is my life, from the basement value of the Great Void, to my sense of presence, to experiencing the Life force, or the divine within me, to my mind and thoughts, to my various emotions, my personality and identity as Ed, to my heart center in love, to the place of bliss that spreads between all the molecules in my body, and lastly, my homeroom, my identity as Ed Muzika sitting in a chair dictating this report on my state of being.

I just watched a movie, called Wild River, about a hunter whose daughter had been murdered years before, when he was helping an Indian whose daughter was just murdered, to find the perpetrators on an Indian reservation. It is a very well-acted movie and I will see it again. But at one point, the hunter addresses the Indian whose daughter had just been murdered, telling him, that he was not going to say that the pain eases with time. He tells him, your daughter is dead, and it is a great calamity, your life will never be the same again, but do not avoid the pain of her loss and cover it by thoughts of vengeance and anger.

He tells him, “Feel the pain; feel the pain all the way; cry as long as you need to. But unless you feel the pain as fully as possible, you will never be able to remember the love you gave your daughter and the love she gave you back. Without going through that pain, you will never remember the happiness she gave you, and you gave her.”

This would be my teaching now. Human, remember your humanity, remember your mortality, remember that you will die, and live your life accordingly in a middle way, with passion but also with compassion, with humility and not arrogance, with love not anger.

All the other things that you have gained in spirituality will still be there with you: the sense of the great Void which contains all, and can rob suffering of its bite, but would also take the meaning out of joy; the light of consciousness and the feeling of the divine within you, and that God lives through you as God; a sense of grace and a quiet happiness; as well as the knowledge that everything is consciousness being sensated, being examined and witnessed also by you on a different level. All of these things remain true, all of these places in the great spiritual mansion can be explored again and again, but always you can return to that one room that is special to you and your life, the room of your personhood, the room of your life lived in compassionate passion for all of life as well as your own.

This is what Sueng Sahn Soen Sa meant by his 360° circle. He said he started at 0° and quickly advanced to 180°, which is the experience of nothingness, emptiness, the Void, and from there through to 360° you pass through a whole legion of spiritual practices and enlightenments, Satoris, and Awakenings, but eventually returning to exactly where you started 0°, in this body, in this room, in this life, but totally changed and transformed, the same yet different, having coffee, and playing with my cats.

Now I feel so empty, so humble, so un-spiritual, so unenlightened, just being me, with my partner Kerima, our seven cats, in a home on a golf course with very green grass, lots of rabbits and birds and coyotes, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets. I have no teachings to give now, my teachings are my lifestyle. I can talk about self-inquiry, I can talk about awakening of the internal energies which turns into a recognition of the Life force within and builds a sense of presence, I can talk about loving another as a way to awaken to the self, I can talk about overcoming any addiction or vassanas by certain meditation techniques, but deep down inside I realize that 50 years of self-exploration has been an exercise in entertainment.

Some people watch movies or television, some become astronomers, some become astrologers, some become master auto mechanics, some become thieves, while others explore their inner worlds to discover all that is there, and in doing this, there is always a danger of losing touch with the outer world around us, the physical world, and also the world of life and death. But we have to feel the pain, otherwise we miss the joy.

SUNDAY SATSANG DECEMBER 3, 2017, 11 AM ARIZONA TIME. COME EARLY, SIT WITH ME AFTER 10:30 am

https://zoom.us/j/2950292557?pwd&status=success

My background is psychology, Zen, and Advaita for over 40 years. Because of my psychology background I emphasize feelings and expressing emotions as part of any serious search for self realization.

One can find many experiences, many states of mind and consciousness, and many kinds of emotions and emotional blockages when looking and feeling into your sense of self: Emptiness or the Void; the inner light of consciousness; internal energies such as Kundalini, Chi, energy centers or chakras; one's own sense of presence, which feels like and energy field within and around one's body; experiences of the divine arising within; great experiences of surrender and of merger to God or to another; self, as universal consciousness; emotions; finally, the most important thing, being able to love completely, totally, with abandon.
It is about all of these issues and areas that I teach. Come, we will explore these together. This way is not so much about teachings, but learning how to experience your self on all levels, to discover and manifest everything that you are, from the divine, to complete nothingness, consciousness, all of which is embodied in a physical/mental bundle. You are incarnate.