Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

Love indeed is a powerful tool to the absolute, although you can find It there within your own sense of presence as a feeling of immense power and groundedness. Several of our family feel that presence, almost like an "other" within our own presence, the One in the center around which consciousness dances. Penetrate that presence by loving it, and you are close to home. Ryan, like me, is finding it the traditional way of meditation--just endlessly witnessing, which can be kind of dry.


The other way is setting the I Am on fire, becoming alive with thousands of energies, love, and ecstasies, and loving all beings and consciousness.  The flip side is dealing with the negative emotions so as to not harm others. In both approaches the guru can be a great aid, and some deem him indispensable. Robert was for me. 


Below is what Ram Dass said about his guru. Read the third paragraph closely. I have bolded it. He advocates exactly the approach I am suggesting. Loving someone external to love fully, completely, totally, and thus find it is your own love within, and then eventually finding the grounded, unmoving center, the absolute and feeling you are beyond even this wondrous dance of consciousness.


I want to be really clear though, there are many journeys possible within consciousness, and some, even knowing the absolute, the divine peace and mystery there, may choose, like Ramakrishna, to stay into the personal, to remain or become a person again, so that he could worship Kali and remain a lover. In fact, even the Jnani needs to return to the I Am to learn the lessons of love and consciousness, otherwise he is dry, or as Robert said, "A cold fish."

THE WAY OF THE GURU, part 2

May 30, 2011

I could see that my guru had this power, this peace, this wisdom, this love, but it was hard for me to see it in myself. My neurotic ego didn’t allow me to think so positively about myself. But once I began to see myself through the guru’s eyes, with his grace the weight of all those negative habits of thought began to drop away, enough to allow me to go on with the journey. 

That’s a little of what the guru does. What we haven’t talked about is the incredible joy of being in his presence. It’s an ambience, a field around him, the field of his consciousness, who he is. When we were with Maharaj-ji most of us interpreted his physical form as the source or generator of that field, but it’s really his being attracting our souls. It’s a feeling that you only get when you’re contacting your deeper self, your soul. He invites us into a soul plane, he’s a soul connection. It’s a different plane of consciousness. It’s being in love, really being in it, being bathed by love until it suffuses your being. 

It’s like if you had intense love for Jesus as a human being. Then as you love Jesus so much, you start to meet the Christ. Then as you love the Christ more and more you keep merging into that love. When you’ve merged into the Christ there is only One. Initially it’s dualism. That’s the route of devotion to the guru. It’s a great asset to have the inner guru, to feel the presence and then keep merging into that presence. 
Each of us has our way of tuning into that place where the guru dwells inside, the telltale sign of that presence. For me, it’s like I’m in a dark room and there’s someone else in the room, a presence of another being who my external senses don’t register. If I’m really tuning into Maharaj-ji there’s a sense of joy, of truth. It feels right on, it resonates, and I can’t get away from it. It takes me over. I associate a feeling of deep harmony with him, or I notice the way things happen with incredible synchronicity that still feels completely natural. 

He comes to me in different ways, in different voices, in different people and yet there’s something about his presence that’s the same. It’s ecstatic. For you maybe it’s a feeling or a remembrance that comes from looking at the infinity of the night sky, or meditating, or listening to certain music, or a poem with an intimation of divine love that stirs your heart.