High Vibe ( - rations)
I don't think I have spoken about the anusara invocation on this blog. Since Emily and Nanna, my teachers in Bali, were from the Anusara lineage, we would recite the anusara invocation often during the training and it was Emily's default shavasana song as well. It is a beautiful chant to surrender to. I found myself chanting it on my ride to the airport from Jati homestay. And it has stayed with me since. I was wearing a red maala on the last day and had rubbed the Joy oil that Emily dabs on our palms into the tassels of the maala. Scents are my thing. guess they are everyone's thing actually. A whiff of a scent can take you back on time to moments, people, places, feelings. So throughout the cab ride and even on the plane, I would pick up the tassels from the maala to get a whiff of the Joy oil and chant the anusara invocation in the back of my head.
That's the power of certain mantra, after a point in time, they become a part of you. You don't even have to consciously invoke it anymore. It resonates in the very soul of your being. I become more conscious of it, when I find myself in moments of stress or when my intuition tells me "something is going to happen"
Om Namah Shivaya Gurave
Saccidananda Murtaye
Nisprapanchaya Shantaya
Niralambaya Tejase
That's the mantra that sings inside me now. The complete essence of the mantra, is lost in it's English translation. And there are really many ways to look at this mantra, loads of meanings you can take out of it. Literally, it means this :
I bow to the presence of God within
Our true and highest teacher
That lives in and around us as
Being, Consciousness and Bliss,
It is ever present and radiates peace
Lighting the way to transformation.
I am not an atheist. I believe in God and the universe and that there is a higher power that helps us achieve what we want, and sort of regulates the world to balance out the good and evil. But it is also my firm belief that the highest and truest God, is in us. And that we don't have to go to a designated place of worship to show our allegiance to God.
Sat, Chit, Ananda can mean three different things, or can come together to mean Brahman, or the universe / ultimate reality. Sat, is the truth, it is pure being, and existence. It is what always remains : our true nature, the foundation of each of us. Chit is Consciousness, becoming aware or conscious of your own sat, your true self. I remember Andrea talking about consciousness to us and he said that consciousness is not aware of itself, the clutter and the distractions and the noise around us prevents the consciousness from being self-aware. When you calm the mind and it becomes aware of itself and consciousness can watch itself, and it's almost like a third person/being watching over our thoughts and thought process. But that rarely happens. When it does, we experience ananda, bliss and joy. It's why i love meditation, you become aware of your sat and your chit and immediately the brilliance of ananda reveals itself to you. It's not something that you need to evoke from someplace, it's always present, just hidden under the various layers that we hold onto. The minute we calm our minds and let go, it rises to the surface and fills us with supreme oneness and for however short, you feel what the Brahman feels like.
After coming back from the training, me and some others, if not all, have been having a tough time adjusting to our 'normal' lives. For many of us, things have turned upside down, the life we knew before doesn't exist. I feel it too, maybe not as fiercely as the others. But in our own ways, we are all going through this process that feels like the universe has taken our bodies, and minds and souls and is churning it, the way you churn cream for butter. Like literally as if we can feel being thrown left, right and center.
I'm drawing the strength to stand upright (and stay sane) in the midst of all this from the teachings at High Vibe, I look at my journal from Bali now and then and read what i was thinking about those days. Most times, I just bring the mantra in the back of my head, to my consciousness and chant loudly in trains, when I'm cooking, even at work. I had coffee with a friend /teacher of mine recently and when I told her some things I have been going through, she spoke to me about how when you practice yoga, you're invoking certain energies from within you, from the sky, the earth, even the universe. And by yoga, i don't mean a physical practice, but the whole package : when you're meditating, thinking about your dharma and re-evaluating (or maybe for many of us evaluating for the first time!) everything that we stand for in our lives and in our relationships! When you're going through that, and allowing yourself to feel what you're feeling and you're open to receiving whatever comes your way, you're literally playing with energy, with vibrations.
And Emily's training or school is so aptly called High Vibe, because it is that after all. Through January in Bali and now after coming back, the suddenness and the intensity with which we were confronted with reality and the steadiness we are all searching for now after the storm has passed, what we are facing are different kinds of vibrations. Sometimes we are emanating these vibrations, and sometimes, these vibrations are drawing us closer to themselves.
I was talking to my teacher about walking from the airport to the someone who was waiting for me, and being able to tell that something was amiss, and she smiled and said, it's the vibrations. We were on two different levels, him and I. Neither is good or bad, but it's a mismatch nevertheless, and that mismatch eventually caused us to break. Maybe what I've been dealing with after I've been back is the mismatch of energy/vibrations between me and my "regular world" and the people I hangout with. The very few people I have been able to genuinely connect with, are people who practice yoga.
As arrogant or pompous it sounds, it's the truth. And it's not even important for me to be talking about yoga, even regular normal conversations with people i don't connect with are hard for me to do anymore : extremely dangerous when you're working in a company and have to deal with all kinds of people.
The other thing that has happened, partly driven by me and partly as coincidence, is the phrase Om Namah Shivaye coming back to me again and again since I've been back. I, of course find myself chanting the anusara mantra, but apart from that, I've been encountered with articles about Shiva, I went for a kirtan that had two Shiva mantras and I've reading a book on the Siva puranas that obviously talks about Shiva all the time. I don't know what that means just yet, but it can't mean anything bad. I take it as God assuring me of his presence as I go through challenging times. I've also been gifted two ganeshas, so I know someone is trying to send me some kind of a message or signal, and I'm thrilled frankly.
As I end this post, I send a silent prayer to each and every single soul from the rainbow shakti warrior tribe. May we have the courage to face the times we are going through and only rise from it stronger and brighter, we after all have been entrusted with lighting the world.
Namaste
Sat, Chit, Ananda can mean three different things, or can come together to mean Brahman, or the universe / ultimate reality. Sat, is the truth, it is pure being, and existence. It is what always remains : our true nature, the foundation of each of us. Chit is Consciousness, becoming aware or conscious of your own sat, your true self. I remember Andrea talking about consciousness to us and he said that consciousness is not aware of itself, the clutter and the distractions and the noise around us prevents the consciousness from being self-aware. When you calm the mind and it becomes aware of itself and consciousness can watch itself, and it's almost like a third person/being watching over our thoughts and thought process. But that rarely happens. When it does, we experience ananda, bliss and joy. It's why i love meditation, you become aware of your sat and your chit and immediately the brilliance of ananda reveals itself to you. It's not something that you need to evoke from someplace, it's always present, just hidden under the various layers that we hold onto. The minute we calm our minds and let go, it rises to the surface and fills us with supreme oneness and for however short, you feel what the Brahman feels like.
After coming back from the training, me and some others, if not all, have been having a tough time adjusting to our 'normal' lives. For many of us, things have turned upside down, the life we knew before doesn't exist. I feel it too, maybe not as fiercely as the others. But in our own ways, we are all going through this process that feels like the universe has taken our bodies, and minds and souls and is churning it, the way you churn cream for butter. Like literally as if we can feel being thrown left, right and center.
I'm drawing the strength to stand upright (and stay sane) in the midst of all this from the teachings at High Vibe, I look at my journal from Bali now and then and read what i was thinking about those days. Most times, I just bring the mantra in the back of my head, to my consciousness and chant loudly in trains, when I'm cooking, even at work. I had coffee with a friend /teacher of mine recently and when I told her some things I have been going through, she spoke to me about how when you practice yoga, you're invoking certain energies from within you, from the sky, the earth, even the universe. And by yoga, i don't mean a physical practice, but the whole package : when you're meditating, thinking about your dharma and re-evaluating (or maybe for many of us evaluating for the first time!) everything that we stand for in our lives and in our relationships! When you're going through that, and allowing yourself to feel what you're feeling and you're open to receiving whatever comes your way, you're literally playing with energy, with vibrations.
And Emily's training or school is so aptly called High Vibe, because it is that after all. Through January in Bali and now after coming back, the suddenness and the intensity with which we were confronted with reality and the steadiness we are all searching for now after the storm has passed, what we are facing are different kinds of vibrations. Sometimes we are emanating these vibrations, and sometimes, these vibrations are drawing us closer to themselves.
I was talking to my teacher about walking from the airport to the someone who was waiting for me, and being able to tell that something was amiss, and she smiled and said, it's the vibrations. We were on two different levels, him and I. Neither is good or bad, but it's a mismatch nevertheless, and that mismatch eventually caused us to break. Maybe what I've been dealing with after I've been back is the mismatch of energy/vibrations between me and my "regular world" and the people I hangout with. The very few people I have been able to genuinely connect with, are people who practice yoga.
As arrogant or pompous it sounds, it's the truth. And it's not even important for me to be talking about yoga, even regular normal conversations with people i don't connect with are hard for me to do anymore : extremely dangerous when you're working in a company and have to deal with all kinds of people.
The other thing that has happened, partly driven by me and partly as coincidence, is the phrase Om Namah Shivaye coming back to me again and again since I've been back. I, of course find myself chanting the anusara mantra, but apart from that, I've been encountered with articles about Shiva, I went for a kirtan that had two Shiva mantras and I've reading a book on the Siva puranas that obviously talks about Shiva all the time. I don't know what that means just yet, but it can't mean anything bad. I take it as God assuring me of his presence as I go through challenging times. I've also been gifted two ganeshas, so I know someone is trying to send me some kind of a message or signal, and I'm thrilled frankly.
As I end this post, I send a silent prayer to each and every single soul from the rainbow shakti warrior tribe. May we have the courage to face the times we are going through and only rise from it stronger and brighter, we after all have been entrusted with lighting the world.
Namaste
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