December 04, 2013 - Lesson 236
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Sloka 81 from Dancing with Siva
What Is the Fulfillment of a Marriage?
Children are the greatest source of happiness in marriage. Householder life is made rich and complete when sons and daughters are born, at which time the marriage becomes a family and a new generation begins. Aum.
Bhashya
The total fulfillment of the grihastha dharma is children. Marriage remains incomplete until the first child is born or adopted. The birth of the first child cements the family together. At the birth itself, the community of guardian devas of the husband, wife and child are eminently present. Their collective vibration showers blessings upon the home, making of it a full place, a warm place. It is the duty of the husband and wife to become father and mother. This process begins prior to conception with prayer, meditation and a conscious desire to bring a high soul into human birth and continues with providing the best possible conditions for its upbringing. Raising several children rewards the parents and their offspring as well. Large families are more cohesive, more stable, and are encouraged within the limits of the family's ability to care for them. Parents, along with all members of the extended family, are responsible to nurture the future generation through childhood into puberty and adulthood. The Vedas exclaim, "Blessed with sons and daughters, may they enjoy their full extent of life, decked with ornaments of gold." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 236 from Living with Siva
Fears and Preparations
Society does not adequately explain the transitions that one goes through in life. Children are smart at the age of four, five or ten, and should be told what will happen through their whole life, as a picture book. When they are going through adolescence, the changes they experience should be explained to them. When they are forty and are experiencing the withdrawal of the vitality of the physical forces into a keenness of mind and shorter-term physical goals, this should also be explained.
Before fifty your goals are simply for the future, not knowing what that is. When the forces turn around at fifty, you start to withdraw. The body does not throw off the toxins like it used to. It does not heal itself like it used to. It does not regenerate itself like it used to. Then at sixty the forces tend to even out.
Two things people are often worried about and need to firm their minds against are the youthful fear "Who is going to take care of me?" and the aged fear "Who is going to take care of me?" These fears are very similar. The truth is, if you are not driven to fulfill dharma, you get old. You get old attitudes. You get set in your ways--bigoted, opinionated, communal, divisive. You seek division rather than amalgamation, become racist, basically self-centered and old by clinging onto your old ideas and not keeping up with the changing times. And, having perfected grossness and subtlety of selfishness, you become ignorantly dominant as an elder, manipulating sons, daughters and relatives for travel, comforts and other kinds of considerations. This is not the Sanatana Dharma. This is the "asanatana dharma" of the lower nature. Elders beware! You cannot hide behind your old age. The mind does not get old. Nor do the emotions. The astral body does not deteriorate. Neither does the body of the purusha, the soul. It is only the physical body that is slowly dissolving into the essences from which it came.
It is well known that even certain advanced souls on the planet may do well when they are young but at their still unperfected stage of evolution have the propensity of deterioration in spirit, mind, emotions as the body sinks, through age, into the substances from which it is created. This is not Sanatana Dharma as emulated by spiritual, devotional, happy, religious men and women who have experienced the frailties of the physique and added greater zeal, power and joy to the now dominant energies of the intellect and the soul. Let there be no mistake that admittance to old age is to admit failure on the path to enlightenment. Admittance to old age is to invoke another birth. Admittance to old age means being set in one's ways, not wanting to be interfered with by the young, unable to learn anything more or new, holding an inflexibility that cannot be challenged.
In the West, growing old is something people take for granted, something they do not look forward to, and yet it happens. And since it does happen and they don't look forward to it, they try to squeeze everything out of what presents itself to them. In the East they look at growing old in a different way, more in the line of becoming full, becoming mature, becoming satisfied.
But very few people become satisfied in the West. They are too self-centered. And the balance between husband and wife is reversed. The woman is trying to live the part of a man and the poor man, he doesn't have a chance. Consequently, old age sets in very quickly, and nothing is left to do but sit and grumble about the instinctive nature: "She didn't bring my food in on time. Somebody made a noise and I couldn't sleep," and all the various things that people, as they get older and older, find to complain about. There is nothing profound, which is too bad, because each and every one has profundity within them.
Sutra 236 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Safeguarding One's Beliefs
Siva's devotees, one-pointed in striving on their chosen path, do not join or study with any esoteric, religious, secular humanist, atheist, existentialist or self-improvement group that might undermine their beliefs. Aum.
Lesson 236 from Merging with Siva
Charging Your Aura with Prana
I want to encourage you and to give you confidence to flood your aura with colors. It takes but a little of your willpower to do this. The intent itself is the thrust of awareness required. Willing consists of a mental command, leaving the rest to the natural mechanism of the mind. Therefore, let us pray to our dear Lord Ganesha to help us remove the obstacles of doubt and fear.
If you are working through the day to bring a certain color into your aura, carry something with you or wear something of that color. The more you are aware of the color you are working with through the day, the better the results. This is because your attention will automatically take up the impression of it, and the corresponding quality will be enhanced in your character. A little practice during your half-hour sadhana period and through the day, and some positive experiences with color will soon give you the confidence you need. Patience, perseverance and earnest interest will be the keys to your success.
As you know, it is not uncommon for the emotions of one person to affect those around him. It is therefore important that you learn how to "charge" your aura with pranic energy so that the darker colors from the auras of others do not penetrate your own. If and when they do, you will experience their moods and emotions and may interpret them as your own. But actually you have simply accepted into your aura the dark reds, muddy browns and greens from their aura. You simply did not have enough prana in your aura to ward off the intrusion. Such mental thought forms and undesirable colors from others' auras are often called psychic influences.
To protect yourself from psychic influences, you can charge your aura with the vital prana from your own pranic body. To do so, sit quietly, breathe deeply and mentally get in touch with your pranic body, first by visualizing it and secondly by feeling it. The pranic body of most people extends out from the physical body about one or two inches, depending on the level of vitality. Of course, the pranic body also completely permeates the entire physical body. As you sit quietly, breathing deeply and slowly, become intimately aware of the vitality, the prana, running throughout the physical body. As you breathe in, feel the vitality of your body. Feel the magnetic energy within it. Feel its life. Then, as you breathe out, mentally and through feeling release some of this vitality, this prana, this life-force, and send it out into your aura. Keep sending it out on the out-breath to the aura's outer edges all around your body, from your head to your feet. The outer edge of the human aura is about three or four feet away from the physical body. After you have charged your aura with vital prana in this way about nine times, you should begin to feel a magnetic shell being built around the outer edge of your aura.
You will feel very secure and content as you sit within your own aura, which is charged with prana from your own pranic body. You are protected from all kinds of psychic influences, seen and unseen. But the prana within your aura will eventually wear away, and you will have to recharge it when it does. For the beginner, it only lasts an hour or two before it has to be rebuilt. When you become more advanced in this practice, it will happen almost subconsciously, or automatically, when you sense the need. Once you master this simple method of charging your aura with prana, you will soon develop an immunity to undesirable thought forms and emotional colors of those around you. This is a great aid to prevent taking on the negative influences of the place we are about to visit, the person we are about to meet or the gathering we are about to enter.