July 2019 Chitra Puja

Yesterday afternoon we celebrated this month's chitra nakshatra with a abhishekam to Gurudeva's Tiruvadi. Yogi's Mayuranatha and Adinatha performed the padapuja.

LWS LESSON 117: \"When you have nothing in your subconscious that particularly bothers you, it is easy to turn the mind inward...

But if you are bothered or disturbed, the subconscious acts as a barrier and makes it difficult to turn within.

When you try to do so, up from the subconscious come all the remnants of the experiences which you hold on to through regret.

If this is the case, you will have one more experience to go through before your mind does turn within.

You will have to experience the understanding of all your experiences, not through analysis, not through reason (although the whys may come to you intuitively), but through the higher experience of pure understanding.

You will find it is possible to have an understanding of yourself without going through the process of analysis.

A disturbed mind which is not permeated with Sivaness is strong in a negative sense, strong in that it will keep you from the realization of God.

When the mind is disturbed, it is outwardly strong.

The mind that is not disturbed is inwardly strong.

Your inner strength is always more dependable than your outward display of strength.

When you have gained your inner strength, you will be able to sit in meditation for at least a half hour every day and practice being the guardian of every thought and the ruler of every feeling within your body.

If you do this, you will realize That which is the center of your Being.

You will be uplifted, elevated, through the purification that you have brought to your mind.

Hold your consciousness high, keep your mind alive and alert so that your soul is alive and alert.

You have heard me say many times, \

Observation is the first awakening of the soul.\''

If your observation is intense and accurate, your mind is not bothered and you are not regretting things that have happened to you in the past.

But people who have poor observation often do hold on to their regrets, and they rationalize most of what happens to them, putting the blame for their own experiences on someone else.

It is so much easier to close the door on these reactions and live more like on a spring day rather than in the dead of winter.

Life is meant to be lived joyously.

The awakened soul is a joyous soul with a positive mind.

The practice of observation will bring you closer and closer to this state of consciousness.

If you feel that your observation is not keen, begin observing things more closely.

Observe the different colors in a store window. Study the shadows and the shades of color in one tree.

Listen to the sounds of the city. How many can you distinguish?

What do they mean to you?

If your observation is already good, you can participate more fully in life and find yourself living above the dreary happenings of the day.

Recognizing that all experience is but a fading dream, you are closer to the permanence within you that never changes.

You can sense it. It is God. It is Siva.

It has never changed. It will never change.

You have all felt this permanence at one time or another, but then perhaps you find that you lose this feeling, this consciousness, and you drift out into the mind and find yourself thinking again that the mind is real.

But then, maybe tomorrow, you will face it again.

And as soon as you have found it, you leave it again, for the mind cannot bear the intensity of God, and you forget all about it.

But then, a little later, you face that permanence within you yet again.

And little by little you find that you are turning inward, opening up the inner channels more and more each day, making a greater and greater contact with God by turning within, drawing yourself ever closer to the pole at the center, the core of your Being.

You will go through many different tests to prove your own realization to yourself. Face each test graciously.

Welcome each test, and welcome each temptation that shows you the strength of your will over the chaotic senses.

You have only to quiet all things of the mind to realize your identity with the eternity of God Siva, the spirit, the Eternal Self within you.\"

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