July 2020 Chitra Puja

Jai Gurudeva!

Our monks concluded their last phase with this month's chitra padapuja to Gurudeva (and thankfully not with a hurricane). Yogi Jayanatha and Yogi Dayanatha performed the morning abhishekam while other monks chanted Sri Rudram. This was the 250th chitra puja since Gurudeva's Mahasamadhi in 2001. Aum Namah Sivaya.

"Out of the microcosm ever comes the macrocosm. Out of Paraśiva—which is timeless, causeless and formless—ever comes all form. This is the great mystery without a reason why. Out of pure consciousness ever comes the light which binds all form together in specific bondage, individualizing forms, souls, one from another. This is ever happening, as simultaneously struggling souls remove their bondage through the grace of God Śiva to come into Satchidānanda, later to be absorbed into Paraśiva. This, too, is a great mystery without a reason why. The existence called Paraśiva pervades the infinite Satchidānanda, sustaining it just as the Divine Light of God Śiva’s mind pervades and sustains the gross forms of this world. Paraśiva does not create Satchidānanda, yet Satchidānanda is sustained because of the existence of nonexistence"

\"The struggle with the mind is an easy struggle if you are constantly vigilant, all of the time, doing always what you know you should do\"

\"not allowing the mind to become instinctive, not excusing the mind when it does become instinctive\"

\"not allowing the mind to justify, rationalize, excuse, become combative, but making the mind always remain poised, like a hummingbird over a flower,\"

\"so that you begin to live in the eternal now, constantly, permanently\"

\"And then the within becomes natural to you, not something you hear about, study about, talk about, sing about, for you become open, awakened within.\"

\"Contemplation is mans power over his mind as he begins to go within himself.\"

\"Concentration is mans power over his mind as he goes through life working out life\

s problems. And meditation is man\'s wisdom.\"'

\"Lets expand our consciousness once again, and see if we can become conscious of the entire universe all in one instant.\"

\"Where is that universe? It is very real to you in that instant, but where is it? You might look above and say, \

It\'s out there,\' but where is \'out there?\'\"'

\"Where do you conceive \

above?\' You might say the sun is way up in the sky. So is the moon. But where is the focal point of your conception? How do you create the sun, and how do you create the moon?\"'

\"You might say the sound of a waterfall is twenty feet away from you. Where is that sound created? Where do you conceive it? Only to the lower realms of the mind is the sun so many million miles away, or the waterfall so many feet from where you are sitting right now.\"

\"Expand your consciousness, and you begin to know this truth.\"

\"Freedom does not come through what you have remembered, how well you can rationalize, how well you can talk yourself into and out of situations, how well you can excuse negative happenings.\"

\"The knowing state of consciousness in which you can know the truth only comes when you can control the lower state of mind and live a godlike life each day, and then your consciousness does expand automatically.\"

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