Experiences of everyday life settle in the subconscious. Disagreements are a natural part of life. The subconscios mind, like an animal, is very intelligent within it's own logic, it's own realm, telling us something is unresolved. Understand and be free from the past. When totally in the present we can experience it in depth. Vasana Daha Tantra another of Gurudeva's tools to clear out the subconscious mind.

Unedited Transcript:

This is from today's lesson from Merging with Siva.

"The Subconscious Basement

"I liken the subconscious mind to a basement. Those of you who have lived in the same house for a number of years have observed the following: as life progresses in the home, old things make way for the new, and the old things invariably are put into the basement. The basement is likened to the subconscious mind; the main floor, to the conscious mind. If one is putting too many things too fast into the basement and is too busy enjoying the new things passing through the conscious mind into the subconscious basement, there is no time to keep the basement in order. Suppose there is an earthquake, an emotional upheaval in life, and the entire house shakes. The lamp shades of the big lamps get mixed up with the shades of the small ones; the pillows of the old sofa get mixed up with the pillows of the armchairs. Should we enter the basement, it may take us several hours to find the articles we're looking for. That is the subconscious mind. It gets all mixed up if we do not look into ourselves constantly and put our subconscious basement in order."

So that's a very good guideline there. Though it has to do with not really paying attention to what's going into our mind. How the experiences of our everyday life are settling in the subconscious. In other words, if we haven't really thought that it's important to keep things in order, that happened to us, they're not in order. So we're creating a basement of unresolved issues down there. So, for example, that's one reason Gurudeva stresses the idea of resolving disagreements. Very important teaching of his: Resolve disagreements with others on a daily basis. And he gave that advice frequently to newlyweds because newlyweds traditionally ask for advice. There they are, you know, starry-eyed, no clue what's ahead: "Do you have some advice for us." So, I've given that advice on a number of occasions and it is Gurudeva's key advice to newlyweds which is: Resolve disagreements before going to sleep. That's the way he would express it. Well what does that mean? That means, if there's a major disagreement between husband and wife you stay up, even if you have to stay up all night, until you've come to an agreement, till you come to a resolution. So, resolution quite often involves compromise. You know, finding a solution that is workable for both of you. So, Gurudeva doesn't say: Don't disagree. That's unrealistic. You know, just the fact that in a marriage one person's a man and one person's a woman is going to cause disagreement because there's two distinct ways of looking at things on many occasions, not on all occasions. Men and women don't look at everything the same way. So that'll cause disagreements. So, disagreements are natural just based on gender.

Disagreements are natural based upon astrology. Some of us are very aggressive, some of us are not at all aggressive. Different natures, different personality traits. Those traits combine in certain ways and they don't always mesh. You know they don't always create a perfect complement to one another so that causes disagreements. And so disagreements are a natural part of life so we're not saying we should never disagree; we're saying if disagreements, major disagreements arise, resolve them. Don't ignore them. That's Gurudeva's advice. So resolution, as I say, quite often involves compromised, because probably, neither point of view is complete and that's why there's no agreement in the first place. It's unusual for points of view to be complete on the first round. You know, we have our own way of looking at things and then we hear someone else's way and we say: "Oh, I didn't think of that; that's a good point of view also." So, being willing to compromise, being willing to value the other person's point of view as much as you value your own is the key. You know, if we think we're always right and other people are wrong then, obviously, we're going to have a challenge in resolving matters. But, if we value the other person's point of view as much as we value our own and listen to it. Or, if there's multiple people involved, listen to other's points of view and value it as much as we value our own, then, it's easier to resolve things. So that's a major source of items getting put into the subconscious mind which eventually end up disturbing the conscious mind.

So, the subconscious mind is very intelligent within it's own logic. It's like an animal. Animals are very intelligent within their own realm. They don't go beyond a certain realm. Different animals have different degrees of intelligence but they're extremely smart. You know, how in the world do birds make nests? You know, sometimes I wonder when they, I see them bringing it up one twig at a time. You know, we see that around here in the spring. You know one twig at a time and they make this intricate nest. You know, what an amazing accomplishment they're able to do. And they just know how to do that. So, you know, I couldn't do that, you know. Probably none of you could do that; but, they know how. So they're very intelligent within their own realm so likewise, the subconscious mind, which is of the nature of an animal, or, based on instinctive or inborn intelligence, is very smart within it's own realm. And one of the ways in which it's smart is that it'll tell us if something's unresolved. Well we've talked about this before, of course: How does the subconscious mind tell us it's unresolved? Does it say: "It's unresolved?" No, it can't do that. You know it's like a bird can't talk, in English. So, it has it's own way of telling us it's unresolved which is: We think about it a lot. If the subconscious throws something up into the conscious mind, if we have a memory about something quite often, it means something's unresolved. So, isn't that an intelligent way of telling us? It's saying: "This is unresolved," by the frequency with which we think about it. So the more often we think about something in the past the bigger a problem it is to us if it's of a negative or unresolved nature. You know all things aren't, of the past, aren't negative. But we're talking about problems or things that didn't go well. So, that which we think about often, is, that didn't go well, it means it's unresolved. We haven't figured it out. We haven't settled the matter to our own mind. So frequency. And, but that doesn't go on forever. It'll go on for a while. The subconscious mind does not, forever, throw up things. Otherwise, we couldn't get anything done right. Imagine if we're fifty years old and it's throwing up, every few minutes, things that are unresolved over fifty years. That would take up our entire day. We'd never get anything done. So, that's not practical. So, the subconscious stops after a while. It says: "Yeah, I've done this for two or three weeks, you know. I've reminded the conscious mind that this is unresolved and I've done my duty. And, we'll just keep it in the basement." And then it, first you know, then it continues throwing up more recent items. So, after a while it stops which is fortunate. But, it's still there in the subconscious. Just cause it doesn't come up any more doesn't mean it went away. It just means the subconscious stopped reminding us of it. So, therefore, if we don't resolve things we keep piling them up. It's like putting things in the basement randomly without putting them in any particular order. We keep piling them up. And that creates a sense of burden. Or, in a relationship, it can create friction, disagreement.

I'm sure you've seen couples that have been married, say at least ten years; they're always arguing. You know they just get near each other and they start to argue. They get near one another and they start to disagree. Why? They didn't start out that way or they wouldn't have gotten married, right? Something changed. To get married you have to agree. Well they've allowed years and years of unresolved disagreements to pile up in the subconscious mind. So, it's like a positive attraction has turned to a negative repelling. That's what happens when that occurs and, of course, that can lead to divorce because they just can't get along anymore. So, it's very important and likewise in business. Business partners can end up in the same problem if they allow business disagreements to pile up, eventually, they'll be arguing all the time. They just see one another; they start to argue or disagree. So, that can all be avoided if we follow Gurudeva's advise and resolve matters as they come up. So, that's one category of item in the subconscious.

Another aspect of the subconscious is that it takes us out of the present. And some people are living strongly in the subconscious mind. And how do you know that? They're always talking about the past. Constantly talking about the past. So, nothing wrong about talking about the past a little bit, but, if you're constantly talking about the past, you're in the subconscious which is a lower vibration than the superconscious or our intuition. So they're kind of stuck in external consciousness by focusing too much on the past. So, we don't want to do that. Let the past be. We want to resolve it, understand it and be free from it.

It's a very interesting comparison when you see young children -- say six or so is a good age, because they can communicate with you and, but, it would apply to any children but they might not be able to express it. If you're walking with a say six year old. they'll see things that you don't see. Say: "Oh look at that." Say: "Oh I didn't see that." "Look at that. Did you hear that?" They're so observant of what's going on, much more observant than most adults are. Why is that? Because they haven't accumulated a subconscious mind yet that distracts them. They don't have these unresolved memories popping up and taking awareness out of the present. They're in the present. They're seeing what they're experiencing. But that's the way we all want to be. We want to experience the present in depth. So, to experience the present in depth, to be totally in the present, we can't be burdened by the past. To not be burdened by the past we have to resolve our experiences as they go along otherwise, we get burdened. Even if we don't remember exactly what we're burdened about, we feel burdened. So, we want to be in the present. When we're totally in the present then we can experience it in depth. That's what Gurudeva calls the "Eternal Now" you know, being in the present moment. For, when we're in the present moment fully then we experience it with the fullness of our mind which draws on our intuition as well and gives us a fuller experience, more religious experience, and a more intuitive or understanding or loving experience of what we're doing at the moment than if our awareness is pulled into the past heavily.

So, the other tool that Gurudeva gives besides resolving experiences, that's, relates to a problem between people. Problem between people causes a disagreement; we need to resolve disagreements so they don't go into the subconscious and pile up. The other tool Gurudeva gives us is called Vasana Daha Tantra which just means writing down the past and burning it up. So, negative experiences that have happened to us. It's not a disagreement, it's just something that happened to us. Say we were mistreated regularly by a parent. And that bothers us. In fact sometimes we get really mad at that parent even thought we're forty years old. We still get mad at one of our parents cause they mistreated us so much when we were growing up. So, that kind of burden from the past, also, is something in the subconscious mind that pulls us into thinking about the past, pulls us out of the present. So, Gurudeva's key to handling those kind of experiences is to write them down and burn them up. So, in that way we actually clear out the mind and that's even part of modern psychology; they call it journalling -- writing things down that bother you and in that way getting it out of the mind. So, we write them down and it's very important part of it is we burn it; we see it going away. We see the paper burning. We don't give it to someone else and they burn it; we see the paper burning. That's part of the psychology of letting it go. We write it down and then we burn it up and, you know. may take more than one time for certain experiences. And in that way we free ourselves of them. We free ourselves of the past and we're able to be more in the present. So, that's another important way that this teaching applies.

So this is good for today. Thank you very much.

Aum Namah Sivaya

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