Beyond the Cosmic Weather Patterns

A Course in Tranquility Lesson 14 of 14 — Beyond the Cosmic Weather Patterns

“When you’ve seen beyond your self, you will find peace of mind waiting there.”
-George Harrison. From Within You, Without You

I imagine a homeless person spends a great deal of time looking for shelter. A person with the means to procure shelter does not do this. One with shelter, has additional freedom to explore other aspects of life, such as finding food, or sleeping soundly, out of the elements. Meditation and internalization of attention serves to build a spiritual shelter from our mental/emotional and cosmic weather patterns.  Once built we are then free to explore meaningful matters, such as our relationship to the divine, our life purpose, and the totality of our being. We move from simply looking for an escape from our mental-emotional torment or spiritual vapidness, to diving head first into the richness of exploring a divine, and very much alive consciousness, which is our own Self.

When we do not have a meditation practice it is easy to for us to be shaken by our mental/emotional weather patterns.  If you have a consistent meditation practice, and you still get easily shaken mentally and emotionally, try not meditating for a few days. You will then appreciate the benefits of your practice more thoroughly. You may realize through this fast from meditation, that while your current shelter (meditation practice) may have a leaky roof, or very noticeable draft, that it is much preferred to no shelter at all! Take this as an opportunity to patch up the points in your practice that may need repair. Then you can look forward to very satisfying spiritual exploration.

Assessing Your Current Meditation Practice

If you are like most spiritual aspirants in search of tranquility, spiritual peace, and inner wisdom, you have been meditating for a while. You have noticed that your life has improved a bit. You’re not so touchy, or irritable. You smile more. You understand much more of the spiritual literature that you read. Yet, you may still feel as though you haven’t broken through to that direct connection that the spiritual masters experience. You may still feel separate from the totality of being (God). You may feel like your inner guidance and knowing isn’t what it really could be. Arriving at this point in your evolution, it is advised to take a close look at your practice, to properly and honestly assess your efforts.

Check List for Assessing Your Spiritual Shelter

#1 Is Your Practice Simple?

Ask your self, “Do I have two or three techniques that I can use consistently to calm my mind and emotions?  Or do I jump around from one technique to another, thinking there is something wrong with the technique, since I’m not getting the results I want?”

For the last 10 years, I have used about three techniques consistently.  They are simple.  They are not complicated. They get results. (You have read about them earlier in this course.) When I practice a technique, I give my full attention to it. When I repeat a mantra, I endeavor to sink all of my attention on listening to that sound within my awareness. If other thoughts arise, I brush it aside, and return to the mantra. I do this over and over and over again, no matter how many distractions arise. Then in a few minutes or even sometimes an hour, super-consciousness dawns. I am thought free and existing in the silence.

What made this work? Was it the special meaning of the words?  Was it that I got lucky? No. It was that I decided that I was going to glue my attention on this one word phrase (the mantra), letting all distractions pass until my inner peace was unveiled.

By “ignoring distractions” or “letting them pass”, I like to use the idea of walking through a forest.  You want to get from where you are, a normal mental state, to where you want to be, a clear mental state. We can look at this as though we are moving from point A to point B within a forest. In between point A and point B, there are rocks, trees, fallen logs, vines, poison ivy, streams, and shrubs. These are like your meditation distractions. When you want to get from point A to point B in a forest, you start walking (using your meditation technique). When you come upon a fallen log, you step over it. When you come upon a stream, you jump over it. Etc. You don’t make it into a big deal. You pass them by, giving them very little thought, and you most definitely stop thinking about them, once you have moved beyond them. Treat the mental, emotional and physical distractions you experience during meditation like this. Keep your eye on the technique, while moving through the distractions without too much engagement of your attention.

#2 Are There Stressful Situations in Your Life that You Can Change?

It’s hard to meditate when you are under the pressure of a difficult relationship, have extreme money complications, or have poor health. There is a reason that, in the past, a person accepted in a spiritual tradition had to be a monk, nun, or renunciate type. By giving up all the things in life that cause most of our drama (relationships, money, sex, work,  addictions, etc.), spiritual aspirants of the past, had seemingly less hurdles to overcome. Luckily, in this day and age, anyone with a little sense can have a comfortable home, a healthy body, and a decent work situation that doesn’t take up too much of their vital energy to maintain.

Ask your self, “Am I serious about wanting to experience spiritual growth and tranquility in my life?” If your answer is “Yes, of course I am.” Then when you have people in your life that cause you grief, stress, and heartache on a consistent basis, and this gets in the way of having a satisfying meditation practice, you will have no problem moving on from that relationship, or at least adjusting it, to avoid this unneeded distraction. You have your priorities straight, right?

Remember, you can’t meditate to experience what the masters experience, if you are caught up in emotional turmoil every time you sit down to meditate. Our goal, in regards to this course, is to assist your awakening process to fully unqualified happiness, peace and knowledge, that the masters know. It is not to provide a crutch that allows you to continue in relationship that depletes your soul force. You can meditate, and reset your system as often as you like, after every bad relationship encounter. But that isn’t propelling you onward to higher realizations.

This same idea applies to proper dietary and exercise choices (or lack thereof). It applies to work that constantly puts you under unpleasant strain, and wears you down. It basically applies to anything that takes up your time, that you can avoid through cognitive or behavioral change.

#3 Do You Get Enough Rest?

Is it common that when you meditate, your head bobs, you find your self caught in daydreams, you fall asleep easily as soon as your body starts to relax from the process, or your awareness seems very dull and cannot concentrate? This may be an indication that you need more sleep, or to under take some stress management measures to get your energy back.

Consider taking a nap? Yes, it’s ok to take a nap, and it doesn’t have to mean something is wrong with you. Consider going to sleep earlier. You may have to rearrange your day or cut out some activities to make this possible, but remember, your desire is for spiritual freedom. So you are willing to make this sacrifice. Proper rest, may very well be the first step, that turns your meditation from a dull, half awake revelry, to an enlightening and enlivening process that jump starts your life and spiritual growth.

#4 How Do You Feed Your Mind and Senses?

When you are not meditating, what do you do with your time?  What kinds of books do you read?  What kind of places to you frequent? What kinds of TV shows do you watch? What is the general emotional quality of the people you spend time with?

What ever you feed your mind and senses, that builds up the quality and state of your consciousness. If you read or watch psychologically disturbing, or emotionally charged media, your consciousness will become colored with that energetic pattern. If you spend time with angry, depressed, or confused people, you will resonate in that pattern as well. You will have a harder time meditating than someone who gets their nourishment from long peaceful hikes in the sunshine, or who spends their time with quiet, purposeful and happy people, or who chooses to read spiritually uplifting and inspirational literature.

One thing you might want to ask your self, is “Why do I enjoy these psychologically and emotionally charged forms of entertainment?” It could indicate a boredom or dissatisfaction with life. It could also indicate that you do not really value your Self enough to treat your self to wholesome and happier forms of enjoyment. If this is the case, admit it. Then do what you need to make choices which are more supportive of your endeavors to “awaken”. This may involve a bit of therapy, or just some motivated will power. Everyone is different, and you must find your own way in this regard.

#5 Are You Really Interested in Clearer States of Consciousness

“Am I really interested in clearer states of consciousness?” This is a question I don’t think gets asked enough.  A lot of people proclaim to be interested in spiritual growth, but their idea of spiritual growth might be skewed. Many think that upon awakening, they will become super human. Magical powers will awaken in them. They will know everything. Suffering will never touch their life situation. This shows an interest in fantasy, not understanding.

If you are simply interested in relaxation, and learning to be happier in general. Keep meditating and smiling. But it takes more than a simple meditation relaxation practice to wake up. You need intention, drive, motivation, and patience. You need to seek out people who can help you experience more clarity and spend time with them. You need to assess your life, and make sure you are making choices that keep you from being unduly distracted during meditation so you can focus your attention on deeper matters, beyond relaxation.

When you wake up in the morning, and when you sit to meditate, inwardly proclaim that you are here to wake up, and you are happy about it. Proclaim that you are looking forward to greater Self-knowledge and wisdom with each new day. Mean it!  Accept it as true for you! Relax into that reality, as though it is as natural as the sun rising every morning.

Once we develop a consistent meditation practice, and it has served to de-stress our nervous system, and give us a measure of peace through withdrawing our, often over stimulated, senses we have created an internal shelter. Now we can direct our attention to higher matters, such as exploring our true nature and our relationship with the divine.

Satisfying, Enjoyable, Spiritual Exploration

Over time, meditation becomes enjoyable and deeply satisfying. Once we master the basics, and can set up the proper environment to meditate with ease, we find that all the hard work and practice pays off. This will be the case with any activity we want to excel at and master. Learning to water ski, playing poker well, enjoying successful business interactions, singing, etc; all of these require a lot of commitment to master the fundamentals. Yet, once mastered, a person can enjoy the activity with zeal.

For some reason, I’ve noticed, that many people think, that just by saying they are on a spiritual path, they expect meditation to be knock-your-socks-off fantastic. Realistically, it can be that way, but we need to be honest with our selves, that it might take some time and training to get there.  By now, we know what we need to do to make spiritual exploration and meditation as enjoyable as getting in a nice hot bath, after a long days work in the cold.  (If you still aren’t sure what you need to do, please review all past lessons up to this point.)

“Enquiry is for really contemplating, discovering and feeling out what we are.  Once we are settled, we must direct our attention to truly analyzing and contemplating our Self.”
-Nisgaradatta Maharaj

What Can You Do Now, to Make the Most of Your Practice, and Experience Spiritual Growth as the Masters Do?

#1 - Take some time to reflect on what you would like to know, spiritually speaking.

• Are you interested in experiencing a cosmic conscious state, beyond the ego and your personality and history?
• Do you want to have a greater sense of life and your relationship to the wholeness?
• Do you want to know what it is like to know God’s infinite Love?
• Do you want to know beyond a doubt, that you are eternal and immortal?

These questions are very important. Once you have direct knowledge of their answers, a lot of doubt and despair in your life will evaporate. Get clear on what you really want to know. Write it down. Write down why you want to know this? Once you can have a clear definition of what you want to explore in your spiritual practice, state with intention that you are willing to do the work to have the realization. At the beginning of your meditations, state your intention again. Say, “I am doing my part to know the truth of my being.” Then say, “And I allow the grace and compassion of the infinite to do what I cannot do.”

“That which was there in deep sleep (no I) there was happiness. Now we have an I and are asking to find happiness.  Where there is I there is no happiness.”
-Nisgaradatta Maharaj

#2 To experience a cosmic conscious state, beyond your personal history and limited knowledge as an individualized unit of the One Reality, you need to expand your boundaries. After you have meditated, using a technique you’ve found useful, and are rather peaceful and settled, lift your awareness up into your crown chakra, or just hold your awareness about an inch or two above your head. With your awareness at this point, simultaneously focus on your breathing.

Now, as you do this, acknowledge who you think you are. Acknowledge the quirks of your personality, the failures you’ve made, the successes you’ve experienced, the people you surround your self with, how you feel like you belong to a certain family, how you define your self as having a particular career. With each breath release your attachment to one defining characteristic of your personality at a time. When you’ve run out of characteristics to release (That may or may not take awhile. Time doesn’t really matter, so don’t rush it.) then continue with a relaxed yet attentive focus on the breath and the crown of your head. With each breath feel your self moving through the crown and expanding. Your boundaries are no longer confined to your skin. Imagine what it would feel like to be aware of the room around you, then the house, then the city, then the continent, world, solar system, galaxy, etc, until you reach the edges of the known universe. Go beyond that, then rest in that experience.

At first this may seem like simple imagination, and it will be. It may be hard to imagine your consciousness as encompassing the city, the galaxy etc. Go as far as you can. As your imagination becomes engaged with each daily practice, you release your identification with your limited form. In time, your imagination will give way to the direct experience.

This practice will also work, to encourage a greater sense of your connection to the wholeness of life.

#3 To know what it is like to know the experience of God’s Infinite Love, repeat the above procedure. This time, once you have expanded as far as your imagination and consciousness will allow at present, rest there. Now as you breathe, remember a time when you felt perfectly cared for and loved, or imagine what that would feel like.  On each breath, send that feeling out into your expanded awareness, on the exhale. On the inhale, feel that same love, with intensity, rushing back through the cosmos and into your body.

No matter what arises, seemingly good or bad thoughts or distractions, in your mind during this practice, let this unconditional love flood the cosmos with each breath. If you have a hard time feeling love, you may have to practice feeling it. Use past memories to help access the feeling. The deeper your practice, the greater will be your ability to accept and feel what is always there, a deep abiding love and peacefulness, that is God’s (and yours) very being.

#4 To know beyond a doubt that you are eternal and immortal, the above exercises are helpful, as they lift you out of your mistaken sense of self. Yet there is a special way to know your eternity and immortality.

As you sit in the silence after effectively practicing your meditation technique, then ask your self, “What am I?” Sit quietly and wait for a response to come up for you, either as a thought, feeling, or sensation. Ask again. Continue to objectively watch what rises into your awareness with each asking. “What am I?”

After a while of practicing in this way, then ask your self, “What is it that is aware, of these things (that which has arisen in your awareness)?” Continue to reflect, asking this question. You will find, that on each asking, “What is aware of these changes in consciousness, that I think I am?” You will become aware that there is something that you cannot see, that is the witness, the observer. Get comfortable existing as that unconditioned, quiet, clear presence that sees and experiences all things.

Once you have this direct experience, and can maintain it, you will know your immortal nature. You will know that this same presence, that you are, has been there when you were dreaming last night, when you were at your work two days ago, during your first day of school, and even before you were born. You will know your eternity.

These practices need to be performed on a regular basis, until you have the direct experience of their fruition. This may take days, weeks, months, or even years. Yet, the knowledge provided by these realizations is superior to any other kind of knowledge. Knowing what you are, puts to rest most of your other burning questions, and releases you from much doubt and despair. Needless to say, if you are going to contemplate anything, contemplate what has been covered in this lesson.

Sincerely, Ryan Kurczak 2010

Learning to Be In Truth

I was recently asked a pertinent question through email, one I’ve pondered and explored on many occasions. Being human, I think it a natural question and one that might be worth considering for more people than just myself and the questioner. Your thoughts and contemplations are welcome in this discussion. Use the “comment” option at the bottom of this post to participate.

Question: I want to be fully established in Truth.  What can I do now to aid in that reality?

Response: There are a few levels to consider.

By consistent and intentional meditation practice we learn to calm our minds and our emotions. We learn that we are not our personality, and we learn to exist in peace, for the sake of existing in peace. Our meditation is charged by our intention. By meditating, practicing our techniques, with devotion to cleaning off the mirror that reflects our true Self, then each practice draws us closer to the pure reflection.

Once we can sit calmly, internalized, then we direct our attention to Truth.  Truth is eternal.  It is not based on the transient world of form,

Learning to Know What You Are Through All Changing Phenomena is Key

although there can be relative truths there.  We ask, “what am I?” as though we really want to know. Then we wait for a response.  The mind may throw up ideas, such as, you are a yoga teacher, or a daughter, or this body, a spiritual person, or an angry person, or someone who is depressed. When these arise, you know you are not them, because you can be aware of them as an object, and you are not an object. So youcontinue, and maybe you experience bliss and joy.  Again, this is an experience, and if you can experience it, it is an object, and it has come into your awareness, and so can leave your awareness, therefore not eternal, and not you.

Eventually, there comes a point when no more answers come forth from the mind, only a knowing that you exist. This may last for a brief instant or a long time. Now, this existence actually is beyond time and space, so it becomes tricky, because you might say, well that experience has come and gone, so therefore is not real. However, that existence has been there before you were born, during your life, in sleep, and in dreams, and will persist. The lack of stability is not stemming from unreality, but comes from a lack of ability to hold attention on this reality.  Practice is required, and with all things, the more we practice with intention and enthusiasm, the greater our ability becomes, until it becomes natural and effortless, and we regain our ‘natural’ state.

In daily life, we move into the witnessing space. Life unfolds based on our past choices, thoughts and actions. As the witness, we can acknowledge the expression of our past choices, and we can choose in the present to let those choices exhaust themselves, or put energy towards another experience. As the witness, we know we are not that which we see “out there”, and we are free to act as best we can given the circumstances.

By remaining the witness, when circumstances occur we ask, “is this me?” Say a negative experience arises, or someone treats us in a way that was not called for based on our behavior. We ask, “is this me?” Waiting for the answer, we either have it revealed to us, that yes we did act in such a way to bring about that experience, or we realize, “no.” this is something unconscious in the other person playing out.  Then we release it, let it exhaust itself.  In doing this, you loosen your attachment to having such experiences, and the other persons need to provide such experience weakens as well.  The more this happens, the easier it is to move into the state of timeless existence as mentioned above, because you note that much of what you thought was so important, wasn’t really you after all!

We endeavor to be as honest as possible, about what we want in life, about our intentions with people, and about our intentions with our self, and also about the inspiration that comes through us.

There is that which continues even through sleep, which is you, which transcends the personality.

Being born human, with a body, mind, history, personality and family pattern, we may not have had the proper role models to show us the merit in honesty, both with our selves, other people, and the divine. And it is hard in the beginning. But it doesn’t have to be. The more we know what we are and can be that, the easier it is to know and be truth. So the above practices allow this to happen naturally, although it may take time. By doing our best to be honest on all levels, even when we fail, as long as we are honest that we failed for whatever reason, it is still carrying us towards that embodiment.  Patience is necessary. But we must be honest about doing our best. Being established in truth requires the earnestness and intention to be held in the minds eye.  The expression of consciousness follows the minds eye. It may have to pass through some muddy transformation to get there, but it can also happen effortlessly and beautifully, depending on how we see it in our minds eye.

I want to be fully established in Truth.  What can I do to aid in that reality?

1) Meditate daily and deeply to a state of calm connectedness, then directing your attention to the heart, the spiritual eye, or the crown of the head, ask “What am I? What am I that has existed through out all time and space?”  Once you simply know “I AM”. Then hold your awareness as pure existence for as long as you can each day.

2) As you live each day, remain as the witness, in loving, working, eating, playing, striving. Ask, “Is this me?” Until you can love, work, eat, play, and strive, knowing what you are as being the “space” in which all these activities occur.

3) Acknowledge your human embodiment. Admit where you are in your development. Then note what you need to change in your mind, heart, and consciousness to accept the truth of your nature, and how your actions can align with this truth and no longer contradict your truth. Take one step at a time, picking your self up when you fall, ignoring the jeers of others (or even your mind) pointing out how you’ve failed and can’t experience that truth because of all the mistakes you made in the past, then keep walking, taking actions that do not contradict the embodiment of truth, until you are strong, and are moving forward like a juggernaut until you break down the wall, that has kept you blind to the truth of your nature, which has never wavered, even when you weren’t paying attention.

4) Relax and have fun. See your self in all life, and all life in you. Walk in nature, be with enjoyable supportive people, Be with those You Love in person or in spirit,  serve people who could benefit from your skills, and be creative and choose happiness.

Love,

Ryan Kurczak