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Content Index
Love: The Essence of Spiritual Power
Part One: The Power of Acceptance and Forgiveness
5.1 Introduction: Here's To Your Success!
One of the most common question that we are faced with as we journey towards adulthood is about our ambition. 'What do you want to do?' or, 'what are you going to do with your life?'. This question is essential in our personal development as it begins our search for answers about who we are. This quest starts early in our childhood, during our most formative years from two to six, the sign of which is when a child begins to role play, imitating their parents or other personalities dearest to them. As we mature and begin to realize that we 'own' our life, we begin to ponder on the possibilities of our future. Usually during our early years when idealism is a reality more than a probability, the sky is the limit to what we will be able to achieve in our life. What happens to this idealism as we mature in life is very important in determining the course of our life. Whether we achieve the goals we set for ourselves, therefore succeeding as we had envisioned or otherwise substituting our idealism for so-called practicality, thus modifying our goals, usually to something lesser than our ideals. The line of thinking about what is success that you are going to encounter in this seminar will likely seem unconventional to you. However, this is the yogic perspective, a perspective that eyes the world from its inherent spiritual nature. The key to understanding this view of success has to do with the origins of idealism.
5.1.2 The Wonderment of Idealism
Youth is generally considered a time for idealism, though of course it is not necessarily limited by age. Anyone can be idealistic about life and their goals at any age. However, the general perception is that idealism withers away over time as one begins to understand the realities of life. Whatever the cause for the loss of idealism, we will explore later. For now lets dwell on the feeling of idealism.
Being idealistic is a wonderful state of mind. More than anything else, it is a perspective of life and our part in it seen from the most positive angle of our personality. We see ourselves at our best. We are able to conjure a grand vision of what we can accomplish as a human being. We feel exhilarated when we are in idealistic pondering. It is an inspired state, full of energy and confidence.
Idealism is by no means an ineffective faculty of our mind. In fact the most innovative human inventions and discoveries are products of idealism. Language, philosophy, ethics, codes of conduct come from idealism. Even scientific discoveries and and inventions find their sources in idealism. Take for instance Einstein's Theory of Relativity. At a time when most of his peers mocked him for his ponderings to discover a single unifying force in the universe, his idealism kept him from being discouraged. Einstein saw a far grander picture of the universe than his peers could fathom and he persisted in this fantasy (at the time) of the ideal universe until he discovered the Theory of Relativity. Just look around, from architecture of buildings to the internal combustion engine, telecomunications, even the humble light bulb can be sourced from the idealistic musings of their original creators.
What then gives idealism its wonderful quality and abilities? The answer is a spiritual force we know simply as love.
5.1.3 Love, The Fountainhead of Idealism
Love is one of the most abundant, easiest felt and easiest stimulated emotion. If you doubt this then observe young children and infants. Unencumbered by subconscious conditioning and limits infants and young children are full of love. They glow in it, and as much as we love children, in most cases, they have more love to give us than we have to give them. Children are so full of love that they can barely contain themselves as it flows out of them as their enthusiasm, exuberance and their ability to forgive. As they grow older children limit the spontaneity of their love based on their observation of life around them and what they are thought.
It is this 'childish' love that also manifests itself as our ideals. Ideals are basically an evolution of love from this exuberant form expression. As ideals, love is a spiritual force as well as an emotion. It is in fact as powerful a spiritual force as willpower is. The difference between willpower and the 'power of ideals' is that while willpower is nuetral or in a sense blind to its application, that is, it can be used equally for noble or evil deeds, ideals with love at its base cannot be used nor stimulated for evil ends. The force of love, especially as ideals can never be used to be inconsiderate or hurtful of another. If someone was compelled to be inconsiderate or hurtful they would have to give up their ideals first, and therefore become 'less' loving.
As an additional observation lets look at unfortunate situations where some children turn out to become criminals. Every child is born naturally innocent and pure. They know how to love as instinctively as they know how to suckle. Basically it is second nature to them. Eventually they become idealistic youth. If a child unfortunately turns out to be a criminal as he or she grows up, it is because at some point they gave up their ideals. In otherwords no one is born to be unkind or corrupt, it has to be inculcated in them. The 'criminal' example is an extreme example, but it highlights just how important ideals are in shaping ones life and future; and why it is a spiritual force that must be encouraged and allowed to flourisn and never disuaded.
Unfortunately in the mainstream psyche of communities all over the world idealism is very much underrated compared realism or more commonly known as 'being practical'. This is a dangerous trend for any society and it will do a lot of good for the planet if it is reversed to emphasize idealism.
5.1.4 Idealism and Realism
The dictionary definition of idealism is as follows:
1. the practice of forming or pursuing ideals, esp. unrealistically : the idealism of youth. Compare with Realism.
2. (in art or literature) the representation of things in ideal or idealized form. Often contrasted with Realism.
The definition of idealism is longer than this, but they all emphasize that idealism is basically unrealistic. This is why, the spiritual point of view is unconventional. Conventionalism–if there is such a thing–of today's modern world is based solely on material results. Idealism however is not based solely on material results but gives equal importance to spiritual results. This key disticntion between these two points of view, that is one based on conventionalism and one on idealism, this is best illustrated by some examples.
Lets take two common possibility of people who we accept as successful in their goal of life of becoming rich. These two persons are billionaires. One is conventionally successful and the other is idealistically successful. The conventionally successful person is a drug lord and the idealistically successful person has a computer software company. Again we are using an extreme example for the conventionally successful person.
Convention which mainly subscribes to realism or practicality as its main philosophy will state that when push comes to shove, winning at all cost is better than losing. That means if you need to 'step on another persons head', be inconsiderate or even cheat to meet your end, it is alright, again, so long as you come out on top. The conventions in our world actually allows for this. The drug lord in this example and illustrate this. So long as he has not been convicted in a court of law, and convention allows for methods to escape the law, in general community will gawk at and even admire his wealth. He can even reach celebrity status despite his shadowy dealings. There are politicians too who are down right tyrants in their country, who are not only allowed to persist with their cruelty in the world, they are given a places of honor as statesmen in international meetings and councils. Until they are behind bars, they may can be given privileges in society and society in general accepts this.
The above example is not a repudiation of the just law of innocent until proven guilty. It just illustrates how and why it is possible for a person who is dearth of ideals, cruel and dangerous can rise up the ranks in soceity by abusing their rights in the name of realism or practicality, simply because idealism is too difficult to maintain and amazingly sometimes they are respected for it! This is the danger of over emphasizing realism as opposed to idealism.
As for the honest software developer, it is obvious to see how his success is faultless as he is living his ideal. He too can rise to become a celebrity. The difference being society will be comfortable with him and he will be thrust forward as an example in society. More importantly, one of the boons of living by ones ideals is a deep sense of contentment and peace within oneself. One can enjoy ones life unhindered by constant fear of enemies. It can be called true success.
5.2 Yoga and Idealism
We have delved rather intricately into the subject of idealism. You may now be wondering how this connects to the core subject of this seminar, which is the power of acceptance and forgiveness as well as how this relates to achieving success in life's endeavours. What we have established so far in the introduction of this seminar is that idealism is a tangible spiritual force that is an outgrowth of love. Idealism is as raw and tangible a power as willpower and concentration and its main function is to guide our actions and intentions towards a path that brings out the noblest qualities and values out of ourselves. Idealism or love therefore is a commodity for success just as concentration and willpower are.
From the yogic point of view idealism is central to its practice. As my guru would advise his disciples often, "whatever you do, do it with perfection". Whether it is sweeping the floor, gardening or writing a newsletter, gurudeva would insist that we be meticulous and bring out more than 100% of our best effort of what we thought was possible. This insistance is a yogic ideal, one all practioners of yoga strive to apply in all departments of life. However this insistence of living according to ideals is not unnatural. It is not something we have to struggle to maintain, we just have to strive to be our natural self. Here we come back to the connection of youth and children to idealism.
It is not surprising therefore that one of the attitudes that we monks strived for while living in the monastery with gurudeva was to be enthusiastic and have a child-like spontaneity when we did our task. No, it is not being childish, but as responsive, as exuberant, as forgiving and as joyful as children when we did our tasks and chores. This striving takes us back to the time of our childhood when ideals were the guiding values in us. We strived to break all the previous conditioning in our subconscious, that had over the years covered up our natural idealism, so that once again the idealism flowed as naturally in us as it did when we were children. In the effort of reclaiming the purity and clarity of our subconscious the most powerful tools are forgiveness and acceptance.
5.2.2 The Yogic Ideals
Yoga is the science and art of discovering ones spiritual reality. The ideals of living in yoga are therefore geared to optimizing ones spiritual development. These ideals are mainly contained in two lists, known as the Yamas and Niyamas, which are detailed below.
The Yamas
Ahimsa: Non-violence. Cultivate peace, abhor violence. Not harming others by thoughts, words or deeds.
Satya: Truthfulness. Being truthful and honouring promises.
Asteya: Non-stealing. Refraining from theft, cheating, coveting and other crimes of greed and jealousy.
Brahmacharya: Sexual purity. Controlling lust by remaining celibate when single and faithful in marriage.
Kshamaa: Patience. Being patient with trying circumstances as well as being tolerant and understanding with people.
Dhriti: Steadfastness. Cultivating confidence and perseverance. Overcoming fear, indecision and changeableness.
Dayaa: Compassion. Expressing empathy and sensitivity. Conquering callousness and cruelty towards all beings.
Aarjava: Honesty, Straightforwardness. Admitting shortcomings and wrong doings.
Mitahaara: Moderation in appetite. Controlling eating habits by eating fresh and natural foods, avoiding junk foods and striving towards a vegetarian diet.
Saucha: Purity and cleanliness. Upholding purity in body, mind and speech.
The Niyamas
Santosha: Joy and serenity. Seek joy and serenity in life.
Hri: Remorse. Be modest and show shame for misdeeds.
Daana: Selfless service and charity. Be generous, perform service and charity without thought of reward or personal gain.
Aastikya: Faith in God and religion. Cultivate belief in God and the path to enlightenment.
Ishvarapujana: Personal worship of God. Cultivate love of God through personal worship.
Siddhanta Shravana: Scriptural study. Study and reflect upon scriptures and the words of the wise.
Mati: Divine cognition. Seek the truths of life through meditation and be a disciple of a spiritual guru.
Vrata: Religious observances. Fulfill religious obligations and vows. Attend temple services regularly. Observe religious festivals and fulfill vows.
Japa: Mantra recitation. Reciting mantras or other religious chants. Deepen love of God through devotional chanting and singing.
Tapas: Regular spiritual disciplines. Performance of regular spiritual disciplines and penance. Nurture soulfulness through hatha yoga, meditation and perform penances or other acts of purification when needed.
As you may observe these ideals are common sense moral restraints and religious culture that are universally applicable with most if not all religions with a little modification here and there. To be able to perfect oneself so as to live according to the yamas and to observe the niyamas are important to yogic striving for self-development. It ultimately leads to God Realization or enlightenment. However a yogi does not attempt to master all the yamas and niyamas at once, he or she will work on them gradually, mastering one aspect and then moving on to another.
If you compared your personal ideals with the yamas and niyamas you should find similarities between them and the yogic ideals, though you would probably emphasize certain ideals more than others due to your personality.
We actually do not need to create our ideals. Our natural ideals are a reflection of the most postive potential of who we can be. It is based on the purpose of our individual existence on Earth and is thus very personal. We may share similar ideals with others, but no two persons will have the exact same set of ideals. We may also incorporate new ideals into our existing set. However we do not have to cultivate ideals, for they are naturally wrought into our inherent nature and is part of our personality. What we can cultivate is to master living by our ideals.
5.2.3 Recovering our Ideals
Though we do not need to cultivate our ideals we do need to recover them if we find that we are straying from the path of our ideals. We never lose our ideals, if we are not living by them, it means we are just ignoring them, or we have lost the urge to live by them. This usually happens because we are dissuaded from living by them either by bitter experiences in life or if we gain the perception that 'the reality' (which can mean street rules or the way the world works) of the 'dog-eat-dog' world.
Our ideals is a force in ourselves that is hard to ignore. As its source is love, it is ever present in the deepest recesses of our spiritual being, which is our soul. The main reason why we are more inspired by our ideals when we are children and young adults than when we are adults is because of the clarity of our subconscious mind. We are going to get into some yoga metaphysics to understand some of the processes of the mind and what clarity of the subconscious means.
According to yoga philosophy, our mind is comprised of three basic parts. The deepest and most spiritual part of us, is contained in the superconscious mind. The superconscious mind is a term that my guru coined to describe the mind of our soul. It is also called the mind of light and through it shines our life force, love and our spiritual potentials which reflect as our ideals. Immediately after the superconscious mind is our subconscious mind. This is the mind of our memory and personality. The subconscious is also the go between of the superconscious to the most external part of our mind which is known in yoga as the conscious mind. Through the conscious mind we experience and interact with the world around us.
In the dynamics of these three parts of the mind, it is the subconscious that can create the obstacles for living according to our ideals. This is because the subconscious can cut off the natural spiritual glow that shines from the superconscious mind, the seat of our ideals, with clutter, which are the unresolved experiences of our life. As a simple analogy to explain this mind-process, lets take a bulb that is lit to represent our ever-brilliant superconscious mind. The light from it contains our ideals. We the person looking at the light represent the conscious mind. The space between us and the light is the subconscious mind. Unresolved experiences are represented by black pieces of paper. Every time we gained an unresolved experience it goes into the subconscious mind (somewhere in the space between the light and us) and blocks a little of the light that we can see from the bulb. If we keep accumulating more unresolved experiences in the subconscious, the light we can see from the bulb begins to reduce. If we do not do anything about this plight and continue to maintain and accumulate a dark and cluttered subconscious, eventually we will be altogether cut-off from the light of the superconscious mind. At this point, our ideals are still there as the bulb is still lit, however, we will feel so distant from them that they seem impossible to uphold.
When we are born our subconscious mind is clear as glass. Our superconscious mind shines directly to the conscious mind, which is why children are naturally positive and spiritual, a reflection of the soul within them. If we do not know or understand that we need to resolve experiences that occur in our life, we begin to accumulate them as unresolved experiences in the subcoscious as we get older. This invariably blocks the existence of the soul from our normal state of consciousness, until eventually we do no feel the soul at all. If a person finds that he or she is losing interest in living their ideals as they get older it is because they are accumulating unresolved experiences. Unless this process is reversed, the subconscious mind will become so filled with unresolved experiences that one can even forget his or her ideals.
5.2.4 What Are Resolved And Unresolved Experiences?
All experiences we go through in our day to day life are stored as memory in our subconscious mind. According to yoga philosophy how these experiences sit in our subconscious is important. When an experience embeds in the subconscious mind as memory it creates an impression in the subconscious. This impression in yoga is called vasana. Yoga identifies three main types of vasanas, they are positive, positive-negative and negative. If we used the earlier analogy of the bulb being the supersconscious, then the positive impressions can be liked to transparent glass, the positive-negative ones are pieces of coloured glass that are semi-transparent and the negative one are opaque black glass that do not let any of the light from the bulb through.
As you can surmise, resolved experiences are the transparent glass, unresolved experiences are either the coloured semi-transparent or opaque black glass. In this classification, the quality of the experience, whether it was enjoyable or painful does not matter. In other words, an enjoyable experience can create as strong and as black a negative impression as a painful one. It all depends on how the experience ends up in the subconscious.
Lets look at an example. Say this persons close childhood friend is going to be immigrating to another country and he is attending a send off party the day before his friend leaves. They have lots of fun during the party reminiscing the good-old-days. This in general is a positive experience, however at the end of the party when they are all saying their goodbyes, this person (whose subconscious we are studying) is suddenly struck by the reality that he will not see his friend for a long time, maybe even never again. As he shakes his friends hand before he leaves him, he is very, very sad. As he drives home, this sadness turns to the fear of loss as he extrapolates who else he will eventually lose in his life. All this goes into the subconscious that records not only the event but our perception and feelings we felt. Despite all the good fun at the party, the sadness and fear colours the impression of the party experience in the subconscious and a positive-negative vasana is formed.
Another example, something bad happens to another person, say a thief stole somethings from this person. He gets angry and hateful at the thief. The unfortunate experience settles in the subconscious as a negative impression as it oozes hate and anger. It is black. A few days later the thief is caught, while the victims belonging are gone for good, the victim learns of the unfortunate circumstances of the thief that drove him into crime. Compassion is the result, he feels pity for the thief and forgives him in his mind, but allows the laws of the land to take its natural course of justice. What happens is that because this experience of forgiveness is related to the original experience of the theft, the subconscious will dutifully add this impression of pity and forgiveness to the negative vasana. Then like magic, Presto! The original negative, black impression turns to a positive transparent one. This negative impression has been resolved. For the victim, when this process happens, that is as soon as compassion and forgiveness well up, the resolution of the negative experience to a positive one makes him feel as if a burden has been lifted from his chest and he feels joy as the aftermath of the resolution.
We can identify whether we have resolved or unresolved experiences in our subconscious mind easily. All one has to do is to go down memory lane on any subject. If you come upon a memory that is joyful, inspiring or creates satisfaction without any residual feelings of pain, regret or loss, this is a resolved experience. If you stumble on an experienced that is either confusing or mixed with joyful and painful experiences these are the coloured positive-negative vasanas that are also be considered unresolved. The totally negative vasanas which cause nothing but regret, pain or feelings of revenge are clearly unresolved. However, as in the previous example of the theft victim, unresolved experience can be resolved and their effects in the subconscious can be transformed from a burdensome blockage to contented clarity using wisdom.
5.3 The Power of Acceptance and Forgiveness
Having explored idealism and peering into some of the processes of the subconscious we finally come to the crux of this seminar, which is how forgiveness and acceptance are powerful tools of self development and how we can use them through yogic practices. The previous discussions have brought us to this point, but a summary will be helpful to sum up what we have discovered so far.
That idealism is a natural evolution of the pristine love that we are all filled with when we are born. That this idealism is a spiritual force that can make the biggest difference in how we lead our life and the paths we take toward reaching our goals. That this idealism is often underestimated in its usefulness in leading a materialistic life; and finally, that idealism is permanently endowed within all of us, if it seems that our life seems cut off from our ideals and the urge to live by our ideals it is because of unresolved content in our subconscious.
Before we get into yogic techniques of harnessing the power of forgiveness and acceptance to regain our ideals, let us first look into these two faculties of love.
5.3.2 Acceptance
Before we can forgive someone or even something (we do get upset at things other than humans too!) we have to accept the pain, hurt or injustice inflicted unto us or our loved ones. Acceptance is the first step in the process of healing unresolved experiences in the subconscious.
How we accept this has very much to do with our philosophy in life or our faith. Faith will gives us ways of accepting untoward events in our life. From the yogic point of view, acceptance comes gradually. It does not happen immediately as we can only accept what has happened to us in retrospect. Not only must we accept what has happened to us, but also how we initially reacted to the incident. That is if we got angry, acted extraordinarily out of character, whatever we did in reaction to the incident must be accepted without judgement or denial in our own mind. It is not important how others might perceive us from our reactions, it is more important that we accept when we have misbehaved.
Yoga philosophy teaches that whatever happened to us is caused by our karma. Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Sikhs, Shintos and Taoists believe in karma. If you are a follower of any of these faiths or are a serious yogi, you too can accept whatever has happened to you as your karma. The cause of karma, of course, is our own doing. What happens to us, good or bad, is our karma returning to us.
Acceptance is not a passive state of servility. In this case we are specifically taking about conditions that have passed and only linger in our mind as memory. In this case acceptance helps us to resolve the burdens in our memory. Acceptance in this context is not about accepting to remain in an unjust or hurtful situation. I am deliberately highlighting this difference so there is no misunderstanding that acceptance means passively accepting or remaining in bad situations and not doing anything about correcting the situation. Such situations are in a totally different context and not in the scope of this seminar.
5.3.3 Forgiveness
Forgiveness is what fosters our release and independence from burdens in our subconscious. In this function, forgiveness is far from a simple concept, it is a powerful ability. Once there is acceptance forgiveness is the next natural step, and it will come quite easily. Again as in acceptance the level of forgiveness that I am referring to is at the subconscious. Levels of forgiveness may be a new concept to you. It was introduced to me by my guru.
Gurudeva explained that if we are wronged by anyone for any reason we must forgive them in our subconscious sincerely and immediately. However this doesn't mean that we show the aggressor that we have forgiven and forgotten. We only acknowledge to them that we have forgiven them when they come to us in remorse, sincerely asking for our apology. Until that time we may show our dissatisfaction with them subtly so they are aware that you require their apology to normalize the relationship. This rule however must be applied with commonsense, since there are many situations where we should just as well forgive and forget subconsciously as well as externally without requiring an apology. Instances of these may be if the offender is an infant or child, if he or she is a stranger (however forgiving doesn't mean we should not take necessary action under the law) and of course if the cause of pain is mother nature herself (nothing much we can do about this, might as well forgive and forget!).
The reason gurudeva instructed us to use forgiveness in such a way is first of all, we must understand that forgiveness is for our benefit and not the offenders. If we do not forgive we are carrying a burden in our mind in the form of a painful memory. While the painful event may have occured at a certain time and is over and done with, by being resentful and hateful of it in our mind, we are unnecessarily carrying a burden in our mind day in and day out. We will unfortunately relive the pain of the event every time something stimulates it from our memory. The only way to release ourselves from this subconcious burden is to reconcile with the memory by forgiving the person in your experience. Thus the benefit of forgiveness is ours and not the aggressors. The reason for not showing that we have forgiven before we receive and apology or some form of atonement is so we protect ourselves from being continually abused and taken advantage of. Allowing ourselves to be abused or to be taken advantage of knowingly on our part, in yoga philosophy is considered going against natural order. We have the right to protect ourselves and this is a divine right that we must exercise if need be. Forgiveness therefore doesn't mean being a passive acceptor of torture and abuse.
5.4 Yogic Techniques of Acceptance and Forgiveness
There are numerous techniques in yoga that use acceptance and forgiveness to release burdens from our memory and give clarity in the subconcious. Harnessing the ability to accept and forgive builds spiritual strength. Since every unresolved experience in our mind is unique, every effort to resolve the experience demands different ways of approach in applying acceptance and forgiveness. From the yogic point of view this is a spiritual practice and one that brings the yogi ever closer to God, especially since according to yoga philosophy God is love, exercising these two processes of love draws us closer to God. It is the goal of yoga to unite a yogi with the Godliness within him or herself.
The yogic techniques for resolving experiences within ourselves through acceptance and forgiveness are diverse. There are prayers, asking for counsel from gurus, meditative introspection and even hatha yoga or yoga exercises. All these techniques can purify the subconscious from its negativity. In this seminar we are going to explore three techniques that deal with three types (the three types will be explained later) of unresolved vasanas in the subconscious. The first uses prayer, the second hatha yoga and the third introspection.
Before we get into these techniques it is important for me to point out that there are times where we have to use acceptance and forgiveness on ourselves. These are the times when we do wrong, such as offending or hurting someone else. We must accept our mistakes and also forgive ourselves for transgressing first. This will naturally lead to us asking for forgiveness and atoning for our transgressions if needed. If we do not do the first step of accepting our fault, we will go into denial, justifying our actions in one way or another. In our subconscious mind, even if we can justify our transgressions, the memory will settle as an unresolved vasana because, within our subconscious is wrought our conscience. Our subconscious will register our offence and denial as a negatively charged vasana that needs resolution. If we do not do anything about this, we too will be carrying a burden in our mind no matter how vigorously we justify the rightness of our action. At some point if we are to clear this negative vasana in the subconscious, we have to accept our shortcomings, forgive ourselves and then take steps to make amends for the wrongs we had done.
When a memory in the subconscious is resolved there is a boon. This boon is the lesson that we learnt as we resolved the memory. This lesson is valuable as it will help us better deal with similar situations that may surface in the future and also help others resolve the same or similar experience that they may be carrying as burdens in their subconscious.
5.4.2 Using Prayers To Purify The Subconscious
Praying is the most common method used to purify the subconscious. It is very easy to do and very natural. It is therefore a great way to start the process of purifying the subconscious. There isn't a specific prayer in sanskrit or any other language for purifying the subconscious. This is because the act of praying itself begins the process of subconscious purification.
According to yoga philosophy any effort we take to communicate or connect with God, draws blessings from God. It is this blessings that helps clear some of the dross of unresolved experiences in our subconscious. Though we may think that when we pray we are relating to God externally or outside us, there is a metaphysical inner dynamics that occurs as we pray. This occurs whether we are aware of it or not.
Yoga recognizes this process since yoga is all about discovering God within oneself. God exists in us as the essence of our life. My guru used to say God is the Life of our life. Capital L, Life, refers to God, who is our creator and also the source of our life. 'life' refers to us as we see ourselves. Therefore when we pray to God in a house of worship, the home altar or anywhere else, we are also connecting with God within us. From the yogic perspective, this happens irrespective of ones religion.
Basically what happens when we pray to God is our mind naturally becomes concentrated on God and we are in a meditative state of mind. In this state we are able to connect with God within ourselves even if our subconscious is very congested with unresolved vasanas. In a sense the prayer blazes a path through the congestion in the subconscious and we are then able to feel God's blessings invigorating our being. Depending on our perspective of God, whether He (or She) is within or outside us, we will feel this blessings entering from an external source or from deep within us, usually from around the area of our heart.
Mystically this blessings is understood as a form of spiritual energy and seen as rays of bright spiritual light which is not unlike our life-force. This force from God is also what gives children their amazing ability to love and their exuberance. When this force fills our subconscious, some of the unresolved vasanas will dissolve and is thus automatically resolved without us having to do anything else. For a yogi this is the most important function of prayer, for above the yogi values a clear, unburdened subconscious. This is where the power of prayer lies. A clear subconscious allows us easy access to develop the three most important resources for success which are concentration, willpower and love.
As mentioned earlier there are no specific prayers that is more effective in clearing the subconscious than any other prayer. Any and all prayer done in sincerity will have the same effect on the subconscious. The key is the connection that is formed with God during prayer. The content of the prayer is secondary.
A Guide To Effective Prayer
Praying to God is easy and natural. To pray means to communicate with God. To express ourselves to God in any manner is a prayer. We may be singing devotional hymns, chanting mantras, writing mantras, speaking to God mentally, performing social services or charity in God’s name or contemplating on God. These are all different forms of prayer. Effective prayer is prayer that reaches God. The key principal of effective prayer is devotion. Devotion is love for God and having no fear of God. Devotion is possible if we remove any fear we may have of God, since the very nature of God is love.
Devotion to the Creator is important to a yogi, simply because that is the goal of his or her practices, that is to know and enjoy unity with God. The yogi, seeks to tune his mind by concentrating on God so he is able to open a clear pathway to God's Being within oneself. This is easiest done by expressing devotion, either to God externally or by praying to God within oneself. According to yoga philosophy, for a yogi to make such a connection to God within oneself, one must first give up the fear of God. Fear of God, in yoga is considered rudimentary in the path of spiritual evolution. It usually applies to people who need to fear a higher power to tread the path of virtue. Usually by the time a devotee feels the stirrings of true devotion, which is the love of God for the sake of loving God, they have already given up the shackles of fearing God and are ready to learn the practices of yoga. If ones connection to God is based on fear of God's wrath or other powers, then it will not open a clear pathway to God within oneself. God will seem a distant Being living far and disconnected from him or her.
The power of regular prayer is that this pathway of clarity within ones subconscious becomes permanently established overtime. When this happens it becomes easier to concentrate on God and devotion becomes stronger. As this process continues, the subconscious becomes ever more lighter and clearer as the dross of unresolved vasanas gets dissolved into resolution. This naturally allows for more of God brilliance to shine through to our external consciousness. The result is that we feel closer to God. We can become so sensitive to Gods presence that whenever we enter a house of worship we will feel the presence of God in these places. Eventually this closeness leads us to begin meditative practices, which at this point becomes easier because of the increasing clarity within the subconscious. This evolution from external prayer to internal prayer through meditation can eventually lead to a pristinely pure subconscious mind, which when attained leads to God Realization or the realization of ones unity with God, the goal of yoga. If you refer back to the Niyamas above, you will observe that it emphasizes devotional practices in various forms such as reading the scripture, performing penances, having a personal worship routine and visiting holy places regularly. This emphasis points to the importance of acquiring and maintaining clarity in the subconscious.
Choose the style of prayer that you are most comfortable with. The form of the prayer is not very important for yogic development as the quality of the prayer. This quality is based on ones devotion to God and how free it is from the fear of God. There are many forms of prayer to choose from, even reading scripture on a regular basis is a form of prayer, along with chanting God's holy name on a rosary, doing simple or elaborate worship ceremonies, singing to God or playing music dedicated to God. As long as there is consistency in the practice, daily is of course the best, but even if it is every few days, so long as it follows a routine, the subconscious will begin to show signs of gaining clarity as God's shakti floods into it, clearing unresolved vasanas.
While prayer is a powerful tool for clearing the subconscious of its darkness, it is unfortunately not a panacea for clearing the subconscious of all its unresolved vasanas. There are some vasanas that cannot be cleared through God's shakti flowing into our subconscious. This is because the process of clearing some types of unresolved vasanas requires physical action or, if the vasana has a lesson within it that we must learn or understand before it can be dissolved into resolution. For these vasanas yoga provides other techniques. They are Hatha Yoga and the Vasana Daha Tantra.
5.4.3 The Esoterics of Hatha Yoga
Hatha yoga is the yogic physical exercises that is known in the mainstream as yoga or yoga exercises. It is a series of body postures that is maintained for a period of time and are coordinated to specific rhythmic breathing. Esoterics is defined in the dictionary as : intended for or likely to be understood by only a small number of people with a specialized knowledge or interest. What we are going to uncover in this segment of this yogic seminar on love is the role of hatha yoga in clearing the subconscious mind of its burdens. It may seem rather unlikely that an exercise technique can create such an effect, but from the yogic perspective it is as natural as water in rain. To understand how this is possible we shall first look at how hatha yoga fits in the complete yoga system known as ashtanga yoga.
Ashtanga yoga, takes the entire system of yoga and breaks it down to a structure of successive steps of practice that leads an aspirant of God Realization, a yogi, from where she or he is in spiritual development to the goal of God Realization known as samadhi. This structure contains eight practices that builds on each other (ashtanga in sanskrit means '8 limbs' hence its 8 practices). These eight steps starts with 1. Yamas and 2. Niyamas. We found out what the yamas and niyamas are earlier. The yamas and niyamas form what is known as the backbone or foundation of ashtanga yoga. In training with an enlightened guru, he or she will determine the starting point of an aspiring disciple of God Realization by determining their ability in observing the yamas and niyamas. We also explored how prayers, which is an important element of the niyamas helps purify the subconscious mind. The third step of ashtanga yoga is hatha yoga. Being the third step of ashtanga yoga, hatha yoga is very close to the foundations of yoga. Hatha yoga's function is not just to keep the physical body fit, as one would think of general exercise, but more importantly for its spiritual functions. This is where the esoterics of hatha yoga lies, that is, with regards to the connection of the physical body to spiritual development.
Hatha yoga is an ancient exercise system that was created by enlightened gurus for the purpose spiritual development and to keep the physical body fit. The gurus never intended hatha yoga to be a body building nor extremely aerobic style of exercise. In India ancient body building and aerobic exercise systems intended to build muscle mass and stamina do exist. They were designed for body builders and soldiers who learnt martial arts. They are still practiced today and are not unlike the mainstream exercises that involve weight lifting and vigorous aerobics. Hatha yoga, on the other hand, was devised to keep the body physically fit enough to remain healthy and more for spiritual effects.
The science of Hatha Yoga has to do with the yogic perspective that mind is not isolated in the brain. According to yoga philosophy the entire physical body is part of the conscious and subconscious mind. In fact memory is not entirely stored within the brain's nerve connections, but also within all the organs of the body. The heart, the eyes, the liver, the pancreas, the spleen, the kidney, the stomach, the gonads, the larynx, the joints are all part of the subconscious and do store vasanas both positive and negative. In their function as part of the mind, the organs and limbs of the body are intricately connected to the spiritual chakras that are along the spinal column and in the head. The smooth functioning of these chakras are also essential to the functioning of our physical body. According to yoga philosophy many illnesses can be traced to a subconscious that is over burdened by negative vasanas. Hypertension, for instance, is among the most common disease caused by a subconscious filled by a heavily burdened subconscious (though this is not the only cause, other factors such as diet and genetics also play a role in this and other disease processes). Through these observations of the interrelations between the body, mind and spirit, yoga philosophy postulates that just as the mind can effect the processes of the body, the reversal is also true, that is that the body can also be made to effect the contents and the condition of the mind. From this theory hatha yoga was born.
Hatha yoga exercises are devised to put the body into different positions and situations deliberately in such a way that it forces an energy known as prana, that can be translated as life-force, which is another form of spiritual energy to be concentrated in certain parts of the body and chakra. Prana has a cleansing effect when it comes to its reaction to unresolved subconscious vasanas. According to yoga philosophy, inflexibility is one of the signs of build up of unresolved vasanas in a certain part of the body. This theory is based on the fact that babies and children are very flexible when they are born. At this stage their subconscious mind is still clear and unencumbered by negative vasanas. Unless this condition is maintained, over time we accumulate negative vasanas in the subconscious and this then causes the inflexibility in various parts of the body. Hatha yoga then seeks to reverse this process of build up of negative vasanas in the subconscious by bringing the body into the same or similar condition of flexibility as when it was a child.
Therefore hatha yoga, like prayers, is able to purify the subconscious mind of negative vasanas. Prayers alone cannot get rid of all the dross of our subconscious mind. This is because some the some of the vasanas require directed prana to dissolve its vibrations from being unresolved to being resolved. Like prayers this is an automatic function of hatha yoga. There is no need to figure out which memory is being resolved and why, it just happens. This is another magic of yoga. It is this reason that people can feel the benefits of hatha yoga in a tangible way, because it causes clarity in the subconscious. From this clarity more of God's energy, the shakti, is able to flow from our superconscious mind to our external being and we are able to feel the benefits of this in our sense of well being and positivity.
Hatha Yoga Practice Guidelines
Even adept yoga practioners try to do hatha yoga daily. However, for the purpose of subconscious purification doing hatha yoga three to four times a week is sufficient, of course if one can do it daily it is better. There are over 2,000 hatha yoga postures that can be learned. Of course one does not need to do all of them to get the benefits of hatha yoga. There are many schools of hatha yoga that are usually named after their founders such as Iyengar yoga and others such as kriya yoga, which incorporates hatha yoga with vigorous breathing exercises that can be learned. The base of all these different yoga schools are hatha yoga and they develop different routines of yoga based on the collection of 2000 postures.
My guru also developed a yoga routine that contains 24 yoga postures known as the Chakra Asanas. This routine is specifically designed to purify the subconscious mind. This routine is also based on the connection of the specific poses to the seven chakras along the spinal cord and in the brain. The yoga routine starts with postures specific to the muladhara chakra and moves successively to postures related to the next higher chakra until it reaches the seventh chakra, the sahasrara chakra on the crown of the head.
To optimize the subconscious purification while doing these asanas, each set of asanas (there are altogether 8 set of asanas with three asanas per set) are done while visualizing a specific colour. The colours are related to the chakra that the posture harmonizes. The colour visualization helps with the flow of prana (life-force) out of the charkra into the parts and systems of the body that the chakra governs and gradually with practice stimulates subconscious purification in these parts of the body. With this set comprising 24 yoga asanas the subconscious purifying effects of hatha yoga is able to reach every corner of the subconscious mind.
The Chakra Asana system of hatha yoga can be found by clicking here. The chakra asanas starts from No. 4 in the playlist, titled: The Chakra Asana Series Intro & Set 1 Siddhasana. Please also go through the beginning of this playlist as it has important guidelines and cautions that one must be aware of before beginning hatha yoga practice. If you have learnt to do hatha yoga under a teacher before you will probably have learned all these asanas as these postures are considered basic yoga asanas. What will be new are the routine and colour visualizations related to the asanas. If you have not done hatha yoga before, please do not attempt to do these asanas by yourself. Learn them from a teacher first. If you are not able to do any of the asanas they may be substituted with easier relevant ones (a yoga teacher can help with this). Please consult a reputable yoga teacher before attempting to do hatha yoga for the first time.
How are Hatha Yoga, Acceptance and Forgiveness Connected?
Hatha yoga is not a very obvious vector of acceptance and forgiveness. Prayer is obvious enough. Surrendering to God through prayer is an act of love. Acceptance and forgiveness is very natural when we are engrossed in a devotional state. The very thought of God has the power of bringing out our best and most noble qualities. It is therefore easy to grasp how cultivating the practice of sincere devotion can bring about resolution of negative vasanas in the subconscious. On the other hand, doing hatha yoga might seem very distant from anything resembling love. However, the effects of hatha yoga, especially after finishing a practice session is calming and fills the body with spiritual energies. Spiritual energies are of course, synonymous with love.
If you practiced hatha yoga on a regular basis you will find improvements in your ability to accept positively any circumstances and work with them without negativity. If you were easy to temper badly before, after a few weeks of regular hatha yoga practice, you will see positive improvements in your temper. My guru used to explain this phenomenon of positivity from practicing hatha yoga by equating that the flexibility that we gain in our body from doing the exercises, translates to a flexible mind. Methphysically, as the practice of hatha yoga clears the subconscious of more and more unresolved dross, naturally there is more space in the subconscious to contain and deal with any situations that may arise. If the subconscious is overloaded with unresolved problems, everytime a new problem arises there is no space in the mind to contain anymore negativity that a person will react very badly and very physically to the problem. This is why many people find that as they age their temper gets worse. This is mainly because the subconscious mind is so filled with unresolved problems that it is very difficult to contain anymore un-resolutions in it that it pushes the problem back to our external consciousness and we show our reaction unbridled and unrestrained. If you ever hear comments about yourself that you never used to be like how you are now, or that you have changed and they mean such comments from a negative angle, such observations are indications that the subconscious mind is overloaded by unresolved vasanas and immediate action needs to be taken to clear the burdens in the mind. If you are in such a situation, hatha yoga is one of the practices that can give you the most effective relief in the least amount of time if it is practiced regularly. Thus hatha yoga is an indirect tool of acceptance and forgiveness.
While hatha yoga is an indirect tool of 'acceptance and forgiveness', there is a yoga technique that employs acceptance and forgiveness very directly. This is called the vasana daha tantra. Before we get into this yogic technique, we need to understand a little deeper about unresolved vasanas.
The Types of Unresolved Memories
Prayers, hatha yoga and vasana daha tantra are used to clear the subconscious of all unresolved vasanas in the mind. Just by having these three techniques to clear the subconscious we can surmise that there are three types of unresolved vasanas. The first type is created by our frustrations in situations that cannot be helped. For instance we get stuck in a traffic jam because of weather conditions. Stress builds up, we even get angry, but there is nothing we can do to fix the situation. We have to just accept the reality of the situation and work with its consequences with patience and wisdom. If we do not accept this reality, the memory of the situation will be contained in the subconscious as a negative vasana of helplessness and whatever emotions we felt. These type of negative vasanas can easily be resolved by prayers.
The next type of negative vasana are memories caused by our interaction with people close to us and strangers. It is mainly the pain or injustice inflicted by others unto us, though much of these are unintentional or at least was not meant to hurt us very seriously. Sarcasms, pranks, jesting at anothers expense are some examples of these situations. We may feel hurt and this personal hurt can be quite deep from these experiences. However despite such situations the relationship remains cordial and we do not require apology from the person to maintain the relationship. As far as we are concerned these situations are like water under the bridge, but for some reason if the memory of the situation comes up we react to it badly. This means that the vasana in the subconscious from this memory is negative, therefore not resolved. If prayers do not resolve these negative vasanas, hatha yoga will surely take care of them. These vasanas also include intentional pain caused by strangers unto us, that is, people whom we will probably never meet again or whose apology is not relevant to us.
The third type of negative vasanas are the most intense or the 'heaviest negative' vasanas. These vasanas contain memories of intentional pain or injustice that we have inflicted unto others (they can be people close to us or strangers) or intentional hurtfulness that others (acquaintances and people dear to us) have inflicted unto others, for which we require an apology or some atonement before we can normalize the relationship. This third type also includes vasanas that cannot be reconciled through prayer or hatha yoga entirely (prayers and hatha yoga may be able to reduce its emotional intensity) because there is some lesson or wisdom contained in the experience that we need to extract. The lesson can only be extracted from these vasanas when we face them consciously. If we do not face these vasanas within ourselves and choose to ignore them, we will be forced to face the same or similar situation re-occuring in the future. The yoga technique that is best for resolving such 'heavy' negative vasanas is the vasana daha tantra.
5.4.4 The Vasana Daha Tantra
My guru would often say doing the vasana daha tantra, is like doing psychic surgery. The vasana daha tantra is actually a very simple yet potent technique of purifying the subconscious mind. The process is even simpler then prayers and hatha yoga for that matter, but it is not necessarily easy until you get the hang of it. The vasana daha tantra uses the power of acceptance and forgiveness head-on. It involves us reliving these memories by recollecting them, then accepting the experiences, that they did happen to us (without denial), then releasing the experience through forgiveness and finally destroying the memory symbolically.
The vasana daha tantra is very direct when dealing with heavy subconscious vasanas. In general we wouldn't have as many of these type of 'heavy' vasanas as we would the other two 'lighter types' that can be overcome through prayers and hatha yoga alone. However, these heavy vasanas are much more darker in a sense and more burdensome to lug around in life than the other types of unresolved vasanas. They can be bigger stumbling blocks to our future and our achievements if we choose to ignore them, much more than the other kinds of negative vasanas. Therefore in seeking to purify the subconscious mind, resolving such vasanas is important to both our spiritual as well as material well-being.
As a yogic technique, if you will remember in the discussion on ashtanga yoga, we stopped at the third step of this eight fold path, which is hatha yoga. The vasana daha tantra a is a technique that jumps to the sixth step, which is dharana. Steps four and five which are pranayama and pratyahara are breath control techniques and basic concentration methods. The reason that vasana daha tantra is in the sixth step of Ashtanga Yoga and not the fourth or fifth is because the most negative vasanas in the subconscious are generally seated deep in the layers of the subconscious. In general most of us protect ourselves from these dark impressions in the subconscious through denial. Either because we do not want to relive these memories again, or that we cannot believe that we were capable of such cruel deeds that we avoid them by having them stuck in the deepest recesses of our subconscious mind in a cocoon of denial. In the process of ashtanga yoga, by the time a yogi reaches dharana, which is a state of super-concentration, the subconscious will begin to churn and bring up even the deepest of vasanas to be dealt with. If these vasanas are resolved successfully then one will be able to progress in ones meditations towards God Realization, otherwise one will feel discouraged to continue on and drop the practices all together. All yogis who start out on the path of God Realization will eventually have to face this test of ones own subconscious purification to achieve the ultimate goal of 'Oneness with God'. Most aspirants who give up the quest of God Realization stop at this point because they are not ready to go on with the ultimate stages of subconscious purification.
Doing the vasana daha tantra does not require that one is a yogi looking for God Realization. Anyone can do the vasana daha tantra and reap the benefits of amazing clarity in the subconscious. The process is simple enough. All you need is some paper to write on, a pen to write with, a place with some privacy and a place to burn paper safely. To do vasana daha tantra, you write out any memory that causes painful emotions to surface, face them without denial and write out in detail the memory and the emotions you are feeling without editing or censoring anything from yourself. During the writing you must allow the emotions, whatever they may be, to surface and express themselves and not restrain them. After having written out the memory, the paper you wrote on is crumpled and treated as rubbish and then taken to a fireplace and burnt.
The Vasana Daha Tantra Explained Further
As you can see from the description of the process above, that it is not a difficult tantra (method) to do. There are no meditative techniques, yoga postures or even mantra to learn. All one has to do is to write out ones memories and then burn them. Though it is not necessarily easy to dig into the subconscious and bring out the darkest vasanas. This process requires fortitude as one will encounter strong emotions as the memories unravel and we relive painful and regretful incidents in our life. My guru used to call these memories paper dragons. He would say that these negative vasanas seem scary, like ferocious dragons in our mind, but actually all they are, are paper dragons that cannot harm us since the events are of the past and we are only vicariously living through them, however distasteful they may be.
Gurudeva (the affectionate name we used to call my guru) created the term vasana daha tantra about 10 years ago though he knew of this practice from his early years of being a yogi. Vasana, as was revealed earlier means the emotional impressions etched in our memory from an experience. Daha means to destroy with fire and tantra means method. Therefore vasana daha tantra is a method of purifying the subconscious from undesirable emotional impressions using fire.
After a few months of entering Gurudeva's monastery in Kauai, Hawaii, he told me to start doing the vasana daha tantra. He explained to me that all I had to do was to write out my memories and burn them immediately after without letting anyone read them. At first I wondered how this would help me learn how to meditate, and wondered if I even had anything to write in the first place. At that moment I couldn't think of anything to write. That's exactly what I told Gurudeva, that I had nothing to write. He laughed and just told me that I have reams to write. He told me to start by praying to Lord Ganesha to unlock my subconscious and then begin writing aum, aum, aum..... until the first thought appears. He also told me that I can write out the thoughts any way I liked. It could be a narrative, a conversation, a description or addressed as a letter to the main character of the memory. As long as the format was conducive to unlocking the emotions within the memory, I could write it however I wanted. He also told me that there is no need to be neat or be concerned of the handwriting, whether it was legible or not. The thought is then written out as it appears in the mind on the piece of paper. At first I had frivolous thoughts of no consequence, like memory of a movie I saw the day before or an amusing conversation with a colleague. As I got into the flow of writing out the thoughts the first serious negative vasana appeared. It was all the pain I had to go through and put my family through to convince them I had decided to pursue my ambition of God Realization and be a Hindu monk. As soon as I hit that vasana, thoughts began overflowing with intense emotions as the memories of conversations and incidents appeared. My stomach churned, my chest became tight. My first instinct was to write about something else and to avoid this subject altogether, but I realized that this is exactly what Gurudeva wanted me to get out of my system. I wrote pages upon the pages the first evening that I started doing vasana daha tantra. I wrote until I felt my subconscious was drained of content. I felt exhausted from this simple practice, but I had another crucial step to complete the vasana daha tantra, that was to crumple and burn the paper. There were more than 30 sheets of paper. In the monastery as a conservation effort we never used fresh sheets of paper for vasana daha tantra. We used photocopy paper that had print on one side and blank the other which were destined to the trash for recycling. As I crumpled each sheet I began to feel an unusual form of relief. As if when I was crumpling the paper I could feel the negativity from my subconcious regarding the vasana I had written on was psychically transferring into the paper. It was not until I saw the paper burn–the thirty odd sheets of paper created a large bon fire–did I feel as if a burden had lifted off of my mind. I felt so much lighter and brighter in myself and the exhaustion disappeared and I felt a gush of energy, as I saw all that paper burn.
Fire has always been an important element in Hindu worship. It is used extensively in worship ceremonies as a medium of transferring blessings from the deity to the devotee. Fire is also acknowledged as a necessary force of destruction that is required for the maintenance of spiritual and material balance. Hindu deities representing the Supreme Godhead are often pictured holding a pot of fire to symbolize the natural forces of destruction in the natural cycle of creation, preservation and destruction. In the vasana daha tantra, fire assumes the role of consuming and destroying negativity, and it is amazing how our subconscious is so naturally attuned to the symbology of fire as a cleanser. It is not until you burn the papers of your vasana daha tantra that you feel the relief from subconscious burdens.
My guru would recommend all this disciples to do the vasana daha tantra on a regular basis as part of a maintenance programme to maintain subconscious clarity. He was very methodical about it. He would tell us to go back into our past and write 10 pages for every year of our life. So if a person was 25 years old, he or she would have to write 250 pages as their initial effort to clean up their subconscious mind. Of course it is impossible to write 10 pages for the ages when we were infants and children ( Age 1 to about 6 or 10), we barely have memory when we are infants. Gurudeva would just tell us to compensate the number of pages for later in life. He said as we got older we can easily write more than 10 pages and we can use those left over pages from when we were younger! After finishing this vasana daha tantra exercise, he recommends that we write 10 pages every year, to keep current. Of course the 10 pages number is arbitrary and we can write as many pages we want for a certain year, or if the year has been relatively smooth (from a subconscious point of view) less can be written, it is up to us.
Wisdom, The Outcome of Vasana Daha Tantra
Vasana daha tantra is the most practical way of dealing with deep seated unresolved vasanas. We cannot rely on prayers and hatha yoga to get rid of these types of vasanas because there is a need for us to confront these memories head-on. This need has to do with the lesson within the unresolved memory that we need to extract. Doing prayers and hatha yoga regularly can help us handle the reaction to these vasanas as they surface better then we would otherwise be able to, but they can only be dissolved after we had learned the lessons that these experiences have to offer us. These lessons are important to our ultimate spiritual evolution, that is why they remain unresolved in the subconscious until we are ready face them to extract the lessons within them. Thus in a sense these unresolved vasanas are precious in that we can progress spiritually by resolving them.
A vasana is only resolved after we gain the lessons it has to offer. We know that we have learned the lessons from the vasana and that it has been resolved when we stop reacting emotionally to the memory. That is, though we will not forget the experience, we will in a sense have made our peace with the memory and have understood why it happened to us. To come to this point most of the time we will have to write about the same incident several times. Usually when one first uncovers a negative vasana and writes about it, the vasana can be so filled with emotions, it is hard to even translate to words. If you ever encounter this situation then instead of writing words on the paper, just vent out the emotions by scribbling vigorously on the paper. Don't even bother to write sentences describing the situation, just scribble until you feel all the emotions drained out of the subconscious, then crumple the paper and burn it. After that you are done with the vasana daha tantra session for the day. Do not revisit the same memory on the same day. The next day, get back to the same memory, you will find it is less filled with emotions and the process of acceptance has started, though you may still be overwhelmed by emotions, they will be less intense than the previous day. Each time you revisit the same memory day after day it will be less emotionally charged until finally you begin to write very objectively about it, almost as if a third party is writing about the experience. At this point the vasana has been completely resolved and some lesson will be gained from the whole exercise. So, it may take several sessions of vasana daha tantra to clear an unresolved vasana. How long it takes to resolve any vasana depends on your capacity to handle intense emotions. However do not set a time limit to clearing a negative vasana, take all the time you need to do a thorough job with each unresolved vasana. There is much to gain from resolving the negativity in the subconscious and the time will be well worth it.
The lessons uncovered from resolving these vasanas does not have to be complicated. In other words we do not have to psycho-analyze the vasana intellectually to 'figure' out the lesson it contains. The lesson will appear to us very naturally. In fact in most cases, the lesson is simply to accept that the experience has happened to us and forgive the offender(s) and presto! The vasana is resolved. Otherwise the lesson can be very obvious, such as do not repeat the same action or mistake again. Occasionally we will encounter a vasana that results in some profound lesson. Whatever we gain from unravelling these negative vasanas, the end result is, we will become more positive and wise for having resolved them.
Vasana daha tantra uses acceptance and forgiveness in the process of resolving negative vasanas. Many of these vasanas are about experiences where others have inflicted pain or injustice on us. The very fact of having the courage to write about these experiences is a form of acceptance, where we acknowledge the memory and are willing to deal with it. Usually dealing with the memory involves forgiving the offender(s). Forgiving becomes so much easier once we weed out the emotions from the memory.
There are also vasanas that have to do with our deliberate transgressions against others. These vasanas are usually wrapped in a cocoon of denial and justifications more than intense emotions. Generally when we uncover these we will be able to write about it immediately, as we write out the justifications of our meanness. The evolution of these vasanas as we do the vasana is different than the previous description. Usually it will take a few writing sessions before we can free ourselves off the denial and begin to accept with humility our own mistakes. Then as we continue to write, we will begin to forgive ourselves. However the vasana is still not resolved yet as we will naturally begin to feel that we need to atone for the mistake we did by owning up to the person we have wronged and seek their apology or some form of atonement for the transgression. The vasana will only get resolved after performing the atonement. Exactly what the atonement should be depends on what the offended person needs to be able to forgive. In cases where the offended person can not be contacted anymore or is deceased then some form spiritual atonement needs to be done. A trusted priest or a guru can help recommend a form of atonement according to the transgression in such cases. Once the atonement is done, the vasana is resolved.
Thus the vasana daha tantra applies the power of acceptance and forgiveness very directly in resolving the heaviest vasanas in the subconscious mind. Don't let vasana daha tantra's simplicity fool you into thinking that it is too easy to solve some of the most difficult problems you may be facing. Such deep seated vasanas in our mind can be the root cause for many problems such as addiction, depression, phobias, bad temper, being rebellious, inability to concentrate, general feeling of debility, lack of zest for life; the list goes on. In fact just doing the vasana daha tantra alone, if that is all one takes from this series of seminars, can make the greatest improvement in ones life. In many ways doing the vasana daha tantra is like seeing a psychiatrist, though in this case the psychiatrist's proverbial couch is the paper, pen and the fireplace. The psychiatrist itself is ones innate inner intelligence.
5.5 Acceptance and Forgiveness in Conclusion
If one is able to incorporate prayers, hatha yoga and vasana daha tantra in the routines of ones life, one will have a complete process in place to maintain a purified subconscious. As we have explored in the first seminar on subconscious concentration, the subconscious is a powerhouse within us. It can shape our life. In this seminar we have learned that our innate potentials both spiritual and material is encapsulized in our ideals. Therefore coupling a clarity in the subconscious with subconscious concentration (which is also easier to accomplish with an unencumbered subconscious) allows us to live the best possible life that we can envision for ourselves. This is ultimately a spiritual vision.
Such a potential is not out of reach. If one uses the elements of willpower to chart out a plan to maintain a clear subconscious, then it should have regular routines of prayer, hatha yoga and vasana daha tantra. Generally prayers can be done daily, doing hatha yoga at least thrice a week is good enough to stimulate the cleansing of the subconscious of its negativity and doing one or two hour sessions vasana daha tantra at least once every two weeks is good enough. This whole routine can be adapted very naturally without requiring much changes in ones lifestyle. If you need inspiration to get these routines going in your life, just try doing the vasana daha tantra! Give it a few attempts until the flood gates of unresolved memories in the subconscious opens and begins to flow. You will realize how immediately positive you will feel after doing it and how it effects your over all outlook of life, which will be more positive than ever. So again, Here's To Your Success!
5.5.2 The Next Evolution of Love
Love is many things such as forgiveness, acceptance, affection, benevolence, care, selflessness, charity and so much more. Ultimately according to yoga philosophy, love is God. The path of love therefore leads to its source that is God. Indeed the path of God Realization as is described in ashtanga yoga is a path of ever deepening and broadening love. In the initial stages we learn to love the people who care for us. Then we learn to love our siblings and relations. Then it broadens to friends and neighbours. In the ever growing circle of love, that can be equated to the progress of our individual spiritual evolution we eventually learn to love universally without bias or judgement. This ultimate state of love is experienced as God Realization, and those who are established in this state of universal love are the enlightened ones. In this seminar we described ashtanga yoga until the sixth step, which is dharana. In the next and final seminar of this series we will be looking into the seventh step and the final eight step which are dhyana (true meditation) and samadhi (God Realization). Even a lay person, one who is not a serious yogi, can benefit from practices that relate directly to the path of oneness with God.
If you have any questions regarding this seminar, or wish to organize this seminar in your locality (for now this is confined to within Malaysia and Singapore), you can email me at:
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