Welcome to episode number three of the Path of Mantra podcast.
Where I share insights on Yoga,
Tantra and Shakti Sadhana.
This podcast is dedicated to all sincere spiritual aspirants from East and West who embrace mantra as a core tool of personal and spiritual growth.
I invoke the blessings of my Gurudev,
Swami Nikhileshwarananda.
And of the Great Goddess.
The topic of today.
Is Sankalpa Shakti.
Sankalpa is our will or determination,
Intention,
Resolution.
And shakti means power.
Sankalpa Shakti is an element that is emphasized in many different lineages of yoga and tantra.
Some say that it comes from the Manipura Chakra.
The solar plexus chakra.
Others say that it is connected to the Ajna chakra.
The third eye.
What exactly is?
Samkalpashakti.
And how can we cultivate it?
Why does it matter?
If you think of your brain,
As a lamp.
When you have a particular thought.
Depending on their intensity.
The energy,
The shakti of that thought.
The lamp will receive 5 votes,
10 votes,
50 votes,
100 votes,
1000 votes.
And so Sankalpa Shakti is our ability to infuse our thought a particular thought.
With Shakti.
Not all thoughts are the same.
They all have different levels of power or energy to them.
Our thoughts don't have all the same weight.
When a person who wants to stop smoking.
Makes a decision that I will not smoke anymore.
How much Sankalpa Shakti?
Is it there in that decision?
If it's little.
And that person is feeling stressed,
Anxious,
Bored.
Then another thought comes like,
Let me just smoke a little bit.
Does your intention have more shakti than that thought or less shakti than that thought?
If he has less shakti.
You will succumb.
That thought will win.
If he has more shakti.
You will not be swayed by that temptation.
If it has extreme amount of Shakti.
That thought will not even arise,
That temptation will not even register.
It's almost like your resolution is like a sun and there's no spot for darkness around the sun.
So sankalpa shakti is our ability to infuse a particular thought with prana.
With power.
How do we do that?
But it's kind of self-explanatory.
We infuse it with prana.
We infuse it with power.
We infuse it with a lot of emotion and intention.
And that also is expressed in our language.
We don't say like.
.
.
Oh yeah,
Let me.
Let me meditate now and try to focus.
There's no Shakti there.
This intention is going to be.
.
.
Drawn in a sea of thoughts in 5 seconds.
But if you tell yourself.
.
.
Now I am going to meditate.
This is the most important thing for me right now.
There's nothing else that I'm gonna think about.
I'm just going to remain focused.
In my mantra.
Moment after moment.
Come what may.
I am decided.
And my whole mind needs to listen.
And obey.
Stay.
Focused.
Do not move.
There is just.
The mantra.
Now,
When you say that to yourself with intention and emotion,
That thought now,
That I will remain focused in the mantra.
That has a completely different weight to it.
You may still end up getting distracted.
But that will take much longer,
And you'll be able to recover sooner.
You still get distracted because you are still growing your sankalpa shakti.
Your power of intention,
Power of will.
There have been cases where a mother lifts a car.
Or a really heavy object.
After an accident to save her baby.
And she did not have the training or the muscles to do that.
But in that moment.
.
.
She does it.
Because in that moment she is filled with Sankalpa Shakti.
The thought is not,
Let me try to do this and see what happens.
Or I wish I could,
Oh my god,
I can't,
No.
I must.
Lift this car and save my baby.
That is the thought.
May not be expressed like this verbally in her mind.
But that is the.
The feeling,
The intention.
In that moment.
And that thought is not shy.
It's not wavering.
It's not meek.
It's like a thunder.
It's like a lightning.
This is it.
Sankabh shakti.
Feels like that.
I'm not moving.
From this point.
We develop our Sankalpa Shakti.
By practicing it.
Every time we make an intention and we follow through with that intention until the end,
Which is the definition of self-discipline.
We grow.
Our Sankalp Shakti,
We grow our will.
Just like we grow our muscles whenever our muscles meet physical resistance.
And overcome that resistance.
By pushing that weight.
On the gem.
Our will.
Grows every time we meet resistance.
And we overcome that resistance.
Meaning that we outgrow,
We become bigger than that resistance.
If when your muscle is meeting the resistance,
You feel like,
Oh,
I can't,
Let me try something else.
Well,
You're not gonna grow.
But if you take that as an opportunity for you to overcome that resistance,
You will overcome that resistance and your capacity now has increased.
Overcoming similar resistances in the future will become easier.
Likewise with our.
There's a practice in Jainism that every morning they make an intention.
And they'd have to follow that intention.
Throughout the day.
No matter what.
It's a practice of cultivating a will.
And that intention could be something very simple or complex.
Apparently even silly.
It could be that today I'm not gonna use this word.
Or today I'm not gonna scratch my nose,
Today I'm not going to complain,
Today.
.
.
I am not going to use my phone.
That would be a modern version.
That cultivates sankalpa shakti.
When you decide that.
At the beginning of a particular mantra ritual?
We make a Sankalpa.
It's not just saying a wish,
Like dropping a coin on a well.
It's a sankalpa,
It's a vow that I am doing this sadhana.
I'm going to repeat this mantra 11 malas.
So that I gain this blessing.
I gain this help.
Then you must complete.
That sudden.
No matter what's happening.
Even if you're tired,
Even if you're dozing off,
Even if you feel like this was the wrong sadhana,
Even if you feel like you need to go to the bathroom,
Or you're hungry,
Or whatever is happening.
If the house is not catching fire,
Do not get up.
Complete.
Your Sadhana.
That's the training of Sankalp.
And specially in sadhana.
Breaking your Sankalpa.
Is a serious thing.
Whenever you make an intention and you break that intention,
You are making yourself weaker.
You are weakening your mind.
You are.
Becoming more and more.
Attached or bound to the world of matter.
Versus the world of spirit that overcomes,
That rises above.
So,
There are always.
.
.
Negative consequences to breaking our intentions.
To not respecting our own will,
Our will weakens.
But in sadhana.
When you start a particular practice with a particular goal.
You're making a promise not only to yourself,
But you're making a promise to that deity.
You're making a promise.
In front.
Symbolically in front of your guru,
In front of the deity.
And in front of the Fire God.
That is there in the lamp that is lit in front of you.
And usually when doing the sankalpa,
You put water in your hand.
So there's also the water god is there.
All these witnesses.
You cannot break your promise.
When you break your promise to a friend.
Yeah,
I'll be there.
And you're not there.
It's like,
Okay,
Nowadays most people are like this,
No big deal.
Oh,
Something happened,
I got busy.
Everyone understands.
But you cannot break a promise to a deity.
There could be negative consequences.
One of the people close to me?
Home.
I guided in sadhana.
To do a particular practice.
Of the Moon Mantra.
I told her that if you make a commitment,
It doesn't matter how small,
You don't need to commit to doing 10 malas every day.
It can be one mala every day.
But you cannot break that commitment.
Bad things can happen.
That person didn't take that that seriously.
The proof of that is that she broke,
She forgot one day.
If it is a serious promise,
You will not forget.
It's always going to be in the back of your mind.
The moon is connected to our mind and emotions.
By doing the moon mantra.
We become.
We have a clearer,
Stronger,
Healthier,
More harmonious mind and emotions.
Now she broke her promise.
And for the following two weeks.
Her mind was very disturbed.
Her emotions were very disturbed.
She almost went through a divorce.
Things you are looking.
Very dark.
Of course,
It was also a period in between eclipses,
Astrologically speaking.
It's not good.
These things can happen.
But I.
.
.
When I saw that,
I was.
.
.
Sure,
That breaking the sankalpa had to do with it.
And I told her that.
And initially she didn't believe.
Then when I say that in another time,
In another circumstance,
Then she felt like,
Okay,
It's making sense.
What do I do?
I said,
You go in front of the yantra,
In front of the picture,
The image of the moon god,
Chandra.
And you ask forgiveness.
And you do some malice of that mantra.
You say,
I'm sorry,
I made a promise,
And out of my ignorance,
Out of my weakness,
I broke it.
And I understand you're upset.
Please forgive me.
I'm just a child.
She did that?
And she felt… a weight lifted.
From her shoulders.
And from that day.
.
.
Things started to improve a lot for her.
Sankalpa Shakti is essential,
Because without it.
.
.
Your mantra.
Or whatever spiritual practice you're doing.
Is going to lack power.
Just like our decisions,
Our thoughts lack power when they don't have much will and determination behind them.
And then other thoughts become more powerful in the moment,
Other temptations.
Likewise with Sandra.
And especially when making a promise.
In a formal ritual.
You must keep it.
So I encourage you.
To honor,
The power of your will.
That when you say something,
You must do it.
If you commit to something,
You must do it.
That also makes you more mindful about what you commit to.
What you're promised to do.
And if for a period of time,
Whatever you say,
You do.
Whatever you say is true.
Whatever you commit to happens.
Then your will is increasing.
And then your mind begins to respect you.
That is self-mastery.
You gain the ability gradually to command the mind,
So to speak.
Like the charioteer guiding the horses to the left or to the right.
Depending on what's helpful.
On what's needed.
And you also pave the way to achieving what is known as Vak Siddhi.
Siddhi means perfection or accomplishment.
It's often translated as psychic powers or spiritual powers or supernatural powers.
But see,
This simply means accomplishment.
A person who is an accomplished speaker.
Who can speak skillfully eloquently on any topic at any time.
You could say that he has the city of speaking.
If you learn how to speak Greek.
And you become fluent at it is like you have achieved the city of speaking Greek.
It's an accomplishment.
Perfected skill.
And vak means voice.
So in Tantra and Yoga there is something called Vak Siddhi the perfection of speech.
What that means is,
If a person has VACCD,
Whatever they say.
Not in an absolute,
Magical,
Transcendental sense that the person becomes like God.
But in a sense that.
.
.
There is so much power behind your voice.
That when you say something,
It's not just a word thrown to the wind.
You create a powerful current in the astral world through your voice.
And so that's why many saints,
Sages,
Yogis can say.
You will be healed.
You will get better soon.
And it happens.
Because they have just emitted a powerful thought wave with that intention into the universe.
And they have that training.
So cultivate your Sankalpa Shakti.
In your everyday life?
And also in your sadhana.
And apply your Sankalpa Shakti.
Whenever you sit for doing mantra.
This is the path.
To Siddhi.
Jai Mataji!
