So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras,
Which is a beautiful book by Lauren Roche who translated the ancient tantric text Vijnana by Rava Tantra.
This is a book all about how to deeply connect with your divine truth,
Your divine self.
Because very often in our world we default to the world around us.
We default to believing that my circumstances define my life.
That whatever is going on today or tomorrow is actually my predominant reality.
It's like my actual reality.
And what happens is we get so attached to it,
We actually then have emotional responses to it,
Which we can get stuck in.
We can get stuck in anger,
We can get stuck in sadness,
We can get stuck in these things.
And now Tantra is not about ignoring the reality around us.
It's about both.
But the problem is when we don't also know that we are divine,
When we don't also know that we are part of a much greater infinite reality,
It's like we are an actor in a play and we actually believe we are the part we're playing.
So let's say I decided to play the part of a beggar on a street in a play,
But I'm just playing the part.
Well,
What if I forget that I'm actually Katrina?
What if I forget that I'm just the person playing the part?
I could be completely obsessed with that.
Or maybe I'm playing the part of a king who has all the power,
All the land,
People at their beck and call,
And I start to believe that that's who I actually am.
That I think that's actually my entire totality.
And I've forgotten that I am this infinite refraction of God,
And this is just one part of me.
And this is really the goal of Tantra,
Is to remember who we actually are so that we can fully enjoy this life we've been given.
You know,
That we can fully play that king role or the beggar role or whatever role out in its fullness.
So this beautiful book,
We read one sutra a week.
We're reading number 76 today,
And almost all of the sutras leading up to this are also here on Insight Timer as recordings in a playlist called Radiant Sutras,
If you ever want to go back and listen to other ones,
Listen to other sutras and discussions and meditations.
And the idea is that you listen to one sutra,
Or maybe you own this book,
Like I am not an affiliate for this book,
I have nothing to do with it except that it's one of my all-time favorite Tantric books,
In the land that if you want a Tantric tool to truly become Tantric,
To truly live in that fully divine physical space,
And you have this sitting by your bedside and you wake up in the morning,
And they call it a hukam,
Where you just allow God or allow the divine to open,
And you read whatever it is that is before you,
And you allow yourself to contemplate that all day,
And you just allow your psyche and yourself to kind of feel it and think it all day,
And it allows all these tiny little dials to change inside of us,
At such an imperceptible speed that you don't even know you're healing.
All of a sudden you're sitting there at night going,
Oh wow,
I never realized that,
And you just have all these tiny little realizations,
And all of a sudden five years later,
You're just happier,
You enjoy life more,
And you have lots of friends,
And you're involved in the community,
And you're reading and writing and doing what you need to do,
And life's just easier.
It's almost because all of the strange programming and all the paper cuts that limit us and hurt us and traumatize us have slowly mended over time.
They've just slowly shifted and changed.
I'm going to tell you a really gross story.
My daughter,
My daughter is 26,
And she had this horrible night a couple nights ago.
She called me in the morning because she was supposed to bring her cats here for the day,
But she was late because in the middle of the night,
She could feel something on her arm,
And she's like,
I don't know,
But she was too tired and blah,
Blah,
Blah.
I'm not going to tell you the gory details,
But by the time she woke up,
There were these two huge welts on her arm.
She'd been bitten by these bugs,
And she saw these bugs in her apartment,
And she was just losing her mind about these bugs.
Anyway,
So I get off the phone with her,
And I'm just like,
Oh my god,
It's so gross.
I was just like,
I had to heebie-jeebies through my whole self.
William says to me,
Oh,
That must be horrible for you.
I'm like,
Well,
Yeah,
It's gross.
He goes,
But especially for you.
I'm like,
Well,
Why especially for me?
What do you mean?
He goes,
Well,
After the whole tick incident,
And I said,
What tick incident?
Well,
I had totally forgot about this.
About a year ago,
I had this funny bump,
Kind of like if you take your belly button and take your finger and draw a straight line all the way around your back to about a quarter of the way around your back towards your spine,
And then go down about an inch.
It's kind of an area on your body you can't see,
But you can feel it.
So there was this thing that was itching me,
And I was like,
What is this thing?
So I just thought it was like a pimple or something,
And I just kind of scratch it and try to leave it alone and try to ignore it.
And of course,
My underwear would touch that line,
And all these things,
And it was just annoying me as all.
And then finally,
After about a week of this really annoying me,
I said to William,
I said,
Can you look at this for me?
And he starts looking,
Goes,
I don't know what it is.
I don't think it's a pimple.
Long story short,
It was a tick that had burrowed itself into my back,
And I had to pull it out.
And you know what,
I put all this stuff on it.
I was so grossed out.
I was so grossed out.
I was literally like I had the heebie-jeebies for weeks after that this,
Because I used to walk my son's dog all the time through all this long grass and da-da-da.
Well,
The crazy thing is I had completely forgotten about it,
Completely forgotten about it.
I had no memory of it.
Obviously,
My body had healed,
But my memory had healed.
The trauma of it had healed.
Everything had healed.
I had no memory of it.
This is the goal of the Tantric journey.
It's a gross version of it,
But that's the goal.
And it's a funny thing because in the West,
We kind of have this idea that any trauma or any difficulty we've ever had will stay with us forever.
We will simply manage that trauma,
And we are the most advanced and most enlightened based on how well we manage our various traumas and difficult circumstances.
It's like we don't actually believe that we could fully heal body,
Mind,
And soul,
And that even if someone reminded you of something,
You'd be like,
Oh yeah,
Right,
Right.
The line in Ted Lasso is something went on on the soccer pitch,
And the guy was really angry.
The player was really angry.
And so Ted Lasso is the coach,
And he says,
Do you know what the happiest animal on the earth is?
And he says,
No.
And he goes,
A goldfish,
Because he has the shortest memory,
10 seconds.
Be a goldfish.
And so this is really,
It's almost like some part of us has to believe that we actually can become whole,
That we actually can become fully divine,
Divine,
Fully physical,
Fully self-actualized,
Fully integrated,
No matter where we're starting from,
No matter what our past has been.
And this is like a foundational thing to think about within each of us.
So we're going to read the sutra,
Then we're going to have a conversation about it.
All right.
For anyone following along,
It's on page 111,
Number 76.
But even if you have the book,
I highly recommend setting it down for a moment.
Let's all close our eyes,
No matter where you are,
Lying down,
Sitting upright,
At work,
Pretending to be working,
Which is my favorite.
But let's just breathe for a moment.
Breathe into your heart center,
Place behind your ribcage,
Where if I asked you,
Who are you?
That's where you would point.
This is very significant.
Who are you really?
Into this eternal self in the heart center and breathe from that place.
Beloved,
Reject the reality of everything.
Deny the universe of appearance.
Say no to the phenomenal world.
Reside in the secret place inside.
As joy rises in the heart at this sudden freedom,
Enter there and dwell.
What rises for you when you hear that?
What emotions or thoughts?
Or feelings?
Why does that turn into a freedom?
What we think is reality is usually not.
Yes.
Feels like spaciousness.
A relief.
Mm-hmm.
I found myself saying,
Come back,
Come back.
Some sadness.
I had more than a thought.
As you were reading that,
Space behind my heart opened up beautifully.
Sadness and clenching.
Listening to this verse reminded me of what Michael Singer says,
Everyone has a not okay part and an okay part in them.
Choose to hang out with the okay part of yours.
A kid's secret hideaway under the lilac leaves,
My hideout.
There is a freedom and joy to be attained.
When crazies all around us go into our happy place.
Mm-hmm.
It's our true heartfelt feelings,
That is reality,
All internal.
Yet we often think reality is external.
I got stuck on the fish.
Satya.
Yes,
Such a beautiful place to dwell.
Be courageous.
Mm-hmm.
Stop seeking comfort from the external.
Everything I need is within.
So in the tantric way of understanding the world,
And this is common amongst many religions or many spiritual paths,
That there is the oneness,
In this case,
Shiva Shakti,
Or oneness of God,
Brahman,
However we understand it.
And then there is duality.
And this is the duality of us experiencing each other.
This is us experiencing the world around us,
Us experiencing our circumstances,
Us creating things in this world.
Duality is Lauren Roche writing this beautiful book.
Duality is us sitting here on insight time we're chatting.
So duality in itself,
There's nothing wrong with it.
There's no reason to transcend duality and live forever in a state of transcendence.
We are here in maya with purpose.
But if we get stuck in maya,
If we get stuck in the duality and we forget about the oneness,
Because they don't exist in the same space.
I don't know how they actually exist,
But in my mind,
The words that make the most sense are,
It's almost like oneness is a separate dimension.
And I know this isn't the normal use of the word dimension,
But it's almost like oneness also exists and duality exists,
But they don't exist in the same space.
And yet we exist in both oneness and duality.
So the key to tantra is every so often becoming aware of oneness so that we can understand the truth of our reality.
So in the beginning of it,
They say,
Reject the reality of everything,
Deny the universe of appearance.
So in those sentences,
For example,
So here I am,
I am the subject who is observing the appearance of the universe out there.
I am subject,
That is object.
This is the definition of duality.
Well,
If I reject all of that out there,
Well,
Then I also disappear.
So subject and object disappear.
And what are we left with?
What are we left with if subject and object disappear?
I don't know why,
I think probably because I watched the Matrix too many times,
But I often think of what's left behind is like the loading program.
It's like the oneness that is underneath all subjective reality.
If I get rid of me and that thing over there,
I'm kind of left with everything.
I'm kind of left with everything.
Like I'm no longer looking at the limitation of life.
I'm not looking at that tree and this little being.
I suddenly become oneness.
I become all things.
So there's a few ways of looking at this.
I'm going to read you a different translation of it.
This comes out of the Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,
The Ascent.
So this is quite different,
But this is the literal translation.
Oh,
Dear one,
Compared to absolute knowledge,
All relative knowledge is without cause and thus becomes baseless and deceptive.
In reality,
Knowledge does not belong to any one person.
Contemplating like this,
One becomes Shiva.
This is why we love Lauren Roche,
Because that is what the literal translation is.
But what they're talking about is the difference between absolute knowledge,
Universal truth,
And my subjective knowledge of the reality around me and how different those things are.
A universal truth applies to all beings at all times and is timelessness.
This is like if you take all the great religions and you compare what's common amongst all of them,
That will be the universal truth.
Everything that is different between them is a subjective bit of knowledge.
These are the things to reject.
If we want to connect with the oneness,
If we want to connect with Bhairava,
If we want to connect with God,
Oneness,
All things,
Shiva Shakti,
If that's what we want to connect with,
We need to connect with what is universal truth,
What is universal knowledge.
In order to do that,
We need to be able to discern between universal knowledge and what I think right now,
Or what I believe right now,
Or what my church says,
Or what my family believes,
What my society believes,
What my race believes,
Or what my creed believes,
Or whatever.
This is my perspective on the universe,
Which is fine.
It's fine to have a personal view on the universe,
But we must be able to discern that that is just my subjective reality,
And I'm not going to find God through my subjective reality.
And it's really interesting.
This is what they say.
This is a book by Swami Satyananga Saraswati.
For this type of questioning and contemplation,
The student must have an undaunted intellect,
Strong willpower,
And unfailing honesty.
He should have mental stamina to question,
Reason,
And reject many conclusions that may be arrived at before he reaches the final truth.
This is so important.
So there's two layers of this.
First,
We have to understand that if we want to experience the truth of reality,
We have to be able to question everything that's in our life.
And the reality is that a lot of the things that we believe,
We have actually been brainwashed to believe.
And I mean that literally.
We were so deeply indoctrinated in whatever that belief structure was,
We cannot tell the difference between what we've been taught and reality.
And you always know that it's an indoctrination because you're not allowed to question it.
You're not allowed to use your intellect to say,
Yeah,
But that doesn't apply to these people over here.
You're not allowed to do that.
And that's where they say the mental stamina to question and reason,
Strong willpower,
And unfailing honesty.
Imagine what it takes to walk through life and you ask a question,
You say,
But what about this?
And they say,
Ah,
Well,
It's this and this and this.
But it's not sitting with you.
And you're like,
I don't think so.
That doesn't land as truth for me.
Oh,
No,
No,
No,
No.
And they try to explain it.
And you're like,
No,
Because you are waiting to hear that,
That,
That something of truth of satya in your heart that says,
Yes,
That is true.
That's true.
You wait for that absolute truth.
And what's interesting is this heart center,
This heart within us is so important because it's clear.
This isn't a romantic heart.
This isn't the heart that gets broken.
None of that.
That's romantic stuff.
This heart center is our connection to God.
This is our personal divine living within us.
This is our connection to infinity,
To oneness,
To absolute truth.
So when we close our eyes and we turn off our subjective reality,
We get to return to the infinite reality within our heart.
For example,
Let's say,
So there's 164 people here.
Give or take.
Imagine we are all sitting on a porch.
It's a big porch.
And we're watching the world go by.
People,
Dogs,
Trees,
Birds,
Cars.
Every one of us in that moment is having their own version of reality.
Even though everybody is looking at the same street.
Some people see this and they focus on that,
And maybe they even get triggered,
And maybe they head off into a different timeline of their childhood.
Maybe something they see suddenly triggers a hope for the future or a fear or a worry.
Every person sitting there is actually having their own subjective version of reality.
And yet we think,
From our perspective,
That the vision we're having from the porch is reality,
Right?
Like,
Isn't it?
I look out and obviously I think,
Oh,
There's a red tree and another tree and a green tree and a truck and a house.
Isn't that reality?
And yet the person beside me sees an entirely different view.
But then we all close our eyes and we tune in to our heart center.
And suddenly we all feel the same reality.
Again,
Not a romantic reality.
This is where it's so important,
This journey of being able to discern between our subjective reality and the absolute reality of God.
These are very,
Very different things.
It's interesting,
Even,
When you imagine that there is an infinite potential within the absolute reality.
And this is within every one of us.
This isn't some cosmic idea out there.
Within every one of us is infinite potential.
Within every one of us is infinite potential,
Coming from this absolute reality.
So even the reality that is appearing before your own eyes right now is only one of a hundred different realities that you could be perceiving.
You could make two changes in your life and the reality that you look upon is entirely different.
You could worry about a potential future reality,
Which is entirely created in your mind.
It is a subjective reality that you have manifested.
You have created in your mind and is now pondering.
It's not real.
You could actually imagine a hundred different future realities.
None of them are real.
No more real than the reality you see before you.
It's like looking in the mirror.
Say you're very body conscious and you stand and you look in front of the mirror and you say,
And you observe a certain reality.
What you see in the mirror is not what other people see when they look at you.
You might look in the mirror and see someone who is ugly or overweight or something and someone else looks at you and says,
Wow,
What a beautiful person.
Or vice versa.
Everything is so subjective,
But within we're all the same,
Which is even hard to fathom.
It's like,
Well,
What do you mean?
But I've accomplished all these things and I do all these things and I'm proud of these things.
I mean,
You can't just wipe all that out.
Otherwise,
What's the point of living?
If all these things out there don't count,
Why am I working so hard for them?
Why am I stressing so much?
Why am I freaking out so much?
Why am I losing sleep over all this stuff that's not even reality?
But that's the point.
That is the tantric journey.
Why are we stressing out about it?
Why are we losing sleep over it?
It's literally one of hundreds of realities that could be happening right now.
It's a real curiosity.
But I want to go back to this idea that to have this discipline within,
Like,
Let's say you're trying to understand reality.
So maybe you read a book,
Take a course,
Hear a talk,
Whatever,
And you say,
Yes,
This is the truth.
And suddenly,
You start preaching this and whatever,
Right?
We have to have the willpower to keep going.
Maybe this isn't exactly the whole truth.
Maybe there's more.
Maybe we have to stay open to actually waiting for more information.
So now imagine this as an application in our life.
So like,
Let's imagine,
For example,
Like,
Why would we,
Why do we want to learn this?
Why is this ability to be able to discern between absolute truth of oneness and subjective reality?
Why is this an important tool or an important ability for us as humans?
Why is that?
Well,
On the one hand,
Obviously,
It enriches our life because we actually connect to the infinite oneness,
Which makes everything to the infinite oneness,
Which makes everything better to be at peace with ourselves.
Exactly.
We've been conditioned to self-hate,
But pretend it's not through cover-up,
Denial,
And dominance.
Totally.
But now let's imagine on a really practical level,
Something's happened.
Something difficult's happened in your life.
Maybe through work,
Through friends,
Through family,
Through relationships,
Through romance,
Through whatever.
And something difficult has happened,
Something that you didn't expect to happen.
And you're really chewing on it.
Life isn't about just flowing through and having nothing going on.
Life is about living.
So on occasion,
Hopefully you reach some obstacles to play with,
To chew on.
And oftentimes they're difficult.
So what do we do?
Once we become contemplative,
You know,
If you're not contemplative,
You just react and repeat patterns and,
You know,
It's normal.
But once we become contemplative,
We actually start seeking the truth within the situation.
Maybe it's a situation within a romantic relationship,
A marriage,
Or within a job situation,
Or a friendship circle,
Or whatever.
And you can't quite figure out what's wrong.
You know that you're hurt.
It's easy to get into that victim triangle where that person's the bad guy,
This is the savior,
And I'm the victim.
That's easy.
We can go into that victim triangle.
But we know that that's just a construct.
Why is this happening?
And this is where I love this line.
And if no one's ever asked me this,
And now we're going to read this line,
But now imagine it in a very practical way,
That you are actually going through something and you want to find a solution.
And we're not talking abstract.
We actually want to find a solution.
For this type of questioning and contemplation,
The student must have an undaunted intellect,
Strong willpower,
And unfailing honesty.
He should have mental stamina to question,
Reason,
And reject many conclusions that may be arrived at before he reaches the final truth.
What if we've come to incorrect solutions?
What if we've come to partial truths?
Yes,
We just quit the job or walk away from the marriage or whatever.
He should have mental stamina to question,
Reason,
And reject many conclusions that may have may be arrived at before he reaches the final truth.
And this is where in our daily lives,
In our daily lives,
When we can start to discern between the reality out there and our deep truth within,
When we can start to discern that,
It's like there's a muscle within our psyche that becomes able to discern between,
Aha,
This is the,
As Helen would say,
The final truth.
This out there is a transient truth.
This is a truth for this date in June 2024.
But it may not be the truth by tomorrow.
I may have realized something else.
That alone tells you,
Aha,
That's not a final truth because I need more information.
And we always know that it's a final truth because our heart settles.
Something within us relaxes.
The back brain stops chewing and you kind of go,
And there's no more good guys and bad guys.
They're just what is.
We find peace.
So how can we make decisions?
Well,
This is exactly it.
We keep listening within.
This is the brilliance of intuition.
This is where whatever it is that you do that helps you to be intuitive is the answer.
Maybe it's meditation and you just sit and you quiet the mind and you let all of the mind and you let all of the subjective reality flow by you as you sit in your center and you focus on your breath,
Focusing on this heart center.
Maybe it's walking through nature where you can hear the truth and you can come to center.
Maybe it's sitting by the ocean.
Maybe it's going for a long run in silence,
Not with podcasts and music playing.
When I was traveling,
Ironically,
As much as I'm not religious,
When I was traveling,
I used to love sitting in old churches,
Not cathedrals so much,
But especially if I could find churches that were from the Francescan order,
Like of St.
Francis of Assisi,
Because they were very plain and very simple.
For whatever reason,
If I could find one of those churches,
I would sit in them.
I could hear myself.
I could hear my center.
That's why it's so important to find your way of hearing truth,
Whatever that is.
Yet,
Doesn't our heart settle for just that moment?
All I know is in my experience,
I can get really chewing on something,
Like really chewing,
Like even something as simple as,
For me in my business,
My year starts in September of a year.
That's when my world begins.
And I've recently started taking sabbaticals in the summer and things like that.
And there's always a sense of redefinition of self,
Redefining what it is I'm doing.
I'm meant to be doing this year.
And almost every year in May and June,
I start going through this,
It almost feels like an existential crisis,
Because it's like,
What am I meant to be doing?
You know,
And you're always balancing this thing between your calling and how do you make money and all this kind of thing,
Right?
And I chew hard on it.
And I journal about it.
And I do yoga about it.
And I talk to my friends about it.
And I figure out all these things.
But I don't find peace.
And I always know that I haven't found the answer until everything settles.
And then last week,
Finally,
All the pieces fell into place,
And my heart settled.
And I was able to move forward.
That's it.
There's no more questioning.
That's how you know that the decision has been made.
Because there's no more questioning.
You now are clear.
Because these tantric teachings,
They have to be applicable in your life.
They have to actually,
They have to be helpful.
Otherwise,
Why bother?
I always questioned,
Felt like I was searching for answers.
We are on an archaeological dig into our heart center.
Helen,
You asked a question earlier,
How this applies to the I and Thou concept.
And the I and Thou concept is when we see the divine in each other.
It's almost like I recognize myself as a divine being.
I recognize the absolute truth that flows through my being.
And when I look at you,
I also see you as a divine being.
And it helps us to not objectify each other and try to make someone else into something based on our subjective reality.
So we're not going to do a long meditation.
But I just want to read this to you again,
Kind of in a quiet space.
So let's just close our eyes for a moment.
Let's just breathe deeply.
Focus on your heart center.
Imagine energy channels flowing through the heart center,
Down into your legs,
Up into your arms,
Into your head,
All being rejuvenated by this divine center,
Anahat.
By this divine center,
Anahat.
Feeling the pulsing of the heart center,
Which is actually a slightly different pulse than a heartbeat.
It's like the pulse of the universe,
The vibration of Aum.
NIRNIMITAM BHAVET JNANAM NIRADHARAM BRAHMA ATMAKAM TATHVATE KASYA CHITNA ETAT EVAM BHAVI SHIVA PRIYA Beloved,
Reject the reality of everything.
Deny the universe of appearance.
Say no to the phenomenal world.
Reside in the secret place inside.
As joy rises in the heart at this sudden freedom,
Enter there and dwell.
So what does that leave you with?
What feeling or words would you like to carry with you the rest of the day?
Beauty of our connection with all.
Live from and through our heart.
Yes.
I am meant to live in joy.
Tune into my heart.
We are meant to live in joy.
It's right from my soul.
Thank you so much for being here.
I hope you have a wonderful day.
