Heart, Head, & Above: Radiance Sutras Verse 14

During this session, we discuss Verse 14 of the Yukti Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras, a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion. These sessions are recorded on a weekly basis and all are welcome.

Transcript

So we're going to read out of the radiant sutras but we're also going to talk from a couple other books that I'll reference from and one is this one Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

The Ascent by Swami Satya Sagananda Saraswati.

This isn't important,

I just want to just tell you where I'm referencing and this is another called Vijnana Bhairava.

This is this word I keep saying by Jaya Dev Singh.

They're all about this one tantric text that I particularly love and so this is our second time playing with it here on Insight Timer so it's a super fun journey.

So what we're going to do is I'm going to read a sutra and the idea is that we listen within.

One of the concepts we're going to talk about today is this idea of we have this heart chakra right in the center of our of our sternum and they say just to the right of it perhaps it's always a question but there's this other heart or they call it Hridaya and I'll talk more about what that means later but they say this is the seat of our individual consciousness.

You know there's this whole body but then just to the right of the heart is where our self lives,

Our soul lives.

Others say that there's no such physical spot,

That it's completely through our whole being so it's always curious you know when we're talking about things that you know originated thousands of years ago what the actual truth is but sometimes it's easy it's nice to have a spot so if you imagine visualizing or even placing your hand on that spot just to the right of your heart center and you imagine that this is your soul.

The world is out there,

Our bodies,

Everything all part of our world but when we close our eyes there's this part of us that's eternal that holds our journeys,

Our passion,

Our whatever that flame is inside that makes us us.

So let's just close our eyes and breathe into that heart center and again maybe it doesn't feel right to go to the right maybe it just feels right to feel it through the whole body or through the whole heart middle of our chest here.

Now when we listen to the reading to listen from that space to release the mind to release everything else to just listen from that eternal wise space and just see what rises.

When you close your eyes attention turns toward the inner glow the heart sees by its own light pulsing with subtle flame in your forehead is a single eye here streams of living electricity flow together the body of substance and the body of light fuse into one above your head a star is shining the soul luminous in its own realm life arises from itself in a swirling motion of flame being becomes body in meditation adore the subtle fire in heart head and above dissolve into radiance.

What thoughts do you have or what words roll through your mind or how does that make you feel?

Dissolving substance and light dissolving in the radiance of all that I am when I touch the spot to the right of my heart I felt an energy and saw a light that I had never before experienced a sense of wonder so amazing flow of energy up to the universe the internal external flow of unity it was like my soul third eye and the divine were glowing together and sharing love.

It's so cool like Debbie you say that it was like my soul my third eye and the divine were glowing together and sharing love.

So these are the three points the three aspects of who we are that this verse really focuses on.

They focus on this point right in between the eyebrows the Ajna chakra.

They point focus on the bindu which is at the back of the head which is where they have that little tuft of hair sometimes in certain traditions and this is sort of a connection to the infinite back here and then this heart center and these are the three places that are our focus for this verse.

They talk about Tilaka which is part of the Sanskrit which I'll read later.

Tilaka is a flame shaped spot like a bindi placed on the Ajna chakra you ever see that in with gurus or or with anybody even if they're doing a spiritual practice and you'll see a little flame on their Ajna.

This is Tilaka and the idea is that if we can focus in the third eye like you hear this a lot in yoga focus on the third eye focus on the third eye you know everything is focused there and the idea is that when we focus there there's a certain shaking or an agitation that happens in the body if we actually allow our energy and physical body to merge if we allow duality to dissolve if we allow left and right to become one if we allow masculine and feminine to merge into androgyny if we allow right and wrong to disappear and this all happens in the third eye if you see the energy of the nadis the energy channels in the body you start at the root chakra where the kundalini lives and then through ida and pingala and we've talked about this in some of the previous talks these are the big energy channels running up the center of the spine they weave they go up into the second chakra and they cross and they go through the third chakra and they cross and they keep going all the way up till they come to the third eye and if you've ever seen the symbol for the Ajna chakra it's like a circle in the middle and then two petals on either side and those petals are like the merging of duality into oneness so the idea is that if we focus in our third eye completely and we allow duality to cease there will be a shaking or a vibration that happens in the body that will actually bring us to divine consciousness and when we focus in that place this bindu back here will actually expand into divine consciousness and then when that expands into divine consciousness our heart opens up this heart center that we are talking about and this is how they all go together and it's really interesting i'm going to read another version of this sutra out of the Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra and this is much more literal.

Lauren creates a poem for us to embody whereas this is a very literal translation of the Sanskrit.

Whenever one meditates upon the subtle fire in the form of a tilak like the mark on the forehead or on the bindu at the end of the shikha,

The shikha is the tuft of hair at the back of the guru's head,

A condition of agitation and shaking is produced followed by absorption and dissolution in the cave of the heart and this is this word hridaya and this is what they call this heart center to the right of the heart,

The cave of the heart,

The seat of individual consciousness.

So one of the things I want to mention is in the back of this book the Radiant Sutras,

Lauren gives us cool little meditations to ponder and the one he gave us this time it was called bindu and the idea is what helps us expand this divine consciousness,

This opening of infinite joy,

What helps us and one practice we can do is as we walk through life when something comes into our eyesight that is perfect whatever it is it's that moment you see something maybe it's a mountain maybe it's little kids playing maybe it's a sunset maybe it's who knows what it is maybe you've just been nesting and your house is tidy and clean and it has that blissful feeling you know when you walk around and you're just your heart rests and you can just simply feel that and if you really allow it your whole being just expands into this incredible peace or maybe it's looking into the eyes of another person it gets more complicated there but just imagine as you walk through your day today or tomorrow and you allow your eyes to come upon something that stirs you inside it doesn't matter what it is all that matters is that there's a genuine response inside of you that lights up and it'll be different for all of us i might see something that doesn't even make any sense it could just be a random flower in spring or it could just be the way the snow is hanging on the trees or it could be just the sight of the sun in a blue sky and everything is right like my whole being just goes so you imagine living like this imagine walking through your day alert to those things because very often we walk through our life alert to everything that's going on in our life alert to everything that's wrong or everything that's whatever but imagine instead every time we walk out the door we keep an eye out for the things that move our soul so this is a practice that we can do to actually allow that feeling inside and then it sort of it lights us up in our third eye it lights us up back here in the bindu it opens our heart and we get to dissolve in the feeling of that experience and it's really interesting because this is a tantric teaching and what does that mean it means embodying the divine in our day-to-day life like it means merging the infinite awe of living in what people might think is very mundane we think oh i'm going to go and do this crazy practice then i'm going to have a seventh chakra awakening and i'm going to do all these cool things and then i'm going to feel like i've had this epic experience of nirvana but what if it's everywhere around us all the time what if we can experience nirvana even if only for a few moments all day long doing anything you could be working at a drive-thru and somebody drives through the drive-thru and you just look at them and they just have this beautiful smile and if we let the smile in it'll permeate our whole body light up all of our chakras and even for a moment we'll experience total nirvana and peace and as we practice this and as this becomes part of our daily practice like why do we practice things to create a habit and we create a habit so that they start to string together and we start to do it naturally we don't have to think about it we don't have to create it or remember it or do an affirmation because it just becomes part of our daily life and then all of a sudden as you're walking through your life you see this beauty and then you see that and then you see this and then you see that and all those feelings those moments of nirvana start becoming closer and closer and closer together and eventually at the end of the day someone says how was your day and you say it was so beautiful i had such a great day well wasn't it busy at work and yeah i guess it was it was pretty busy but there were so many nice people today and oh the smell of the toast or the smell and and then this person and then this happened it was so wonderful so all of a sudden we can have a very difficult day but what we remember are these moments that cause this dissolution into bliss in our day-to-day life i just want to quote mr lauren roche in his book here he said the world is an open air ashram and the guru is everywhere the world is an open air ashram and the guru is everywhere can you imagine walking through your world everything is sacred everything is beautiful this is another one i love that he said let the swoon carry you into the arms of divine consciousness swoon if this is if english is your second language or third language fourth language swoon is when you see something or someone holds you in their arms and you release to it and you just flow in the arms of this joy you swoon at the sight of your lover you swoon at the sight of at the sight of i don't know an open beach on a warm sunny day and you just allow that we have to be able to let down our guards in order to swoon in life and that's a real journey that's a huge part of the spiritual path is to trust enough that we can just let it all go let the swoon carry you into the arms of divine consciousness and we can do that just through joy and allowing beauty to come in and open us up i want to read something else to you guys from this book the vijnana bhairava and this again is another translation of this this verse and again this is even more cryptic than the last one just gonna warn you but there's a part of it i really want to share the yogi should meditate either in the heart or on the bindu which is a subtle spark of fire resembling a talaka which is that little fire on the forehead fire on the forehead by such practice the discursive thought of the yogi disappears and on its disappearance the yogi is absorbed in the light of supreme consciousness this is the part i want to look at by such practice the discursive thought which in sanskrit they call vikalpa the discursive thought of the yogi disappears and on its disappearance the yogi is absorbed in the light of supreme consciousness well if you look up vipalka one of the definitions of this which is i i find fascinating is trying to conceptualize reality trying to conceptualize duality you know when you think of how much how often something happens in life and we think why did that happen how come you know we're trying to conceptualize we're trying to imagine we're trying to figure out the world we're trying to understand everything that's going on this is what they call discursive thought or they call it vikalpa but when we can focus in the third eye when we can focus on the bindu when we can focus in the heart and allow our consciousness to let go and just release we have to let go of the need to understand everything that's it we just do the practice we just do whatever it is we allow the agitation and the shaking and we allow this to open up and that's the other thing i want to talk about is this agitation and shaking how seldom we want to experience that it's really interesting because as you guys know i teach kundalini yoga and one of the things about kundalini yoga is it's a little tiny but it's not disturbing if we're really doing it it's not like hatha yoga really helps you get into your body it helps you stretch it helps you open up it helps you create something very different but kundalini yoga you're doing exercising and breathing techniques and stuff like that and the idea is to get into the organs and rattle them we want to get rid of the stuff that's locked there we want to get rid of the blocks in the meridians we want to get rid of the things that we've accumulated over time well that requires something that isn't within our comfort zone it means we might have to do something that's difficult or something that our soul is calling us to do but it's going to ask us to leave our comfort zone and really walk in faith to really do something so it's not all about yoga it could just be life and then by doing that there's an excitement that builds and how often in society we have interpreted that excitement of stepping outside our comfort zone doing something that's a little edgy we interpret it as fear or we interpret it as anxiety it's not anxiety it's the agitation of growth it's the agitation and the irritation of stepping outside that comfort zone i don't know if i ever told you guys this story when i was in my 20s i went skydiving my husband and i we went skydiving quite a few times and people would always say oh was it hard was it scary to do skydiving it wasn't really the scariest part of sky once you've decided to do it maybe it's scarier when you haven't decided yet but once you've decided to do it the scariest part is you get in the plane and you fly up and we only jumped from 3 000 feet but we you go up they open the side door and there's this the wings right so there's an upper strut and a lower strut and you have to reach outside the plane hold on to the the bar that's holding the upper wing and you have to step out onto the lower part of the wing and then from there you let go and you fall right and you skydive the scariest part was getting out on that wing because the propeller was in the front so there was this blast of air right past the door so you had to reach your hand out through the prop blast to hold on to that thing to get and then pull yourself through that charge of air to get out on the wing to let go that was the scariest part sitting in the plane even standing on the wing that's not as scary as this this air pushing you backwards and how often in life we have this thing that i know i want to do this thing that i maybe it's a practice maybe it's going for a walk every day maybe it's having a hard conversation maybe it's taking that new job or taking a risk but taking something that really feels right in your heart and between where i am now and doing that thing it's like there's a prop blast there's a propeller blast in between us and it's scary to reach through that agitated space once we get through it we're fine but it really takes something inside like even in yoga they call it tapas this fire that's there's something inside us that has to say no i believe in my vision i believe what i'm supposed to do i'm going to reach through and i'm going to do it even if it's scary even if it's hard so it's very interesting to imagine the agitation the irritation it takes to say release this duality and not totally we're going to live in duality right but this is just a spiritual practice to kind of help us lose our attachments to things so that we can really live and be happy but oftentimes like even when you're doing the yoga or even we're in meditation let's say if we simplify it right down and you're sitting in meditation and you say to yourself you know what i'm going to set an alarm and i'm going to meditate for 10 minutes just silent i'm going to focus on my breath i'm going to have beautiful posture and all i'm going to do is focus on my third eye and breathe well what's going to happen if you're really good at it if you're going to have total bliss it's going to be great you know you're going to forget about everything and you're just going to have this lovely quiet time but that's not how it is for most of us because our mind is going and we're thinking about things and we're conceptualizing things the palkha is at full power it's trying to figure things out and why would this happen and how what are you going to do about that and it's doing all these things but you've decided to sit you've decided for 10 minutes out of my entire day i'm just going to sit and breathe what happens there's an agitation there's an annoyance in the body there's a battle between the stillness that i desire and the exceptional busyness of my mind that doesn't want to let go so even that is such a journey and that's why it's so good to set an alarm and tell yourself no matter what i'm not moving i'm going to breathe through the agitation i'm going to breathe through the challenge i'm going to breathe through all the voices in my head that say this is stupid and my legs are hurting and i don't want to be here anymore and on the other side you're going to open your eyes and you're going to go and you may not have some feeling of nirvana or anything like that but we all know this curious agitation we're going to look at the verse again before we do our meditation so the first part says when you close your eyes attention turns toward the inner glow the heart sees by its own light pulsing with subtle flame now i don't want to interpret this for you because i really whatever it is that that stirs for you is what's right for you so what i'm going to say is one idea but it's not the idea it's just an idea what's interesting about this when it says the heart sees by its own light this to me is like what we were talking about when you walk through the world and you see something and it lights you up on the inside imagine that's what it is that you're actually seeing the world through the light of your heart your heart is guiding your eyes to the things that nourish it what makes your heart rest what makes your heart expand what makes your heart excited imagine seeing the world through the light of the heart the next part in your forehead is a single eye here streams of living electricity flow together so this is this the energy is going through the chakras up and fusing together merging together in the third eye the body of substance and the body of light fuse into one and above your head a star is shining the soul luminous in its own realm the next line life arises from itself in a swirling motion of flame and to really think about this in a swirling motion of flame and to really think about that in life so often we live our life based on what our head says we should do and if i always imagine that when i do something that my head says i should do it's like whatever is possible is like a spreadsheet or a flow chart that i've written it's limited it's kind of empty here's the goal here's the thing here's what i'm going to step through and i'm going to get a gold star at the end because i did it or something but it's kind of limited but when we see the world through the light of the heart when we see the things that really stimulate us naturally not something that i make myself like or something like that or something like that this morning when i was doing my yoga i had this vision of a dance collective and i'm teaching like cha-cha on by yourself and i'm doing ballet and i'm doing all these things and literally these ideas started flowing out of my heart i wasn't doing it i wasn't creating the spreadsheet it was happening dynamically from its own energy you know when you have when an idea comes to you and it makes you really excited and all of a sudden it's almost like you have infinite ideas infinite possibility life builds upon life and there's no effort imagine living like that when you really imagine why we're here why aren't we living like that i understand we've got to pay the bills and we've got i totally totally get that but in between that within that structure to allow life to build on life to not force ourselves to like things to force ourselves to do things what stirs our soul and then what happens is life builds upon life and we're just along for the ride and life becomes so easy life arises from itself in a swirling motion of flame being becomes body in meditation adore the subtle fire in heart head and above dissolve into radiance i'd love to know if you have any thoughts you'd like to share and then we'll do a fun little meditation living in inspiration how do we get there but i think that's where it starts it starts really subtly like walking through the world and just noticing the beautiful things and then it just organically grows from there all my life i had different meanings of bindu vilkalpa and hidra and you know there's so many meanings these are just the meanings in this case like it's the most interesting thing about sanskrit it's a language that everything morphs depending on the context and it just is it's so rich so we're going to do a little meditation and we're going to use a mudra called the hridaya mudra and this is a beautiful mudra to use i'll tell you what it is while i'm talking so if you hold your hand up we're going to bend our index finger down join our thumb with our middle and ring finger so if you if your thumb is touching your middle and your ring finger your index finger is kind of tucked down underneath them and your pinky is straight so your index finger is bent your middle finger and your ring finger is on your thumb and your pinky is straight so just while we're talking just have this sitting on your lap palm facing up and just even holding the mudra you may feel something in your body because what the mudras do is they create a very particular electrical channel a circuit in the body for me holding this mudra i can feel it energetically in my body and if you can or can't and if you can or can't it's not important maybe i feel it because i need it it's almost like i can already feel it's like a bit of an agitation in my body like i need to actually breathe a little bit deeper to do this mudra so let's just get comfortable in this mudra for a moment breathing deeply be sure that you're expanding the belly as you inhale contracting as we exhale what this mudra does is it helps to open the heart and our world struggles with the heart so we're going to do a little guided meditation but if this is annoying to you and you feel called to it try doing this every day for 10 minutes the recommendation is to do it until it isn't annoying it's not like you have to do it forever but just do it maybe say you know what i'm going to do it every day for a month for 10 minutes i'm just going to sit down and i'm going to do this mudra this is where it really shines when we have daily practice for a period of time and a period of time longer than our comfort zone because whatever our current status is our current homeostasis we will actually try to stay there no matter what so let's say what you really need is to do this for a month or maybe two months we have a weird program inside that says wait a minute this is changing something okay screw it maybe i'll just do it today or maybe i'll do it for a week but then i'm gonna quit right because that's what will keep us in our old paradigm forgetting about the meditation we're going to do today highly recommend this if it feels right to you to create a daily practice around it just for a time not forever as a remedial healing technique and you can feel the agitation already okay so for anyone who's joined new this is the mudra we're using the index is down middle and ring is touching the thumb and the pinky is straight so let's come into a comfortable seated position you could also be lying down you can use this mudra lying down for sure you can do it while you're walking right you don't have to be meditating while you use it let's close our eyes relax your shoulders down the back and focus on your breath expanding the belly as you inhale contracting as you exhale really making sure you're breathing imagine your inhale like three parts expanding the belly the ribs and the upper chest so in this space in our mind we're going to go for a walk our body will stay in this posture in our mudra but in our mind we're going to go for a beautiful walk in the sunshine and we're going to go for a walk until you see something beautiful what is that thing that lights you up inside whenever you see it is it flowering is it a mountain you can be anywhere in the world we're in our imagination is it the ocean is it a child playing in the sand whatever it is there's a bench that you can sit on let's sit on the bench and gaze upon this site i want you to look at it and imagine that you're sitting on a bench on this site i want you to look at it through your third eye the asana between your eyebrows and feel it expanding feel all thoughts dissolving as your thoughts dissolve feel this beautiful energy radiating from your third eye to the back of your head and beyond as you feel this energy feel your heart opening you can feel maybe your physical heart pumping feel this energy flowing down through your whole body as all tension dissolves and releases feel your body tingling your toes your fingers the skin on your arms and your face and then let's just focus on the sensation in the body let your eyes roll up to your third eye point and feel the rest of your body dissolve breathing deeply allow your focus to come down into that heart a little to the right of your heart center the hridaya and feel it expanding with the breath every inhale it becomes light and bigger expanding in your chest cavity expanding beyond your body and imagine seeing yourself in that cave of the heart sitting in this place of supreme consciousness your individual divinity and see yourself sitting there smiling release the visualization and focus on the breath while i read our verse in sanskrit then english laya when you close your eyes attention turns toward the inner glow the heart sees by its own light pulsing with subtle flame in your forehead is a single eye here streams of living electricity flow together the body of substance and the body of light fuse into one above your head a star is shining the soul luminous in its own realm life arises from itself in a swirling motion of flame being becomes body in meditation adore the subtle fire in heart head and above dissolve into radiance gently release the mudra stretch your fingers out and then let your hands rest in your lap palms facing up or if you're lying down just rest your just resting on the bed beside you allow your breath to become normal and just tune in to how you're feeling right now allow this to be part of your repertoire of how you can feel in a day let's take a deep breath in together exhale thank you so much for being here and we'll see you soon

Reviews

Thank you! Embrace the everyday beauty of the world. 🌎

Beauty❣️♾️☯️☮️⚛️⚘️☄️
Thank you so kindly❣️⚛️
🙏🏽✨️🖤🌸🪔

Thought provoking discussion and meditation on a RS. Thank you Katrina.