Plunge Deep Into Centre: Radiance Sutras Verse 103

During this session, we discuss Verse 103 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 today we're reading out of this beautiful book called The Radiant Sutras and this is written by Lauren Roche and this is a translation or an interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra which is a beautiful ancient text that comes out of Kashmir Shaivism and the reason that that matters, I mean most tantric schools have very similar belief systems. But Kashmir Shaivism for example deeply believes that we are all infinite beings and we are physical beings and the goal in life is to experience both at the same time and we can call it our divine selves and our physical self. But this is a very interesting thing. It's almost like there are times in our lives that we feel very much attached to our physical world. Our personality, The life we're given, The circumstances we're in and we're almost lost in them. You know we're lost in the emotions that have come up because of our world and and we think oh and we become despondent and so worried because we think that this physical world is our entire existence. So if that doesn't go well, My whole life is ruined. You know or if this goes well, I am amazing. I'm having this amazing success kind of idea. But tantra says this is all true. Like the experiences you're having are important because this physical life is why we're here. It's why we're incarnate. But if we get too lost in it and we actually think this is our only existence, It's almost like we miss the joy. So the key then is to remember that there is this divine, It's not just a divine spark, It's like the divine spark within us is also the divine. Everything, The energy that breathed this world into existence, The intuition, The wonder, All that that's inside of us, Each one of us is the embodiment of that. We just are in a few billion different forms in perhaps nine billion different circumstances. But we are all this wonderful divine being. So imagine you remember that. Like remember imagine you know sometimes people have near-death experiences and when they come back they'll say oh that they kind of have the big picture. You know that they've sort of tasted another dimension. And then all of a sudden the food that they've been eating their whole life tastes better and roses smell better and even arguments are more interesting and more important and you're able to be more present in them because you take them more seriously. Not because you're lost in them but because this is real. This is really important and this is the joy right. It's not about experiencing the divine so that we transcend our life. It's experiencing that little spark inside so that we actually dive deeper into our daily experience. But if we feel like our circumstances could drown us, We have no consciousness because we're driven by fear. We're just clinging and grasping onto anything. But if we know that no matter what we can just keep swimming. It's almost like we can relax a little and experience life. So this book is a series of 112 verses that help us bring these worlds a little closer together. Just a little closer together. And the cool thing is like as humans like we're very dynamic and multi-dimensional and interesting. So it isn't that one sutra and you you hear this one sutra and you go oh I've got it. One sutra expands us a little which sheds a little light on everything and then we're a little different. And then each sutra or each yoga class or each whatever book you read or you know that inspires you, It changes you and then a year from now you're actually unrecognizable compared to the person you were a year ago. If you were actually going to time travel back to yourself a year ago you would be different. You would have different confidences and different awarenesses and that's interesting and that's really the point here. So today we are reading number 103. So what we're going to do for our new friends, I'm going to read the sutra a couple times and then we're going to discuss it and then at the end we'll do a meditation. All right you guys ready? So let's all close our eyes and just breathe deeply and just forget everything I just said. Just come into your own heart into your own center and let's listen from that place. Abandon all these attitudes of wanting to prolong pleasure and avoid suffering. Let the heart be itself and feel whatever is there. Freed from clinging and avoiding, The heart regains its poise and revels in creation. Plunging deep into its center, Discover that the heart is moved by a pulse that is everywhere. What comes up for you when you hear that? A thought or an emotion or what words kind of repeat themselves in your mind? Relax and breathe. Feel whatever is there. Heart, Love, Pulse everywhere. The heart knows, Listen to it. Sitting in your heart, So sitting in love. The heart is moved by a pulse that is everywhere. The pulse, You've got to be very quiet to feel and hear it. Deep gratitude for every moment. Connect me to my knowing. The pulse of balance. There is a deeper heart pulse beyond circumstances, Conditions, Feelings, Pain or pleasure. Resonated with some of the yoga sutras I've been studying about the kleshas. Allow the heart to experience what is. What we just read is an interpretation, A poetic interpretation of the sutra. So I'm just going to read to you a direct translation of the Sanskrit. One should never think in terms of friendship or enmity. Being free of this idea of friend and foe, In between the brahma bhava or nature of supreme consciousness blooms. And this is another direct translation. The aspirant, Us, Should neither maintain the attitude of aversion nor of attachment towards anyone. Since he is freed of both aversion and attachment, There develops brahma bhava or the nature of divine consciousness, Which is also the nature of the essential self in his heart. Abandon clinging attachment. Allow heart to feel, Not prolong pleasure, Avoid suffering. Had I had a coming to God universe on the beach and screamed to the ocean, Why didn't you tell me it would feel this way? And a voiceless voice responded, You've always known. I am pregnant. So the pulse of heart within and everywhere is exploding with creation. Wow. There's a beautiful ray of light coming in from behind you. Katrina. Yeah. I'm feeling very blessed right now. Unconditional love in its purest form. So when I first read this, I thought it was weird, You know, Because they talk about to let go of everything you hate and everything you love. Or more importantly, Everything that you push away and everything you cling on me and bring towards you. And I, It truthfully, I, It didn't sit with me. I, Even after reading all the different translations and commentaries, I was like, What do you mean? Like, That you aren't supposed to like or dislike things like what, I mean, Isn't that part of our journey of discernment between, Well, I don't like that. And I do like that. And that's how I choose my path. Like that's, I'm called towards that. I'm, I'm drawn to that, But I'm averse to that. So therefore I go this way, Right? Like, Doesn't, Isn't that how we navigate? But what's interesting is there are five, What they call fetters in the tantric journey. So imagine on the one hand, You are this divine consciousness, You are omnipotent, Omniscient, You are all things, You are everywhere. And then somehow we have to become this limited body, This individual, I have to somehow go from being Brahman, All God, All consciousness, To just Katrina. Like, How does that happen? Like, How do we all become, You know, Nina and Paula and Carla, And how do we, How do we become all these individual beings, When we're also this great oneness? And so, In Kashmir Shaivism, They talk about these five things that sort of transform God consciousness into individual consciousness. Two, Or one, Is introducing time. Because of course, There is no time in oneness. So as humans, We have a brain that organizes life in time. And now we have the future, The past, The present. We have space, That each one of us is actually in a separate space. You know, They're, We are not all the same people, We are living in different space. So there's the space time continuum. And then there is the fact that I'm not all powerful. I just have a limited power. And that is all kind of contained in my being, My essence, My ego, My, You know, I'm limited in knowledge, I only know so much, I don't know everything. And the final limitation that allows me to be an individual, Is what they call ragas, A raga. And this is, Essentially, It's desire. It's desire, Because it's the sense of feeling incomplete. Because oneness in God consciousness is everything. It's whole, It's everything. So in order for us to actually be alive here, Or in action, For me to be me, Like if we, If everybody here in this class right now, We're all in a room, We would all have different gifts, Different challenges, Different whatever. So I'm not exactly the same as Nina, Or Carla, Or Nancy, Like we're not the same. We all have different things. So in some level, We are incomplete as compared to all the things that are out there. Right? And this isn't a bad thing. But what this incompleteness does, Is it creates a longing inside of us to become complete. It's almost like to have all the experiences, To know all the things. And what this does is it sets us up as humans on a journey of constant expansion. If we had no desires, We would just become nothingness. At the end of this book, This Radiant Sutras book, Lauren talks about this danger of when we try to reduce all desire out of our lives, That we become like those people on a spiritual journey where they're above desire. I have no, Nothing. I do not, You know, It's almost like we're acting like we're God. And so therefore, There is nothing to do and nothing to say and nothing to, You know, But here's his warning about that. A caution. This practice gives you the power to make yourself into a completely bland person with no raga, No passion whatsoever. It is like becoming tasteless white bread, Distilled water, No salt, No spice, No taste, No minerals. This is a gateway to depression and emotional malnutrition. Your healthy adaptation to life depends on having a rich life of passion appropriate to your unique character, Your age and your life path. Are you on the path of renunciation or the path of intimacy? Celibates need to dissolve passion. If you are married, Dissolving passion will just destroy your marriage. It is very important that when we're talking about the dangers of raga, The dangers of passion, The goal is not to not have any passion. The goal is to bring it all into consciousness. Because what raga, What it, What another translation of this word is that it's color. So sometimes what happens, Imagine you go through life, And everybody here has had decades of experience. Those decades of experience will have colored certain things for us. We will have decided that those things we don't like, And those things we do like. But a lot of this coloring of things into good or bad, Like, Dislike, Hate, Love, It's just based on the past. It's not necessarily based on where we are right now. And sometimes those old angers or hatreds or dislikes may not even be relevant today. So what this sutra is saying is, Let go of all that. Let go of your likes and your dislikes and your enemies and your friends and let go of all those ideas. Where are you right now? In between all of that, In between all of the preferences pro and against, Where are you right now? And what's interesting about this is we still will have preferences. There still will be things that we like or we dislike. A friend of mine is going through a very difficult breakup with a business colleague. And the business colleague has been horrendous, Like truly abusive, And kind of in that narcissistic way, And very, Very volatile. So at this point, You might call this an aversion, A hatred, An anger that says, This person can no longer be in my business. And then you might look at someone else in your life and say, Oh, But I love that person. I love them. I'm so attracted to them. I love them. And what this sutra is saying is, These are the same. These don't push them apart so much, Don't make such a big deal out of it. And you think, But it is a big deal. It's a huge deal, Right? Like it's like, That's a big deal. But is it? Imagine you take the loadedness out of it. And this person says, And they consider the person they love. And they think, Why do I love this person so much? Or why do I love being around this person so much? Well, Maybe they're respectful of me. Maybe they make me feel good about myself. And they're fun to be around. Well, You know, What's interesting about the person who they want to discard out of their business is they don't make them feel good about them. They're insulting. And they're no fun. Can you feel how close those two things are together? There's something weirdly close about those things. All the things I love is in this person, And all the things I don't love are in this person. But who's in the middle? Me. But essentially, It's almost like these two people are like two sides of the same coin. And I'm the coin. I remember I was at a Tantra retreat once. And they were saying how important it is to say no to people. Because they said, If you don't have a no in you, Your yeses mean nothing. And this is very interesting. That saying yes or saying no, They're both the same. It's like they're both the same answer to the same question. Whether I say yes or I say no, I'm simply honoring my truth. It has very little to do with the others. It's like, Do these belong in my life? Yes or no? I'm in the middle of them. The more I can be aware of both, The more centered I am. But as soon as I, I hate that, I can't stand that. I can't believe that. Right? It pushes you way off center. Or it's like, I can't live without this. Like this is so important. I love this. I love this person. I love this job. I love this life. I can't live without it. It's like you are so completely identified with the other. You're not even there anymore. But if you can actually sit in the middle and say, I love being around people that are fun. Or I really don't like being around people who are fun. I love being in business where people are expansive and we grow together. I really don't like being in business where people are contractive and critical. Can you feel that I'm essentially saying the same thing by saying, I like this. The assumption is that I don't like the opposite. And there's something in balance about this. You know, I don't have to lose my center to love or dislike something. Passion as an energy can be directed in loving ways or in angry ways, Or in the expression of anything. All of the feelings are based on our humanness. Determining good or bad is my choice. What a wonderful truth. It's very interesting. It's like the very first meditation in this book. It's actually the meditation that I have here on Insight Timer. I think it's called a Tantric Meditation to Experience Oneness. I uploaded it here, I don't know, Six years ago or so. It's the very first meditation on my profile. And it's from this book. And it's all about noticing the inhale, The gap, And then the exhale, And then the gap. The gap are these places in between the inhale and the exhale. And these are the places where we experience God. That the inhale and the exhale, These are us in the world. These are our physical human experiences of the breath. And as I inhale, As I exhale, And I experience the gap, As my body shifts to exhale, Then at the bottom of the exhale, There's a gap where my body shifts into an inhale. And in that gap is stillness, Or what they would call shunya, Divine stillness. So I'm going to reread the direct translation. I'll reread the original one in a moment. The aspirant should neither maintain the attitude of aversion nor attachment towards anyone. Since he is freed of both aversion and attachment, There develops brahma bhava, Or the nature of divine consciousness, Which is also the nature of the essential self in his heart. So if you imagine, Inhale, Because you know, We do this with the breath, Right? Sometimes if you're in a yoga class, Inhale happiness, Light, Joy, Exhale everything you don't want in life. We do that. Inhale the good, Exhale the bad. Inhale the light, Exhale the darkness, Right? This is done at times. I've done it in the past. What is in the gap in between the inhale and the exhale and the inhale? Divine consciousness, Which is our essential self. That is the divine spark in us. In between all the play of the personalities and the circumstances. Neutrality, Exactly. Now, Of course, As Lauren cautions us to say, Don't live there. Love roses. Swim in warm oceans. Make love, Eat chocolate, Do what you love. Don't become tasteless white bread or distilled water. But be aware of the neutrality. Be able to sort of be in your center and then flow over here, Or be in your center and be able to discard that, Whatever that is. You know, But it's that heightened something that turns a preference into hatred or kind of clinging love, You know, That we have to watch for. There's something beyond choice maybe, Emergence. Like in physics, Self-organizing structures, The lines about blooming, Emergence. Physics says the space between chaos and structure. Oh, It just gives me chills. Emergence. It's so beautiful. Thank you, Michelle. It's interesting when I'm just rereading part of the Radiant Sutras when it says, Freed from clinging and avoiding, The heart regains its poise and revels in creation. Plunging deep into its center, Discover that the heart is moved by a pulse that is everywhere. So now, To take what Michelle has said, Imagine we are freed from the extremes and we come into our heart and our heart is pulsing with the pulse of humanity, Of the universe, Of Brahman, Of God, Of Aum, That primal vibration. And now meditate, Like ponder emergence. What can emerge from that state? How often we live our lives like we're in a pinball machine, Banging from the things we love and the things we hate, The things we're angry about, The things we want, The things we, Like we're just bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang. You know, Even these days, These days are very tumultuous in the world, All over the world, Not just North America. It's a lot going on in the, I don't know, In this great time of ascension. It's a lot of controversy. Imagine staying in your center. What an incredible journey that is. And it isn't about not being aware, It's about actually allowing ourselves to be even more aware, Because we are in our center. Because if we are in this pinball machine of life, Being thrown from pillar to post, Nothing can emerge from us. Because we're either defending against that which we are averse to, Or we are longing for the thing we want. And now instead, We stay in the center and we feel the pulse of life. And things emerge. Imagine how different that is. It's always intriguing to me when there are certain teachers that I followed, You know, Who maybe lived in, I remember at one point, I was really into Tolstoy, Or I was really into Gershchev, Who were, You know, He was a great metaphysics teacher, Or even Gandhi, Or any of these great people. And then you find out when they lived and where they lived. And it was very, They were difficult times. Like, It's almost like, The greater the forces externally, The more centered we must become. And then we dig deeper, And greater things emerge. Just, It's just interesting to me. The banks of the river have snags, The center has the clear flow. Totally. Let's do a meditation. Close our eyes. Just breathe deeply. And I'd like you to focus on your inhale and your exhale. As you inhale, Expanding the belly, The ribs, The upper chest. As you exhale, Releasing the chest, The ribs, The belly. Really focus on the movement of the belly. Really focus on the breath going in your nose, Exhaling out. And then I'd like you to notice the point at the end of your inhale, Where the breath turns around and becomes the exhale. To focus on the gap in between the breaths. And we're not extending, Or anything like that. We're just noticing, Almost like the place where a car turns around, Does a u-turn. The same way, The end of the exhale. Notice the place where the breath turns around and becomes an inhale. Don't really worry about the inhale and the exhale. Just allow all of your attention on the gap in between each end. And then I'd like you to imagine a little ball. And as you come to the end of your next inhale, Visualize a ball rolling through the gap, Going around the corner, And into the exhale. And see the ball roll all the way through the exhale. And as it comes to that corner, You watch the ball go around the corner, Through the gap, And into the inhale. And just really focus on this ball rolling through the corner of the gap. And then allow yourself to be aware of it all. The inhale, The gap, The rolling ball, The exhale. And just very gently watch it. Abandon all these attitudes of wanting to prolong pleasure and avoid suffering. Let the heart be itself and feel whatever is there. Freed from clinging and avoiding, The heart regains its poise and revels in creation. Plunging deep into its center, Discover that the heart is moved by a pulse that is everywhere. Coming back together. And thank you so much for being here. And I hope you have a wonderful day.

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My heart is full. I feel the truth and alignment with Self. 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍