Surrendering Into The Flame: Radiance Sutras Verse 29

During this session, we discuss Verse 29 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

Today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras,

A beautiful translation of the Vijnana by Rava Tantra by Lauren Roche,

This lovely man.

And today we're reading a sutra,

We're reading number 29.

The most important thing,

And especially with this particular sutra that we're going to read today,

To really listen to it from your soul,

To really listen to it from that immortal,

Eternal place inside.

Because that's the huge path of Tantra,

That we are fully divine beings.

We are also physical and the physical world matters,

The physical life matters.

But so often we get so caught up in all the physicality and the worry and the relationships and the money and everything,

We really lose touch with how divine we are.

It's kind of like,

If you forgot how physical you are.

So for example,

This morning,

I went for a long walk with Storm.

And I was kind of booking it because I wanted to get back here in time to prepare for class and stuff like that.

And so I'm walking through this great big long thing,

And I'm really walking like I'm like,

I'm really walking fast.

My heart starts to pound and I can start to feel it in my legs and my hips.

And I'm really going.

That helps me remind me that I have a body.

That helps connect me to my physical body,

Which is why one of the reasons exercise is so important.

But what do we do to remember that we're spiritual?

What do we do in the same way that connects us to our infinite selves in a really tangible way?

Not just saying it,

It's easy to say it.

It's easy to say it in the same way that I could lecture people on the importance of exercise but never exercise myself.

And then all of a sudden I go out and I start exercising and I start connecting with my body and suddenly I'm drinking more water and I'm eating differently and I'm sleeping better and I'm walking and I'm doing all these things.

And I'm having this experience of it.

That's a whole different thing than talking about it.

One of the beautiful things about this book of sutras,

This book of readings,

Is that it's like we get to exercise our spiritual selves.

So I highly recommend it,

Especially with this sutra.

And maybe I shouldn't be giving you all these extra warnings but I don't know,

I find this a tough sutra for me personally.

Again,

Why am I putting ideas in your head?

So if we really tap in and we close our eyes and we breathe deeply into our heart center,

That eternal part of us that doesn't move,

That's totally still,

And connect with your eternal self,

Whatever you call it,

Your soul,

Your divine self,

Your infinite self,

Whatever that is.

Breathe into that in the same way that you might breathe into your body going for a run.

Live for a few days in the meditation.

I am immersed in the flame,

The flame of time,

The flame of love,

The flame of life.

The universal fire flows through me.

Step into that fire wholeheartedly,

Starting with the big toe,

Then surrendering everywhere.

Only the not-self,

Which doesn't exist anyway,

Burns away.

Attend to this continually and awaken into tranquility.

Your essence is renewed in the flame,

For it is flame and knows itself as flame since the first heartbeat of creation.

How does that make you feel?

What thoughts flow through your mind?

The not-self burns away.

This is a great one.

Happiness.

Holy cow,

Flames in my gut is telling me to ask what he says in the back about this.

We will talk more about it.

There's so many directions my mind is going in.

I am divine.

I immediately think of the violet flame,

The cosmic eraser of all that no longer serves us.

Only the not-self,

Which doesn't exist anyway,

Burns away.

That sits with me.

Flames purge what is not truth.

Freedom from expectations of how I should be.

It's a great reminder of what is true and so much that is not.

It made me think of a newborn,

When the flame is first ignited and how utterly beautiful that is.

A violet flame,

Saint Germain and Archangel Zadkiel.

From the ashes rises the phoenix.

So in the back of the book here,

Our lovely friend Lauren writes about Agni.

Super aware of my body in the past week,

But not in a good way.

Twice in a week it's got sick.

First cross-contaminated food,

Sea legs,

Picked up a nasty cold.

Oh wow,

The flame is reminding me of the renewal I'll feel when I get my fire back.

I love the imagery of a newborn.

Why is this one hard for you?

When I first read this,

Something in me like shifted.

Did a little duh,

Because obviously there are aspects of my life that are not me.

For example,

And I'm going to say this,

Which is very weird to say to you guys,

But sometimes I question why I teach.

Sometimes I wonder if I've done this because I started opening bricks and mortar buildings like I had a dance studio.

So I had to start teaching.

I was very shy.

I was very introverted.

And then I discovered Kundalini Yoga and I started teaching and then I started teaching meditation and my life became all about teaching.

And some days I wonder why do I extrovert everything?

Why do I,

Why don't I just sit and enjoy my studies and write books and hang out and have coffee with my friends?

Like why am I constantly,

Why is my whole business about teaching?

And I've been thinking about this a lot lately because it's a curious business.

It's a curious job.

And I was talking to Nelda about it on the weekend and she said,

All that matters is that what you're doing is really yours and you're not living out the lives of your ancestors.

And realize that my parents were teachers like school teachers and my grandfather was a minister.

And I'm just curious about it.

I'm just curious.

So I'm not sure.

I see you as being in service,

A Virgo signature and teaching as a form of being in service.

A hundred percent.

And the challenge is for me is that,

And we've talked about North and South nodes a little bit.

I'm not going to get into that,

But on your astrology chart,

Your South nodes are the things that you've already done.

You've done them a thousand times.

Your North nodes are what you're actually meant to be doing in this life.

And the South nodes are where you'll tend to revert to.

Well,

On my birth chart,

My South node is in the sixth house of service along with five other planets,

Including my son,

The son,

Not my son.

And so as much as my tendency is to be in service,

It's actually my South node.

And I'm supposed to be across the thing in the 12th house,

Reaching beyond the veil,

Which is why I love this class.

That's why this class is so exciting for me because this is an opportunity to reach beyond the veil with you guys.

And as I sort of look at how I teach and what I'm teaching,

I just always have to make sure that I'm expanding and I'm not just teaching what I've always taught.

I could easily just teach everything I've always taught,

But that's not why I'm here.

I do feel I have attachments still to certain things,

And I still think there's parts of my life,

Maybe people pleasing,

Maybe situations that aren't me.

And I'm afraid to step into that flame.

I'm afraid to have it all burnt away.

It's like I'm not ready yet to let go of the not self that I'm still living.

Yeah,

That feels so emotional inside of me.

There might be a large portion of my life that is still not me.

It's the idea,

Like if someone was to say to me,

Katrina,

Here is a ritual where we will step into the flame and we will burn away your not self and you will walk forward free.

I would take three steps backwards.

That's my truth right now.

I'm not ready to let go of these not self parts.

I'm not saying this teaching isn't valuable because God knows it's going to live in my heart until I resolve this.

It's going to sit in there and it's going to burn away.

It's going to find little things and then someone's going to say,

Katrina,

Do you want to do this?

And I'm going to go,

Um,

Because it's a great danger.

And then,

Like,

So for me,

For example,

Everything I teach is everything I love.

I fell in love with Kundalini yoga and I loved how it transformed my body and mind.

So I started teaching it.

Do I want to teach it?

Really?

I love teaching other people to teach it.

It's not that I don't like teaching it,

But it's so different.

I love dance.

So I teach it.

Everything I love I teach.

And this is where I'm going,

Do I have to do all these things?

Do I have to have 500 irons in the fire all the time?

Because I have a lot of passions.

And so I end up creating a lot.

That's my little why.

When I first read this,

I literally went,

Oh,

I wonder if certain types of teaching is really joyful and others is not.

Totally.

It reminds me of the Saradatta teachings.

It has touched me.

It has seemed to me that you are called to teach and fed by it.

I know.

And that's the curious thing.

As long as I'm teaching it in a way that feeds me,

That it actually is coming through me,

It's all good.

But as soon as I'm kind of locked down here,

Like regurgitating or something,

Everything's wrong.

So I've been doing a lot of deep searching about this in the last month or so.

So the topic of this sutra is fire,

Agony.

In the back of the book,

Lauren talks about that.

Agony means fire and it means sacrificial fire.

The fire of the stomach,

Digestive faculty,

Bile,

Gold.

It's very interesting.

I'm going to read a little bit of what he says.

There's actually a lot to say about this.

It helps to know that biological life is fire.

Our bodies burn at almost 100 degrees night and day,

Even if the environment is cool.

Each cell is a little flame,

A tiny hearth cooking up the sustenance of life and transmuting the elements into energy.

The process of transmutation is called fire.

The sun is fire.

Our bodies are fire.

The sun shines on the oceans,

Forests and farms,

And the fiery sunshine is absorbed by the plants through the magic of photosynthesis.

When we eat the plants or something that eats plants,

We absorb this energy and turn it into heat and energy to move with in a continual dance.

Isn't that interesting to think that we are fire?

Every cell is actually a little fire transmuting nutrients into energy.

What we call fire is just the transmutation of energy into,

Or of base elements into energy.

We just happen to call it fire because we can see it and we can feel it.

There's another aspect of this I want to talk about.

There's one word in here,

Kala agni.

Kala,

Like K-A-A-L-A,

Is time.

It's the aspect of time.

And kala agni,

Or time rather,

Sorry,

Kala,

Is the great destroyer because time destroys all.

If we really consider time in a space-time continuum,

We're not talking about eternal time,

We're talking about our physical life in a space-time continuum.

As time marches on,

Things are consumed,

They disappear,

We can't take forward what we had yesterday.

And so in here is this word,

Kala agni,

And this is the fire,

The consuming time.

And these are some of the things that they also talk about,

Truths about time.

Time only exists in the present.

It is never static.

It has a spiraling motion.

And that time is deeply related to our existence.

So if you imagine we're going through life,

Time is progressing.

We're in this moment and then in a minute we're going to be talking about something else and another minute we're going to be talking about something else.

My hand is moving through time and space as I'm talking.

You guys are over there and I'm over here.

And we're just sort of flowing through this time-space continuum.

So I'm going to read something else,

And this is to me quite bizarre and cryptic.

And this comes out of the book Sri Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

The Ascent by Swami Satyananda Saraswati.

This is to me something that has to be listened to without our rational mind,

Because our rational mind is based in time and space.

So we have to be able to get out of it to even imagine what he's talking about here.

Time and space are equal and opposite forces.

But when their movements are reversed and they can begin to travel towards each other,

They meet at one point and an immense explosion takes place.

Tremendous heat is generated by this explosion,

Which completely overrides the mundane mind and gives birth to a very extraordinary state of awareness.

Kala Agni,

The fire of time,

Refers to the great heat of that explosion which takes place when time and space collide with each other.

In order to reverse the movements of time and space so that they unite at the center,

Concentration on these two equal and opposite forces is required.

The flow of time has to become linear and one dimensional and the flow of space must be focused rather than dispersed in all directions.

Anti Shanta Abhasa refers to the result of this tremendous explosion,

Which is that of tranquility.

Heat,

Fire from the sun,

Light,

Food,

Us,

We are made from all of it.

So I'd like us to do a meditation to kind of gather all this together and have an experience of what they're talking about because that's a real mind bend,

What he just said.

But it's worth meditating on.

So let's sit nice and tall.

Close our eyes and breathe deeply through the nose,

If you can.

If you can't breathe through your nose,

Breathe through your mouth.

Expanding the belly as you inhale,

Contracting as you exhale.

And I want you to envision yourself,

Your true self,

Whatever vision comes forward.

Maybe it's just an energy field or maybe it's your body.

Maybe it's a version of your body at a previous time.

And then gently imagine all that isn't you.

Again,

However that shows up,

Maybe it's just like a cloud around you.

Or maybe it's physically attached to your body.

Or maybe it's like a pig pen on Charlie Brown with all these flies and kind of dust bowl flying around you.

Whatever comes up for you is right.

And breathe into the body that is you.

The essence of who you are.

Now I'd like you to imagine yourself walking down the street.

This essence of who you are is walking down the street.

And you're breathing deeply.

And you're noticing things.

You're noticing the birds.

You're noticing the color of the grass.

You're noticing sand.

Maybe you see a car.

And you are just flowing through life.

You are flowing joyfully through the time-space continuum that we are designed to do.

That's why we're here.

And then as you're walking,

You start to bring your thoughts within yourself.

You stop noticing the birds and you start noticing your breath.

And you stop hearing the sounds around you.

And you become aware of your belly expanding as you're inhaling.

And releasing as you exhale.

You stop feeling the movement of the air on your face.

And you start to notice the feeling of the breath coming into the nostrils.

Cool air coming in.

And warm air going out as you exhale.

And all your attention is coming inside.

And just ahead of you is a bench.

And so you walk up and you sit on the bench.

And you close your eyes.

You fold your hands in your lap.

And you allow all movement to stop.

For all intents and purposes,

Space has disappeared.

You are now just this being.

There is no movement.

There is no sensation of other.

It's just you.

It's only the breath that you're aware of.

And slowly time slips away as well.

And as you sit in this stillness,

There is a fire.

Perhaps a violet flame.

And it's a beautiful fire.

Because it's a magical experience.

It is the transmutation of the physical world into energy.

This is like magic.

And this is who we are.

Every cell of our body is this flame.

And bit by bit,

Anything that isn't that flame gently floats away.

In this quiet,

Still space.

And to allow the word tranquility to flow through your thoughts.

And feel the essence of who we really are.

Light,

Fire,

Tranquility.

Live for a few days in the meditation.

I am immersed in the flame.

The flame of time.

The flame of love.

The flame of life.

The universal fire flows through me.

Step into that fire wholeheartedly.

Starting with the big toe.

Then surrendering everywhere.

Only the not-self,

Which doesn't exist anyway,

Burns away.

Attend to this continually.

And awaken into tranquility.

Your essence is renewed in the flame.

For it is flame,

And knows itself as flame,

Since the first heartbeat of creation.

Let's just breathe silently for a minute.

Let's take a deep breath in together.

And exhale.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

I have been feeling the burn of the flames these couple of days. So reassuring and yet challenging to hear what the flame burns- the not self- so grounding to imagine that essence being itself. That surrender is indeed a shudder inducing thing🪔🫀

This is one I listen to more than once and so many different things meanings feelings come out?❣️♾️☮️☯️⚛️⚘️☄️🩶✨️💮
Thank you kindly for these guided meditations & talks & recommendation of this book❣️✨️🥀🙏🏼✨️🫶🏽✨️

A teacher who is teaching what they love and what they are passionate about is my kind of teachers Katrina! This morning teaching and meditation was pure delight providing me with big mouth, eyes and heart smiles. Of course you came into you with the ease of teaching and your north node is for you to practice to be tranquil. Especially when you are running home from your morning walk to teach again! This verse and what came through your teaching was so powerful. For me to know that fire within me burns everything I don’t need (which is not me anyway) reminds me of what comes out of a volcano, burning everything not needed, leaving only what is pure and making the most fertile soil ever. Time and space colliding into tranquility. My South node is in Capricorn, lots of burning and doing, outside of me. My north node in Cancer desires to learn to burn what is not needed inside of me and rest in tranquility and stillness. 🙏