The Elements Of Human Experience: Radiance Sutras Verse 78

During this session, we discuss Verse 78 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 are reading from the Radiant Sutras.

The Radiant Sutras is a beautiful book.

It's a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra and it's by this wonderful man named Lauren Roche and he wrote this in a way that kind of brings the Sanskrit alive like a poem so that our hearts can feel something new.

Some of these sutras are practices that you can do for transformation or for healing and some of them are simply ways of seeing the world differently.

So what we're going to do today is I'm going to read a passage and for everyone who has the book we are reading number 78.

I do highly recommend buying this book.

I'm not an affiliate.

I have nothing to do with it just so you know but it is my favorite tantric book to have sitting by your bedside and even if all you do is wake up and kind of open it up to a random page read it and just let that idea float through your consciousness all day like osmosis.

What page?

Page 113.

So I'm going to read it and then we're going to have a discussion and then if we have time we'll do a meditation on it.

So even if you have the book let's close our eyes and let's just breathe deeply and I'd love for you to come into that place in the center of your chest your heart center and feel your timelessness.

Even though your body is busy pumping blood and maybe sitting or lying down wherever you are maybe even your mind is thinking about things almost like you're this almost like you're this quiet person meditating in the middle of a busy street and while everyone is running around you you are sitting quietly eyes closed and breathing.

Imagine your heart center is like that.

Imagine that this is your connection to God the consciousness to whatever you understand that to be.

Feel yourself breathing gently.

This is a huge journey of the tantric world of feeling our divine self within our physical world.

So just imagining yourself sitting in your own heart center bathing in that divine light breathing deeply.

Let's listen to the sutra.

Desire.

Lust.

Longing.

Anger.

Humming in your blood.

Confusion.

Jealousy.

Bewilderment.

Swirling in your head.

Catch the first hint as passion rises.

The first quickening heartbeat.

Embrace that vibrancy with a mind vast as the sky.

Witness the elemental motion of emotion.

Fire burning.

Illuminating.

Water gushing.

Cleansing.

Air inspiring.

Soothing.

Earth supporting.

Holding.

Space expanding.

Embracing.

You are in the temple of desire.

Go deeper still and rest in essence.

Awake to infinite spiritual energy surging into form.

What comes to you when you hear that?

Emotions or thoughts?

Or is there a phrase in there that rings through your mind?

It's interesting how it embraces so-called negative emotions as part of the deepening negative emotions as part of the deepening spiritual experience.

Exactly.

Passion.

Elemental motion.

Creation.

I don't understand rest in essence.

What is essence?

Awesome question.

We'll talk about that.

Anger humming in your blood is beautiful.

The connection of humans to nature through emotions.

Living before thinking.

Betrayal.

Catch the first hint of passion.

I love the alertness.

It's a really interesting one.

The infinite surging into form.

Love it.

What came to me is what I try to practice nowadays.

Not perfect as it is challenging at times.

Watching the rise of these emotions.

Begging a witness to it but not it.

But resting in the essence which is the self.

The spirit that is watching.

Watching all emotions but not it.

Quickening heartbeat.

Catch it.

Oh yes.

That was juicy.

Totally.

So it's exactly that.

That these are what we would call as so-called negative emotions.

And they can be.

If they are left unattended these are the emotions that can torment us and kind of torture our days.

And the problem is is that our mind,

Our brain,

Adds stories and thoughts to the emotion.

We feel anger and then a thought construct which in Tantra they call or in Sanskrit they call a vikalpa which isn't important unless you're interested in Sanskrit.

But these thought constructs then rise and say can you believe they did that?

Like all these thoughts are going to come in and they're going to now amplify the emotion.

But here's the thing.

It feels like it's amplifying the emotion but in fact the thoughts are dissipating the energy of the emotion.

So this sutra says when you feel the emotion catch it.

Quickening heartbeat.

Catch it.

Yes Nancy.

That you feel the emotion rising.

Feel that feeling.

Don't let the mind get involved.

Don't let any constructs in.

Just feel the emotion.

This is where the in the eight limbs of yoga dharana,

Single-pointed concentration.

When you feel the emotion feel it in its purity.

Feel it.

Feel it.

Why?

Why do we want to feel it in its absolute essence?

Because if we don't allow any thoughts in this pure energy is actually our own aliveness.

This is our life force.

Our life force isn't just sexual energy or happiness or joy or love.

When we actually feel these desires,

The anger,

The jealousy and we allow no thoughts in that that heart pumping experience.

That's us.

That's the oneness.

That's all that we are.

So this sutra says when they arise feel them completely but don't let your mind in.

And this is a very interesting thing and someone said it earlier in the chat that many spiritual traditions will say you have to erase anger.

You have to erase jealousy.

These are things that will take you from your path.

But one of the unique aspects of tantra is that they say no this is normal.

This is the normal human experience.

We're meant to be angry.

We're meant to have jealousy.

We're meant to have desire.

It's like we have this weird idea that we you know when people talk about oh well I am a spiritual being having a human experience or something like that.

Which is true.

I 100% agree with that.

Just so you know.

But what we don't understand is that it doesn't mean we're meant to be like God.

We're a spiritual being having a human experience.

We're meant to have emotions.

We're meant to have anger.

We're meant to be happy.

We're meant to swim in cold water and warm seas.

We're meant to have all these experiences.

That's why we're on earth.

They're not flaws.

We choose the human experience and then resent it.

Right?

We're supposed to feel these things.

And if we deeply want to have a temper tantrum.

And I mean this in a very genuine way.

If my soul wants to get so angry that I kick and scream and freak out and lose my mind.

Because maybe that's what my soul wants in this moment.

Then the emotion will rise and all the thought programs,

All the karmic patterns,

All the samskaras,

All of them will dive into that emotion and create an entire moving picture of absolute chaos.

And you'll be able to flail and tantrum and lose your mind.

That's also a human experience.

Like to really get that we get to have whatever experience we want to have.

Now if we have a habit of allowing all of those thoughts and all those karmic patterns.

So I genuinely believe that karma is not punishment from the past.

That karma is simply energetic patterns that we continue.

Sometimes they're very positive but they're often very painful.

They're difficult patterns.

So now imagine your soul is sort of stepping through a karmic pattern.

Maybe you're in a relationship that is abusive in some way.

And that relationship could be with an intimate partner.

It could be with a parent.

It could be with a friend.

It could be with a boss.

It doesn't matter.

But for some reason you're always the one getting in trouble.

You're always the one that has to walk on eggshells.

You're always the one that has to,

You know what I mean,

Like maybe that's the pattern that you are replaying in this life right now.

And again it's okay.

This is it's kind of why we're why we're here on earth.

So now imagine you're kind of unconscious of the pattern.

You know those patterns are running in you and you think you just have bad luck.

You just think the world is out to get you.

You just think that everyone's a jerk and you're a victim and you know you're kind of unconscious about the fact that now I'm kind of playing out a pattern here.

So then so imagine you're kind of in that unconscious state and now one of these emotions rise.

Desire,

Anger,

Greed,

Delusion,

Pride,

And jealousy.

These are the six emotions from the six emotions from the sutra.

So one of these emotions rise and you're unconsciously in this victim mode,

This pattern that you're in.

What happens?

Well now suddenly that pattern you're in it's almost like you're on a hamster wheel and now all of a sudden you have this energy come in and now the hamster wheel goes a million miles faster.

It's like and you're like completely giving her.

When we go on a spiritual path we develop a witness mind.

We develop the ability to observe ourselves and not to become aloof from our experience but to help us learn and explore something.

So then from that witness mind we see the anger rising and we realize that's interesting that I'm so angry.

You can be very angry but still actually observe yourself being angry at the same time and you can choose to not let the hamster wheel turn.

You can even be on the hamster wheel.

You can be walking that hamster wheel,

Turning it in your just day-to-day life because we're just living our life and all of a sudden that anger rises and we just take a deep breath.

We stop walking on the hamster wheel.

We breathe deeply into that anger.

We stop all thought and we feel who we really are.

Like we feel the essence of God.

We feel the essence of our true spirit.

It's like that whole thing that oh we're a spiritual being having a human experience.

When we can slow the mind down and feel the emotions we feel the essence of that spirit.

And this is how we can use these emotions to remember who we are.

And what's interesting in the tantric path is that every time we do this every time we catch the quickening heartbeat every time we do that we have that awareness it changes us a little bit.

It's like it expands our awareness just a little bit and we look at life a little bit differently.

I thought that was life.

You mean there's something else other than that?

I don't understand what the purpose is.

I mean I'm a lunatic and then I'm supposed to then just be aware that I'm a lunatic.

That just makes it even more insane.

Yeah I'm reading a book right now called The Way of the Dream Catcher and it's an amazing book.

I bought it at a used bookstore about a month ago and I had no idea why I bought it and I started reading it a couple days ago and it turns out that this guy was Thomas Merton's best friend and Thomas Merton was this amazing Trappist Catholic monk who lived in Gethsemane monastery in Kentucky in the U.

S.

And he was very formative for me in my life.

I deeply studied him for quite he wrote over 50 books.

He was an amazing amazingly grounded spiritual teacher.

So the idea that this man that this book is about that I'm reading was Thomas Merton's best friend.

I can't tell you what that does in my heart.

Well the book's about this guy whose name is Robert Lacks and he died in 2000 I think but he lived in Patmos,

Greece.

He was a hermit,

A poet,

A writer,

Philosopher.

Many people thought he was one of the wisest people ever.

He wasn't very famous because he was a hermit and he never really drew anyone to him but people would come to him kind of idea.

But if you asked him say the question that you asked Howard which is a really good question he'd probably if you asked him like you know are you kind of a lunatic are you kind of crazy or are you he'd kind of smile at you I think and say yeah I probably am but the difference between him and maybe other people is that his conscious mind or his witness mind was so developed he fully accepted all of his quirks all of his tendencies.

He knew he loved being a loner and he also knew that he loved being connected with people.

He knew that he he just he loved he had a real wanderlust he loved traveling from place to place to place he but it's like that's what that witness mind does it allows us to see ourselves with love because the reality is is sometimes we've had very difficult lives.

We've grown up in very difficult places and and it has twisted us and it has caused perhaps some quote dysfunctions that make it hard for us to connect with others it makes us hard to let our minds relax it makes it hard to find our life's purpose but it's almost like can we develop that sense of self inside of us that can watch ourselves in our life with love can we feel the emotions we feel stop the mind because the mind is what holds all of those stories the mind and even we can say oh but the body carries trauma also but what part of the body carries trauma the nervous system which is the mind so when we slow the mind down we slow the nervous system down in our whole body this is so important and when we slow the mind down all of those patterns all of those adaptations all of the experiences and traumas are quiet are still every single one of us has this ability imagine your nervous system is like an audio book that is perpetually reading the story of your life out loud to you over and over again re-traumatizing you this is what's going on and then all of a sudden you find the switch that says pause pause there's no story that's what we're aiming for that's the tantric experience and maybe that's the bonus of these very difficult heavy emotions because they get our attention we suddenly see ourself full of jealousy it's like oh this is a big one hold on i'm going to take a deep breath and i'm going to stop the wheel just for a moment and this experience like you can feel it in that silence it's very rich and i can't explain it longing yearning grief depression these feelings are uncomfortable can the depth of feeling be illusory my uncle died and i can't bring myself to travel and attend the funeral the people pleaser on me in me is telling me i'm doing something wrong by not attending another part of me knows that i can't go you know what's beautiful about things like funerals or weddings is that when we close our eyes and we breathe deeply we know that whether we're there or not isn't important like sometimes when we get caught up in the shoulds of life and the expectations of the clan it's almost presented to us like you have to be there or else everything will fall apart but it's not true you can grieve maybe best where you are in a tub maybe you create your own ritual with an altar and a candle or you do something to honor him in your own way or maybe you write him a letter i think the most important thing is that we know that we have choice because again even in the in the context of this in this talk when we feel the truth when we feel the spirit inside it's completely free it's universal energy it's infinite it's all the things the things and from that place we choose to do whatever we're meant to do to me that's always the leap of faith to honor our inner truth when that is not the popular opinion i love the word conviction when you have a deep conviction when you act from conviction and if english isn't your first language conviction is like when you know something deep in your heart and you stand in that truth and even though the winds blow around you and people disagree you have a deep conviction that you're doing the right thing and when we can live with conviction we are so happy there's a peace inside of us when we can have conviction and in my life it's always been these kinds of leaps of faith where in my heart i knew something and it was not the popular opinion and i very likely would have disappointed somebody or made someone uncomfortable or whatever but every time we follow that truth it deepens our conviction it's like it deepens our our direct connection with our soul with our soul that i am here as a soul having an experience it's very interesting what has been your experience of finding that switch that enabled the pause it's funny the first thing that comes to me is crisis you know that there's moments when you're in crisis whether it's personal or whether it's with someone else that it's like reality busts open like suddenly you're just like what and you realize that this is all nonsense it's kind of like one day you're walking along and you think that you actually have to do you have to work these eight hours you have to do this commute you have to do this you have to do this you have to make this person happier to make your parents happy you have to you have to you have to you have to you have to go to that thing you don't want to do and then one day you're in a car accident you break your leg and you end up in the hospital for four months and none of those things had to be done you just and you realize that it's all made up and if you choose to do it like do it and if you love doing it do it and if you have to pay rent do it but to believe that that is the requirement of life it's just not true i remember when for anyone who's new to my world in 1999 i was sick this was a huge turning point for me when i found my first pause and i had breast slumps and i was very sick and i wrote this book about the journey what if you could skip the cancer my teacher at one point i was lying on his table i was 29 years old my kids were two and four years old i was married we had a dairy farm extremely busy life he said what do you really want right now katrina if you could do anything in the world what would you do and i cried and i said i would just go away and he said well then you should do that and we were in his he had a cabin a little chalet on the woods he says you can come here it's free you can be here for as long as you want i said well i can't i can't i mean my husband what will he do and my kids and the farm and i am you know irreplaceable and he looked at me with that twinkle of a guru right and he looks at me and he goes well you could die then i'm sure they'd figure it out pause you know and so i did i i went to the cabin and i stayed there for a while and everything figured out nobody lost it without me okay let's do a short meditation let's close our eyes wherever you are whether you're sitting upright or you're lying down just breathing through the nose expanding your belly as you inhale contracting as you exhale and then as you exhale i'd like you to visualize yourself sitting on a park bench when something has happened and you are so angry and you're just so angry you can feel this anger rising in your heart rising through your body you can feel the element of fire coursing through you and in that moment breathe deeply allow the anger don't change the anger but breathe deeply feel your heart pumping feel the aliveness inside of you this is the experience of being alive this is our kundalini flowing through us imagine allowing ourselves to feel whatever we feel you know and maybe as you allow that anger to burn inside you honor it and all of a sudden a stillness comes and you're taken to a much more subtle realm you can still feel the anger but it's quiet and it's peaceful and you feel held and then in your mind's eye as you sit on the park bench you open your eyes and you look around and there's a campfire that people are sitting around just down the road and you see this fire one of the basic elements of life and you realize that you have this fire inside of you too and just like when you gaze at a flame inside the flame there is a stillness a quiet and you just got to feel that wonderful energy you just got to feel that wonderful element of earth within yourself it's often why we seek drama in our lives unconsciously it makes us feel alive so imagine knowing that no matter what quote negative emotion rises there is this beautiful peaceful place inside of you where perhaps this emotion is leading you to feel where perhaps this emotion is leading you to feel water perhaps in sadness fire perhaps in anger earth perhaps in the desire of greed or accumulating air in pride or even delusion imagine that every emotion takes us back to earth makes us feel one with everything and helps us feel the oneness of god of consciousness Kama,

Krodha,

Lobha,

Moha,

Madha,

Matsarya,

Gokhare,

Buddham,

Nistimmatam,

Krita,

Tattvattham,

Avasthasyate desire lust longing anger humming in your blood confusion jealousy bewilderment swirling in your head catch the first hint as passion rises the first quickening heartbeat embrace that vibrancy with a mind vast as the sky witness the elemental motion of emotion fire burning illuminating water gushing cleansing air inspiring soothing earth supporting holding space expanding embracing you are in the temple of desire go deeper still and rest in essence awake to infinite spiritual energy surging into form let's take a deep breath together and exhale thank you so much for being here and i hope you have a wonderful day