Tapasya ... Look Within

The process of self-improvement requires TAPASYA. Do you have a DEEP WISH to know yourself and to figure out how thinking-energy works? It's like being a spiritual scientist. If you are not really interested in understanding yourself …Do you think others should be interested in you?

Give yourself plenty of attention.
Tapasya and inner focus is easy, when there is curiosity.

Transcript

I'm Shanti and welcome to Soul to Soul.

This is Rose from Glasgow Meditation Centre in our space and we're going to talk tonight about this very very interesting subject of Tapasya.

So Tapasya means looking at the self.

People talk about deep Tapasya and sometimes people think that to sit for half an hour is meditation and think of peace and God and spiritual things is Tapasya and in a way it's very useful for Tapasya but Tapasya is meditation in action.

To be a Tapaswi means as far as I understand according to Raja Yoga meditation is we have yoga,

We practice peace and we practice self-awareness and we look at the good qualities of the self and to reflect on these good qualities and put them into practice during action is Tapasya because during action I can get caught up in the way I would normally do things and maybe interact with feelings of worry etc or be concerned with whatever comes in front of me but if I've been practicing Tapasya I'll want to give it my best shot.

So the process of self improvement is what we're all practicing if we're looking at Raja Yoga meditation and this requires Tapasya because otherwise I'll forget and I'll react in the old way over and over and over again so if we sincerely have a deep wish to know ourselves and to figure out how our own thinking energy works it's almost like being a spiritual scientist and if you're not really interested in understanding yourself do you think that others should be interested in you?

If I'm not interested in myself why should they be interested in me?

So with Tapasya I teach myself to give myself a lot of attention how I am what I desire what outcome I would like to see and usually there's something so good in us that we want the best to come out and then we get a bit annoyed with ourselves when the best didn't come out and something else came out instead and we think huh I should have said I should have done and oh gosh but I'll do that the next time but if I'm going to do it the next time I would have to check myself and tell myself and sit in this what we might call Tapasya and teach myself that no I'm going to do it this way so Tapasya and inner focus is easy when there's curiosity when I'm curious as to what goes on inside my own self it's like when a business person is making a lot of money they would never lose interest in making the money they would be full attention so words like self-discipline and intense meditation and solitude or giving up and letting go can make this sound like hard work but once the spark of interest in the self is ignited once I start to think like a business person it's actually easy to observe my thinking energy it becomes very easy I'm able to see the way I do things and and and some of the things I might appreciate a great deal and think yeah and other things I might think oops and so it teaches me to seriously know my energy and how it works how it goes up and down and dips and surges and so I can prompt myself again again to watch my thoughts and whilst doing that I don't have to sit for hours in deep deep deep meditation I'm still getting on with my life and still interacting with others being friendly with others cooperative with others but I keep my inner eye on my thinking and feeling that's really the important thing then I can give it my best shot and feels okay about whatever interaction or whatever came my way so this really is the very very straightforward approach to being a tapas way when I see stress and troubles in the world I do care deeply it's not that we get so engrossed in itself because the reason we go in for self-improvement is to be of use so I don't get angry and hopeless because I'm busy creating positivity and peace inside myself and I've made a decision inside myself to interact in a calm useful reassuring helpful way again this is my understanding of being a tapas way I won't get tangled up in destructive energies I'll keep myself away from those such as fighting and quarrelling it doesn't mean I run away but whilst being there and maybe in front of fighting and quarrelling I'll do my best to keep my energy of peace to be up there in the front and involved with those energies and calming and soothing those energies and keeping myself reassured and steady and stable again this is a tapas way so the past is the awareness of my own self at every step to remember who we are and remember the divine when I remember the divine and the qualities of the divine and all remember as Raja yoga is teaching us that as a soul we share those same energies and that everyone in front of me is a soul but everyone in front of me has moved on to using maybe the anger and quarrelling etc and are distressed so if I was to take seriously my role now in the world it would be my role to do everything just to send out accepting understanding friendly helpful vibrations of peace and love in a very natural and normal way which could help to take the top off these forceful energies so if I stay in the world of spiritual light and be like a lighthouse and a lighthouse and remember the things I've been teaching myself and the energies that are within me but now are accessible to me as a tapas way it encourages me to create something new over and over again and to feel that happiness of thinking gosh success I didn't know that I could remain so steady in such an atmosphere I didn't know that I would be required to be so useful I didn't know I would be there for someone to say thank you that was I feel much better now I didn't know I was going to be asked to be that so it become more and more natural to be like a lighthouse create something new why did we say a light house a lighthouse usually is on the edge of the ocean and the storms of the ocean I haven't heard of it maybe some half we're in a lighthouse crashes but hardly ever does it get harmed by the force of the ocean and it continues to give out light which helps them all to find the shore all the ships and the boats find land through the power of the lighthouse so to be a lighthouse and a lighthouse it is like living in a different space so I teach myself to be in this different space and it it brings happiness to the self it gives me back my self-respect I'm still getting on with my life I'm still interacting with others but I'm being friendly and cooperative but I'm keeping the inner eye on my thinking and my feelings and so actually it's very very easy to observe our thinking energy it's not difficult once we start the process if we do meditation anyway it just gives us a different way to look at things to focus on what is good in me because this is we have started to do meditation for self-improvement and if I don't know who I'm improving and I don't know what I have to improve and I don't know the energies that are at my fingertips in a way it's like being a spiritual artist I would say but an artist has a palette of color and it's like I can use the colors the utensils the tools I practice using them and then I get quite surprised to see that it actually works and so it doesn't mean people are going to applaud me because they won't it's energy so a lot of the time people won't know that energy has touched them and they'll just treat you quite offhand and normal and no big deal whatever it was in fact they might think it was them and they might start praising themselves so it teaches us to be humble without ego so I have to keep my inner eye on my own thinking and feeling and remain curious about what is possible for me to do and create something new and it is like awareness of myself at every step but remember that I'm a soul being of energy and remember the divine the one above okay I like this theme that it's something easy because the word tapasya does tend to be associated with renouncing and giving up and letting go and solitude and silence and withdrawal and all of these things can sometimes come across as a little bit daunting or austere and then I liked the bit about the businessman a businessperson making a huge profit I think that I mean we're talking from the West and this is more an Eastern custom but it's been associated with holy men and gurus etc so ordinary people think that there's no way they could do tapasya it requires them to run away leave their houses as you're saying and give up all the different things so they can focus only on stillness silence peace and light and austerity but no it's not like that it's the way we look inside and see it and then use our own energy and it's self-improvement self-improvement yes because you would never have thought to be kind and gentle at some point you would just got stuck into whatever was the argument to try and prove yourself that you knew better or or to try and stop an argument through a bit of force you wouldn't know there was another way and there was another part where you said how can I expect others to be interested in me if I'm not interested in my own self and how I how I work and how I think that's a good point because I can be looking out for attention and yet I'm not attending to myself properly yeah again we're used to looking for approval from others all the time and it's so important to us that others approve and it would be so important to us that we would win the argument and it'd be so important that they would say good for you well done well done you managed to beat that person and you know and and then you expect them to see that oh what a wonder you did there you're a wonder so we maybe think that self-improvement and meditation is going to get this big applause but I tell you to my experience that doesn't actually happen like that because in a very natural and lovely way you quietly change you quietly start to use your original energies and it doesn't make that big wow factor because it's not force but it has a huge beneficial impact on your entire surroundings I think that's the key word is force actually when I know that that kind of quite often goes along with that thought of austerity and intense meditation there's a feeling of force and you're saying it's not that it's not that so you mentioned something so good inside us when we want to self-improve it's usually because we're not seeing lots of good so how do we start to identify the good and they not get you said we get annoyed when we see that the base didn't come out in a scene as well so when the base doesn't come out it just have to be start to have faith in yourself really and start to believe in yourself or and if you're practicing meditation and practicing that you're a soul and thinking about being a soul and attending spiritual classes if possible and so it's like an education on who we really are and if I'm doing this I begin to realize I am a kind soul I am a generous-hearted soul I am someone who doesn't like violence I am someone who wants to be helpful I am someone who wants to appreciate others and this way of thinking encourages me to appreciate myself when I do appreciate myself it's real and so I'll keep that faith going in myself excuse me even when I get to on did I'll keep going because I think know what I am I am peaceful I am kind I'm generous-hearted I don't like violence so you keep mentioning things about study and spiritual classes so this attention on the self seems to be spurred on by fresh information and new ideas and so how should I study what kind of things would you recommend I think you start to look at Raja Yoga meditation and find out the information that goes along with it like all things you have to start somewhere a lot of people will do the course in Raja Yoga meditation and find out that they are a soul and then they'll be you know advised to practice their meditation and to also think that there's like thousands and thousands and thousands of people practicing this Raja Yoga meditation and that vibration is throughout the whole world and it's a huge power when you look out there you'll see the power of violence throughout the whole world that's a huge power but alongside that there's another vibration and almost like another world of people who are practicing meditation and practicing peace and that vibration of peace is in every corner of the world and so quite often when you're doing meditation you're not alone you might be alone but you're not alone you have the almost like a cloud of of supports coming from the whole world it's like you've joined the the other side the nonviolent energy does that make sense okay so thank you for listening and now we'll just finish with a few minutes of Raja Yoga meditation so we sit very comfortably if possible and keep our eyes open and be aware that we are energy in the center of the forehead I'm the soul the point of living life energy I am this point of living light and I'm in the center of my forehead just remember who you are and remember the divine the one above and practice being in this world of spiritual light and remember that we're sitting alone focusing but we're joined by thousands of others who are also focusing and this is a very powerful energy of peace I am the soul I am like a living lighthouse others can often feel that energy of peace even if they are not practicing meditation it can touch their hearts and so just feel that we are creating newness freshness calmness and keep my inner eye on myself on my thinking and my feeling actually it is very very easy to create this peaceful and thinking energy and to be interested in ourselves as living light energies and to become an example for our own self and an example for the world and let those rays of energy of the self combined with the divine and the thousands and thousands of others touch the world I am a soul a being a light a being of beautiful beautiful life energy Oh sound

Reviews

As always 🙂

Thank you.
I have been on this path for a while without knowing it.
Tapasya. It is a better way than I had before January 3,2016.
This is so edifying my friend.
Much Metta, peace and love to you.
Steven.