Welcome to this Lakshmi Mantra.
Now to begin,
I will tell you the story of Lakshmi and then we'll go through 108 rounds of Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
So Lakshmi is the goddess of grace,
Abundance,
Wealth and beauty in the Vedic Pantheon.
And she bestowed this most beautiful garland gift on the sage Dravasis.
He was praying to her,
Giving salutations every morning.
And so she came to him and gave him this lovely garland as a gift.
And it was his most precious gift.
He loved it.
He wore it everywhere.
He'd smell its beauty in the morning and just lit up his days.
And after a while,
Of course,
It got a bit tattered,
Right as it would by wearing it and loving it so much.
I don't know if any of you had a blanket as a child,
But imagine that favorite blanket that you carried around everywhere.
You know,
After time it gets a little bit ratty.
So there was a parade and down the street comes Indra,
The God of gods riding on his elephant.
And Dravasis says,
Yes,
This is who I'm going to give this gift to.
He will love this most precious gift of mine.
So he came and he brought his precious garland to Indra and Indra's elephant,
Took it with its trunk.
And before he was out of sight,
He just threw it around the neck of his element.
And Dravasis said,
Shame on you,
Curse you Indra and curse the three worlds.
That was my most precious gift.
And with that,
The sky started to turn dark.
There was no food being produced.
The land went fallow.
People stopped making love.
People started arguing.
Babies were no longer being born.
Children were being ignored by their mothers.
Companies were not treating the earth and their people with respect.
People were littering and not caring.
And beauty and grace was gone.
With that disrespect,
Lakshmi decided to hide.
Lakshmi is not the type of goddess who's going to fight you if you have disrespected her.
She's just simply going to disappear.
As beauty does when we don't appreciate it,
It simply just can't be found.
So everyone,
The gods and the people and the animals and everything,
Things were starting to die.
It was going dark.
So they all went to Vishnu,
Who is her consort.
They all went to Vishnu and said,
Where is she?
We need to find her.
And he said,
Oh,
I know where she hangs out.
It's his consort.
So they're together.
And so he called up the other gods and they all said,
Okay,
Let's get together and we're going to churn the ocean.
She rests at the bottom of the ocean.
We'll find her there.
So they take a dunda,
A staff,
And they put it in the water.
And all the gods and demigods are on one side and all the demons and Raksha says are on the other side.
And they all take it and they all start pulling and working together actually as one team.
They're all turning and turning the ocean.
Shreem calling for her grace,
Calling for her beauty to come up.
And what happens when they all start churning in this way is the holla holla comes up,
The nasty,
The grossest things about all the things that we discard in life that get put at the bottom of the ocean.
I don't have to name them.
You know what I'm talking about.
All of our waste,
All of our garbage,
All the grossness comes up to the top as often happens when we start doing this work and jump into this practice,
Right?
We start noticing,
Oh,
There's that again.
Oh,
I'm doing that.
Right?
So that all comes up to the top and Shiva takes it and he slurps it up and he holds it in his throat.
You might have seen images of him at the blue throat,
Holding it in sacred mantra.
Right?
So by his special gift of holding this,
Everybody else can get back to that churning,
That churning.
So they go and they churn and they churn.
And finally up she rises on her pink Lotus and she takes Vishnu's hand and the sun begins to shine and babies are being born.
Lovers are making love.
Plants start to grow.
Companies treat their people and the planet with respect.
People are no longer unnecessarily buying extra things and discarding them and polluting and trashing this beautiful planet.
And things are well once again.
So this is the story of Lakshmi of this grace,
Of this beauty.
And so we'll do 108 rounds of Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha as that offering also from Shiva,
That mantra holding in the throat to help her arise back again.
So find your comfortable seat.
Close your eyes.
If you're driving and listen to this,
Please don't close your eyes,
But feel free to join me.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
Om Shreem Lakshmiye Namaha.
May this mantra resonate out with more grace,
Beauty,
And abundance in your life.
Thank you.
