To deal successfully with a Kali experience, it is necessary to have a commitment to liberation that is greater and more powerful than the ego’s defense system. It means you have to give your life to liberation. Only then can you detect where you still hold on out of pride or weakness.

Kali is the supreme power, the power of naked compassion, the power of time that dissolves anything that holds us imprisoned in what is temporal and mortal. Only your immortality will survive Her. Having a keen desire for liberation from suffering brings to your attention the inner sources of your suffering, so you can set yourself free.

Notice when your mind is complaining about something that has to do with defending something in you that is painful. Drop the defense. Try your best to see how this moment serves you. How what happened is a blessing in disguise. Mistrust the impulse to defend or attack. Turn inside instead to see what it is in you that you are defending. If you look sincerely, you will be shown. Here is the true cause of pain and discomfort, and here you can set yourself free.

As long as you have anything to defend, you are not yet free. Dropping the defense is as easy as deciding to return your awareness to the Heart where your freedom always resides. It will heal and nurture your entire being, and that includes everything because you are one with all.

Ramgiri

HeartSourcing.com

The post The Inevitable Meeting with Kali first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

When we have opened even a little bit to that bountiful quality of the Heart, then we can begin to sense that “Giving IS receiving.” Giving and receiving are one and the same movement. Let’s say you give some money to a worthy cause. As you do that, you appear to ‘lose’ something (money), but are enriching yourself because you become a giving person, you become aligned with the deepest strain of your true nature, the Heart. So what you receive is not only vastly more precious and important, it also lasts forever, it cannot be lost, like money can be easily lost. And so it is with generosity in all aspects of life; when you give you are automatically enriched.

Practicing generosity in tangible ways is the direct antidote to the scarcity driven fear that is unconsciously imprinted into all of us from early on. That is why developing generosity has always been part of all true sadhana. Opening to the flow of giving and receiving is necessary to create a core capacity for awareness beyond the limiting mindset of our culture that asks “What’s in it for me?”  With each concrete act of giving, generosity becomes a more permanent inner state of mind and heart and reveals to us the absolute abundance of creation.

When we give freely, receiving is immediate and complete.  Nothing else is required. Notice how you feel in an act of unconditional giving. It means you don’t even expect a “Thank you,” or any other acknowledgment or appreciation.

To strengthen your capacity for unconditional giving and to overcome any subtle expectation of reward, here is an exercise:

Your task is to do three things (big or small) every day for someone else, without them finding out who did it. If you are found out, you have to start from the beginning and find another three ways of anonymous giving. Many people find this difficult in the beginning, but continue and notice how such secret giving makes you feel.

Every expression of unconditional generosity purifies the heart and reveals a bit of the absolute abundance of the Heart. Such selfless actions create and empower a field of generosity in and around you. They show you that it is indeed a privilege to have people in your life to whom you can give – of your time, your interest, your service, your money, and more.

Stay in balance with your giving. Give as much as you can, but not more. As you develop a sense of your capacity to give, it may surprise you. And as you give, be aware of what you receive. With each act of giving, do you notice what you get? Do you notice the precious momentary high of this act of pure love and service with no strings attached? And are you aware of the lasting and timeless quality of becoming an abundant and generous human being by each act of giving, living out of your abundant soul and not your ego?

As you become able to give like this, you gather the only true wealth, which will not eventually be lost. It is far superior to material wealth. Even the richest person on earth in the end dies alone and penniless. But we all take with us the abundance or scarcity of our hearts, who we have become, either by living in fear or out of confidence, inner security and peace, built through generosity.

Love, Ramgiri

© 2017 HeartSourcing® Institute, Ramgiri Braun, Ph.D.

The post Cultivating Generosity first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

“You must want to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All conflict is in truth a burning away of conflict itself. Pain makes us tired of pain, and although the confused mind revels in its distortions, there is a fundamental sanity in everyone that bides its time, but will not be denied.

When the time has come that the soul is matured by its pain and it’s waiting, it kindles its own funeral pyre in the unconscious awareness that this light will be the beacon that will guide it home. And all that can burn will burn until only the pure white ash of absolute peace is left. It is the sacred ash that powders the wings of the phoenix.

This bird of freedom has waited long, silently maturing in the shell of immature mind, until the day has come to spread its wings, and as if from nowhere the soul suddenly knows. It recognizes its own freedom in the space of nothing that creates time and space and all worlds time and space can contain. And from that day on awakened mind liberates itself in whatever comes. Everything is revealed as the nectar of infinite heart, the void as the soft ground of everything, the pillow of bliss that supports the god of the soul.

The last desire then is to share this miraculous state of naked and friendly nothingness, the supreme bliss of nothing special, the end of the eternity of imagined pain. For love is what ties everything together. It is a vast net that holds any soul open enough to catch itself in the nectar of its own heart.

Love, Ramgiri

Funeral pyre in Manikarnika Ghat, Varanasi

The post To Rise Anew first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

That day her world turned upside down.

Rose has an extraordinary heart—but then all hearts are extraordinary. But Rose also understands how to keep the mind from shutting down the heart and how to break the spell of fear with stillness and love. This understanding is now being tested.

As her husband Mike’s sudden terminal illness is turning her life upside down, she knows the only way to deal with it is by coming back to her heart again and again in ongoing reliance on her guru, Maharaji Neem Karoli Baba.

The path of our soul through suffering, joy and grace is difficult for us to see and to make sense of in ways that bring peace to the mind. This is because our perspective is so limited to the situation – or even the lifetime – at hand.

And yet beyond all attachment and pain we can find a place of faith and peace based on experience (not imagination) that can bring us solace and great, surprising strength. It is the Source of inexhaustible love in us—a supreme, unshakable love. It is the love of guru, the love of God, our love.

All turmoil on the surface of life has the hidden purpose of granting us access to that unwavering love. Rose is experiencing this now as never before, and because love wants to share itself, she agreed that I publish some short excerpts from our email conversation.

Rose: This love you offer me is a pulse of Maharaji. The embrace is palpable. The spaciousness I’m having is disarming every thought. I feel safe, secure and clear. It appears I’m making decisions but I’m in a flow of perfection unfolding. I feel soft and held despite all that is going on around us. Saturated and grateful. In love, Rose

That saturation and gratitude, that spaciousness and safety, that security and clarity, are a state of being in which we can flow with presence and power, knowing that anything and everything Life presents before us, is an opportunity for awakening into a yet deeper love.

Our challenges are a catalyst for stretching our capacity for acceptance and surrender to what is. We can react to them with devastation and suffering or do our best to encounter them with openness and acceptance. Resistance to what is, is the root of suffering. But we fall into the shadow in order to release it into the light.

Rose: Sometime ago we worked on the fear that terrified me most – my husband dying. Sitting at his bedside just now, completely vulnerable, willing. This morning weeping doubled me over.  The ways I rely on Mike are showing up, the pain is in his physical absence at my side. With the shock subsiding, ambiguous loss is here. For all of us…. our world shattered on Thursday. 

I can’t surrender THIS and it’s already gone… was it ever real…, my surrenders are conditional, this but not This… Raging keening weeping … How can this cancer be Love?????

We believe that we have to believe our stressful thoughts. We have an unconscious affinity to fall into disastrous emotions, which we consider inevitable. Then we mistake those who agree with our terror as being compassionate.

But none of this turns out to be true. There is a way of staying in our true being at challenging times and meeting reality with an open and fearless heart.

Rg: Rose, knowingly or unknowingly you are held in the space of unconditional, all-embracing love, your true nature, which is the nature of Reality. Mind objects and wants its way. But beyond our preferences and desires, reality is always offering the best of all possibilities, which is often very difficult to see for the mind. But the heart has the ability to surrender to what is – again and again – and so come eventually to the space of ‘loving what is.’

Cancer is not love, and it is not non-love. It is part of the world of appearances. This world is empty in nature, like a common dream we share, and it is held in the space of love. This love includes anything and everything and when you become still it will show itself to you.

Stillness, like peace, is already present underneath the turmoil. The turmoil is the dance of life in its wrathful mode. This mode is the knowledge-giver. It forces open what we want to be closed, when the time for openness is at hand. This opening is always love. What hurts are the ways we hold on to what is not.

You are held in the complete space of love for which you have to do nothing. It is there, because YOU ARE THAT. Let the tears flow, let the thoughts rage, even then you are safe and you are loved completely.

Rose: I Treasure your wisdom message, so very welcome as a transmission of unconditional love as the hell realms have their way with me and my dear ones. I talk to you. Talk and pray to Maharaji. The Chalisa [a chant to the Hindu deity Hanuman, the manifestation of faith and devotion] is streaming in my mind and heart. 

Two days ago, in a brief time of Mike finding his voice, I asked him to talk with Maharaji. He said yes and a kriya shivered his whole body. He has also chanted Ram with me and responded to the gayatri [mantra] with my daughter. Of course the earliest spoken words were the mantra “fuck”. 

Navigating my family’s resistance [as they perceive that] I have my head stuck up in my lotus flower calls up fierce strength. Durga [the warrior aspect of the Goddess] is in ICU. All of my new doctor friends are giving me tons to try to make sense of / or not. 

Your presence is a lifeline to the hridayam [the inner space of the Heart]. Nowing. Only Nowing while all about me churns.

Rg: There is a force beyond Mike’s (and your) present state. It is the living presence of the guru. We have the extreme blessing to be consciously connected to a being who is one with the Supreme and therefore concentrates his tremendous blessings on us all. Your best way is to remain as connected as possible to that immense compassion!

This may not always make the day-by-day, or rather moment-by-moment, any easier; it does however give it a direction, a purpose, a higher meaning and inevitably an outcome that is beneficial to all.

Dealing with difficulties is the fastest way to God.

Rose: Mike is walking with saints, talking without filters, a wandering love pilgrim. He shifts from speaking of no fear of death after burning in the bardos to making plans to drive, return to work and upgrade his insurance plan for better coverage for when he is over 60. 

Dropping all of this at Maharajis feet and stepping into the day. Grateful to be able to share with you in this way. 

My heart, Ram Ram

Rg: Please understand that Mike is more than completely safe from the point of view of the soul. I know you can sense that; it should give you some peace. It leaves the realm of our egos to deal with, and there too we are completely protected because we cannot be harmed by what, in the end, has no reality.

When life takes a difficult turn, it is a time when we receive special teachings from a universe that cares so deeply that it does not respect our ego comforts that keep us from evolving and waking up. Then we can break through to new levels of non-attachment and freedom, and from there to inner peace, understanding and love.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
~ Kahlil Gibran

Rose: In the hollows that sorrow is carving out of me, I have so much more capacity to drink in Love! It is a physical sensation.

Love is palpable and a great force as I navigate the realms of the medical paradigm … Consciousness is exploding ~ nothing else!!

Mike speaks of being slain. I witnessed his epic journey through the bardos, (as did the children). All he believed he was is gone, he is glowing as he basks in Loving Awareness and smiles so Big with very clear eyes as he breathes with Maharaji.

The love we are experiencing together defies anything previously imaginable.

Rg: What Mike believed he was—was it not far too small? I am so joyful that he is seeing a greater view and that the love that unites you is now revealing its true scope beyond time and what thoughts can contain!

I wish you strength to bend the forces around you into being of service to your higher purpose – and I know your love IS that strength.

With love,
Ramgiri

Ramgiri Braun, Ph.D.
HeartSourcing®

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The post Love, the Best Medicine in Hard Times first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

With every fiber of her being Radha yearns for union with Krishna, but at first he is a fickle lover. When he comes to her Radha is bathed in bliss. But the taste of love, the dance of lovers, the bliss of the Self is interrupted again and again as he leaves her and it plunges Radha into the searing pain of separation, kindling the fires of love to burn that much brighter.

Radha of course is the soul, in love with the divine Source in the heart, Krishna. Every soul, whether male or female, is Radha. Every one of us yearns for love and is given moments of happiness, glimpses of a fulfillment we can nurture and grow until it is infinite.

But at first our minds are not pure enough to stay in the heart, to experience the union of love all the time. The distractions of mind and emotions make it seem that our lover has left, but we are the ones who have closed the door to the heart. Every time that happens, every time we suffer the pangs of separation from love, our devotion and determination, our yearning and our surrender can deepen, until the day when Krishna no longer leaves.

Then we live permanently in the absolute intimacy of the heart.

On that day we realize that Krishna is everywhere. Our mystical vision has opened and we perceive that love has no bounds. It has become all-embracing. Everyone and everything is revealed to be our love. Love is no longer confined to its Source in the heart. Our being has become boundless; our love knows no limit. We have become one with us and therefore we are one with the world.

On that day we will truly know what love is.

Love,

Ramgiri
#HeartSourcing

The post Radha and Krishna first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

Ramgiri: Surrender is the sweetest word in my language. In my world it does not mean to ‘give up.’ Rather it means to open to love – to surrender the shell of fear around the heart and stand firm in the place of love, which is our pure being.

What is it that we surrender?

We surrender our ego that causes us nothing but pain and fear, our hardheadedness, the need to be right, the illusion that says “I know”. In surrender we open our heart to someone or something that can actually help us.

In my experience it comes in stages. First we can pray for surrender – because how can ‘we’ do it, the ‘we’ that causes all the trouble? When that prayer for the ability to surrender is genuine and deeply felt, then grace will come.

How do we feel that prayer deeply and genuinely? In two ways, either by love, or by sheer despair when we finally realize that our way just does not work. That is the hard way, to wait until you hit a wall and your life seems to fall apart. And then the surrender isn’t that deep because it is forced. So love is the best way, unconditional openness.

When I was 22, the idea to surrender to another human being was the furthest thing from my mind. And yet – somewhere, somehow I was given a hint that I could trust my guru Maharaji absolutely, that his love and his wisdom were reliable beyond question, that he could set me free of myself. And certainly I knew I could trust myself only to give me more trouble.

So I laid my life at his feet. It was all I had to give him and it wasn’t worth much at that time. It seems my prayer was accepted and over time he emptied me of myself (that is still going on) and gave me such magnificent gifts I could never have imagined to ask for.

Surrender of ego – contrary to public opinion – is the by far the smartest thing you can do. The ego will do anything it can to prevent it. But you have an ego; you are not an ego. The ego is like a dark pair of glasses through which reality appears quite dim.

You are the flawless and unobstructed consciousness that already knows freedom and love. In fact, it is the very Source of freedom and love. Listen to that; let it guide you and you’ll be fine.

Love

Ramgiri

The post Surrender to Love first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

It is impossible to understand pure love, the love of God, our deepest love. This is because, no matter how we are experiencing love, the experience transcends the mind and as we open, there is always infinitely more bliss waiting for us.

In other words, love is limitless. There are no boundaries around love.

Obviously I am not speaking here of the small personal ‘love’ that always wants something. When desire, attachment and fear are in the mix, love is still pure, but it is heavily veiled.

I am speaking here of the essence of our boundless Being.

This great Love in us is the very cause of creation; it keeps it alive, and it liberates us when our time has come. It is infinite and greater than all possible worlds because these worlds come out of love, exist and disappear again in love.

Through its agent Shakti, the divine power in creation, love is the expression of infinite timeless awareness. All of nature, the Divine Mother, is the expression of that love.

Therefore love leaves nothing out. It is not absent anywhere. It includes all: the highest pleasure and its dark shadow in the dream of the world, the most terrible pain. And love assures that all suffering is short-lived. It is here just long enough to awaken us to the all-encompassing, eternal bliss of the soul.

When we open to love we open to life. The enlightenment of the mind is just the first step.

First we have to stop being confused. Then we can realize that the pure divine love we all carry hidden in our hearts is the light of enlightenment. It lets enlightenment unfold in the world and it laughs back at us from everywhere.

This love forever yearns to serve us. We can receive the service of love at any time when we open to her in our heart. She waits with infinite patience and she has infinite power, for she is the Source of all that exists.

Love is waiting for you at this very moment. Right now, unseal your heart and open to her. And do it again and again, let this love be your only obsession, until your heart no longer closes.

All it takes is a thought. It is a thought of the heart that remembers its irresistible yearning for Oneness. Once you have that thought, love begins to caress your pain out of you, and your confusion. This is the beginning of blossoming.

Loving is continuous practice. It is the practice and the path and the fruit of the path. And it must start with you. That is what we tend to forget.

To love requires loving us first, to intimately know our own heart, for we can give only as much love as we have. And we can receive only as much as we give. You come to know your heart by loving you. For that you must love what you cannot yet love – in you and the world. This means, bring your love into your pain, into your hell, so your hell becomes filled with your love and your demons retire for good.

Loving your demons out of existence is powerful practice. It evokes the greatest healing force of all, the power in you that can overcome all the obstructions to love in your being. Then you can genuinely love everyone. And when you can genuinely love everyone, you can genuinely love anyone. The light of enlightenment penetrates everywhere.

Ramgiri

The post Love is the Light of Enlightenment first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

Life is vast and profound. All power resides in life. It goes on by itself, it lives us, we are like passengers on a ship. Life inevitably takes us where we need to go due to karmic forces we have set in motion, and we have no control over that. We have choice only in the karmic patterns we create now.

The more we try to impose our ego’s will on life, the more difficult it gets. The thoughts in our head simply cannot plumb the depth of life. They are like the conversations of deranged passengers on a ship who imagine they are the captain.

Thoughts are meaningless in reality. Reality is the infinite and timeless awareness in which life happens. It is always completely peaceful and we are able to become aware that we are always living as that. We must remember that we are this boundless peace and always exist as that. Attachments to the world and our thoughts capture our awareness in what is false and make us blind. This is how we are lost in the prison of our own imagination. Let the imagined world take its course and abide in the peace of your nature.

The most profound peace and all-encompassing love are always present, right now, exactly where you are. The single problem is that you are not aware of it. Too busy for peace, too afraid to love.

Attachment is the veiling force.

Existence with attachment = the world of suffering
Existence without attachment = the realm of the free

Because of attachment we try to create a future that can be less subject to desire and fear, but we don’t know the correct mechanism to do so. Trying to reach peace by satisfying the cravings of the ego is like trying to quench a fire by throwing more fuel into it. This is delusion. Therefore the typical efforts of humans at this time cannot lead to peace, love and happiness. The solution is to encounter the world with love.

Each time your joyful, open presence touches someone’s heart, you give them the precious gift of sharing with them a moment of the exquisite awakened state. That is how you have planted a seed of karma that must bear fruit. The seeds of karma bear all kinds of fruit, but if you sow the best seed, you will have the best harvest, the best tree.

To open to be completely loved is very difficult because you are completely exposed. That is why, in HeartSourcing, we practice exposing ourselves fully to our own hearts. Here we discover that receiving love is as safe as it is blissful. With practice we become used to this bliss and find the confidence to share it. This does not have to be noticed by anybody. Giving evolves us. The receiving is in the sharing.

When love is given and consciously received without falling into the trap of attachment, a powerful seed of pure light has been planted. Notice whenever that happens and reflect deeply on the ability of love to share itself through your person. That is how the real is born in the unreal. The light is born into the darkness.

Plant seeds of this light of love and you will receive the happiness of many. This is the greatest happiness.

Enjoy Next Year’s Journey!

Love,
Ramgiri

The post A New Years Resolution: To Generate the Greatest Happiness first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

How fast times change! It was sometime in the mid-1960’s, “in Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district,” that the Trappist monk Thomas Merton had a vision which was as revolutionary to him as it was to the Christian faith of his time.

“I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”

This is the revelation of the reality of the soul, the light that shines in the core of our being. The ancient Indian sages were well aware of it and called it the hridayam, the heart-cave, our real identity. Here, in the innermost core of each being, lies the Source of all-embracing wisdom and love, forever free of all darkness and pain. When consciousness descends into that depth of the heart, it reveals that we are not separate from each other, but emanations of the one and same loving awareness, shining in us like the sun. We differ only in appearance as this same light inhabits separate bodies.

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts… the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

This is what can be seen in a moment of the true clarity of the open heart. It is an inner reality that has enormous transformative potential when we consciously cultivate it to heal and nurture us and the world. Today, only a half-century later, we have the inner technology available to us to do just that. We can tap into the Source of the Heart like into a nuclear furnace and use its infinite power of love to lift the veils that have hidden from us the truth of our existence:

“At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God… which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness… is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us… It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.”

It is not new, this awareness of the inner light; mystics around the world have spoken of it. We just have not known that we can use its liberating force in very practical ways. But times change. Now we do have the ‘program;’ the practice of self-liberation is in the palm of our hand.

• It lies in the decision to cultivate the discipline of unconditional love in surrender to the heart, again and again, until that becomes our normal way of being.
• It is the refusal to participate in judgment, fear and hate in our minds.
• It is the resolve to die to our habits of confusion and darkness to be reborn in the bliss of the inner light.

This is how we cross the threshold of the gate of heaven that is everywhere in order to live in the kingdom of God. Then Christmas will have regained its deep meaning in us and the message of the rabbi from Bethlehem will have come to fruition.

Happy HoliDays and much love,

Ramgiri

The post The Light in You and Everyone first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

What would love do for a soul, who is as confused as to believe that killing innocents can be an act in service to God? Would such a soul not want to be stopped in its insane behavior? Yes, in such cases love may have to take the form of a bullet or a prison cell – but this is not a real solution.

Souls of demonic temperament simply reincarnate with the same samskaras (unconscious tendencies), only to repeat their confusion again and again. As difficult as it may be to show such souls love in any form, it remains the only long-term solution. But since their very behavior and disposition rejects it, we can understand how extremely slow souls evolve that are so deeply obscured by illusion. And let us be clear, don’t we all experience some of the same tendency every time we get angry or hate?

Love is the very ground we stand on. It is the greatest healing power; it is the fundamental quality of the consciousness in which we experience our world. But it is hidden from us as long as we are asleep to its presence in us.

Our reaction to events like this latest terror attack can awaken us or send us more deeply into suffering. The choice is ours, and the only questions I see is individual: Is our own personal world rooted in this love or ruled by fear? And are we as fully committed as possible to taking the steps to free us? The terrorists’ actions are helpful in bringing to our attention this choice we all must make. Their actions can bring the impulse that frees us.

Ramgiri

The post Terror and Love first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

“You should not drink what only intoxicates you for a little while. Drink what intoxicates you for all time.” This is what K.K. replies when I jokingly chide him that even before dinner he is getting us drunk.

And drunk we are, sitting here with him in his tiny study, immediately falling into the exquisite songs of devotion K.K. extrudes from his tablet. We listen and sing along and he translates the meaning, and between the words we fall into a deep stillness in which the subdued sounds of life on the street become like a hum talking of the love of God that is in play here and everywhere.

We listen to Pandit Jasraj (one of the greatest singers of India today) singing “Bharata Bhai,” one of Durga’s favorites. As you listen to this melody at first, is something touching you in the singer’s voice?

The song comes from the profound devotional tradition of the Ramayana, this epic of our own transformation, played out in this fantastic tale of God and monkeys and bears. The setting takes place in the end of the story.

It tells how Sri Ram (the true Self in us), upon returning home from his exile (in the world of illusions) and defeating Ravana (the demonic force of ego), meets his brother Bharata who has minded his kingdom for him during his absence. (Bharata symbolizes the part of us that retains the deep essence of the heart and does not fall into delusion). He praises Bharata’s great love – “…and yet, if it wasn’t for that monkey Hanuman (who is the simple, one-pointed mind of devotion and faith in us, active in the world) I would not have been able to defeat Ravana and would not be standing here now.”

This song of love of incarnation, of the admiration of the pure faith in us that wins the day, aims to have us feel the depth of our hearts so all else, all worries, all inconveniences, all troubles, can drop away into insignificance.

It is the voice of an enlightened one (or the enlightened Self in us) telling us that faith and devotion are all important because their force can literally move mountains – as well as the mountains of obstacles before and in us. But how dry it seems for me to write this, compared to the moment – now – when the melody provokes such richness in us.

After sunset we hear the bells ring for evening puja (worship) in various homes surrounding us in this Indian maze of houses, where everyone lives in a natural, uncontrived intimacy, their lives shared in many ways, in the presence and grace of God, whether one believes or not.

Now K.K. plays a song from a 1944 movie.

It is a dialogue between a king and his wife. The king stands before her in robes of a sannyasin (a monk), telling her that it is his time to renounce his worldly life in search of God. His wife tries her best to dissuade him (as the forces of the world pull us in the direction of our comforts and desires), but he stands firm in his decision, telling her that the call of destiny cannot be changed.

“This is making me crazy…” K.K. says, smiling. It impacted him deeply when he saw the movie as a young man.

The calling to devote one’s life to the pursuit of divine truth and love was so impelling in this old movie that many village people who saw it in ’44 indeed left their families and took to the holy life, so many that the movie has to be forbidden for some months… This is India.

Of course the deeper understanding is internal; it is not a call to break up families, but to have us realize that the devotion to liberation must be most important for us. That, in turn, is the secret that allows relationships of all kinds to flourish and reach their potential height!

What cannot be told in words is the feeling in the room as we absorb the music, so deep in devotion, sensing the call of the timeless that reaches to all beings who are prisoners of time in one way or another.

It is K.K.’s love, the accumulated shakti (power) of prayer and devotion of a lifetime, the stillness of the lingering presence of great saints in his humble home and his open and soft heart, that transmit the true meaning, and the bhav (elevated feeling) of devotion, the receiving of grace in the fullness of the divine presence of the moment.

I am writing you this in the hope that even a little of this experience can transmit itself from our hearts to yours. This cannot be made to happen and words by themselves are powerless to give it to you. Words are simple instruments like a wire; it is only when the electricity flows through that wire that something else, beyond the instrument that transmits, can occur.

I know that in you has grown a receptivity for that which words cannot contain, the secret bond of lovers of God. This secret code may seem unintelligible to the world because the mood of devotion, the essence that is derived from the heart, transcends a life that knows only the concerns of matter.

Just a few days ago I read what Guru Padmasambhava said, the second Buddha, this tremendous being who is mostly depicted in a quite wrathful expression as the one who frees the world of demonic forces. He said: “For those who have devotion, I sleep at their doorstep.” He evokes the power of a pure heart, the highest blessing we can strive for, because the guru, and love, cannot refuse such a heart.

So we sit here, present, aware that all is in the hands of destiny that are filled with love.

And in this love we meet,

Ramgiri

KK Sah is a long time devotee of Neem Karoli Baba, Maharajji and a close friend of Ramgiri and Durga. In the early 70’s he was instrumental in building a bridge between the Westerners who wanted to meet Maharajji and Maharajji himself. A beautiful soul whose love and devotion have touched many, both in India and in the West. He is currently writing a book about Sombari Maharaj, one of the great Siddhas (enlightened master) of the Kumaon Hills, this area in North India where we are currently living.

The post Bhav (elevated sentiment) with K.K. Sah first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

To the degree we think freedom is what the ego wants, we are blind. There is no freedom for the ego because it is confinement itself. But like any sly politician knows to do, the ego makes our slavery appear delicious and irreplaceable. We are so easily fooled.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a minister during the Nazi rule in Germany who served a greater cause, the cause of freedom. He was imprisoned and murdered because his cause would not let him support by silence that which was wrong.

Shortly before they killed him he wrote a poem that has an important message for us. It describes the struggle we wage with the ego.

He asks, “…is something still in me like a battered army, running in disorder from a victory already achieved?”

The ego fears, agitates, controls, complains and judges, even as victory is already achieved.

Victory is achieved in the first moment when we recognize our true and timeless identity. When the soul has found its destiny, victory is achieved. The battered army of ego still runs, but its fate is already sealed. Victory is already achieved.

In my experience that victory is love that transcends all limits of the mind.

Who Am I?

Who am I? They often tell me,
I come out of my cell
Calmly, cheerfully, resolutely,
Like a lord from his palace.

Who am I? They often tell me,
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me,
I carried the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one who is used to winning.

Am I really then what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, melancholic, and ill, like a caged bird,
Struggling for breath, as if hands clasped my throat,
Hungry for colors, for flowers, for the songs of birds,
Thirsty for friendly words and human kindness,
Shaking with anger at fate and at the smallest sickness,
Trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Tired and empty at praying, at thinking, at doing,
Drained and ready to say goodbye to it all.

Who am I? This or the other?
Am I one person today and another tomorrow?
Am I both at once? In front of others, a hypocrite,
And to myself a contemptible, fretting weakling?

Or is something still in me like a battered army,
running in disorder from a victory already achieved?
Who am I? These lonely questions mock me.
Whoever I am, You know me, I am yours, O God.

~ A poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Love,

Ramgiri
HeartSourcing Yoga

The post Confinement and Victory first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

Each God in the Hindu pantheon represents an aspect of our enlightened mind. This is how the dynamics of soul and ego, of devotion and higher intelligence, of faith and ignorance have come into form so we can understand ourselves.

Hanuman, the great monkey God of the Ramayana is a symbol of the mind that has become disciplined and filled with devotion. Hanuman is the evolved state of our unruly monkey mind that constantly jumps from thought to thought. This mind is fully focused on the presence of the Divine Self, the Lord of Life within the heart.

When Rama asks Hanuman, “How do you look upon me?” the great monkey gives a three-part answer, “When I believe I am the body, then I am your faithful servant. When I know I am the soul, I know myself to be a spark of your eternal Light. And when I have the vision of truth, you and I, my Lord, are one and the same.”

Wit this answer he shows us three states we flow through in our spiritual quest. Many times we identify with the person, the body-mind –ego we think we are. At those times we can realize that we are here to do God’s work, to serve that higher Self in us and in everything. This is the foundation of Karma Yoga, the yoga of service.

One level up and we realize we are not as separate from divine intelligence as we thought, that there is a higher knowing and presence working through us. We sense we are not separate from other beings and that our existence is an expression of the indescribable presence of God in us. This is where Bhakti and Raja Yoga open us further.

The most dramatic shift in our perception occurs when all veils lift and we have the vision of truth. Then we know that we are all that exists. We are the Source; we are One. Jnana Yoga aims at this direct perception.

What allows Hanuman to have this complete vision? It is faith (shraddha). This faith is the origin of five essential levels of spiritual practice. Hanuman is therefore the manifestation of faith that gives us strength, which transforms our memory and leads us through samadhi to perfect wisdom. Let me explain.

True faith is not belief. Faith is not what we think or have been told, nor is it belief in someone else’s belief. It is much more real than that. It is based on the direct experience of Truth and therefore more solid than rock.

For those on the devotional path faith is born out of love and love grows our faith. We know we are onto something most real, most important. Although we often forget, we have an intuitive sense of the preciousness of the inner Source of our faith and sense that we are no other than emanations of the infinite grace of that Source. And we have a deep love and respect for the means, the knowledge and the practices that remove the obstacles to the full blossoming of our true nature.

This faith gives us strength (virya) and allows us to remain increasingly unshaken in the ups and downs of life. We begin to receive nourishment from within. We discover the inner Source of the nectar of contentment and joy. It brings us fulfillment and the power, stamina and agility necessary to pursue our path.

As our strength grows, it evolves our memory (smriti). Realizing the crucial importance of our spiritual practice, our commitment becomes increasingly stable and we approach a state of continuous remembrance of our Source. When powerful memories of past injuries, desires or distractions arise, this higher memory heals, protects and focuses our mind in the guiding grace of the Divine.

Rather than falling for our stressful thoughts, we witness the mind and become less vulnerable to its distractions. Instead we are able to surrender to the Divine at our core again and again. With that we come to taste states of meditative absorption in the Divine presence within (samadhi) and our mind becomes settled and unperturbed.

The sage Vyasa tells us that the awareness that we are constantly loved by the Divine, is the greatest force that allows us to surrender spontaneously to the inner Source. We realize what we have been seeking is what we are. The joy of that realization frees us from temptations and distractions and we embrace the fullness of our true nature. Our attachment to a God outside us melts away and, held in the embrace of our spiritual family (satsang), we discover the true inner presence of guru and Self.

Focused on the Divine presence within we realize we are the giver and receiver of love – the lover and the beloved – in one. This is the blossoming of perfect wisdom (prajna), the clear perception of the enlightened state. We discover we are all that exists. We are one appearing as many and able to give ourselves fully to love because we realize there is no possibility to be hurt in this inner union.

As we are filled from inside, we shed the need for love, for attention and acknowledgment from outside and therefore we are able to share ourselves with great abundance. We have become infinitely rich. Happiness is not something we seek. It is what we are. It is our timeless and indestructible essence.

This inner wealth of love wants to share itself because that is its nature. It is the nature of Hanuman, the faith that moves mountains, that heals and serves God in all things. The mind fully focused on the Divine knows itself and is free of all fear.

* Learn more about Hanuman and the Hanuman Chalisa (a 40-verses song to Hanuman).

with love,

Ramgiri

Ramgiri Braun, Ph.D.
Annapurna Institute, Inc.
HeartSourcing Yoga
Website: http://heartsourcing.com/
Mentoring: http://mentoringwithramgiri.com/
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ramgiri

The post Hanuman and the Evolution of Faith first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

Ok, she was new to this.

Somewhat hesitatingly she agreed to question her belief. We do this with one of the skills we use in HeartSourcing Yoga, known as The Work. Quickly she came to see several layers of painful emotions that were caused by this belief. On the surface there was anger. Many, many years of it. Too long had she been led to blame her parents – and what had it done for her?

Under the anger she discovered a heavy layer of sadness, fueled by the depressing story of her lonely childhood and aggravated by the fact that she still felt like an invisible outsider at 60.

And there was more: under the anger and the sadness there was deep fear, expressed in life-long anxiety and nervous habits. This fear was not quite visible to her yet; she had to go slow with dissolving it. But what she intuitively felt was that below all that anger, sadness and fear was the peace and the great love she had always longed for. They were beckoning to her from the deepest core of her heart.

Then I asked her, “Who would you be without the thought, you were damaged?” She described the person she always wanted to be – and somehow knew she was – although it had so far escaped her: free, joyful, living in the present, enjoying life fully, happy and deeply loving.

We went further in this inquiry. We turned the thought, “I was damaged” around to, “I was not damaged.” First she looked at me in complete disbelief. This had never occurred in any of her countless therapy hours.

Slowly, after some encouragement, she found it: she was actually whole, her body intact, her mind operating well, she had good capacities as a professional woman and she had used them well. All this was indisputably true; it was clear evidence that her being was intact, that “I was/am damaged” was a belief only, not the dreadful reality she had thought it was.

And we went further. I asked her, “What is the opposite of ‘damaged’?” She came up with, “I was raised in the best possible way.” I knew this would be a stretch for Linda and it took her a while to absorb the implications that this could be true. Then, slowly it came to her. “The way I was raised gave me compassion, resilience, strength, and humility.” Recognizing these precious qualities her upbringing had given her was a quantum leap for Linda. And there was more: a burning desire for freedom, an aspiration for enlightenment, not being content with just a temporary absence of pain, but aiming for the very highest.

Slowly a new reality dawned to her. “It had to have been be like that,” she said quietly, “for how else could I have become me? How else could I have found my unique path in life? How else could I have developed this great desire to know freedom and grace?” A glow of gratitude came over her face. She looked like a different person now. Finally she had come to a place where no one was to blame, a place where she could find the Source of love, generosity and infinite nurturing inside herself. Finally she was coming home to herself.

Indeed we cannot live another life than our own, nor can it ever be true that the past could have been different. It had to be what it was – because that’s what it was. Any other belief is pure fantasy and highly toxic. It is pure delusion and it fuels anger, sadness, blaming, regrets, anxiety and endless pain. It makes us tense and miserable and lonely.

Only when we say yes to who we are – an unqualified yes to the present – can we begin to find the gateway to the heart. There we discover the Source of all we are looking for. Here our nurturing and fulfillment lie waiting for us to notice.

But they come at a price: they will cost us our cherished identity as someone who was damaged, misunderstood, abused, neglected or hurt. We no longer need to dreadful stories of the past. We are free to realize we are free, here and now, in the core of the heart.

*Her real name has been altered.

with love,

Ramgiri
and the HeartSourcing Yoga Team

The post Therapy or Freedom? first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.

“Maharajji said, “The best way to worship God is every way.” We find devotion equally in the dance of the Sufis, the stirring psalms of the Jews, the powerful ceremonies of indigenous peoples, the sacraments of the Christians, and the meditative stillness of Buddhists. It is present in the pursuit of truth through the mind. It celebrates love and wisdom in all forms and all places, for everything is part of the One. The many forms of deities and God-realized beings are windows into that oneness. Devotion to them dissolves our limitations and blindness.

The deities aren’t gods up in heaven who control life with fire and brimstone. They are but personifications of attributes of the ultimate nature of my own consciousness—qualities such as completeness, wisdom, insight into emptiness, equanimity, unlimited power, compassion, and unconditional love. That’s why they are not foreign and aloof, but intimate, compassionate, whole, and exciting. Encountering the deities allowed my studies to go beyond mere mental understanding to become a real and full-bodied experience.

In India there are even more forms of the divine—all representatives of aspects of the one absolute Self, the one ultimate Truth, the one and only God—an enormous expression of the vast generosity of the Indian mind. As soon as I arrived there, I began to have spontaneous visions of the Hindu deities. Like so many facets of light emitted by the infinite diamond of the Self, these deities are aspects of the enlightened heart-mind in all of us and are completely alive. If we open to this supreme psychology of the higher mind, the deities can interact with us (with our everyday ego-bound consciousness) in grace-filled ways.

When consciousness merges through devotion with a deity such as Shiva,¹ the Lord of the yogis, we discover that Shiva is much more than a form. He is a path to enlightenment, and the Unified Mind itself, brahman, our own enlightened awareness. Shiva is the ideal yogi, and manifests in us as our highest ideal. Devotion allows our consciousness to gradually merge with the essence of the deity, the essence of the enlightened heart-mind.

The same awareness of divinity manifesting in form exists in most traditions. Those who are open to direct mystical experience can intimately encounter their Beloved in the here and now. “Where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them”² is not a figure of speech, it is literally true. The masters and higher beings come to uplift us. They are part of us, found in the innermost place in the heart.

When our mind is clear, when we have cleansed the mirror of our heart, our love will be constant.

Shiva, The Lord of Yogis (sculpture by Ramgiri)

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1. Shiva, the archetype of the perfect yogi, is one of the three primary emanations of Brahman, the formless ground of all being. Along with the creator (Brahma) and the preserver of the universe (Vishnu), Shiva is the destroying, renewing principle. This represents the ability of the mind to destroy what is false, remove illusion, and open access to enlightenment in non-dual awareness.”

The post Shiva: The Lord of the Yogis first appeared on HeartSourcing Blog.