Books

Karma - A Yogi's Guide to Crafting your Destiny

**"Seeing life as an expression of happiness instead of the pursuit of it, makes all the difference." **

Points

• "The irony is, the more you try to avoid Karma, the more it multiplies."
• You can be fully involved in something, so much so that you would do it as if your life depends on it and yet have it not mean anything to you.
• Only a person who is capable of being immersed in some work knows the true meaning of rest.
• Restlessness is not the base of action. Restfulness is.
• If someone has never known intense action, they will never be able to move into inaction. For them inaction will simply be lethargy and apathy.
• "No work, no food" (Zen monk story - Para 4, Page 125)
• Movie Of Life (Para 4, Page 152)
• "It is the magnanimity of creation that allows you to an experience of individuality, even though you actually have nothing you can call your own."
• Whatever you accept becomes a part of you. Whatever you don't accept, stands apart like a huge hurdle.

Topics

Awareness

Mental alertness is not awareness. Awareness has nothing to do with the logical mind. "Nor is it what is being referred to as mindfulness". Awareness emerges from the deepest layer of a human being. This is called chitta, or consciousness without content.
Awareness is not something you do. It is not an action. It is a state of being. You can set the right conditions for it to happen but you cannot 'do' it.

Spirituality

When a person is spiritual when their awareness rises beyond a certain level, if their love transcends certain limitations, if their physicality is very intense, or if the vibrancy of their energies goes beyond a certain level. A spiritual person person is one who has found action in inaction, and inaction in action. For such a person, their very life breath is a spiritual process. Spirituality is about dynamism and stillness cohabiting within you to give a taste of living death all the time.

Karma Yoga

The basis of karma yoga is to be involved in the process and not the product.

Physical

• When you are psychologically distraught, it is important to hold your body consciously because your karmic substance is trying to shape your body according to its distortions. If you can be conscious at this time, you can reduce and even prevent accumulation of karma or in technical terms, you can prevent the psychological suffering.

Fast forwarding karma burning

When you are on the path of spirituality, you have fast forwarded the burning of your karma. During your journey, your karmic blockers will come fast and with full force. More so than they would have normally. If you deal with them appropriately, you will shed the load much faster as well. If not, the suffering will be in a proportionate amount. When you naturally become more perceptive towards your own self, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore the problems you have. (Page 146)

Sutras

Sutra #1

Sutra #2

Ultimately, life is neither suffering nor bliss. It is what you make it.

Sutra #3

There is only one crime against life: to make believe that you are something other than life.

Sutra #4

However profound it is, everything that comes from memory spells karmic bondage.

Sutra #5

Pure intelligence creates memory out of itself; the rest of the creation projects memory as intelligence.

Sutra #6

In losing awareness of self us the trap of karma.

Sutra #7

If you take more karmic load now, when you are well and capable, later you will walk "hands-free"!

Sutra #8

If you experience this moment only once, you will never be able to fall out of it.

Sadhanas

Keeping your Vasana in check

Try to stay away from a thing that you like/love/long for. The intensity of the pangs you go through when you stay away tells you something about the nature and depth of your vasana.
It's our compulsiveness that forces us to thing and long for the things we miss. Try to pause for a few moments before you do something that you can do without. Two minutes, two hours, whole day; depending on how entangled you think you are.
Your grip on it will start to loosen and you will start becoming free of your compulsions.

Compulsions to consciousness

Intention

If you want to be self propelled, it is important to start by fixing your intention. Make your intention as all encompassing as you can.

Runanubandha

If you want to test your own levels of runanubandha, try sitting alone in an unfamiliar place on an unfamiliar piece of furniture. Observe yourself closely. How comfortable is your body? Is it uneasy? Does it seem to want to be elsewhere?
The same chair or room may give you physical privacy but if you find yourself growing territorial about it or disturbed as if your very identity depends on it, it is time to start shaking up your karma.

Spine

If you are experiencing deep distress, try to keep your spine in an erect and upright position. The lumbar region needs to be relaxed and stretched to activate the spine.
Squatting is an even more effective way to do it. If you keep your feet together when you squat, it's extremely beneficial but difficult to do. Next best thing is to widen the distance between your feet when you squat, keeping your feet in-line with your shoulders. Make sure your feet are firmly on the ground.
It's really important to keep your spine healthy. It not only keeps the body healthy but also plays a major role in your emotional and mental well-being.
Yoga namaskar is a great process activating and strengthening the spine.

Chitta vritti nirodha - liberation of consciousness from emotional fluctuations and bottlenecks.

Total involvement

Be consiously involved with everything around you: the food that you eat, the water you drink, the earth you walk upon, the air you breath, the people around you.
Think of someone very dear to you and try to look at everyone and everything with the same emotion. If this is hard to sustain, set hourly reminders on your phone. It can be as simple as a bell or a chant. This is to help establish the practice.
Be fully and equally involved with everything: be it a human being, a frog or even god. No more, no less.

Physical balance and well being

One of the simplest ways to begin cultivating awareness is to start with physical awareness. Close your eyes. Raise your hand in front of you to the level of your face and gently stretch the muscles in your hand without moving is mechanically. Watch the lots of sensations being generated as keenly as you can. Become are of the twitch of every single muscle in your hand.
If you can notice the minutest sensations in your hand, you are ready to do it for the whole body. Stretch every muscle in your entire body with your eyes closed and observe the sensations.
Do not make this mechanical. This is more akin to a dance.
If you do this, the very way you observe and experience the world will be altered. The chemical deposits that have been built up in the joints and muscles over long periods of unattentiveness will also be released. So will a lot of your karma.

Boosting your perception (Akashi Mudra)

There is a point of convergence in your energetic body that stretches beyond the physical body. It is approximately 17 to 19 inches from the point between your eyebrows. You must search for the point where the vision meets at an acute angle of about 11 degrees. FInding that point of convergence boosts the akasha within you. This hugely enhances your perception.
(There is a guided sadhana available in the sadhana section of isha account. It instructs to focus between the eyebrows and slowly keep pushing the attention outwards.)

Creating a new you

Drop your self image for a moment and create your-self from scratch. Close your eyes and start from your skelaetal structure. Then organs, muscle and flesh. Then create your thought and mindset and emotion.
Do this as intensely and as vividly as you can.
Examine this self image very close and in every detail. How closer is this image to the divine?
Make it come alive within you. Take this opportunity to consioucly craft yourself to become the creation you want to be.

All this is not to say that day dream a perfect version of you. It is to show that the version you consider to be yourself is a self image and nothing else. It can be dropped at will and a new one can be created. It just takes some awareness to do that effortlessly.

tags: #psychology #life #self #mind #spirit
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