Blog – Page 274 – Yoga Beautiful

Dear Yogis

As my heart is seeking it finds you in every soul I meet. – Ibn’ Arabi

This morning we can consider LOVE, and the story of Rumi the Persian Poet, and his lover Shams. It is a wonderful example of love, courage, service and duty. Love and death. When I listen to the words of Rumi, and the music, my heart also calls for the desert, but I have been put here to write to you, to be with you. I am not who you think I am. Do you know about you?

Rumi started his adult life as an authoritarian teacher, head of a community, strong husband, feared and honoured by most. A Judge. But inside he knew this was not life. Like the Christian Saint Peter, he was at heart a homosexual.. He had no passion, no love. Trying to be the person his family and community wanted him to be, he was strangling the person he was at his heart. These things have a way of surfacing, and so they did when he met Shams, and we are told, fell instantly in love.. (and that is another story – there are many).

This meeting with the Dervish, transformed Rumi from an accomplished teacher and jurist, to an ascetic. He left behind everything solid, everything stable to be with his Lover. We don’t know much about his wife and children, but at the end end he was buried with great honour in the family tomb. Reconciliation and acceptance occurred, and his poetry changed a community, a country, and then reached the world. Such is life – only the angels would understand.

Shams Tabrizi, Rumi’s love, an itinerant poet, mystic, had travelled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could “endure my company”. A voice said to him, “What will you give in return?” Shams replied, “My head!” The voice then said, “The one you seek is Jalal ud-Din (known as Rumi) of Konya” and the music was born.

However, on the night of 5 December 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door. He went out, never to be seen again. It is rumoured that Shams was murdered with the connivance of Rumi’s son, ‘Ala’ ud-Din; if so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of mystical friendship.

Rumi’s love for, and his bereavement at the death of Shams found their expression in an outpouring of lyric poems, He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus. There, he realised:

Why should I seek? I am the same as
He. His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself!

Rumi found another companion in Salaḥ ud-Din-e Zarkub, a goldsmith. After Salah ud-Din’s death, Rumi’s scribe and favourite student, Hussam-e Chalabi, assumed the role of Rumi’s companion. One day, the two of them were wandering through the Meram vineyards outside Konya when Hussam described to Rumi an idea he had had: “If you were to write a book like the Ilāhīnāma of Sanai or the Mantiq ut-Tayr of ‘Attar, it would become the companion of many troubadours. They would fill their hearts from your work and compose music to accompany it.” Rumi smiled and took out a piece of paper on which were written the opening eighteen lines of his Masnavi, beginning with:

Listen to the reed and the tale it tells,
How it sings of separation..

Hussam implored Rumi to write more. Rumi spent the next twelve years of his life in Anatolia dictating the six volumes of this masterwork, the Masnavi, to Hussam.

In December 1273, Rumi fell ill; he predicted his own death and composed the well-known ghazal, which begins with the verse:

How doest thou know what sort of king I have within me as companion?
Do not cast thy glance upon my golden face, for I have iron legs.

Rumi died on 17 December 1273 in Konya. His death was mourned by the diverse community of Konya, with local Christians and Jews joining the crowd that converged to bid farewell as his body was carried through the city. Rumi’s body was interred beside that of his father, and a splendid shrine, the Yeşil Türbe (Green Tomb, قبه الخضراء; today the Mevlana Museum, was erected over his place of burial. His epitaph reads:

When we are dead, seek not our tomb in the earth, but find it in the hearts of men.

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY. The sun is shining, and there is a gentle breeze where there has been an icy wind.. beautiful.

Open your eyes, for this world is only a dream – Rumi

NAMASTE. JAHNE

Dear Yogis,

Now we will come to yoga. You have read about actions and non actions and the results of both. To learn how to control the mind you must learn how to control the mind.

“Meditation” the word is used for all kinds of practice. When people talk to me about how they meditate I tend to glaze over as mostly it is apparent that they have confused meditation with contemplation or just thinking. As my teacher said to me “Are you a warrior? to meditate this is what you must be”. It was not an easy thing and it was not to be treated lightly. Meditation is the first step on the road to Enlightenment.

In order to meditate you must prepare. First watch the breath. Now I am breathing in, now I am breathing out. I challenge you to do more than a few breaths without your mind wandering away. If you are honest, about ten breaths. That’s OK. The whole point of this exercise is to bring the mind to neutral. Watching the breath is not the act which will set you free, but knowing what is happening when it is happening will be helpful.

Ask yourself why you want to meditate. Why are you here? I believe it is because you want to answer the questions you have never been able to ask or answer. The questions children ask. Why are we here? Why do we die? Why do we get old and sick? We teach them not to ask, and they in turn become adults who tell their children “these questions have no answers”. The Church tells them these questions will be answered when you die. Do you want to wait that long?

Decide here and now that you will meditate with a goal in mind – to find the answers to these questions. Do not waste your life playing with lesser objectives.

To begin ask The Enlightened Ones and your Heart Teacher to join you. They will come. You bowed to them before you sat, bow to them again, and then imagining the glorious Beings in front of you, bow down deeply in gratitude, happiness and awe, as you will when the time comes that you actually see them.. your head and hands touching their heavenly feet. Sit. Imagine the most beautiful flowers in all the world and shower your Guides with these flowers in gratitude, and ask gently for their help.

Now, clean your conscience. You cannot take this journey with a heavy heart. As in the 12 Step program, remember those you have wronged and beg their forgiveness vowing to keep to the the narrow path. Just doing this one thing will expand the beauty of your meditation beyond what you could ever imagine.

Now do the opposite. Think of all the good things you have done, all the good thoughts, words and deeds.when you do this your heart will be bursting with joy to overflowing.

Now, ask your Guides here present for their guidance. Ask them to continue to appear to you in all the ways and places that they can (and they can astound you). Ask them to appear as teachers even as people around you – the people in the street, at the supermarket, on the TV. That they will continue to teach you and continue to guide you along the Path. Ask then from your heart, to always be near you, to never leave you, always teaching, always guiding. When you do this, a great quiet will fall over you.

Now understand this – silence is not the goal. The silence is not the meditation. Chickens can sit quietly and produce nothing more than an egg, as beautiful as that is, it is still an egg. The truth is IN THE SILENCE of meditation. Meditation is the tool, it is not the goal. Ultimate wisdom is the heart of the path. Meditating for the sake of meditation would be like having an axe and burning it for warmth instead of using it to cut down a tree for greater warmth. If you sat for months without thought would that be helpful?Not really, eventually you would get ill and die.

To enter the serious path to meditation you really do need to learn from a teacher. It is more difficult to learn from a DVD, or zoom, because a teacher must disturb you in order to help you to understand where your mind is along the path at any time.

Laziness is the greatest enemy in meditation. Many meditators waste their time in useless fog. They tell themselves their mind is empty and this is good, and it is what they aim for. It is not useful. Mental dullness has become a drug to these students. They are addicted to the excuse of inaction and nothingness. They feel nothing.

In the beginning bring the face of your Heart Teacher to your mind and keep it there, bright and real. To deal with agitation, bring your thoughts back to your heart. Slow the breaths, count them if you must. Think of your meditation experience however it is, as a large flock of birds, swirling and dipping as the wind changes – but always a flock of birds.

When you have mastered these steps, and are able to keep the picture clearly in your mind you must watch for the monkey telling you that adjustment is necessary when no adjustment is necessary. That is the final trap. Only when you have mastered the basics, can you begin to use the meditation for problem solving. When you meditate regularly and correctly, it will seem as if one meditation attaches seamlessly to the last no matter the time that has passed in between sessions. You will find yourself growing in insight.

Think lastly of the way to end your meditation. Think of a pond, and imagine a drop of water entering that pond, see the ripples going outwards from the drop of water – the sacred event of your meditation. Imagine these ripples getting longer and stronger, waves of happiness touching every living thing around you.

Are you asking yourself what to meditate on? As my teacher said, begin where you must begin. Your heart teacher is there to teach you. Ask for help, have faith and trust and the answer will come. Please log on to this short video. It may help.

Meditate, meditate meditate

Namaste – Jahne

Dear Yogis,

Each day brings us closer to what we used to think of as “normal”. The question is, do you want to go there? I am hoping that my newsletters will cause you to move forward in a yoga way.

We we speaking about CAUSE AND EFFECT. Karma. That everything you think, say or do has a consequence now, and into a future you cannot even imagine. These actions produce a karma greater than the action. Scarey yes? An action that is strong produces an imprint that is even stronger. Love, hate, anger.

What would happen karmically if you did NOTHING? You plan to hurt someone but don’t get around to carrying out the action. Suppose you do this action in a moment of strong emotion, you do the deed but the person doesn’t die? Is then the seed of killing another person implanted in your mind? Not necessarily. According to the Dalai Lama’s teachings, for an imprint to be perfect, for a seed to be planted perfectly (not just sit on top of the ground), it needs to be planted perfectly and deeply to grow into a perfect plant. We must have a clear intention, and a steady emotion as we do the deed and then complete it as we desired, be aware of the completion and take ownership of the deed. When all these conditions are met we will have a strong seed. No matter what we do seed is created. How it grows depends on how it is planted.

Remember in the ‘Gita. Arjuna and Krishna are on the battlefield and Arjuna is conflicted about fighting and karma. Krishna tells him that they must fight, but it is how they fight that is important. The battle has been fought many times before, it is HOW the battle is fought this time that is important. The enemy (in this case their relatives and friends from neighbouring villages) has called the terms and is determined for war. Negotiation has won nothing, and now because Arjuna and Krishna know their “duty” (The Purushatras), they must fight WITH LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING not with hate, knowing that this battle will be fought again in the next life. We have time to get it right.

How are we going to deal with all these seeds we create every milli-second? In the space of a second we have so many negative and positive thoughts, only a small fraction of which we are aware of, but ALL OF THEM are creating imprints. The task seems impossible if everyone of them is precisely recorded in our consciousness. On that basis we would all be doomed to an eternity of suffering, even if we only had to deal with the thoughts from this lifetime.

There is a way to clean negative imprints and we have talked of it before, whereby the imprint of killing a person resulting in seeing oneself killed many times over many lifetimes, is reduced to a small headache.

The first step is grounding yourself in goodness. There is a reason that Ghandi for instance chanted continuously the Name of God – lived in a constant vibration of his mantra. Bring to your mind constantly the Enlightened Beings, your Heart Teacher, and by rededicating yourself to their care, bringing to mind constantly the lessons they have taught you, and remembering that by true service and compassion to EVERY LIVING THING (a virus is a living thing), you should for yourself master the path to freedom, and as a part of this service you will be able to show others the way. (Covid? Building your immunity is karmically better than killing the virus).

The second step, is to consider everything thought, word or deed, and remember the harm that it is doing to you. The pain you are bringing upon yourself and others. Think carefully before you bring any negative karma towards yourself, and cause the planting of negative seeds. This a very subtle thing. The effects of just one word for instance. For instance, when people continuously swear without thinking, just imagine the seeds piling up, that all have the possibility of growing into negative results many times bigger than the original seed.

The third step, is to VOW NEVER TO CONTINUE THE THOUGHT, WORD OR DEED, that would cause negative seeds. This in itself is dangerous and difficult because none of us are evolved enough in our spiritual life that we could keep it, and to lapse would itself cause negative seeds and compound the problem. Set an easier task. A time frame, a curtailing of a certain action. Saying “I promise I will not swear for the next 24 hours (the “F” word?)” or “I promise I will not reply to…………….in anger for the next 24 hours”. Something like that. Difficult but achievable with honest effort. Just imagine that every time, EVERY TIME, you said “F>>” you are piling up negative seeds, which EACH have a result way in excess of the original seed. Not smart.

The fourth step is to learn, to study yoga, contemplation and meditation, which will encourage you to dedicate yourself to a life of kindness and compassion to every being. To know what you are doing when you do it which allows for change.

The Dalai Lama demonstrates this every day. If you think life for you is hard, watch the DVD “Kundun”, the early life of the Dalai Lama. No matter what happens, he has kindness, compassion and trusts that all is as it should be. That is why he is always happy no matter what happens. He controls his mind. He knows how imprints work, and the relationship between the imprints and emptiness.

Imprints do exists, they are what drives your existence and create your world, and to a great extent they can be removed or lessened depending on your motivation.

It is up to you. Your life now and in the future, and the lives of others WILL BE changed by your actions. Even if you do nothing. Now you have read this, you have an option… this in itself causes karma.

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY.

NAMASTE. JAHNE