09.27.04
Posted in Tips and Tricks at 2:55 pm by Shri Jadu Garudanath
I think an architectural comparison is useful, as the intonation of mantra is but walking into the first room. Various mental projections and shakti projections from your personal zone to others in the chanting circle with close coordination of harmony and intonation help create the basis of a common launch zone for getting through the crack into other levels of consciousness and alternate realities.
Closely listen and come into energy, sympathetic correspondence with one or several of your circle. Feel the cone of energy built. Push your shakti out with sound, breath, and Will. Listen with the most precision to hear the over tones both auditory and vibrationally, as in psychic tones.
Blast off! Feel the Others (non-physical beings) join the circle. They can be there! The ancestors are with us.
Guru Om! Om Bhairava!
Garudanath
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05.23.04
Posted in Tips and Tricks at 5:57 pm by Shri Jadu Garudanath
Imagine that our task is to jump up upon a narrow wall. To accomplish this several abilities must be demonstrated: strength, balance, judgment, vision, etc. Too little of any attribute, and we never reach the level of the walls height. Too much, and we fall over onto the other side, after just touching of the wall’s edge. Though we do not completely know what we will see once we stand on the edge of the wall, we nonetheless find it useful to have some idea of what the goal may be, as it helps coordinate our estimates of effort and direction. So, not confusing the method for the goal, it is still important to hold both in your attention.
Guide books to spiritual practice always seem to assume that we have no skills. Not all methods are needed by all individuals, as their karmas or present skills may already make them ready in some way. Some are born smart, but are weak. Some are born strong but dull of mind, etc.
So you ask about tips on methods: the strategies subtly change as you get near the goal. Too much strength, you push past the opening. So you practice jumping up on the wall. You fall off quickly most of the time. The ledge is narrow, but your balance improves, with practice. The more time you spend on top of the ledge, the easier it will become to stay there. Again, practice.
Proper use of mantra will aid in spontaneous alignment of your mental / concentration agencies. There is a point where awareness of the mantra disappears or else seems distantly irrelevant, just before transcendence occurs. This involves “doing / not doing” at the right moment. And awareness of both. That is what I call balance! The thing is this, do not get discouraged. Keep going. Make adjustments, but do not give up.
OM……
Garudanath
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03.22.04
Posted in Tips and Tricks at 4:05 pm by Dhruvanath
Someone asked:
Does anyone know what is the significance of North Star in Natha Tantra? Is there any link between Alpha Ovule and the North Star?
What excellent questions! It’s not that I’m biased in favor of my namesake or anything… ha but since I am biased, you give me a perfect opening to wax poetic. Don’t worry, I’ll be brief.
First the standard Nath style Do As You Will disclaimer — the North Star, and any other object of worship or meditation, has whatever degree of significance a particular Nath decides to invest it with. As Shri Mahendranath wrote in The Ainigmatikos,
“…we ourselves can give gods and goddesses the power to give us the power we want in order to strengthen our power.”
I always liked that passage. So, in this way I give Stella Polaris the power to give me power within my personal cosmos. Because I do see a natural Magical Link between the North Star and Alpha Ovule. The North Star occupies the Dragon Seat of the Heavens — a fixed, self-luminous point in the center of the sky, around which all else turns and is linked through relationship to the Center. Sounds a lot like Alpha Ovule.
Also, if I might get a little technical, a star in the heavens can provide a dynamic focal point for the apex of a cone-shaped Umbra Zonule, thereby creating a mind continuum connecting Earth and Heaven, and a conduit to the Reality of Alpha Ovule. What better choice than the Pole Star for this focal point? A zenith portal to the fifth dimension.
In turn, this Umbra connecting Earth and Heaven has resonance to the Sushumna Nadi, or central channel connecting the chakras from base to crown. Once you scratch the surface, all these ideas are related. Shri Mahendranath wrote about the Umbra Zonule in his piece titled The Londinium Temple Strain.
I know I strayed a bit from the original topic of Alpha Ovule, but perhaps you see it can be beneficial to have a web of ideas that help illuminate each other and create a picture. Food for thought, at least.
Blessings from Stella Polaris Zonule,
Dhruvanath
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08.07.02
Posted in Tips and Tricks at 4:59 pm by Dhruvanath
Adesh, Adesh,
I’ve been doing my thousand-a-day Rudra mantras, making myself an offering to the Cosmos and using the mantra as a call. However, today I shifted the focus to a very one-pointed worship in which the mantra itself is the deity and offering myself to the mantra. Of course, I knew intellectually that a good mantra is supposed to be one with the deity it represents, and countless times I’ve been absorbed in mantras while worshiping the divine vibrations in the zonule, but somehow I never quite made the connection to how a mantra can in a functional way be considered to be the deity. I always thought of it as a way to get to the deity, but apparently that happens best when you make it to be the deity. Anyway, the mantra came alive in the center of my mind, and I can say that I’m not the same as I was yesterday.
Did you happen to notice a change in your chant or perhaps a change in your enthusiam when the mantra came alive in the center of your mind? If so, could you describe it?
The chanting did change somewhat, in that I experienced that the mantra was “doing me” as much as I was doing the mantra. I was already chanting with a good degree of fullness of my chi, which I feel is a prerequisite to reaching any threshold of success, but as the experience crystallized, I noticed that my enunciation became very precise, as I was concentrating with rapt attention to every part of each syllable. Palpable magick power was even oozing out from the spaces between the syllables when I looked there too.
There is an esoteric capacity of the mind to mix modalities of sensory perception, such as seeing sounds or smelling colors, called synesthesia. During my mantra epiphany, and also since, part of my mind was taken to an astral loka where the sound of the mantra had a three dimensional form, though as you can imagine it becomes very hard to describe in English at this point. Quite psychedelic.
As far as enthusiasm, hell yeah - it was electrifying. The challenge actually was to keep in a relaxed state of equanimity, so as not to become distracted and disturb the stability of the yoga. Enthusiasm is important and natural, but if it reaches the level of an exhibition of ego, then it’s an unwelcome intrusion in the Divine space. It’s a subtle balance. Anyway, I felt like it wasn’t “my” enthusiasm as much as the innate ecstasy of the Divine being expressed through my nervous system.
Was this experience accompanied by insightful ideas or did it have a non-instigating effect on your mind and thoughts as you completed the practice?
The value of this kind of experience is that it turns your paradigm of reality upside-down, inside-out, or all of the above. As I mentioned, my effort as I completed the practice was to maintain the one-pointed awareness that triggered the whole thing in the first place, not to let my thoughts spin off on all the ramifications. But outside the time/space of the sitting, yes I hope and expect the ripple effect of insightful ideas will propagate forth and lead to new and fantastical thought patterns.
The Deity is the background and the mantra is the foreground. As in seeing, our eyes focus to encompass a perception of the totality of the piece we are viewing. Similarly, in this way do I bring the mantra into focus to encompass both the seeing and the seen (scene)? A type of Stereoscopic vision, rather than a monoscopic vision that tends to flatten the visual field?
My only comment would be that the approach you describe sounds similar in some ways to my previous notion (which did yield positive effects over a long period of time), but the startling change for me now was a result of intentionally merging in my mind the “background” deity with the “foreground” mantra. After all, if yoga with a deity is desired, then why hold it at arm’s length in the background?
And lastly, if I might reemphasize what for me has been the key element, it is as Kapilnath put it: “In all humility you may offer yourself up as an offering. If this is done rightly and your offer accepted, there will be no holding back and the liquid gold of the Cosmos will move through all parts of your being.”
May your endeavors in the spiritual realm grant you much peace and happiness.
Guru Om
Dhruvanath
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