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alt.meditation.shabda
"THE ETERNAL PRINCIPALS"
- by Michael Turner
(c) 2008
(Note: This is from a satsang I gave following reading the Chapter
"The Eternal Principles" from Paul Twitchell's classic "Stranger By
The River". All my love and blessings in the LightSong Eternal,
Michael Turner)
This is a very special chapter for me because it is one that my
Master, Sri Darwin Gross, read prior to giving me my final initiation
into the Pure Positive God Worlds It was really special when he read
this chapter. Then we sang a rolling HU for several minutes, which
finally tapered off into silent contemplation of the Light and Sound
of God. It was really powerful and resonant.
"The Eternal Principals" is a beautiful chapter. What can be said
about the eternal principles that cannot be derived from simple
contemplation? It's funny, because Rebazar Tarzs uses words to
describe these spiritual truths, and he does a good job. But, in some
ways, it's still just a bunch of words. It's like you keep orbiting
around this thing called "God Consciousness," and you're trying to
find some way of translating It into something that the mind or the
emotions can understand.
It almost seems futile a times. Rebazar says God is life, existence
and consciousness. And it's all true. It's nothing that has not been
said before and will not be said again. But it seems he's almost
grasping at straws, thinking "How can I describe this Thing?" And
really what you find in this chapter, which happens so frequently in
Paul Twitchell's books, is that Rebazar gives a discourse, and the
effect on the seeker - Peddar Zasq - seems not so much to be the
actual words of Rebazar Tarzs as it is just listening to the Satguru
speak and experience the Divine Spirit of Shabd flowing through him.
And they go through this process, and then Rebazar finishes and walks
away.
It's more the Satguru's presence - the cadence of the words, the
rhythm of his voice, the beauty within it - that leaves the seeker
transfixed. Suddenly, he feels like singing because this whole vista
opens up within. And I don't think it's the result of any specific
thing the master says, so much as it's just the presence of the
master.
Q. Is that why Paul said "It can't be taught; It can only be caught?"
And you just sort of circle the air****t, right?
M. Precisely. The information is there, and there is information that
is good to know. But it is really the rhythm of the words that
conveys the consciousness.
What you said reminds me of a time I was at a friend of mines' home.
I was just thumbing through his bookshelf, doing a sort of literary I
Ching (you just grab a book, open it up and see what you get). And I
reached up and got a copy of "The Far Country" and opened it up - and
it was just about a paragraph - I don't know where in the book it was
anymore - I just flipped through it with my thumb and picked a page
and looked at the paragraph. And there was something that just struck
me between the eyes - like this golden hammer on my third eye - and
this whole spiritual vista just opened up spontaneously - and I
started laughing and laughing, bowled over by this incredible wave, a
rush of golden energy that came through and it was absolutely
delightful. The golden tongued wisdom at that moment was in those
words.
On page 56 of "Stranger by the River" Rebazar Tarzs states that the
three principles of spirituality are a proper understanding of God,
knowledge of. It and knowledge of Its creation. Now, if you are
looking at this chapter logically, you might assume that Rebazar would
say this and then spend the next three or four pages expounding on it,
"Well, first we'll discuss the proper understanding of God, and then
the knowledge of It, and then the knowledge of Its creation."
Instead, he just sort of skates right over it. He lays it down there
and keeps going and you keep going on.
He goes on a bit later to say that if you understand these three
principles, you will be great in the sight of God. And, really, I
think that it's not so much three separate principals as it is simply
grokking that, as individuals, we are microcosms of the Divine. That
is a good thing to understand about the nature of the self in the
spiritual quest.
In the next paragraph you find what I believe to be one of the keys
to the whole book, wherein Rebazar advises that if you look within to
find the Divine Essence, your spiritual ideal will be a reality.
Because you come to understand that the God Center is your true self.
You are the drop of water out of the ocean. And everything you ever
wanted to know about the Divine is found within your own self.
And that's a big thing. It's the biggest step in assumption to take
when you get into talking about God. People automatically have
reactions when you talk about spirituality. And if you say you are
God, some people might say, "Oh, you think you're Jesus. Let's see
you do miracles, buddy." Everybody has their assumptions of what God
is. And we're all taught to feel that we are unworthy of our
divinity.
That is one of the reasons people so often get into this whole trap
of "masters" and "students," and top-down authoritarian structure,
because we are taught that we are not worthy, so we have to find
somebody else to do it for us, to show It to us. And the real goal of
the master is to serve as an objective perspective, as well as just to
awaken you to the fact that you are the essence of the Divine. No
matter what age you are, race, color, ***, occupation - it doesn't
matter. We are all particles of pure - golden - love. And all of our
brothers and sisters we encounter on this planet are of the same
essence.
Most people don't know this. Most people are myopically caught up in
their mental, emotional and physical melodramas, to the point where
they act selfishly, oblivious to how their thoughts, words and actions
impact their brothers and sisters. And it's a real challenge at times
feeling compassion for people. But, it's an im****tant thing to do.
Throughout this book, and others, Paul Twitchell reiterates the
commandment Jesus made to love one another. Many people have a hard
time with that because they look at love as the love you have for your
child, or your father, or your mate, or your mother. They see it as
an emotional love, a very person-involving love and think, "How can I
love everybody? How can I love horrible people? I don't have enough
love to give to my spouse, and my kids! Am I supposed to walk around
just hugging everybody I meet?"
And that's not really what is meant at all. That's why Rebazar talks
about it in terms of charity, or compassion. You might think of it as
appreciation of someone's condition, and just realizing that everybody
is on the path. Some people are in negative conditions because that
is a learning experience they are going through, and it is good to be
able to understand that and appreciate it, not necessarily agreeing
with a tem****ary negative wavelength they are operating from, but
having compassion for their condition nonetheless. It is im****tant to
appreciate the trials and traumas of soul as it evolves. Because it
takes so many incarnations, so many lifetimes over and over - I mean
tens, hundreds and thousands of lives sometimes - to blossom. And
there are times in the evolution of every soul when it's a real
struggle.
Some folks go through dozens of incarnations just working through a
certain pattern - just one mental pattern, or one emotional pattern -
male, female; female, male; male, male, male, female, female, female,
male, female - back and forth, trying to figure it out. It can be
very long and draining. You keep coming back and doing it again,
because that is what you do as soul as you unfold. And sometimes
people get caught up in negative tides and eddies and find it's a
real struggle to get out.
That's why I say you have to have compassion even for people who are,
on the surface, evil, people like Hitler, Stalin, Milosovic, Jeffrey
Dahmer, people who kill thousands of innocent people in the World
Trade Center, or blow themselves up on busses in Israel or use tanks
to massacre civilians - things that you think are absolutely horrible
- because, actually, spiritually speaking, they are suffering too.
They are suffering more greatly than you can possibly imagine. And
believe it or not, it's really hard on them. Generally they pay with
their lives - even after this life. They have to go through a lot of
suffering. Sometimes they learn from it, and sometimes all they learn
from suffering is that it makes them more angry and they come back in
another incarnation even angrier than they were this time, and they do
even more negative things. But eventually they, like all souls, grow
weary of pain and anger and conflict, and start letting go and
choosing the path of least resistance, which is the path of eternal,
divine love.
I'm reminded of an experience I had several years ago when my first
wife and I divorced, and I was very sad for a long time. I hurt so
much, I didn't think I could bear it and I didn't think I would ever
be happy again. More than once I cried myself to sleep. I went
through this whole process of crying and crying. It just kept
rolling through me.
Finally, though, it ebbed over time. And it works that way for all
of us, whether it's a few minutes or a few lifetimes. You finally are
just tuckered out. You're tired of struggling with it, and you just
let go . . . and relax. Then the Wind of the Holy Spirit blows
through you like a Spring breeze. It caresses you, and gives you Its
love and forgives you, because that's all It can do, is bathe you and
nurture you, and say, "It's okay. Are you tired of feeling bad?
Good. Let's take another step."
It's like when you're a kid and it's bedtime and your parents carry
you off to bed, or you kind of totter back there, and they tuck you in
and you know everything's okay. Hitler will eventually learn to
follow the call of soul, as will Stalin, Dahmer, Jim Jones, Bin Laden,
the person who took you parking space - you know, everybody learns.
Which is why compassion is so im****tant. It's easy to be frustrated
with people, but it does you no good. Because when you indulge in
anger, when I indulge in anger (I don't like using "you" statements),
it stresses me out. When I indulge in getting angry at somebody -
even when they richly deserve it - it drains me, it unbalances me, it
gets me stressed.
Being indulgent in anger is like being indulgent in alcohol or drugs
or anything. It's a luxury that a person, as you let go more and more
to Spirit, you really can't afford. And you discover that it's really
not any fun, and it just gets to be a drag being angry all the time.
Q. So it's like another addiction?
M. Yeah, anger addiction. That's why they call it one of the five
deadly passions.
Q. I thought there were seven.
M. Well, in the Sant Mat tradition there are five: pride, attachment,
vanity, anger and greed. Anger is really seductive. Where I work
there is a lot of anger flying around. People's emotional bodies get
all bent out of shape. And, when these big waves come, it's easy to
get caught up in the feeding frenzy. It can be a real challenge when
you're dedicated to your spiritual unfoldment and it is the most
im****tant thing in your life, the choices frequently seem to be either
to participate in the group negative consciousness, or overtly remove
yourself from it into vanity - the vanity of piety. This can be a
really, really tricky thing, finding that balance.
Because, if you go to the extreme of not participating and being
obvious about it, then people might think you're arrogant or holding
yourself to be spiritually superior to them. And that does you no
good either, because vanity is more seductive, subtle, and dangerous
in its subtlety, than anger. It creeps in without you even realizing
it and makes you think you're kind of special, like "I'm not going to
indulge in this crude human emotion. I'm spiritually evolved. I eat
the right kind of tofu. I'm not going to lower myself to this
level."
So it's a whole question of compassion and balance. How do you deal
with people who are into their anger trip when they're around you?
How do you weigh that with compassion?
The thing I have found that works is you go to that God-center within
when these things happen. You learn to attune yourself to the divine
love of Naam through the exercises of Shabda Meditation and working
with the HU. You sing the HU silently to yourself when negativity
hits you. And you discover how to respond to the specific situation
in the moment in a way which leaves you in harmony with the Holy
Spirit.
At each moment, a different response might be necessary. And that is
a real test of spiritual balance, learning to listen, and not even
base your response on earlier responses to other similar situations,
because that's not being in the now. It's taking you back in time and
you find yourself working from the causal plane, the causal
consciousness, of the time track and memories. In doing so, you once
again become again the effect of past actions and events.
So the goal is to learn how to find that spiritual center as quickly
as you can. This happens through consistent practice of the spiritual
exercises of Shabda Meditation, which is why the exercises are so
im****tant on some regular basis. The centering process should be
instantaneous.
Q. Through practice and doing the exercises, eventually it (being off
balance) will just not appear. Right?
M. Well, so long as you are living in the worlds of mind, emotions and
matter, you will always be dealing with space and time, and
imbalance. This is a high pressure, high density universe which is
constantly drawing us off balance and leaving our spiritual strings
out of tune. So there is no "should." When you get into "should,"
it's just another mental trap. "I should be doing this. I should be
doing that." It's just a matter with being gentle with yourself,
really, and knowing where your spiritual center is, and having this
built-in guidance that you learn to listen to. It's like "Oh, that's
right. Okay, where is that HU? I know I put It around here
someplace. There It is. There's my center."
So you take a deep breath, a long, slow deep breath. And as you're
breathing out, you mentally sing HU along with it, and feel the
golden, loving breeze of Naam rise up from the deepest, deepest part
of the core of your being. The wind of the Holy Spirit rises up and
spreads out in all directions with your breath, and wraps ItSelf
around you and gives you a spiritual hug. You will find poise, inner
balance, serenity and love, and be able to make decisions in harmony
with God and the situation at hand. This is part of being a creative,
loving co-worker with God, and living on earth as we do in heaven.
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