Gurudeva gives a number of ways to impress and remold the subconscious mind that we are a spiritual being. Affirmations work better after Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. If we experience jealousy or fear, detach, apply reason, let it go as an instinctive quality that we don't need. Advance ourselves, encourage others. Be the soul.

Master Course, Merging with Siva, Lesson 189.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning.

In the Merging with Siva lessons from the last few days, the theme has been to impress our subconscious mind that we are a spiritual being. Gurudeva gives us a number of ways which we'll look at. Reminds me of the question I've been asked, I think once it was an eight year old boy. He asked me: "What is the soul?" So that, the challenge is, the soul is asking the question, you know. It's like a dog asking me: What is a dog? you know. Or a cat asking me: What is a cat? That which is asking the question is the answer to the question, right? But, the person asking, particularly an eight year old, doesn't see it that way. So we have to try and find various ways to explain the answer that makes sense.

So, the first one is from Lesson 189:

"Uncovering the Light of the Soul

"As we study the mystical teachings of our religion, we begin to reprogram the subconscious mind and mold it like we mold clay. We become more conscious of our fears. We tell ourselves, 'There is nothing to be afraid of. ' We are able to talk to the subconscious mind in this way. It is called affirmation. 'I am a fearless being. I am a fearless being, ' we keep saying to ourselves time and time and time again. In affirming this truth we begin reeducating or reprogramming the subconscious mind. Finally, we begin to remove the layers upon layers covering the soul."

The remolding of the subconscious mind, and in particular here, we're talking about remolding it to impress it that we're a divine being, is stressed in the sutras. Gurudeva talks about it in the terms of success.

All my devotees are successful because they remold the subconscious mind first by Vasana Daha Tantra and then second by affirmations.

So that tells us that affirmations work better after we've done the Maha Vasana Daha Tantra. We've cleared out some of the debris that's down there and therefore it's easier to impress it in a, what would you say? in an efficient way.

"In India there is a traditional analogy of a lamp whose light is concealed by a screen of colored pieces of cloth. It is said we can uncover the lamp, representing the light of the soul, by reprogramming the subconscious. First we take off the black piece of cloth. The dark green one is still there, so little light comes through as yet, and we are faced with the instinctive emotion--our great protective power of being jealous. Both fear and jealousy are protective mechanisms of the mind. We work with our jealous nature as we make other affirmations. 'I have all that everyone else has. The same power that is within everyone is within me.' In this way we begin reprogramming the subconscious and gain more and more confidence in ourselves. Jealousy is inferiority. We feel we lack that which someone else has, so we try to cut them down a little bit to our size."

That's always the one I talk about, you know. Two people are of the same status. And you want to be of a higher status, it's easier to cut the other person down then it is for you to advance, right? It's more work to improve yourself. So, it's human nature to take the shortcut. You know, we just criticize the other person, make them look lower, though we're the same height, now we're taller. Whereas, of course, what we want to do is encourage them by our words but work on our self to advance our self so that we improve. Jealousy is a shortcut.

"Jealousy makes people mean. Finally, we work our awareness through this dark green sheath of jealousy, and we remove that sheath from the lamp of the soul. A little more light now shines through, and we begin to feel good about ourself--'I'm not so bad after all. In fact, I'm pretty good.' We become more confident and penetrate even deeper while working on the next instinctive quality, and the next and the next and the next. Finally, as we take off the last sheath, we find that we are That which we were all the time. (Meaning the soul.) We are inwardly free. We have removed awareness from the conscious mind and brought it through the subconscious state into pure superconsciousness. Now the physical body seems to us but a shell, a place in which we live in order to express ourselves on the surface of the Earth. The spiritual body seems to us to be our real body, and we wonder why we didn't realize that before."

In a practical sense we can use this if we do experience some jealousy or some fear, to look at it with this analogy that that's simply a cloth covering our soul nature. That helps us not identify with it and think: I'm a jealous person, I'm a fearful person. Cause we don't want to do that. That makes it who we are. Rather we want to be the soul, we want to be the light that's temporarily put a cloth over it and of jealousy or fear. And we want to, therefore quickly, take the cloth off. Well it helps us see, the analogy helps us see it in a more detached way from ourselves and then gives us the key to getting rid of it, is just to let it go as an instinctive quality that we don't need.

There's no reason to feel jealous. I'm a soul, you're a soul, which soul is better? How can one soul be better than another, you know? Obviously, we're equal. We're both souls. So we get rid of jealousy by talking ourselves out of it. Fear, we can analyze fear and say: What am I afraid of? Maybe it's something we, we heard on television quite often. You know, we get too much news in the sense that we don't fully digest it, you know. We don't fully analyze it. So, it goes in the mind and got this impression about something and we end up the next day worrying about it. So, we didn't fully analyze it when it went in the mind. So, we have to be careful not to take in more than you can digest in terms of news. So we want to, if we're fearful of something we want to analyze and see what it is. And usually it's something that when we apply reason to it it fades away cause it's not worth, it's not really true.

If it is something that seems to have substance then we need to research it and understand. Okay, this is going to happen. You know, sea level's coming up. And what altitude to I live at? Four hundred feet. Okay, I'm safe. You know, need to analyze it; use reason to work ourselves out of some sense of fear. That's all.

Thank you very much.

Om Namasivaya. Have a great day.