Seeing our shortcomings it's hard to think of ourselves as divine beings. Avoiding that series of memories we don't meditate. Overcoming that involves better understanding, learning from experience, improving our self-concept, becoming more refined, strengthening certain qualities. If we were perfect we wouldn't have been born in the first place. Move forward, closer to God. Master Course Lesson 180.

Unedited Transcript:

Lesson 180 from Merging with Siva.

"Never Fear The Past.

"Generally people start meditating and do fairly well in the beginning, for their great desire to unfold spiritually propels them within themselves. But when the subconscious mind begins to upheave its layers--as it naturally must for the unfoldment process to continue beyond an elementary stage--meditators become afraid to look at the subconscious patterns of their seemingly no-so-perfect past. To avoid facing themselves they stop meditating, and the subconscious subsides. The once-meditating seeker returns more fully to the conscious mind and becomes distracted again in order to forget 'all those terrible things.' At the same time, the remembered past seemed to be terrible because the impressions were strong, magnified by sensitivities awakened through meditation.

"For many years thereafter the one-time meditator can be heard to say, 'I'd like to meditate, and I do sometimes, but I don't have time, really, to meditate.' What he is actually saying is, 'Most of my time is used up distracting myself so I won't have to meditate anymore and won't have to face my bothersome subconscious.'

"On the path to enlightenment, you have to face everything that has gone into the subconscious, not only in this life, but what has been registered in past lives. Until you do, you will never attain Self Realization. Your final obstacle will be that last subconscious area that you were afraid to face, looming up before you in the form of worries, fears and repressions that you will wish to push away, hide from, so that neither you nor anyone else can see them."

One of the points I often make is--in our book Dancing with Siva, which gives the basic philosophy--the first topic might surprise someone who's not used to it. The first topic isn't about Siva. You know you would think the book's called Dancing with Siva, right? So we're going to start out, we're going to talk about God. But Gurudeva starts out by talking about the soul. And makes the point, first verse: You are a diving being. Came from God, returning to God and the path is experience.

But why does he make that point? Because when we face our subconscious, the things we did in the past that didn't go well, things that we regret, it's easy to not think of ourselves as a divine being because we're seeing our shortcomings. And if we see our shortcomings that's no fun. So, we avoid seeing our shortcomings; we don't meditate. We keep out of that memory, that series of memories. But that's just putting everything on hold. Here we are avoiding certain memories because they make us feel bad about ourselves cause we wish we had done things differently. So we have to overcome that and certainly the first part of overcoming that involves our self-concept. And that's why Gurudeva says: You're a diving being.

And as you know, often I say: None of us are perfect. If any of us were perfect we wouldn't have been born in the first place. So, no perfect people on the whole planet, therefore, just cause we have some imperfections we don't need to feel badly, everyone does. And we're here to improve. We're here to learn from our experiences, become more refined.

So therefore, the second point is: We need to make sure we're doing that. If we have unpleasant memories about certain parts of our life we have to ask ourselves: Well how would I do that differently if I was faced with the same situation? What have I learned from that that I didn't know back then or I didn't know strongly enough? And, impress our mind how we would handle it differently. That means we've learned from the experience. So, all experiences are good experiences if we learn a lesson from them. Life isn't supposed to just be a series of perfect events. Lots of times things go wrong and it's because we don't know something or we're not strong enough in a certain quality. We need to determine that and strive to improve through better understanding, through strengthening certain qualities. And then we move forward, closer to God.

So, that's the two aspects of what we're talking about in terms of facing the past. To remember we're diving being. But that doesn't mean we don't make mistakes. And mistakes are okay as long as we learn from them and figure out how we could handle the same situation in a different way next time.

So, thank you very much. Have a great day.

Aum Namasivaya.