What we do with our awareness relates to where our energy goes. Purge, through vasana daha tantra, unresolved events we haven't accepted or understood. Affirmations. Redo goals, harness and control energy, get into the fourth chakra, observe, watch the mind think. Change habits dramatically through cultivating and choosing mental patterns. [Commentary on book Self and Samadhi -- How to Realize God.]

Unedited Transcript:

Continuing to read and comment on "How to Realize God."

"Still other goals must be met: quieting the energies, the pranas through pranayama, purifying or refining mind and emotion, quelling the ever-constant movement of the restless, external mind and its immediate subconscious, where memories are stored, preserved memories which give rise to fear, anger, hatred and jealousy. It is our past that colors and conditions, actually creates, the future. We purge the past in the present, and we fashion the future in the present."

In general, it's good not to think a lot about the past, what we do with our awareness, where we decide to place it: past, present future. Relates to where our energy goes. If we think a lot about the past, which chakra is the past? Muladhara chakra, right? That's not particularly a high state of consciousness. So we're putting our energy in our muladhara chakra by thinking and talking a lot. Not, not occasionally, you know, but thinking and talking a lot about the past is unnecessarily placing energy in the muladhara chakra whereas we want it higher than that.

However, if the past looms up in a recognizable way, meaning certain events in the past keep being remembered regularly and aren't our happiest memories, shall we say. Then it means we need to purge them. There's some emotional content in them that we haven't gotten rid of or there's some aspect to what happened that we haven't accepted and understood.

So, that's a different type of past where it's, a couple of times a week we keep thinking about the same event that happened twenty years ago. It's telling us, the subconscious is telling us: This is unresolved, maybe you want to figure it out. And then, when it's figured out, when we understand it or accept it, or write it down and through vasana daha tantra, just take the emotional content out of it. We don't think about it regularly any more; it goes away.

So those items which need to be purged, we don't have to go looking for them. Unless we're doing the maha vasana daha tantra. Then we're looking for them. Otherwise, we just wait for them to pop up.

"... fashion the future..."

So we have to be careful about that. If we, as Gurudeva says: If you worry a lot about certain things you can put so much energy into those worries that you actually create the experience that otherwise wouldn't be happening. So, better to think about positive events for the future. And the most structured way of doing that is through the use of affirmations. It's always good to have an individual or a family affirmation going on that talks about the future. Particularly, if there's any changes we want in our life. We're trying to move from one job to another, trying to move from one city to another. We need to affirm a positive future when we're undergoing change. Otherwise, worry can come up.

Gurudeva created an affirmation for the monastics. So every morning we, except Sun 1, every other morning except Sun 1 we, after our half an hour puja, we go to the Guru Peedam and we start with our monastic affirmation. It talks about the five Kulams and what we're doing and so forth. So Gurudeva was a strong believer in affirmation. Affirmation talks about the Kulam goals, meaning the goals of the different departments in the monastery.

He was also a firm believer in always having goals. Sometimes we feel we're kind of standing still in life. Maybe we haven't, maybe we need to redo our goals. That we kind of achieve them all or were outmoded for some other reason. And even if we're retired we need goals. It keeps us going, keeps us developing. Otherwise, you don't stand still. You either go forward or backwards, comes to human development. So we want to keep moving forward through affirmation and goals and avoiding worry about the future by having positive plans.

"All of these emotions (which refers back to fear, anger, hatred and jealousy) are the powerful force that bursts the seals of the psychic chakras, four, five, six and seven. Once harnessed, turned inward and transmuted, this life force drives the spiritual process forward."

Well energy is energy. And we have a choice of where to put it. What we do and what we don't do determines where our energy ends up. As we said: If we think a lot about the past it ends up in the muladhara chakra. We allow ourselves to get fearful then it goes down even one more. We get too intellectual it ends up the second chakra, svadhishthana. But where we want to have it is the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh. So to get it in the fourth chakra, as Gurudeva says: We have to harness the energy so it doesn't get into anger, fear, hatred or jealousy. Have control over it and then we can get it into the fourth chakra which is observation.

Gurudeva puts that in a nice way. He says: Observation is the first awakening of the soul. And it's cultivated through abstinence from excessive talk, right. So what does excessive talk do? It's just like thinking a lot about the past. It's using the energy in the first two chakras -- excessive talk. You're expressing your energy through your first three chakras with excessive talk. Notice he doesn't, he puts the word "excessive" in there. Don't want to all go silent. Gurudeva says: Don't talk. No! Excessive talk. Some talk is necessary to keep social protocols going; keep a sense of harmony flowing between people. But, you don't need excessive talk.

So, if we can observe our mind thinking, observe our tendency to be drawn to certain external objects and all, then we're utilizing the fourth chakra. We're observing the mind, watching the mind think. If we're just thinking without observing then we're not utilizing the fourth chakra.

So the fourth chakra's very important because we can see our habits. The mind is very much a creature of habit. Wake up in the morning, you reach for the same thing be it a cup of coffee, whatever. You know, we're creatures of habit. Goes with the same routine. Physical habits are easier to see than mental habits. But we also have mental habits. In other words, a mental habit would be when something goes wrong, we get discouraged. That would be a normal mental habit. And then we might, something else goes wrong, we might end up giving up. So we get discouraged twice on a project, we end up giving it up. Not a good habit to have.

How do we overcome it? Well first we have to see it. You know, if we can't see the habit we can't overcome it. That's why being in the fourth chakra is important. Instead of just going through these reactions without being that aware of what they are. And one step further: Without being aware of the reaction but not seeing the pattern, we can't change it. But we can change ourselves in dramatic ways through this simple process of cultivating observation of our mental patterns, choosing the ones we like and changing the one's we don't.

That's a good place to stop.

Have a good day.

Aum Namasivaya.