Further insights into "dark night" - by Kiara Windrider

It was St. John of the Cross, one of the early Christian mystics, who first coined the term, "dark night of the soul". In my early twenties, when I was going through bouts of tremendous depression, I came across his book and found myself fascinated. It seemed that every word was written just for me, and it helped me understand what was going on from a different perspective. I would like to share a few reflections here on what this might mean for us now at this point in our journey. St. John referred to two distinct processes, which have surface similarities but are actually quite different from each other. The first process is what he called the "dark night of the senses".

Later on in the book, he describes the "dark night of the soul". I would like to distinguish here between these two events. Most of us have experienced feelings of great loneliness, emotional dryness, and depression. Sometimes these states come and go; other times they remain for weeks or months, or even years, at a time. Much of this is a psychological process. We feel unworthy, small, unloved, and insecure. The universe feels too big and too frightening for us to handle, and we find ourselves retreating from it into an increasingly tiny box in order to feel secure. We feel lost and cut off from other people. We feel too inadequate to live out our dreams. We have been hurt by life and by other people, and we retreat into a cave of our own making, alternating between feelings of anger, betrayal, loneliness, sadness, and grief. Dealing with our unhealed psychological issues is often painful, and the deeksha can accelerate this process as it pushes us towards wholeness. All this is part of the "dark night of the senses". Often we find that the stronger the light that shines upon us, the stronger also the darkness that gets stirred up.

When I lived in Mt. Shasta, California, there was a lake I used to frequently visit. It was a very shallow lake, and the bottom half of it was soft squishy mud. I used to love walking through it, stirring up all the bubbles of methane gas from the muck at the bottom, watching as they made their way up to the surface to be released. Our psychological process can be similar to this. We see for the first time some of our shadow aspects that have been buried under the mud for so long. We have tried to deny, change, project, or suppress these things for a long time, but they are still there. What do we do with these bubbles of subconscious material that get stirred up?

It pushes us towards wholeness.

Very often we try to suppress or deny these feelings, memories, or sensations once again. They are uncomfortable, and don't fit with our ideas of wanting to be spiritually enlightened beings. Or else we go into depression or contraction, and then feel guilty or ashamed for what we perceive as failure or unworthiness. A third thing we might do is to project these feelings onto other people or circumstances, actively or passively blaming them for our own feelings of darkness and discomfort. This becomes especially evident for those who have experienced significant hurt or abuse in their early childhood. The need to blame oneself or somebody else can get intensely strong to compensate for all the shadows that the deeksha begins to push towards the surface. If we no longer want to get into old patterns of suppression, denial, or projection, there is a fourth option. We can simply watch and observe this process. We don't need to try and change anything. If we are willing to hold still and stay with the feelings, the bubbles from the mud will naturally come up to the surface of the lake, and get released. However, when we actively go into blame or judgment, we halt the process and become stuck in this dark night of the senses. This is where many people have felt lost or betrayed, feeling like somehow the deeksha hasn't worked for them, or that they are worse off than ever before. If we can allow ourselves to go through the dark night of the senses, simply experiencing the reality of the mind as it is, it soon passes. More light can then come in, and deeper experiences of oneness begin to happen. We discover a stronger connection with our inner divinity, the "antaryamin", and a greater sense of our unique destiny as a soul on earth. At some point of this journey, another transformative crisis begins. This is the deeper "dark night of the soul". Whereas the dark night of the senses is a psychological crisis, the dark night of the soul is an existential crisis. Whereas the purpose of the dark night of the senses is to dissolve the sense of a separate 'self', leading to enlightenment, the purpose of the dark night of the soul is to discover the divine 'Self', and enter into God-realization. The inner experience may be similar. There is again the sense of emotional dryness, loss of vitality or enthusiasm, and a sense of desolation and darkness. But this time it is the experience of the inner soul, not the outer personality. Often we feel that our very connection with the divine is broken, there is no more joy in our hearts, and everything that had been so smooth and easy on our spiritual path now becomes burdensome and difficult. Why is this happening? This is where the last and subtlest shreds of our personal ego are being confronted. Our deepest certainties and sense of ultimate purpose is being challenged. We are being pushed into the void where everything that has to do with our last remaining ideas and concepts about divinity, truth, and ultimate reality dissolves. Even our ideas about the 'big picture' get eaten up in the void. It feels like a dismemberment of our very being, a journey through the valley of death. The journey feels endless, and just when we finally surrender to this death, we emerge reborn as a christed being. This is the stage Jesus went through in his 'forty days in the wilderness'. As he struggled with the last remnants of his inner demons, he was able to dissolve the last illusions of a separate self, and merge with the 'Father', his inner divinity. This is when he became the Christ. This is when his mission as an avatar could truly begin.

We can simply watch and observe this process.

We are on this same journey. Bhagavan makes it very clear that we are all an aspect of the Collective Avatar which is descending on Earth. He emphasizes the need to go through our own dark night of the soul, and challenges us to step into our mastery. This is what it takes to become one of the 64,000, he says.

Let us not confuse the dark night of the senses with the dark night of the soul. Just because we are feeling miserable does not mean we are automatically moving into mastery. The journey has begun, however. The way through both of these dark nights is the same. We must simply become awareness of our inner process without judgment or blame. And we must trust that this divine intelligence is equally with us in the darkness as in the light. When we can finally surrender fully to the perfection of God within the darkness, we mysteriously discover that we have emerged once again into the light! When we emerge from the dark night of the senses, we step more fully into oneness. When we emerge from the dark night of the soul, we step more fully into mastery. We become God-realized, and can serve humanity as part of the Collective Avatar on Earth, one cell in a Planetary Body as it slowly builds the critical mass necessary to achieve the collective planetary awakening!

In the words of an ancient Indian prayer, "Lead us from untruth into truth. Lead us from darkness into light. Lead us from death into immortality!"

- taken from www.onenessforall.com

nothingness..

It happened one day, a man named Bankei was working in his garden. A seeker came, a man in search of a Master, and he asked Bankei, "Hey Gardener! Where is The Master?" Bankei laughed and said, "Wait. Go in through that door, and inside you will find The Master." So the man went round and came inside. He saw Bankei sitting on a throne, the same man who was the gardener outside. The seeker said, "Are you kidding? Get down from this throne. This is sacrilegious, you don't pay any respect to the Master." Bankei got down, sat on the ground, and said, "Now then, it is difficult. Now you will not find the Master here ... because I am the Master." It was difficult for that man to see that a great Master could work in the garden, could be just ordinary. He left. He couldn't believe that this man was the Master; he missed.
Once you feel your nobodiness you have become immortal. The experience of nobodiness is exactly the meaning of nirvana, of nothingness, of absolute undisturbed silence, with no ego, with no personality, with no hypocrisy--just this silence. And this insight, where there is pure silence and pure isness, is your reality, which death cannot destroy. This is your eternity, this is your immortality.
There is nothing to fear. There is nothing to lose. And if you think anything is lost--your name, your respectability, your fame--they are worthless. They are playthings for children, not for mature people. It is time for you to be mature, it is time for you to be ripe, time for you just to be. Your somebodiness is so small. The more you are somebody, the smaller you are; the more you are nobody, the bigger. Be absolutely nobody, and you are one with the existence itself.
Everybody is afraid of being nobody. Only very rare and extraordinary people are not afraid of being nobody --a Gautam Buddha, a Bankei. A nobody is not an ordinary phenomenon; it is one of the greatest experiences in life--that you are, and still you are not. That you are just pure existence with no name, with no address, with no boundaries... neither a sinner nor a saint, neither inferior nor superior, just a silence.

~ Osho

Dukha...the reality within

You do not exist. That is the truth. That sense of "I and you", the sense of separateness, is an illusion. It does not really exist. For example, as you are listening to me, you are seeing me but you are not hearing me, and when you hear me, you are not seeing me. But that is happening so fast, that you have this illusion that you are seeing and hearing. The two senses have got coordinated, like in a movie; unless you have those 16 shots moving per second you will not see the hand movement, in the movie theatre. If the projector is slowed down it becomes only like a slide. Similarly, here the senses are coordinating at a particular speed whereby you are feeling that you are seeing, touching as though all these things are going on at the same time. It is this illusion that creates the sense of "Me" and "I". If this is slowed down, you all just vanish! So, now you are there. If I were to slow down your senses, if you would give me permission, you would just disappear. You will go back home minus yourself! But you will still be very functional; you will in fact be very efficient. The sense of separateness would completely be gone. What remains there is life or you may call it pure consciousness; the stuff from which this whole universe is made. What is there ultimately is consciousness and that has to only to be experienced.How can you see yourself? There is no way to see consciousness, because you are that. Its' true nature is Ananda and Love. It is a causeless Love. What you call love is not truly love. You either beg for love, asking somebody to give you love, or if you give love it is because somebody is big or famous or great or wealthy or you have something to gain from that. You love your wife or husband because he or she means something to you. You possess somebody, you are attached to somebody. That is not the love we are talking about. This love is a causeless love. It is just there. This can happen only if the "I", the "self" disappears. It is a very simple thing - the senses have to be slowed down a little bit and behold; You are not there! What is there is only life. You will feel you are one with the universe, completely one. It is not a mystical experience. A mystical experience comes when the kundalini rises to the chakras, but when it comes down, the experience is lost. We are not talking about that. We are talking of a very robust state of 24 hours irreversible consciousness. You are completely gone. To attain this state you must qualify. The qualification is that you must set right your relationship. It takes only 7 minutes for me to give you that state you perceive everything without the "Me" or the "I". For example, when I look at you people, I don't feel you are outside of me. It is as though all of you are inside of my belly; I can never see anything as separate. It is a fact and reality for me, and this is how all these 320 people who have got the state are experiencing. You can experience it. Somebody is not outside of you. Strangely the boundaries of the body cease. You no more can see it as your hand or your body, it is gone. The whole thing has become your body; it is a part of you. It is then that you have this true love, because it is a part of you. There is no cause, and there is no question of the mind slipping into the past or worrying about the past or projecting into the future or thinking about the future. It lives in the moment. Every moment it lives and you start really living. Right now, what is happening is, you are merely existing. You live because you are afraid of dying. Otherwise you see no reason, why you should continue with your mediocre life. You get up in the morning, go to the toilet, brush your teeth, have your breakfast, pack up your lunch, go to office or do some business, come back, have a quarrel with your wife, have a fight with your child , again comeback watch your TV, day in day out, this routine, mediocre, meaningless, purposeless. You create of course some meaning. You say "I'm doing some social work, helping man" and all kinds of things because you have to invent these things. There is no meaning, because deep inside, there is only sorrow inside you. You don't know what to do with your lives. You've got into this mechanical trap created by self, by the "Me". So, you have built up various escape systems, mechanisms and you continue with this kind of life and the only reason you are not sick is because, I can probably say, you are afraid of dying! You have had no moments of ecstasy or bliss or joy. It is what really life is all about. You have certainly missed out on all that. So, sometimes I marvel how people are able to live. It really baffles me. To me, giving enlightenment is not a big problem at all. To me the problem is, I wonder how people continue to live, how many escape systems can they build! They have TV systems, computers, sky diving, and what else; somehow you must manage your lives. You are managing your sorrow, you are escaping from your sorrow, doing all these things but fundamentally that pain is there inside; that ache, what is all this ? What is the meaning of life? Where are we going? We are getting older, and seem to have achieved nothing and what is the purpose of all this? That is the meaning of the word 'Dukha'. There is no translation for it in English. We use the work 'suffering', which is not the true meaning of the work 'dukha'. It is a very abstract and not clearly definable ache you have, the ache which Buddha had. He had everything in life yet that pain was there, that sense of "what is all this about". That is what we mean by the work 'dukha'. So, this has to go. But you must first feel that pain. That is the first qualification. If you do not feel the pain and say "OK! I'm managing my suffering and I'm happy with it" then I have no business with you. I can help you only if it is going to really trouble you. The second thing is, your relationships. That is very important. Then you are ready for receiving my grace of Mukti. Only then you'll know what true love is, what compassion is, what it is to share your life with others, what all this talk of oneness is. All the scriptures will start revealing themselves to you. Nobody needs to teach you. You are your own guru you can see it for yourself.

- Sri Bhagavan, taken from www.onenessforall.com

acceptance..the seed of love....

"Love is possible only when there is a deep acceptance of oneself, the other, the world. Acceptance creates the milieu in which love grows, the soil in which love blooms. When you stop improving upon yourself, life improves you. In that relaxation, in that acceptance, life starts caressing you, life starts flowing through you. Nobody else has ever been like you and nobody else will ever be like you; you are simply unique, incomparable. Accept this, love this, celebrate this--and in that very celebration you will start seeing the uniqueness of the others, the incomparable beauty of the others.

~Osho

Significance of year 2012.....

Most of you know that the earth has got a magnetic field. As the earth's molten core is rotating; the magnetic field is created. The thought sphere of the human mind is located in the earth's magnetic field. This magnetic field has been weakening dramatically over last ten years. Now, in physics there is a parameter called "Schumann's Resonance". Using that we can determine the strength of the earth's magnetic field. While for many centuries, it was constant around 7.80 cycles per second,during the last 7-8 years, it has risen to 11 cycles per second and is continuing to increase dramatically. If you work it out mathematically, it appears that, by the year 2012, the "Schumann's Resonance" is likely to be 13 cycles per second. When this resonance is 13 cycles per second, the earth's core would stop rotating with magnetic field gone, your mind is gone. When I say "your mind", what I mean is your "samskaras". The pressure of the past 11.000 years of samskaras will vanish. In the Dharma, we also say, "Mind is Karma". All actions start from your mind. The mind is nothing but a storehouse of samskaras or past life vasanas from which all action emanates. This is stored in the earth's magnetic field. So in the year 2012, it will become zero for a few days. After that the core will start rotating again. This would be a fresh beginning for man or the dawn of the Golden Age. This is the significance of the year 2012. How do we know, it will happen? The study of fossil records has shown that, it happens roughly after 11,000 years. It is only a short time away and then we can all start afresh. That is why I want you to become enlightened by 2012. If you are enlightened, with all your samskaras gone, we can begin a new yuga, which can be called Sathya Yuga or the Golden Age. Man will enter into a new state of altered consciousness. As I told you already, the earth's resonance is increasing which means the earth's heart is undergoing a transformation. The earth has got a physical body, like you have a body. It has got a consciousness as well. Now as the resonance is increasing the earth's heart is functioning very differently from before. Now, your heart and the earth's heart are connected. The earth's heart can be influenced by your heart and vice versa. That is why, it is essential that your heart- beat synchronises with the earth's resonance. This means your heart must flower. Your heart will flower when you discover love in your relationships. If you have discovered love, you must stop judging your parents,spouses, etc, internally. Nobody can be judged as the whole universe directly influences all events, even the behaviour of the people. So learn to experience life. Life has to be experienced, be it pain or pleasure."

- Sri Bhagavan, taken from onenessforall.com

from here and there..awesome....

........in a period of drought, all villagers in a village decide to get together and pray for rain. on the day of prayer, everyone gathers around. a little boy shows up with an umbrella.....

the essence of prayer, faith.

Unconscious of suffering....gems from Sri Bhagavan

A fire broke out in a house in which a man was fast asleep. They tried to carry him out through the window. No way. They tried to carry him out through the door. No way. He was just too huge and heavy. They were pretty desperate till someone suggested, "Wake him up, then he'll get out by himself." "Man is unconscious", says Sri Bhagavan. "There is enormous suffering in every individual. Like the rats that eat away the hands of a leper and he is unconscious of the bite having lost all sensations, people are unconscious of the suffering that gnaws at their being."
There are a lot of things going on inside you to which you have never paid attention. For instance you could be helping a person not knowing that you would rather not help if given a choice. If you go a step further you will see ulterior motives in helping him. The aim need not be monetary or physical but a simple craving to project a good image. Many forces are acting behind the scene, of which you are unconscious.
A person who denies that he is suffering is telling a plain lie to himself and to the world. His tail is on fire and he is not accepting it. You do not know yourself.
The first step in the path of enlightenment is to be conscious, to see the prison that holds you. The state itself is a benediction.

- taken from www.onenessuniversity.org

from my inbox...hilarious!!!!

Check the status of india in 2056 due to some internal issues Ahmedabad, 30 April 2056:

I attended the bash at the IIM-OBC Alumni Association to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the reservation of seats for OBCs (Other Backward Castes) in IIMs. Since I'm not an OBC, I was not supposed to attend, but at present, we MBFCs (Moderately Backward Forward Castes) together with the Non-Scheduled Tribes have a political alliance with the OBCs. We sipped champagne and talked about how so many of us had progressed from reserved seats in the IIMs to reserved jobs to reserved promotions. Unfortunately, the party broke up when a Non-scheduled Tribes faculty member objected to the OBCs dancing with all the pretty girls - he wanted equal opportunities for every caste at each dance. I pointed out that the Non-scheduled Tribes had exceeded the quota of champagne reserved for them. The party ended in a pitched caste battle.

1) May 2056:Today, I became president of the IIM Board of Directors. Under the present rotating presidency system, a member of each caste is made the president by turn. When it was the turn of the MBFCs for president, they had to choose me because I'm the only MBFC on the campus. True, I'm only the campus dhobi, but then every caste must be given an equal opportunity. All those centuries of oppression by the OSBFCs (Only Slightly Backward Forward Castes) and the OFCs (Other Forward Castes) must be rectified. I hope to restore the high standards at IIM - I overheard some foreigners calling it the Indian Institute of Morons, the other day.

2) May 2056:They've announced the cricket team for the series against Australia. I was overjoyed when they chose an MBFC man as captain. But my hopes were dashed when I realised he was a Most Backward Forward Caste and not a Moderately Backward Forward Caste. The selection committee lamented that it was gross discrimination that no member from the Jarowa tribe (the Stone Age tribe in theAndamans) had ever found a place in the Indian cricket team. A squad has since been dispatched to the Andamans to capture a Jarowa tribal to play in the national team. I hope he will improve their performance - they had an innings defeat against the Maldives recently. I would have played myself except for the fact that I lost a leg some years ago when I was in hospital with a toothache and a doctor recruited through the Unscheduled Caste quota extracted my leg instead of my tooth.

3) May 2056:There are too many NFCs (Neo-Forward castes) in the IT business. Under the terms of the Business Reservation Act, their firms will now be taken over by the other castes. I hope they will be able to restore the Indian IT industry back to its former glory. For some unfathomable reason, it has gone down the drain after job reservations were implemented. I went for a movie featuring star actor Mungeri Ram. He may lack teeth, be four-feet-three and have hair growing out of his nose, but this year it's the turn of the EBC-RYs (Extremely Backward Caste-Rural Yokels) to be stars and Mungeri Ram is the best of the lot. I wonder why foreign movies have become so popular.

4) May 2056:A truly great day. We now have an OFBMBC (Other Forward But Moderately Backward Caste) general as the Head of the Armed Forces. I hope he'll be able to win back the territory we lost ever since reservations were implemented in the Army. Since then, the north has been taken by Pakistan, the North-east by China, the east by Bangladesh and the south by Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Only last winter, we lost the war against Bhutan and free India is now limited to the western coastal states. But I'm sure the OFBMBC general will turn the tide.

5) May 2056:My wife and I have been blessed with a bonny daughter. Since my wife's an SBBNSBC (Slightly Backward But Not So Backward Caste), my daughter will be an MBFC-SBBNSBC. I must lobby for reservation for her caste. She's the only member and I'm sure she has a great future. I really dont know where will this quota system will take us!!!

Helen Keller speaketh...

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing....