Awareness

 

I am very familiar with meditation practices. Before I was born, my parents were a part of an ashram in New York City, so I grew up with them meditating in front of framed photos of gurus. 

Meditation has always helped me to detach from people, places, and things that no longer serve my highest good. I can still my mind and stop ruminating about conditions that I can not change.

I am starting to witness the evolution of others and myself, and enjoying the ramifications of my spiritual process. 

But just recently, I have a new found awareness of my history and how much I need to spiritual practice such as meditation if I am to deal with my relationships in a healthy manner. 

It is all a play of consciousness, right? And I have a role to play.  

Well, it is according to Swami Muktananda, (Muktananda's website ), who was Bhagawan Nityananda's student and Ram Dass' teacher. At the ashram, my parent's teacher, Wingate Paine, wrote books about Emmanuel where Ram Dass wrote the introduction.

I like Ram Dass. I remember reading Be Here Now. Similiar to Ram Dass' title, I want to start a new business called Be Who You Are. 

My parents and Wingate Paine attended an ashram that Rudi Rudrananda started before he died in a plane crash. Rudi left behind a book about Spiritual Cannabalism, which I am reading now. Rudi and Muktananda both refer to Bhagawan Nityananda's devotion and surrendered soul.  

The teachings of Nityananda are saturated within my consciousness, and as I grow older and older, I see that my awareness is blossoming within the garden of Nityananda, where Swami Muktananda's and Rudi's teachings have brought me Om Tara and led me to metaphorically take a drink of water from the river of Oneness. 

As I meditate more, I am having more visions. 
The pearls of wisdom I am absorbing into my consciousness are humbling, as I am reading Carl Jung's essay in Man and His Symbol to find company, as I process and he describes the meaning of other people's dream language. 

I am exploring my dreams in a dream journal and exploring the anima while his ideas are synchronistically mirroring my waking life. 

Carl Jung explained the concept that we have an anima and animus, a male and female self, I am starting to envision my anima acting out various situations in my emotional world. I had a vision of a woman in a white dress with a blue sash as an animated drawing, a skinny cartoon holding a balloon, and she was near a lake.

This is when I realized the power of animation. My animating anima is like a Japanese Anime movie. But I think the closest animation style to my anima vision is the Song of the Sea. 

When Wingate was not teaching at the ashram, he was finding pearls of wisdom from Eileen and Peter Cady at Findhorn Community in Scotland. Wingate expressed in his book, Tilling the Soul, how we need to surrender, that we have masculine and feminine energies uniting within, to surrender. I agree. 

Wingate Paine explained a meditation to do in order to envision our masculine and feminine selves and have them unite. I love this because I have an awareness of my male and female selves, I always have, and this was such a great reminder for me yesterday. 

Through uniting my consciousness of self, my Higher Power, after my 12 step work, meditation, Carl Jung's writings, Wingate Paine's teachings, Swami Muktananda's experience, and Nityananda's Grace, my soul is satisfied in my new found awareness of Self. 

I pray: may all beings be free from suffering. 

Thank you, Big Head Todd and the Monsters!

It is Bittersweet, Surrender. Listen Now!