The Alchemical Transformation of Conscious Studentship
There’s nothing wrong with desire. Śiva’s own will, the power of the Goddess Parā, is His desire. The difference is that Śiva’s will is the desire to express the freedom and simplicity of His own state — the expansion of His completeness. This is very different from the reaching and grasping we do as the expression of some emptiness.
Desire binds us because it becomes a need that determines our experience. It is responsible for the destruction of the experience of the highest bliss, which is Self-sufficient and needs nothing for It to exist.
Want everything in this life. You just can’t need it. It’s fine to want the love of others, financial security, or a beautiful place to live. But if you get confused and allow your experience to be determined by the need for that, then you have automatically reinforced the dualistic perspective.
Attachment is the driving force of our experience of need; our life is motivated by the urgency to acquire some thing. Then, when we have it, we ’re afraid to lose it! That’s equally as binding as not having it. Instead of the joy of having and sharing, what’s functioning is a fear of loss.
It is in our mind that we experience, project, and sustain our sense of lack. The limiting thoughts and emotions that arise out of desire and attachment can easily become dominant in our lives, encasing our awareness in the matrix of limited knowledge and debilitating emotion.
If your heart is truly open you will have no discursive thoughts and you will live in a desireless state, in the experience of resting in fullness. In this way, we avoid becoming attached to any energy coming from our thoughts. Only the heart can open big enough to experience the simplicity and fullness of our own Divinity. Live from there.
Parādevī, The Supreme Goddess Kuṇḍalinī, constantly articulates Herself as the life-giving flow and breath.
VIJÑĀNA-BHAIRAVA-TANTRA || VERSE 24||
Imagine that the Goddess Kuṇḍalinī stands before you. In front of Her is a fire, its flames rising in jeweled colors. Imagine yourself before Her. Imagine your negative tendencies/misunderstandings as a cloak that covers your body/mind/awareness causing you to act from a limited place. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire. Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising and sweeping over you, leaving a residue of insight and understanding.
From that residue of insight and understanding look deeper to see an even more thinly-veiled cloak, which even further obscures your knowing your true Self. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire. Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising and sweeping over you, leaving a more luminous residue of insight and understanding. Now surrender that insight and understanding and see the profoundly subtle veiled cloak, the insidious experience of willfulness. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire of awareness. Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising & sweeping over you, leaving a direct experience of your highest essence. The experience of fullness, where no need exists.
Apāna is the descending inhalation and Prāṇa is a rising up on exhalation. By pausing at the stillpoint at the end of each inhalation and exhalation, we discover that those points are filled with silent awareness. In that pause, one abides in the state of inner fullness.
She, Kuṇḍalinī, is the highest place of pilgrimage, both transcendent and immanent. VBT-Verse 154
Attachment into Non-Attachment
After doing the meditation of change, tune in to the felt-sense & living essence of Non-Attachment
Make a note describing the resonance of the experience. Wordsmith it to make sure it is a clear and concise articulation of the moment.
Create a flash card to remind you to find, enter into, and establish yourself there, moment by moment.
(You might even make a copy and post it on your refrigerator door!)
SGG || Verse 14||
One should bathe in the water poured over the Guru’s feet, which removes the root of ignorance . . . for the sake of attaining insight and freedom from the belief that getting what you think you need is the path to happiness.
REFLECTION AND INQUIRY:
Inner Practice: Direct Experience of the Self
The best of cobras have the internal breath; they listen attentively to the sweet music of the flute. You must practice it, you must experience it.
Those who do not breathe through the mouth or nose have no desires. The breath is purely internal. You alone are responsible for either happiness or misery.
— Bhagavan Nityananda