Petals-Session 10-Extended

Petals of Change

541

Swami Khecaranatha

When you receive a māla, you are receiving and accepting a commitment.

Typically you receive a māla from a teacher, so you’re receiving their commitment to you. And you’re accepting your own commitment not really that teacher, but to your own freedom.

By putting on God’s māla, you are making a commitment to serve the highest in yourself, to expand your willingness and capacity to serve the Divine.

So should you choose to make that commitment understand what you’re committing yourself to.

And when you choose NOT to make that commitment understand what you are committing yourself to.

Petals of Change

542

Swami Khecaranatha

Service is the charnel ground, ablaze with the fire of Consciousness.

Understand that if you offer yourself into that fire, you have to remain there long enough for the blaze to incinerate you!

When I see a student grumbling about the work I’ve given or the change I suggest they need to make I just give them some more. I throw another log on the fire. This is the only way I can help students burn through the limited capacity to give. All resistance is a fight against being willing to give, When we truly surrender to serving the Divine, we are simply immersed in God’s love and witness its expression, flowing out from us to wherever it is needed.

Strike the Match & Light the Fire!

Petals of Change

543

Swami Khecaranatha

Most often we only serve when it doesn’t cost us anything, but action is for the purpose of knowing our Self, and that includes the painful exposing of the parts of us that are closed. Serving unconditionally requires that we open our hearts without attachment to the results of action. That’s the only way to get bigger than our limitations.

Petals of Change

544

Swami Khecaranatha

Learning to serve involves the devouring of thought-construct and consuming the energy of mind. This is important since our minds are continually seeking to define, and thought-constructs are simply the matrix of all those definitions of who we are and what we do.

Consciousness thereby becomes encased in this web of thought-constructs and we engage in actions that spring forth from our needs, rather than acting for the purpose of self-knowledge.

Petals of Change

545

Swami Khecaranatha

In unconditional service we have the inner realization that we are Śiva, and that His powers are our own. But we must then express this realization in life. Although we’re ultimately serving God, we appear to be serving those around us, and navigating the practical aspects of service is part of the challenge. Only when we learn to serve unconditionally, without injecting our own needs and desires into the equation, is our desire to serve actualized.

Petals of Change

546

Swami Khecaranatha

IMAGE TEXT: SHAMBHU

Petals of Change

547

Swami Khecaranatha

https://www.hardlight.org/ teachings/guru-gita/

Credit: Eric Jacobsen

SGG || Verse Eleven || The embodied one becomes the Absolute, purified of the impact of bad karma, through doing sevā at the feet of Śrī-Guru.

Petals of Change

548

Swami Khecaranatha

The true reason people don’t really serve is that requires that they change.

It is only in the willingness to be changed that self-absorption becomes Absorption into the Self.

Petals of Change

549

Swami Khecaranatha

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 misunderstandings and misperceptions as a cloak that covers your body/mind/awareness, causing you to perpetually act from self-absorption. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire — repeating “May All My Actions Serve You”.

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 of your true Self. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire. repeating “May I Know You As Myself”.

Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising and sweeping over you, leaving a more luminous residue of insight and understanding.

Now look deeper than that insight and understanding and see the profoundly subtle veiling cloak, the subtless unwillingness to serve God’s will. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire of awareness, repeating “May Thy Will be My Will”. Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising and sweeping over you, leaving a direct experience of your highest essence: Your Self.

Petals of Change

54-10 550

Swami Khecaranatha

it is in stillness of will, knowledge and action that we merge into Presence— the Divine Light from which we came. If finding your liberation is not the most important thing in your life, you will not have it. It is the commitment to eliminate all other options, because you are clear that liberation is what you want. Your decision to know and serve God will be tested, and the strength of your commitment is forged in that challenge.

Offering ourselves into unconditional service not easy, yet it should be a joyous undertaking. So we tether ourselves to our intention. We refuse to lose sight of what we know is most important. If we truly offer our lives to God, if we truly serve, we will ultimately burn through any perception that “I am separate, I am different, and I am the doer.”

To live in and as God, to abide in and as Divine Presence, is a conscious choice to serve God’s purpose.

Petals of Change

551 54-11

Swami Khecaranatha

Self-Absorption Into Selfless Service Selfless Service

After doing the meditation of change, tune in to the felt-sense & living essence of

Selfless Service 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!)

NOTE TO SELF — Selfless Service

_______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Petals of Change

52-12 552

Swami Khecaranatha

Utpaladeva makes it clear that devotion — the state of being servant to the Lord— is the highest state; that this state is very difficult to achieve; and that it is attained through the Lord’s grace. For Utpaladeva, devotions means the state of recognition of the Lord, hence liberation. itself.

Petals of Change

553

Swami Khecaranatha