Petal-Session 7

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With one’s aim inside while gazing outside, eyes neither open or closed, this is Bhairava Mudrā, the most kept secret of the Tantras. By penetrating into Bhairava Mudrā the yogin observes the vast totality of all things arising from and dissolving into the sky of consciousness. — Kṣemarāja

Bhairava Mudrā: The power of external gaze, internal focus to bring about the experience of unity.

Established there, we engage life for the very purpose of learning that there is no difference between having our eyes open or closed — of looking out or in.

(Bhairava who is YourSelf knows Himself as Everything) Credit: Florentine Faltin

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Deep within us is the knowledge that the Divine is the Source of our lives.

Our spiritual work is to develop, refine, and tune our psychic mechanism so we can resonate on the same frequency as the subtle Divinity.

This means tuning in to a different dimension of life — the part of us that

remembers its Source. Otherwise, we spend our energy reinforcing a limited vision of what we think life is. When we do that, we are resonating with a denser vibration. This higher vibration is a high-pitched frequency that requires us to develop a finely-calibrated inner radio receiver.

Tuning in to the Divine means we are filled with it, and we function within

the dimension of it. Outward circumstances might not change at all, but our perception of them is transformed. Even though we continue to experience difficulties and pain, we are grounded in a place within that is unaffected by the surface dimensions of life.

Most people get caught up in the dynamics of their life, and because they can’t see these higher dimensions, they don’t seek them. We have to redirect the energy we expend in reaction to external circumstances.

By reorienting our attention inward, we change from the inside out. This

allows a lighter, deeper understanding to filter up through the denser levels within, so these qualities can become manifest in our awareness.

Sādhana is seeing Consciousness through the power of Consciousness to see Itself.

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Consciousness expresses Itself in and as the field of Śakti.

What we see and experience inside us, as the vertical exchange with life, is not different than what we see and experience outside of us as a horizontal exchange with life.

Credit: Florentine Faltin

Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven beyond doubt that the physical/seemingly external world is one large sea of energy that flashes into and out of being in milliseconds, over and over again.

Which way did it go, where did it go?

Which way did it come from, which way did it go?

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O c s n

The conscious discipline of developing a flow and extending it into daily life is a vital element in knowing that there is only Life moving in and out of life. There is only One Energy, permeating everything. There is no up, down, in, or out. When we deeply open and begin to establish this flow inside it creates the perfect situation “outside” of us to help us free ourselves from some powerful pattern or tension within — the ones that are actually dictating our experience of/in the world.

 Vertical can be described as being the flow that moves within our psychic body: Up the central channel, connecting us to the unbounded Awareness, and then back down into us. It also speaks to the ascent of consciousness out of the more contracted, less reflective capacity of itself.

 Horizontal flow is that which moves out from the inner flow, extending into our life in the world. It is this horizontal flow that creates our life.

Isn’t it amazing then, that the very life that is being expressed from

within us is the life we are perpetually rejecting?

The internal vertical flow must be extended from our center, from our heart, to connect with the energy around us. As soon as we understand the manifest world as energy, we can feel it and interact with it in a fundamentally new way. What we initially think of as external energy is not different from the energy within. When we understand that tension is just contracted energy not in motion, our relationship to it has changed.

As that energy within us rises, it exposes a bigger consciousness from which we can then re-engage life. We then function from a completely different consciousness. We understand that all life is not about form but about energy, and this energy can be used to transform our experience when we put that force into the flow within.

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Descending and ascending.

Center of the Head

Heart Cakra

Down the front, up the back.

VERTCIAL FLOW INTO CONSCIOUSNESS VERTCIAL FLOW WITHIN SUBLTE BODY

HORIZONTAL FLOW: Extending from Within and Taking Energy from Without

Navel Cakra

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Oblation is effortlessly offered in the fire of Śiva’s intensely flaming Consciousness by fully sacrificing the great ‘seed’ of internally and externally created duality. —Abhinavagupta

There is an internal surrender and an external surrender and they are never separate. As it expands in itself, energy is creating the dynamics of our life. We can’t achieve a real state of freedom by surrendering inside while expressing willfulness and trying to control everything “outside.” Surrender isn’t a constraint that we feel, but a true letting go. Whatever offering you choose to make, do it from the place of joy in yourself. What we’re really sacrificing is our attachment to suffering, to the anger that arises when our needs are not met, and to the underlying tensions/patterns that keep us in pain.

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

Credit: Eric Jacobsen

SGG || The Key Verse of The GG || One should meditate on the eternal, all-pervasive state of the Guru, which is the embodiment of all the sacred sounds [of Sanskrit] in visible form. One should meditate on the [form of] practice & conduct which holds ‘the flame of the lamp,’ that is, the Śāmbhava state which illumines that spontaneous freedom which is inscribed in everything in existence by the divine Causes of the World and that have all bodies as their abode, and which are [installed within] the ‘lotuses’ (i.e. cakras) whose petals are rotated by ‘ham’ and ‘saḥ.’

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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 perpetually act to get something outside of yourself. 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.

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 Credit: Eric Jacobsen fire. 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 externalization that obscures the awareness of inner focus. Peel away the cloak, and throw it into the fire of awareness. Watch it dissolve in the flames, ash rising and sweeping over you, leaving a direct experience of your highest essence: Your Self.

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Externalization becomes Inner Focus Inner Focus

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

Inner Focus 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 — Inner Focus

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