Latest / Inspiration and Transformation / The Rise of the Divine Feminine
Transcript
- 0:05Welcome to inspiration and transformation from the banks of the Gunga with Sadvi Bagwati Saraswati
- 0:11and American Sanyasi living at the parmarth Nikitan Ashram in Rishikesh, India. Sadvi
- 0:17is President of the Divine Shakti Foundation, a charitable organization bringing education, vocational
- 0:23training, upliftment and empowerment programs to women and children. Sadvi is also Secretary
- 0:29General of the Global Interfaith Wash Alliance and director of the world famous International Yoga
- 0:35Festival. Joined the musings of an American Sanyasi as Sadvi shares the wisdom and
- 0:40teachings of her Guru, His Holiness Pujiaswami Chinnant Saraswatiji, Welcome everyone to inspiration
- 0:53and transformation from the holy banks of the Sacred Gunga River in the land of
- 1:02Rishikesh, India. There were a lot of challenges. Some of the challenges
- 1:08had to do with adaptation, as in things were completely different than what I
- 1:12was used to. And some of the challenges had nothing to do with cultural
- 1:18adaptation and everything to do with the mind of my own ego. As I
- 1:26was saying to the woman who asked the earlier question, You know, just
- 1:30because you decide to join an ashram, just because you may have as I
- 1:36had a deeply powerful, transformative experience of spiritual connection, of awakening, of
- 1:45whatever word you may use to describe it, that does not mean you're done.
- 1:53Sadly, it doesn't mean that in that moment, every mental habit,
- 2:00every son scotta, every programming, every aspect of your psyche suddenly gets washed
- 2:07away, and you know you are anger free and desire free and ego free.
- 2:15It would be great if a deep spiritual experience were that kind of a
- 2:20package deal. It's much more such a powerful experience of the truth that it
- 2:30transforms how you understand yourself, and therefore it becomes that which you always want
- 2:38to get back to experiencing. But yeah, I remember I had been here,
- 2:46I don't know, maybe a year or so approximately, give or take
- 2:51a few months, and someone said something not directly to me, but to
- 2:57someone else that got back to me, and I was really upset, like,
- 3:01oh, worked up, really upset in a sort of how dare she
- 3:06type of thing? And I finally took it to Pujaswamiji because I was suffering.
- 3:15I didn't take it to him as a story of like, she did
- 3:17this, but I took it to him as in, I'm suffering. My
- 3:23piece is nowhere to be found because I'm so stuck in this mental game of
- 3:32what I've been told. So and so said. And he looked at me
- 3:37and he said, you are the stupidest smart person I've ever met. When
- 3:44I first met him, I was shocked to discover that he even knew what
- 3:47Stanford University was. I mean, I had no idea that he was this
- 3:53very famous, internationally beloved and revered leader. I had no idea. I
- 4:00walked in and had darshan of this incredible being who, in my mind,
- 4:05was just this amazing, divine being sitting in this incredible corner of the world.
- 4:13The fact that he also traveled to America and had founded temples, and
- 4:18I had no idea. So when I found out that he actually knew what
- 4:25Stanford was, and he knew what a PhD meant, and he knew all
- 4:29of these things that seemed to me to be from such a totally different world,
- 4:32I was really shocked. But yeah, so he says to me,
- 4:36you are the stupidest smart person I've ever met. He said, how could
- 4:42you be that's smart and be this stupid, like, how could you so
- 4:50willingly voluntarily let go of truth that you know is true. You've spent the
- 5:01last all of these months living in this truth. Nobody came inside you and
- 5:09surgically removed it. You weren't drugged or literally hit on the head unconscious.
- 5:15You have voluntarily given up your peace, your truth for some random nothing.
- 5:29My God kiss nake ya kaha kiss go Really, and as I found with
- 5:43him over the years, when he simply in these one liners points out the
- 5:49truth, all of the illusion just dissipates in that moment, and so him
- 5:57just saying that made it go away. But yeah, I mean, and
- 6:01that was I would love to say, yeah, that was the last time
- 6:04anything like that happened, But it wasn't. It wasn't even close. So
- 6:14there's lots of challenges whatever path in life we choose, because the mind is
- 6:19always there. And so whether it's the mind having you know, cultural issues,
- 6:28which actually, by God's grace, adapting to the culture was really easy,
- 6:35really really really easy for me. Yeah, really, by God's grace,
- 6:43that came came really easily. But adapting to working with my mind,
- 6:56adapting to having a group who was a mirror of truth and not an aider
- 7:02and a better of the games of my own psyche. You know, we
- 7:10get so used to having people in our lives literally be enablers of our own
- 7:15way of thinking. Yeah, yeah, of course you should be upset.
- 7:18My god, CHAOSO must be up up in the alpicle. So mabotarunga,
- 7:24right. I mean, so many people in our lives meaning wow, aiming
- 7:35to make us happy, aiming to make us feel supported, actually are just
- 7:41enablers of our own disease. But having a guru who was not an enabler,
- 7:51who was not going to sit there and say, oh yeah, oh
- 7:55you poor thing. That was such a mean thing for her to say,
- 7:58you know, come here and cry in my lap. I mean was he
- 8:01was not not going to go there. And those were challenges because when you're
- 8:11used to having had your your ego stroked and massaged, and so the challenges
- 8:20were much more that being celibate as a challenge. Being a disciple is a
- 8:28challenge. Being a woman in essentially a man's world is a challenge. But
- 8:37those are the types of challenges that whatever path we choose in life, there's
- 8:43choices that we have to make, and we always have to adapt and learn
- 8:48and change. I mean, that's what life's about. It's about growing into
- 8:54the choices that are right for you. Whether you choose a path of monastesis
- 9:01or you choose a path of marriage. Either way, it's a lot of
- 9:05challenges. There's a lot of adaptation, there's a lot of working with your
- 9:11ego, working with your patterns. But to say, well, I don't
- 9:18want to be a monastic, but I also am not going to get married
- 9:20because I don't want either jungered men aporn my well, then you lose on
- 9:31some level the opportunity to actually work with the ego, on that deep level.
- 9:39And it doesn't mean that you have to actually take official vows of renunciation,
- 9:43but there needs to be I think, in our own lives, not
- 9:50hanging out in limbos, where we do make choices, we do make decisions,
- 9:56we move forward on a path that calls to us, that speaks to
- 10:01us, that feels like our dharma, even when it's full of challenges.
- 10:09Because in those challenges or what we when we have the opportunity to learn,
- 10:16really learn and open ourselves up. When I remember, you know, tying
- 10:22a sorry was a challenge. And when I first came, I decided I
- 10:28loved how sorries look and I was going to learn to tie a sorry and
- 10:33if hundreds of millions of Indian women, many of whom were totally illiterate,
- 10:39could do it every day, well, I was going to figure out how
- 10:43to do it. And I tied them very badly. And I found myself
- 10:50as I would walk through the ashram, through the street, through different places,
- 10:56that random women would come up to me and fix my sorry. And
- 11:03I remember the first time it happened. I was actually walking through the marketplace
- 11:07like up towards Ramjula, and this random woman came up to me. And
- 11:11when I when I first used to wear sorrys instead of doing it like this,
- 11:15I did, you know the full on folded way and then you safety
- 11:18paint it up. And she comes up to me and she literally sticks her
- 11:24hands in here and pulls at my plates and fixes them, and then sticks
- 11:35her hand in here into my blouse and fixes these and then sort of assesses
- 11:43me and walks on. And I stood there like I have been assaulted,
- 11:56I have been violated, like that woman just stuck her hands in my underwear.
- 12:03I don't know, or she didn't ask, and I held on to
- 12:11that for several hours. She's kind of moving through the world with this relatively
- 12:16mild form of PTSD, but you know, nonetheless PTSD anyway if I can't
- 12:22believe it. And a few hours later I finally realized that that woman actually
- 12:31did to me exactly the same thing that she would have done to her daughter
- 12:37if her daughter was walking out of the house in a very badly tied sorry,
- 12:43and that rather than being assaulted and violated, I had actually just been
- 12:50adopted, and that if I could shift my own mindset from feeling like I'd
- 13:00been violated to feeling like I'd been adopted, living in India was going to
- 13:05be much easier, because, as you know, there isn't the same sense
- 13:13of personal space like we have in America. If you've tried to sit in
- 13:18the gunga Art the anytime recently, right, you realize, especially when things
- 13:22are really crowded, that that which to those of us from the West feels
- 13:28like my space to an Indian looks like a whole other place for a whole
- 13:35other person. And you'd be sitting down next to somebody who was, you
- 13:41know, say about kind of the distance between me and this pillow, and
- 13:46to me, I've just got enough space between me and the two people,
- 13:50you know, on both sides of me. And then someone would come down
- 13:54and think that this was a space and they their knees are in my lap,
- 14:05and again it's the same situation. Either you've been violated or you've been
- 14:15adopted, because that person has just essentially assumed that you are a family member
- 14:20and therefore having her knees or arms or handbag or baby or whatever it is
- 14:26that's now in your lap is a perfectly okay thing to do. So when
- 14:37we have to adapt, we really grow. I mean, I was raised
- 14:43an only child, so I really had a lot of personal space. I
- 14:50never shared a room, I never shared a bed. I really had a
- 14:52lot of personal space growing up. And suddenly there's no space, and then
- 15:03you adapt, and what ends up happening is you expand to an awareness that
- 15:11actually everybody is your family, and how beautiful and the fact that everybody says,
- 15:18you know, by or Ben or Deed or Chach or whatever they say
- 15:24next to your name, that you're the sister or the brother or the aunt
- 15:28or the uncle. But that's really how the culture operates, so all of
- 15:33the the challenges monkeys in the trees, for example, yeah package deal of
- 15:45life in India, you adapt Yeah cows, whatever it may be. And
- 15:54in the adaptation you realize that you're not actually nearly as fragile tile as you
- 16:00thought you were, but actually you don't really need quite so much space,
- 16:07that you don't really need things to be quite exactly as you want them to
- 16:12be, and that there's a way of letting go into the flow of the
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- 17:10Hi, this is Christina Ricci with Rain. Every two minutes another American is
- 17:15sexually assaulted. If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you
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- 17:37Brought to you by Rain and this station. Welcome back to inspiration and transformation.
- 17:47I'm so glad to have you all back here with me. There's always
- 17:52been the deep presence and power of the divine feminine, I mean Hinduisms.
- 18:00Matand arm is a tradition that has always worshiped the divine feminine. Whether you
- 18:07look at mantras, if you look at the actual mantras that we chant,
- 18:15we say tameva Mata chuppitata, you are oh God, you are the mother.
- 18:26Then you are the father, you are the Guru, you are the
- 18:29friend. And when we pray at the end of arty and we say dirty
- 18:41mata keij go mata kej, ganga mata kej, it's all mata matata.
- 18:48It's all mother, mother, Earth, mother nature, it's all mother.
- 18:55If you look at the actual language like English, Hindi is got words that
- 19:03are masculine and feminine, like Spanish or French or so many other languages.
- 19:07And the word for creation shrishti feminine, the word for nature, precret the
- 19:19feminine, the word for the energy of creation, the energy of everything,
- 19:26the energy of creation, sustenance, disillusion, the energy of everything that the
- 19:32divine does, shuck the feminine. So the creation itself is feminine. Nature
- 19:41that has been created is feminine. The energy with which it is created,
- 19:45sustained, dissolved, feminine. When we pray to God and take God's name,
- 20:00we take the female first. We say Lukshmi, not ayan. We
- 20:03say Si Tadam, we say Radha Krishna. So it's actually a culture in
- 20:11which from the core, from the essence, from the beginning, although we
- 20:18say it's eternal, with no beginning, there has been a reference of the
- 20:22divine feminine. Not only do we worship door to Go, Saraswati, Kali,
- 20:32Lakshmi, Gayatri, all of the forms of the Mother Goddess, but
- 20:38we also have these days eighteen days a year, nine in the springtime,
- 20:45nine in the autumn, dedicated exclusively to the worship of the Mother Goddess.
- 20:53I don't actually know of any other tradition like that. So it's there the
- 21:00dilemma that has happened across the world over. I don't know whether it's been
- 21:10hundreds or thousands of years. I'm not a sociologist or historian in this way,
- 21:15or anthropologist in this way, but I would imagine that it's been and
- 21:25I'm just guessing here, but I would imagine that it's been since days of
- 21:32hard labor work, where it wasn't something that women could necessarily do as well
- 21:38as men, that there's been perhaps a sense of not just division of labor,
- 21:47but that which over time became more of something that's seen as a hierarchy.
- 21:53It's better if you are a man, because then you can do this,
- 21:59and if you're a woman you can't, and they are four that is
- 22:02lesser. I would imagine that that has creeped into our society around aspects of
- 22:12that, But again I don't know. I don't know how or when it
- 22:15arose, but I know that it's not part of the core teachings. What's
- 22:22happened over the last many, many many decades, but even going back,
- 22:33going back even before the last century, were with women getting the right to
- 22:38vote, is There have been movements. There have been movements around equality.
- 22:45There have been movements around whether we say feminism or whatever word we may use,
- 22:51but words around the awareness that this actually isn't right and it's not right
- 22:59in society. And slowly, slowly, slowly, we're seeing change. And
- 23:04as we're seeing change in our societies, we're seeing also change in how people
- 23:14worship spiritually. Now again, this is not true with ancient and indigenous traditions.
- 23:19It's not true in Hinduism. They've never stopped worshiping the divine feminine.
- 23:26It's not true in the indigenous religions anywhere in the world. But in our
- 23:33more you know, Western societies, culture meets religion, where there's been suppression
- 23:41and subjugation and oppression. As women are rising in society simultaneous to it,
- 23:49and I don't know if it's causational or they just go together, there's been
- 23:53also a beautiful rise in people looking four an aspect and embodiment of the divine
- 24:07that is feminine. And that's beautiful because here's what's interesting. The divine feminine
- 24:15is not only present in the bodies of actual females, it's present in everyone.
- 24:22So when we talk about the need for the rise of the divine feminine.
- 24:26It's not just a rallying call for women of the world unite. It's
- 24:34a rallying call to recognize the power of that shakti, of that feminine energy
- 24:45that exists in all of us. Maybe it's a little bit more available pronounced
- 24:52accessible in women, but not always. It's a lot of men who are
- 24:57deeply connected to their divine feminine and a lot of women who are not.
- 25:03Because the divine feminine energy is an energy that is not only different, but
- 25:11it's an energy that's critical. And so we are great proponents of worship of
- 25:19the divine feminine, both from a spiritual level in terms of prayers and poojas
- 25:26and ceremonies and whatnot, but also in terms of the actual women and girls
- 25:33in human bodies here on earth as embodiments of that. And so the work
- 25:38around gender equality, around empowerment, around all of that for women, because
- 25:45they do go hand in hand, you know, we as we remind people
- 25:49every Navaratri, when you worship Mother Doortiga, Ma Doortiga or Ma Saraswati Malaxhmi
- 26:00in the month there and then you come home and you abuse your wife or
- 26:10your daughter, or your sister, or the women in your company or the
- 26:15women in the community. Do you really think that the Mother Goddess is answering
- 26:21your prayers? Like, do you think that Madorga is saying, oh wow,
- 26:23great Puja. Don't you think she knows how you are treating her in
- 26:32the form of your wife of your daughter. And so we're really vocal advocates
- 26:41for the awareness that the Mother Goddess whom we worship in our temple also exists
- 26:49and lives in our mothers and our sisters and our daughters and our wives and
- 26:57the women in our community. And that's why it's so important to respect them,
- 27:08to honor them, to celebrate them, and to celebrate differences, not
- 27:15to celebrate their ability to become like men, not to celebrate their right to
- 27:22be like men, but to celebrate the women that they are, and how
- 27:30that's different from what our men give us. So, yeah, it's happening.
- 27:37It's happening spiritually, and it's happening in the world, but it definitely
- 27:41needs all of us together. This is OTRFM, part of the Iom Radio
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- 29:18of Animals seven five seven six two two peta Welcome back. This is Sadvi
- 29:25Bagavati Saraswati with inspiration and transformation. Why do people gossip? My mother in
- 29:36law is like a character from some TV show. She sits down and the
- 29:41first words out of her mouth are always something like, well, you won't
- 29:45believe what Nard said to your father yesterday? Or can you believe what Ritu
- 29:52was wearing in a temple? If I sit back and just observe, it's
- 29:57really funny. But sometimes the gossip isn't this mild? Why do people do
- 30:04it? Well? We gossip for a lot of reasons. First of all,
- 30:22sadly, a lot of people are afraid of silence, and when they
- 30:29don't have anything else to say, there's always gossip. One of the real
- 30:36tragedies is that we see silence as empty, and there's that anxiety, Oh
- 30:42my god, who's going to say something? Who's going to say something?
- 30:45I should think of something to say. What if they don't say anything,
- 30:48Oh my god, They're going to think I'm really boring? And so we
- 30:52sort of rack our brains for anything to fill that space, and a lot
- 31:00of times it's nonsense. Sometimes it's gossip. Sometimes it's just nonsense chatter.
- 31:06Sometimes it's oversharing. You know, we we kind of do anything to just
- 31:11fill the space. We all sew gossip because on some very deranged level,
- 31:22it makes us feel closer to the people we're talking to that somehow, if
- 31:27I say to you, oh, do you know what this one's am?
- 31:32I couldn't believe it. What do you think? My god, she's the
- 31:36worst? Right, Well, it creates this really false sense of closeness between
- 31:44us that now we've got this sort of tosome huddle. But it's a very
- 31:55false and very shallow form of connection because it's grounded only on being negative about
- 32:07others, which means, after I tell you about this thing, I better
- 32:10think of something else to tell you so that we can stay connected. So
- 32:15that's another reason that people gossip is for that sense of of closeness. If
- 32:23I want to feel close to you, I may try to think of some
- 32:29kind of juicy thing to tell you, or some kind of critique about someone
- 32:35else, because for some again kind of deranged reason, it seems like a
- 32:45short cut to us feeling close. And I think the third reason people gossip.
- 32:55I'm sure there's probably more, but three occur to me at the moment
- 32:59is as a defense mechanism against themselves actually having to open and be real.
- 33:12Because if you take the case of the mother in law of the questioner sitting
- 33:20down together, well, if she starts with just, oh my god,
- 33:24this one and that one and this one and that one, and you won't
- 33:28believe this, and you won't believe that. Did you see this? Did
- 33:30you see that? Well, it fills up the space so that there's no
- 33:37necessity for the two of you to actually have to just sit in each other's
- 33:45presence. And sometimes when we are uncomfortable to be vulnerable, when we don't
- 33:55want to be vulnerable, we don't want to open up. We don't want
- 33:59the possibility that you might actually ask me how my day was, or ask
- 34:07me how I am and really want an answer, a real answer, or
- 34:13God forbid, you might start to talk about something actually real and meaningful that
- 34:17would require me to open up and connect with you in a deep and vulnerable
- 34:24way. We just fill the space with shallowness. But that song is always
- 34:37focused as much as we can on us and not on others. So rather
- 34:43than why do others gossip, let's look at what can we do both to
- 34:52stop ourselves from engaging in useless energy we se chatter, and also to get
- 35:05ourselves out of that situation if we find ourselves in it. So, if
- 35:12you are a gossip, if you find yourself that you are doing it,
- 35:15it's okay. Don't hate yourself, don't feel badly, but ask yourself why
- 35:23why? Like, what's my impetus here? What was I feeling before I
- 35:32started telling that story? What was going on? Try to work backwards.
- 35:38Eventually you'll get to the place where you'll be able to catch yourself before you
- 35:42do it. But at least from now, at the end of the day,
- 35:50as you're doing your introspection or whenever you sit for contemplation, ask yourself
- 35:58what was going on? What was the true or that led me to suddenly
- 36:01start unnecessarily bad mouthing this other person who really hadn't done anything to me except
- 36:07maybe wore something that I didn't particularly like to a party to the temple God
- 36:14forbid, the same sorry they were last week. They didn't do anything to
- 36:19me? What instigated me to start that? And really just to ask yourself.
- 36:27Was I feeling disconnected alone, lonely? Was I looking for some false
- 36:35connection and grabbed onto that. Was there too much silence and I was feeling
- 36:45bored, worried that there was nothing to fill the silence, nothing to fill
- 36:52the space, Worried that the person would think I was boring and end the
- 36:55conversation. Or am I am I subconsciously protecting myself from being vulnerable? Am
- 37:07I closing myself off to that relationship, preventing myself from having to really open
- 37:15up? Ask yourself? What was I feeling? What did it do for
- 37:21me? And then as time goes by, as you find yourself doing it,
- 37:28even if you're in the middle of a sentence, to stop, to
- 37:32stop, check in what's going on, because we learn so much from these
- 37:43behaviors of hours of what triggers us. And if you find yourself in a
- 37:47situation where someone else is gossiping, feel free to say, you know,
- 37:54I'm so happy to be having a conversation with you. I'm so happy to
- 37:59be together, but I really try not to fill up my mind unnecessarily with
- 38:05gossip. Can we talk about something else and just shift the conversation, don't
- 38:13criticize the person, don't say, my god, stop gossiping, you're driving
- 38:15me crazy, but humbly suggest ask them, can you talk about something else?
- 38:24Let them know you're trying to protect your very precious brain's face, and
- 38:31slowly, slowly, people themselves may not necessarily stop gossiping, but at least
- 38:37they will stop gossiping to you. And if you don't necessarily want to say
- 38:43that, if you feel uncomfortable saying that, well you can just try to
- 38:45shift the conversation. Shift it to something deeper. Next time your mother in
- 38:52law start saying, my god, you won't believe this, Just ask her,
- 38:55hey, how was your day? How is your day? Or begin
- 39:04by saying, God, you know what I've been meaning to tell you?
- 39:07And share something, Share something deep, share something interesting, and just shift
- 39:15the conversation. Because just like we need to protect our physical immunity or spiritual
- 39:22immunity, like we are careful about the food we eat, the water we
- 39:28drink, the air we breathe, we've got to be really careful about what
- 39:35we take in energetically, and gossip, especially negative gossip. Being happy for
- 39:45someone you know, it's still gossip, but at least it's not negative.
- 39:50You know the Oh my god, they look so great together. Aren't they
- 39:52so cute? Oh? I hope they get married. It's so sweet.
- 39:55It's still gossip, it's still unnecessary, but at least it's not filling you
- 40:00with negativity. You've got to be really careful of your energy protected. Take
- 40:12that into your hands, just like you wouldn't eat, you know, junk
- 40:15food that someone gave you, well, don't take in the junk conversation.
- 40:22Shift in. This is OTRFM, part of the IOM Radio network. Ome
- 40:31Times Magazine is one of the leading online content providers of positivity, wellness,
- 40:37and personal empowerment of philanthropic organization. Their net proceeds are funneled to support worldwide
- 40:44charity initiatives via Humanity Healing International. Through their commitment to creating community and providing
- 40:50conscious content, they aspire to uplift humanity on a global scale. Home Times
- 40:54co creating a more conscious lifestyle. Do you have time to read that inspiring
- 41:01book or that blog post you've been meaning to get to in your busy world?
- 41:07How do you improve yourself and keep your life going. I'm Lisa Kaye
- 41:10and my Between Heaven and Earth radio show can transform your life. Just by
- 41:15listening, be uplifted with inspiring topics, positive stories and ideas that really work
- 41:22between Heaven and Earth. Radio is conscious living for your soul every Wednesday at
- 41:28four pm Eastern Time. Like Baldwin, with People for the Ethical Treatment of
- 41:34Animals. I grew up loving circuses and other traveling animal shows, but it
- 41:38never occurred to me what life might be like for the animals. Training wild
- 41:43animals to do things they don't understand takes. Force routine discipline with a hook
- 41:47or whip with the heel of a boot shows the animal exactly who's the boss.
- 41:52Don't patronize animal acts. Please contact People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
- 42:00X two two p e t A welcome back. This is Sadvi Baghavati Saraswati
- 42:07with inspiration and transformation. Is a guru necessary? Do we really need a
- 42:15guru or can we just attain liberation, awakening, enlightenment through just these paths
- 42:27of devotion Bakhti and karman Jan. Can we just use the paths without a
- 42:32guru? In theory, since enlightenment, moksha, awakening, God realization,
- 42:47self realization is all here. We don't need anyone or anything else. Self
- 42:59realized zation is realizing my own self, realizing God. Well, we are
- 43:08one with God in theory, we don't need anyone or anything. The problem
- 43:17is that life is not theoretical and in practice, in actuality, the dilemma
- 43:29is that we've all got this thing called ego. An ego works very well,
- 43:39and very hard, and very tirelessly to take us off the track.
- 43:46It's not evil, it's not trying to ruin us. It's just got its
- 43:52own attachment to the status quo of how the ego understands myself. So every
- 44:00time that I try to say, for example, to realize, for example,
- 44:08I am not my body, I am not my thoughts, I am
- 44:15not my emotions, well the ego is right there saying, yeah, you
- 44:22better be angry. My God, did you hear her? That was so
- 44:27rude? Tomorrow will show her who does she think she is anyway? Yeah,
- 44:34of course you've got a right to be mad. You better be mad.
- 44:37You're not a doormat. In fact, tonight at dinner, I think
- 44:42I'm going to tell everybody what she did. Nobody should be friends with her
- 44:45anymore. Now it's very difficult to attain moksha when thoughts like that are flooding
- 44:55your mind. When I tell myself, I'm not my body. But I
- 45:01go to parties, to weddings, to events, and as I look around,
- 45:08I see everyone who's so much more beautiful than I am. They're wearing
- 45:16nice or clothes, they dance better, they're mingle better, they're much more
- 45:24popular than I am. Look, they crack jokes. And then I feel
- 45:31like a home feeling like I'm kind of a bit less than because I'm not
- 45:38so attractive, my clothes aren't so nice, I'm not such a good social
- 45:42butterfly. So it's very, very difficult to experience self realization when you're feeling
- 45:51awful about the few pounds that you put on over the holidays, or you're
- 45:54feeling awful that you don't have new clothes, or that you didn't have a
- 46:00good joke to tell at the party. And so the ego. The problem
- 46:07is that the ego just keeps coming and detracting us, keeps sending us off
- 46:13on different paths, and it keeps telling us that those paths are right.
- 46:21Next time we're going to wear the nice clothes, and next time everybody's going
- 46:23to be looking at us. Yeah, right, So the ego's got a
- 46:30completely different agenda, a completely different goal, a completely different idea of what
- 46:37a successful evening would look like. Right to the ego, a successful evening
- 46:44is you're the one everyone's jealous of at the party. But that's maya,
- 46:52that's the opposite of moksha, that's illusion. So spiritually, a successful evening
- 47:02would be that I spent as many moments as possible aware that I am soul,
- 47:14that I am spirit, and that I was able to see soul spirit
- 47:19in others. That when I met others, I met them on a level
- 47:22of soul spirit. That every time my mind started to see object, to
- 47:31judge, to grab, to push away, that I was able to free
- 47:37myself from that thought. That, too, the spiritual self would be a
- 47:45successful evening. But you see, they're kind of diametrically opposed. So where
- 47:50the Guru comes in is when you are in the throes of oh my god,
- 47:57how dare she? Or I'm never gonna have any friends or any of
- 48:07that. The goodho is the one who comes in and metaphorically slaps you,
- 48:14you know, like a potter with a big lump of clay on a wheel.
- 48:19Could a lump of clay become a beautiful piece of art on its own.
- 48:29Sure, of course, theoretically, I mean it's all clay could roll
- 48:32the right way, hit up against the right rocks, experience different aspects of
- 48:42erosion over many, many, hundreds or thousands of years, and get dried
- 48:47in the sun. Sure, why not get piece of it pulled away by
- 48:52one animal, a piece molded by another animal. It could happen in theory,
- 49:00But most of the time, when you want to make something out of
- 49:02a lump of clay, you need a potter. You're not going to just
- 49:08leave it there and hope that something beautiful comes out of it. You're going
- 49:15to have a potter put it on a potter's wheel, and the potter is
- 49:19going to spin it around and slap it into shape. And that, in
- 49:27many ways is what the guru does. And if you've ever if you've ever
- 49:32done any kind of ceramics, what you know is as you do it,
- 49:37sometimes the clay gets a little wet and it starts to kind of ooze off
- 49:40this way, and you've got to really hit it to keep it on the
- 49:44wheel or it's going to end up on the floor. And we're kind of
- 49:49like that in life, the ego takes over, some past pattern takes over,
- 49:55some desire takes over, grudge or fear takes over, and we literally
- 50:00sort of start oozing over in this direction and we're just about to actually fall
- 50:07over when the Guru comes in whack, not physically for most of us,
- 50:14thankfully, Poujaswamiji was whacked physically by his guru, but it's not his way
- 50:22of teaching, and so metaphorically they come in and they whack you, as
- 50:31in, don't go astray, don't fall off, stay on track. You're
- 50:43becoming something. Stay on track. There's more to this lump of clay than
- 50:49you realize. So if you if you didn't have an ego, or if
- 50:57you had great, great, great control all over your ego and you had
- 51:02a lot of clarity and you never found yourself dragged away or swept up by
- 51:09maya or whenever you did, you were able to notice it right away,
- 51:15really quickly and bring yourself back. Then No, in theory, you wouldn't
- 51:22need a gourd. But that's not most of our stories. Most of our
- 51:30stories is we get wrapped up in our own stories. We believe our own
- 51:35stories, we believe our own dramas and our whole lives go absolutely wasted.
- 51:44If you say to most people, and if you go around the room and
- 51:49you say, okay, how are you feeling today, and everybody who says
- 51:52I'm feeling great and happy, you remove them. You take everybody else,
- 51:55everybody who gives any answer ranging from frustrated or bored or angry or in despair
- 52:05or sad or whatever it may be, and then you say to them,
- 52:08okay, why what is the source of your trouble? Almost every single one
- 52:16of them is going to blame someone else or some situation. This person treats
- 52:28me like this, does this, acts like that, belittles me, undermines
- 52:34me, rejects me, insults me, humiliates me, ignores me, or
- 52:43worse, abuses me. This is why every one of us that's living in
- 53:00anything other than I am full of joy has got someone else to blame or
- 53:07some story, some circumstance of why we are like that. This is why
- 53:14we need a gurdu, because it's the gurdu who's going to show us.
- 53:19Uh. Yes they may be like that. Yes they absolutely may have spoken
- 53:24to you like that, acted like this, But your choice of how to
- 53:32respond, your choice of your inner response is up to you how much you
- 53:43want to identify as the one who was ignored, belittled, embarrassed, rejected,
- 53:55or do you want to identify as consciousness, as divinity, as love.
- 54:07But most of the time it takes a guru to really help us remember
- 54:13that. So again, yeah, in theory you could do it. But
- 54:20if you're asking my very specific advice, could you be in absolute perfect health
- 54:28without any form of doctor or nutritional consultant or ira vedic veddia or wellness coach
- 54:38or anything. Sure, in theory you might have just that perfect instinct knowing
- 54:45exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, exactly how to do
- 54:52it. But for most of us, it really helps to have someone who
- 55:00knows what they're doing, to have someone who can say, ah, you
- 55:06know, it's because when you eat these things together, or when you sleep
- 55:10at that time or eat at that time, or do this, that's is
- 55:16how it impacts your body. This is why you have these symptoms. So
- 55:22in the same way, on a deep spiritual level, it really helps to
- 55:28have someone who can see in the darkness and who can then shine the light
- 55:37for all of us. And why not this brings to a close this hour
- 55:49of inspiration and transformation. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so
- 55:57glad to be together with you all each week, and I look forward to
- 56:02being together again next Thursday, same time on Home Time's radio. They could
- 57:00be can to complete