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By Swami Shankarananda
5
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The podcast currently has 16 episodes available.
Say to yourself:
Notice the feeling tone that comes with each of these three statements.
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Close your eyes and search for feelings or ideas within yourself. Is there joy inside (confidence, satisfaction, pleasure)? Is there love inside (gratitude)? Is there clarity or wisdom inside? Is there peace or contentment inside? Is there energy inside? Is there doership or ambition inside? In each case, locate where
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
The next time you feel depressed, unbalanced or contracted, turn your attention inside, become aware of the state of your inner world, and ask yourself, ‘Who is in here?’ or ‘Who have I let in?’ You will be surprised at what you understand from this simple inquiry.
Ask, ‘Is it my mother? My father?’
You can proxy another person when that person’s feeling invades you or when you are a well-wisher of that person and you want to help them. In either of these cases, proxying has a magical effect.
Since Consciousness is one, we can work with another’s feeling inside of ourselves and we can help another in this way and we also can decontaminate ourselves when we’ve been affected by another’s feeling. Use proxying.
To proxy, you look at the feeling within you and you assume that it comes from the other person and you make statements, as you would for yourself. You begin with A-Statements. You say, ‘I’m X …’—X being the other person— ‘and I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel scared’. You can be specific and find their underlying statements. ‘I’m X, I feel unlovable. I’m X, I feel weak. I’m X, I feel like a failure.’ To help the other person, when you come to the end of the A-Statements, you can make B-Statements. ‘I’m X and I feel optimistic. I’m X, I am capable. I’m X, I love myself.’ You can go seamlessly into G-Statements. ‘I’m X and I am Shiva.'
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
This is a streamlined version of personal inquiry for adept meditators:
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
Look within. Scan the four chakras for tension.
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
Read the following G-Statements. They are either directly from the Shaivite scriptures or glossed from them. With each one, you should watch how they impact you. See if they are easy to accept or not, and notice where they affect you. Do they go into your heart, your third eye? Do they uplift you? See if any of them open up a doorway within you. In these G-Statements, ‘Shiva’ is synonymous with the Self, God, or universal Consciousness.
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
Go inside. Say to yourself, ‘I feel …’—mad, sad, bad, scared or glad. It might be a mixture of things. You might feel a cocktail of emotions. Don’t worry or torment yourself about accuracy.
Make an A-Statement in this moment: ‘I feel …’—let the word come to you, then fit it to the feeling and see if it seems true. Then make the A-Statement to yourself.
Feel what it is like to make an A-Statement.
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Sit down and look within. Whatever you experience, pleasant or unpleasant, is what is given. This is the meditation you are having. Shaivism says every thought, every feeling, even every contraction is Shiva.
If you can make a verbal A-Statement, do so. If not, simply ‘be as you are’ in this existential moment. Say to yourself, ‘I am this form of Shiva’ or ‘I am Shiva in this form’ or ‘All this is Shiva’ or, as Popeye would say, ‘I yam what I yam’. Meditate with this awareness—your present experience is Shiva. As you do this, you honour your present experience. You do not reject it in favour of some imagined ‘better’ experience. You do not compare it with other possible meditations or with the meditation the person next to you is having. You simply have the meditation you are having, knowing that it is Shiva.
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
Close your eyes, think about the past; everything that’s happened leading to this moment has gone. Think about the future; the future has not yet come. What’s real, what’s actual, is the present moment. In the present moment, listen to the sounds. Now feel the sensations in your body—the sensation of sitting, your neck, your back. Now be aware of your breath coming in, going out. You’ve breathed a lot in the past, you will breathe in the future; the only breath that gives you air is the present breath. Breathe that breath.
Click here to purchase Swamiji's book 'Self-Inquiry: Using Your Awareness to Unblock Your Life'.
The podcast currently has 16 episodes available.