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“There is nothing so likely to
produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.”
- George Washington.
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations (translated by Gregory Hays. Weidenfeld and Nicolson History, London, U.K., 2003).
p.73. 6:20. In the ring, our opponents can gouge us with their
nails or butt us with their heads and leave a bruise, but we don’t denounce
them for it or get upset with them or regard them from then on as violent
types. We just keep an eye on them after that. Not out of hatred or suspicion.
Just keeping a friendly distance.
We
need to do that in other areas. We need to excuse what our sparring partners
do, and just keep our distance - without suspicion or hatred.
p.54. 5:2. To shrug it all off and
wipe it clean - every annoyance and distraction - and reach utter stillness.
Child’s
play.
p.54. 5:3. If an action or utterance
is appropriate, then it’s appropriate for you. Don’t be put off by other
people’s comments and criticism. If it’s right to say or do it, then it’s the
right thing for you to do or say.
The
others obey their own lead, follow their own impulses. Don’t be distracted.
Keep walking. Follow your own nature, and follow Nature - along the road they
share.
p.143. 10:37. Learn to ask of all actions, ‘Why are
they doing that?’
Starting
with your own.
p.111. 8:49. Nothing but what you get from first impressions.
That someone has insulted you, for instance. That - but not that it’s done you
any harm. The fact that my son is sick - that I can see. But, ‘that he might
die of it,’ no. Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing
can happen to you.
Or
extrapolate. From a knowledge of all that can happen in the world.
p.112. 8:51. No carelessness in your actions. No confusion in
your words. No imprecision in your thoughts. No retreating into your own soul,
or trying to escape it. No overactivity.
They
kill you, cut you with knives, shower you with curses. And that somehow cuts
your mind off from clearness, and sanity, and self-control, and justice?
A
man standing by a spring of clear, sweet water and cursing it. While the fresh
water keeps on bubbling up. He can shovel mud into it, or dung, and the stream
will carry it away, wash itself clean, remain unstained.
To
have that. Not a cistern but a perpetual spring.
How?
By working to win your freedom. Hour by hour. Through patience, honesty,
humility.
p.113. 8:55. The existence of evil does not harm the world. And
an individual act of evil does not harm the victim. Only one person is harmed
by it - and he can stop being harmed as soon as he decides to.
p.114. 8:59. People exist for one another. You can instruct or
endure them.
p.39. 4:6. That sort of person is
bound to do that. You might as well resent a fig tree for secreting juice.
(Anyway, before very long you’ll both be dead - dead and soon forgotten).
p.39. 4:7. Choose not to be harmed -
and you won’t feel harmed.
Don’t
feel harmed - and you haven’t been.
p.39. 4:8. It can ruin your life
only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you - inside or out.
p.39. 4:9. It was for the best. So
Nature had no choice but to do it.
[L] story: She was in a job with a
bitch of a boss who wanted to know what she couldn’t do - her limits, her
failings - not what she could do, to bring out her potential - in order to
control her, to push her down. She had a chip on her shoulder and felt powerful
by reducing another’s power through applying pressure on their limitations.
[F] story: People put us in a box.
They want us to conform to their expectations. They are bitchy and gang up on
us. They ignore or abuse people who are different, to whom they feel unable to
relate. They want everyone to be the same so they can feel safe. They are
scared of being challenged. They do not want to recognise the need to change or
grow. There is no development mentally. Their bullying is all about their own
subconscious insecurities. Rather than express their potential they seek to cut
you down to size so there is nothing that reminds them why they are here on
Earth.
"When you have made some serious (not minor) changes in your
perception of life on Earth, your aura does change its vibration. This
vibration is noticed by others, although they don't know why. It's just that
you seem to ‘no longer fit’...and you DON'T. You are spiralling up and away
from 3rd density Earth. They are spiralling DOWN into the Dark plot. You will
find you irritate them by no longer conforming. Minor quirks are tolerable, but
you are vibrating to a new, higher reality, and they don't like it. If you find
people going out of their way to be vile to you, ignoring you, talking about
you behind your back or confronting you for seemingly minor things, don't
worry. Take it as an indication you're proceeding as your Higher Self wants you
to. It isn't easy. You WILL lose 'friends'. Of course if they ever REALLY were
your friends, they would not be put off by the new you. You can lose 'family'
(I lost ALL of them).
This shows you that
although blood may be thicker than water, spirit is stronger than blood for you
are NOT your body. YOU are not your incarnation for it is the clothing you
chose to wear in this lifetime, no more, no less. There are a few others (very few
in relation to the population of the planet) who are experiencing what we are
going through. They are scattered all over the planet. When the shift comes,
all of the new vibrating beings will advance while those who resist REAL
change, inner change, will get to continue this farcical Game. The thing is,
once you've reached a certain level, although you can miss the company of those
who've chosen not to associate with you any longer, it's not the emotional
wanting most people associate with a loss. It's more of a 'well, that's too
bad, but I gotta do what I gotta do' attitude. The more your Higher Self kicks
in, the more the real YOU kicks in, the quicker you advance. It always pays to
look forward, not backward. Let the dogs howl and snap at you. You're on the
rocky road. Once you've come to a point on that road, the dogs can no longer
try and hinder you..."
- Val Valerian (‘Changes
in You,’ excerpt from Matrix 5 Gold
Edition, Volume 1, Leading Edge International Research Group, www.trufax.org/matrix5/welcome.html).
“This is
why, when people start on the spiritual journey, the reason that they start to
walk the journey, that all hell breaks loose in their life, that structures
break down in their life and they think, ‘Crikey, if this is spiritual…’ I
remember me, when I started on this route, my life broke down in so many ways,
I thought, ‘If this is spirituality, you can stuff it. I don’t want to know.
Why does this happen to people? Because, when you put out your intent, ‘This is
what I want to achieve,’ that intent energy will always draw towards us what we
need to achieve that intent. So, if we’re going to reconnect with the cosmos
then that intent will draw to us the experiences necessary to achieve that.
What we need to do to achieve that connection is to clear out that cess pit
level of low vibration. And so we draw into our lives people, experiences, what
have you, that make sure that we can no longer do that, that this has to come out
and be processed. And we have to clean out this emotional debris that’s
disconnecting us from who we really are.
If we’re prepared to walk this journey, take a step back and realise that it’s
actually an experience that is going to set us free rather than a really
negative bad thing or at least something to do with the fact that we’re not
good people – must have done something terrible in a previous life; I hear that
all the time – these challenges are to help set us free by clearing us out. It’s
important we understand that.”
- Author unknown (from the web: I lost the
address!).
Toir: Communications One to Nine. (Gemstone Press, London, U.K., 1999).
p.52. It is just this that your
Christian teaching does not seem to understand, for a person cannot commit what
is called a sin against another, one can only commit a sin against oneself.
What is committed upon others is offence and what you call stigma. And if you
have built and amassed antagonisms in yourself, and then you can’t find others
to put them on, they will work against you, yourself, and cause you, unbeknown
to you, to massacre your own temple. So we who try to help and understand you
say, don’t massacre, but do MASS-A-CARE.
p.57. When you are angry you are
senseless; when you are senseless you stand against all the good in you; when
you stand against the good in you, you give empire and control to the lower and
the wrong. These workers of iniquity glutton upon you, and squeeze out the good
of you in the intensification of your physical faculty - when your eyes glare
and your ligaments tighten - when everything gets overintensified, and
violence, in one form or another, exudes from you, making every action an
indignity to existence, Creation and yourself.
p.63. You often say in your world,
‘I do not like this person or that person,’ and we have learnt that what this
means is that they do not fit into what you want, which for you is I WANT. See
that if you take millions of I WANTS, all based in different ideas, manners and
conceptions, your possibility lies in your finding, amongst these mad millions,
a madness that doesn’t prevent your own madness from growing stronger and
stronger.
All
this we see you cannot change, but let us now say to you, need you deal in it,
partake of it? Can you not build and cause in yourself a history of fairness
and stability, where you receive what you earn?
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti: meaning of the shanti mantras (of Sri Mata Amritanandamayi) by Vedarat.
The mantras chanted in Amma's ashrams
at the end of arati and archana are called shanti
mantras. Therefore to conclude each one, ‘shanti,’
which means ‘peace,’ is chanted three times. As a spiritual aspirant, one
chants shanti in desire for the
occurrence of circumstances conducive to a spiritual education. But these
mantras can be chanted for peace in a general sense as well. Shanti is chanted thrice not for
emphasis but because disturbances are of three distinct categories. In
Sanskrit, these are referred to as adhi-daivikam, adhi-bhautikam and
adhyatmikam.
Adhi-daivikam literally means
‘mental disturbances that come from God’ - i.e. things that are utterly beyond
our control: hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis,
etc. We have no control over these types of disturbances. So when we say the
first shanti, we are praying, ‘O God,
may we be protected from these obstacles that are beyond our control.’
Adhi-bhautikam literally means
‘disturbances that come from the world.’ That means anything stemming from the
world around us - mosquitoes, noisy neighbours, barking dogs, the phone
ringing, family arguments. As opposed to the first category, we have some control
over this second category of disturbances. We can use mosquito repellent, we
can call the police on our neighbours, we can turn off the phone, we can leave
the place altogether, etc. So this shanti
means, ‘O God, may we be protected from the people and surroundings.’
The third type of disturbance is the
most powerful and, at the same time, the only one over which we have total
control. Adhyatmikam means ‘disturbances stemming from the self.’ For one who
is still identified with the ego, the people, places and things of this world
stimulate one of two reactions in the mind - attachment or aversion. Whether we
physical see someone we consider our enemy as we walk down the street or
remember him during meditation, the mental turbulence that results is the same.
Lust, jealousy, anger, sorrow, hatred destroy our peace. During meditation,
pleasant memories also distract us. Hearing the sound of a jet plane flying
overhead may mentally carry us off to a fabulous holiday we once took. Only
after 10 minutes of daydreaming do we realise we have lost focus on our object
of meditation.
In fact, Amma says that the ego is
the only true obstacle to mental peace. This third shanti is therefore the most important one, because even if we are
free from outside disturbances, if the inner realm is not calm we will never
know peace. Conversely, once we have found inner peace, no external force can
ever disturb us. So chanting this third shanti
is akin to praying, ‘O God, please remove all the inner obstacles.’
There is one more element to the
three-fold chanting of ‘shanti,’ and
that is the silence that follows each repetition. If chanted properly, this
silence is the emphasis: shanti…shanti…shanti…
This silence is representative of
true peace, the peace of an Enlightened One like Amma. For the spiritual
seeker, peace is the goal. For an Enlightened One peace has been realised as
his very nature. To have equipoise in every situation in life verily is
realisation.
Sri Mata Amritanandamayi (AKA ‘the
hugging saint’) sings a
traditional Indian song on David Sylvian’s album Dead Bees On A Cake (1999). The song - ‘Praise’ (Pratah Smarami) is
so beautiful that I have played it on ‘repeat’ over and over again many times,
unable to turn it off! Sylvian has explained that the underlying theme of the
album is ‘devotion’ and dedicated it to his teacher: “With immense love,
gratitude and humility I offer this work at the feet of my beloved Amma.”
A
few statements from Jeshua and Jayem a friend wrote down at The Way of the
Heart Festival, 27 September 2010:
“Full embodied
acceptance...”
“Be fully present with what
is...”
“As the awakened Christ
what do I choose to transmit to humanity?”
“What frequency would I
most desire, as Christ, to send to the heart of this beautiful soul?”
“A friend is one who
deliberately gives the whole of their being to seeing you only as the light of
Christ Itself and holds you in this frequency for all eternity...”
“Genuine Mastery is when
you are no longer compelled in any direction - you are at rest...at peace...in
the present moment.”
“I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make
an exception.” – Groucho Marx.
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