Remember Who You Are!

स्म्रिति

Forever -- is composed of Nows --
'Tis not a different time --
Except for Infiniteness --
And Latitude of Home --

From this -- experienced Here --
Remove the Dates -- to These --
Let Months dissolve in further Months --
And Years -- exhale in Years --

Without Debate -- or Pause --
Or Celebrated Days --
No different Our Years would be
From Anno Domini's --

—Emily Dickenson

 

 

simple vinyasa for remembering

Week 7: Purusha and Isvara

As a toy fruit or a toy elephant reminds one of the real fruit and the living animal, so do the images that are worshipped remind one of the God who is formless and eternal.

Many are the names of God, and infinite the forms that lead us to know Him. In whatsoever name or form you desire to call Him, in that very form and name you will see Him.

It's enough to have faith in one aspect of God. You have faith in God without form. That is very good. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false. Know for certain that God without form is real and that God with form is also real. Then hold fast to whichever faith appeals to you. 

Chant the name of God and sing his glories unceasingly; and keep holy company. Now and then one should visit holy men and devotees of God. If a man lives in the world and busies himself day and night with worldly duties and responsibilities, he cannot give his mind to God. So it's important to go into solitude from time to time, and think about God. When the plant is young, it should be fenced on all sides. Unless there's a fence around it, goats and cattle may eat it up.

 

Honour both spirit and form, the sentiment within as well as the symbol without.

Because of the screen of Maya (illusion) that shuts off God from human view, one cannot see Him playing in one's heart. After installing the Deity on the lotus of your heart, you must keep the lamp of remembering God ever burning. While engaged in the affairs of the world, you should constantly turn your gaze inwards and see whether the lamp is burning or not. 

--> One man may read the Bhagavata by the light of a lamp, and another may commit a forgery by that very light; but the lamp is unaffected. The sun sheds its light on the wicked as well as on the virtuous.

When the flower blooms
The bees come uninvited

The winds of God's grace are always blowing, it is for us to raise our sails.

You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heavens during the day? Because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.

What Brahman is cannot be described. All things in the world — the Vedas, the Puranas, the Tantras, the six systems of philosophy — have been defiled, like food that has been touched by the tongue, for they have been read or uttered by the tongue. Only one thing has not been defiled in this way, and that is Brahman. No one has ever been able to say what Brahman is.

 Many are the names of God and infinite the forms through which He may be approached. 

All above quotes are from

 Ramakrishna Paramahamsa 

from 
The Gospel of Ramakrishna

Sutras and Definition on Isvara and Purusha 

Pranayama for Week 7

Week 6: Hrydaya

ह्र्य्दय

  

Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours.
James A. Baldwin

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
― Edgar Allan Poe

A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
—Albert Camus

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
—Mahatma Gandhi

The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you. ― Rainer Maria Rilke

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
—Buddha

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
—Plato

Reading for Week 5
Ananda Hridaya

Pranayama for Week 5

Week 5: Cikitsa

चिकित्स

The wound is the place where the Light enters you. ― Rumi

 

The first lesson to learn is to resign oneself to the little difficulties in life, not to hit out at everything one comes up against. If one were able to manage this one would not need to cultivate great power; even one's presence would be healing. ― Hazrat Inayat Khan 

 

The doctor of the future will be oneself. ― Albert Schweitzer

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing. ― Rabindranath Tagore 

 

The wish for healing has always been half of health.
—Lucius Annaeus Seneca

 

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.
—Hippocrates

  

 

If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.
― Rumi

 

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ― Novalis

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.
― Marcel Proust 

Reading for Week 4
Yoga Cikitsa/Gary Kraftsow

Pranayama for Week 5