 The world today faces a crisis. That crisis is spiritual. A crisis of the soul, of the heart, expressed in the physical world in the variety of collective circumstances that face the planet today.
There is one point about all of these circumstances—the pandemic, the racial problems of discrimination and injustice in various forms around the world, the meaning of conservatism and reaction to the world situation wanting to return to the past and past glories—all of these struggles face humanity, not one country or one continent. We face the entirety of humanity, and what happens in one place affects what happens elsewhere. Humanity cannot currently be divided. The climate, the care of the planet, or the lack thereof, all of these problems affect all of humanity. Gone are the days when one nation, one race can make it on its own independent of others and can find superiority, for the fate of humanity is an interwoven interconnected whole. The transition from nationalism to globalism is unstoppable because those issues which face human beings are not national they are now global. The solutions are not national they are also global. This is a spiritual crisis because human beings' spirit has been bound by materialism in the age of the Vaeshan. It has manifested primarily as capitalism. But it has generated vast materialism that is unsustainable and has depressed the human heart and the human spirit. And so today human beings in their material seeking have moved towards their own demise. To rise above the demise of humanity, to rescue humanity will require humanity to rise in universal love for all beings and efforts to secure all beings'. This is a part of universal love taught at the heart of most religions. But in the secularism and materialism that has dominated the current age, this spiritual love has diminished. Greed, self-centeredness, individualism has dominated. But the world is in a transitional period. A transition from the Vaeshan era through the Shudra revolution into the Kshattriyan era. The Kshattriyan have a different psychology. A psychology that will rescue and heal the world of today. It need not look military or like an army, but an approach, a value system that values the welfare of all human beings and the duty to serve and care for the welfare of all. The true Kshattriyan is not just a soldier, but one who values a noble cause, one who values dharma, one who values moving from darkness to light, one who values uplifting the human spirit, and is willing to put duty to humanity, and love of humanity above personal welfare. We are moving into an age where this is essential. We can no longer pit one person against another, one society against another, one race against another to secure greater material gain, territory, and conquest. This tendency of the human mind to move in these directions and use violence to secure these ends is leading to the destruction of the very planet we live upon. This cannot change without a shift in consciousness, a shift in the value base of people, a shift to a more subtle frequency. No amount of resistance, no amount of reaction can change what is occurring. The planet itself is evolving. Human beings are evolving, and this evolution is spiritual. The spirit of human beings needs to expand to be inclusive, to work for the welfare of all living beings. Do not be daunted by the reactions to this process. As I have said, a corner is being turned, and those reactions will have less and less appeal to people. They will receive less energy. And people instead will be inspired to work for the welfare of living beings. You will see a change this very year and in the coming following years, it will only increase. The way forward is before you. It is not for one country, one society, one race. It is for humanity. And humanity will join together to face the global issues that have arisen and will soon arise so that human life and all life upon this planet may survive and flourish. I have created a meditation to visualize that survival and flourishment. I would encourage all of you to do that meditation periodically, to visualize the healing and perfection of the planet on which you live - the healing of all living beings. Now is the time to create that positive vision that it may become true in this physical world. And it will become true in this physical world. Namaskar
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 There are three primary yogas - jnana yoga, bhakti yoga, and karma yoga. Jnana yoga is the yoga of knowledge, the yoga of right understanding. It utilizes the mind to bring a clear understanding of the nature of reality and focuses on undoing erroneous beliefs about the nature of self and others and clarifying deep wisdom in the mind. Bhakti Yoga Bhakti yoga is different, in that Bhakti yoga focuses on the heart. There are twelve traditional avenues of Bhakti yoga. There are things like chanting kirtan, pad kirtan where you dance--pad means foot so you're using your feet moving around, telling stories about the gods and goddesses and the gurus, and similar types of activities that involve opening the heart. But the essence of Bhakti-yoga doesn't lie in ritual or any kind of performance. It lies in the heart. It lies in a devotional relationship to the Supreme, where you feel the Supreme is your divine father, divine mother, divine friend, or divine lover. The Supreme is the great one in your life and you develop an emotional devotional attachment. And the bhakti, the devotion, opens up the love in the heart so that you can feel the presence of the God-Self. You can feel the presence of Divine Being and you can have an intimate relationship with that Divine Being. Bhakti is a gift from the Divine - true bhakti. Not a practice but a gift. Karma & Jnana Yoga And then there is karma yoga. Karma yoga you focus the mind and the heart on doing service in the world. You focus on giving of yourself to others but doing so in a very particular way where you see the God, the Divine being, in all beings and you serve the Divine Being in the form of all beings. And you recognize that the one giving the service, as well as the one receiving the service, and the act of service itself, is all the infinite Brahma. That you are not doing the service but God is doing the service to God and the process of serving is God itself also. And in that way through doing good works in this ideation recognizing that God is moving through you in the world of form to serve other people, and that those other people are parts of God also. And you begin to feel the presence of God in your life. You begin to align yourself with the compassion and love that the Divine Being has for all living beings, and you feel that love and you feel you are an instrument of that love, and you are aligned with the divine and you feel the divine is in you flowing through you. You become a hollow reed, an empty vessel to let that love flow through you into the world. And the true path of karma yoga is a very powerful path because it aligns you with unity with divine being. Ego falls away as you recognize that Divine Being alone can act in the world, and Divine Being alone is acting in the world. And so you don't take on the karma of your actions, "Oh I'm so great because I did this service,” or, “I didn't do this right so look at me I'm a failure." Everything is done by God and the results of those actions go to God. So through the path of karma yoga you burn up the karma and by burning the karma the jnana is opened, the right understanding comes, and the heart is opened in love. So karma leads to bhakti and jnana.  Jnana, through right understanding, leads to right action, karma, and it also eventually leads to deep love and the path of bhakti through immersion in love of the divine. There is the natural karma yoga, and when you're filled with the divine and divine love, right understanding and right action comes naturally .
So those three paths cannot be separated out. They interweave with each other. Whether you are Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu they're in play in your spiritual life. They allow you to have a personal intimate relationship to Divine Being, and to feel the presence of divine love in your heart, in your life - to appreciate the synchronicities and the shower of grace that is always there, and the presence of the Divine, and to become an instrument of his work. Through these three yogas interwoven together mind grows in magnitude. Right understanding of your relationship to the infinite comes into view, and the bonds of samskara and karma begin to burn away. This is the greatness of yoga. Yoga means to yoke, to unite the little and the great. So, these three basic paths form the foundation of yoga. Ashtanga yoga brings them altogether in the eightfold path. Tantra utilizes the approach of integrating and understanding everything in this world is part of God. Hatha yoga focuses on the body yet brings these three in as well. They are the foundation of all yogas.  Namaskar. Each day is a new beginning, a new dawn, a new opportunity to become that which you truly want to be. When you rise each day it is a fresh start. Think, the night before, what you want in life, what you want to be, how you want to be in the world. You have every opportunity every day to create that manifestation of your being which you want in this world.
Forget the past, forget the limitations, the beliefs about yourself, the condemnations, the limitations. Let them go. Awaken each morning to the opportunity of your life. Seize the moment. Each day you can create the person you want to be, the life you want to lead. Life is short. The need is to see that now is the time, now is the opportunity for you to do that which you truly want to do in life, for you to assess and find your priorities, that which is truly important for you to be, to do, to become. What is it you really want to to do in your life? What is it you really want to be in your life? You have an opportunity each day to be a person who is immersed in Dharma, to be a person who lives in harmony with this universe, to be a person of ethics, to be a person of integrity. You have an opportunity in every action, every interaction that comes in your life to be the best self you can be. And that opens the opportunity to connect with the infinite Self, the divine essence of your being, and to bring that which you are into existence. This opportunity in your life brings you into connectedness with the whole of your being; with the infinite Self; the one, eternal, immortal essence of being. That one is always there, permeating all that is. Your life is an opportunity to get to know that infinite source of being, to establish a personal relationship with that divine existence, so that you yourself can melt into that infinite essence and become one with all life, become one with the essence of being. For that essential Self, that beloved of your heart, is always with you, day and night, through thick and thin. And you have an opportunity each and every day to awaken and meet that essential beloved of your heart, meet that divine essence, immerse yourself in that divinity. And to follow a life which reflects that in your inner actions, in your being in the world—creating loving-kindness, compassion, and care, in you and all around you; leading a life of nonviolence, loving-kindness, compassion, truthfulness, self-honesty, generosity, not desiring what others have but rather generously giving of yourself. A life where you see God in everyone and in everything, and a life where you find your safety in that divine presence that is in you and all around you, rather than in money or accumulation of things. Let that be the core of your substance, your shelter in the storm. Let it be your divine source, rather than material gain. Then you may find, without struggle, that your material needs are cared for. Because when you follow your bliss, when you live your heart’s dream, when you are aligned with your inner being in the outer world, then a flow happens, a movement, a movement toward the infinite, a movement toward love. Because when you follow your bliss, when you live your heart’s dream, when you are aligned with your inner being in the outer world, then a flow happens, a movement, a movement toward the infinite, a movement toward love. And out of that, you find that your needs are being cared for, that abundance comes in your life, without struggle, but in the joy of deep expression, deep love, and deep connection to essence. So never feel that this life divine, this life of deep fulfillment is far away from you, beyond you, somehow unreachable, unattainable—no. Every day you wake up to a new opportunity, a new beginning, a new moment in which you can connect with essence, in which you can open your heart in love, in which you can get up and be the person you want to be. So never feel that this life divine, this life of deep fulfillment is far away from you, beyond you, somehow unreachable, unattainable—no. Every day you wake up to a new opportunity, a new beginning, a new moment in which you can connect with essence, in which you can open your heart in love, in which you can get up and be the person you want to be. This is the great opportunity and joy of your life; and great happiness comes when the inner man, the inner woman, is the same person as the outer expression. When you are in alignment with your heart, your mind, your thoughts, and your actions, then a great fulfillment comes, for you are living your Dharma. And when your Dharma is aligned with Bhagavad Dharma, with divine flow and connection, with harmony, with all life, and with that great love of the infinite, then there is a great peace, a great harmony to your life, to your being. And out of that, great happiness comes into existence. So never be downhearted, never think that the joy of your life is unattainable. Never think that you don’t have the opportunity to be what you truly want to be. For it is there every new moment. It is there in the love of your heart. It is there in the joy of your being. It is there in your connection to the infinite. Namaskar.  Namaskar. There are three basic paths of yoga. One is bhakti, devotion. The other, karma, good work in the world with a sense of selfless service with doing things without attachment to the results of actions. And the third path is jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge. It works with the mind. Bhakti works with the heart, opening the heart, and the feelings of the divine experience. Jnana works with the mind, restructuring the mind so that conditioned thoughts, attitudes, and ways of responding are let go. And karma works with being in the world and relating to other people, relating to service in the world, Seva. So these three paths, each have significant advantages, and when they are combined together they form a powerful structure that can integrate both mental development, development in the feelings and relationship to the infinite, and development in your daily life in your service attitude and work with others. When combined the three form a reinforcing system that can make real change, transformative change. But many times it is too much for someone to begin with all three and so one may begin only working with the mind, the attitudes and beliefs, deconstructing erroneous beliefs and gaining new insights and understandings, dissolving the conditioned mind. Or one may begin working with the heart, establishing a relationship to God, establishing a fundamental experiential feeling related to the Infinite. Developing love for the divine and through that feeling of love and devotion there comes great humility, great passion. When that detached understanding comes in action and you realize that the cosmic one is everywhere, both receiving and doing actions, then the results of actions do not stay with the ego because they are not done by the ego self, and the ego self does not feel attachment to the results. Then, when that happens this karma yoga wipes away the delusions of the mind, wipes away the samskaras, all of the attachments to the reactions of one's actions, and begins to free psychic space where there is no action no reaction of mind.  When this overall science of yoga is applied, two phenomena develop in a person that brings them to the truth. One is that they develop vairagya and the other Viveka. Vairagya means detachment, true detachment, not the renunciation of an idea, not the renunciation of the belief that you will renounce the world, but true detachment.
When you begin to see that the Infinite is everywhere, God is everywhere, and only by the grace of that great divinity does any action come. When you begin to see there is no separate self to do anything, that everything, every molecule of you is made of that divine Beloved, the separation of I and Thou dissolve. True detachment comes because you realize that who you are, who you have been, are the same. It’s the same. And the feeling of attachment to the results of your actions begins to diminish. And this is true renunciation. Renouncing the attachment to the results of your actions. And thus, gaining a clear mind, clear vision, clear understanding of the nature of the God Self, and when that clarity is there, that discrimination, you become able to know the unreal from the real. You understand the deep nature of reality and you can discriminate knowing what is truth, what is truly real. This is a great power that comes from dissolving the conditioned mind, awakening the heart, and doing actions in the world with a detachment to the results of your actions. Thus, vairagya, renunciation, trie renunciation, and Viveka, true deep discrimination, the ability to know truth, to know the real from the unreal, come as a result of these yogas. And the Yamas and the Niyamas become doable, really doable as you follow these yogas. The Yamas and the Niyamas form the base for your action in the world. Action-based in love and loving-kindness without violence to other beings. Actions based on truth and deep honesty with self. Without coveting what someone else has, and without trying to secure yourself by accumulating more and more, you are able to live in the world with truth and kindness, and love. And thus you gain the power of a pure mind, pure thoughts, a pure heart, the simple childlike nature, and you gain the ability to be truly content with who you are, what you are, and with what life is. You become content. Santosha is achieved. And tapas, the ability to love selflessly, to have true loving-kindness comes, and the ability to know the truth, to understand the deep nature of your own self. This development of knowledge comes when you practice all of this. And finally the realization, the dissolution into the divine God Self. This is the culminating realization of the Yamas and the Niyamas and of the three yogas, the three primary yogas – bhakti, karma, and jnana. Without coveting what someone else has, and without trying to secure yourself by accumulating more and more, you are able to live in the world with truth and kindness, and love. And thus you gain the power of a pure mind, pure thoughts, a pure heart, the simple childlike nature, and you gain the ability to be truly content with who you are, what you are, and with what life is. You become content. Santosha is achieved. And tapas, the ability to love selflessly, to have true loving-kindness comes, and the ability to know the truth, to understand the deep nature of your own self. This development of knowledge comes when you practice all of this. And finally the realization, the dissolution into the divine God Self. This is the culminating realization of the Yamas and the Niyamas and of the three yogas, the three primary yogas – bhakti, karma, and jnana.  When there are many difficulties in the world and the normal routine of life is disturbed by them, it creates certain stress in the mind. And, with the current situation with fires, plagues, and political strife of an unknown unexperienced previous nature, there is tension in the air and little things become big. Sometimes situations that you could easily handle become very stressful. And you find when you calm yourself to meditate, there is certainly stress within from the stress and strain of the time and the lack of social interaction and opportunities to express yourself in the world. Self Care This is the situation that all are facing right now, and depending upon your circumstances it may be better or worse. Surely, everyone around you is having problems or tensions to one degree or another due to this external upheaval and difficulty. In times like these, it is important to take regular breaks from your work, computers, and from your activities in life to simply calm your nervous system. Do your sadhana, let your nerves relax - this combined with physical exercise to the best of your capacity given the circumstance. Get out into nature if you can but even walking around your house or block is fine, just get some exercise every day. Also, two, three, four times a day take 5 to 20, 30 minutes to just calm your nervous system, to get away from technology, do a few stretches, and then sit, breathe, connect with your Divine Source and let yourself move into alignment and harmony with that universal source. Because, when you do this you will find the strength, the solidity, the healing that is not represented in your external circumstances at the moment. External circumstances come and go and patience is needed when you go through difficult times. There have been very difficult times in the world so you are not alone in this experience. There are those who survive. They make it through the most difficult times because they find inside of themselves a resilience, a place where they can nurture their own being and find their solid ground.  Sadhana
When you do sadhana, when you calm your breathing, when you bring divine grace and love into your psyche, into your energy field, then you bring in healing from the deeper source than these external circumstances. External circumstances are variable but that inner base of your being, that is a resource that is sustainable, that doesn't change with the passage of time or the circumstances outside. Get away from those things that you are doing and the worries of your life and just drop into that divinity within you. Let that love permeate you. Let that grace be around you. And that will make a difference. You will notice that you begin to be more solid, more able to weather the difficulties of life. And when you hear one more bad news it is less likely to distress you and you are more likely to find your peace and your harmony, and more likely to be able to deal with external circumstances with a more even hand and to maintain your own emotional well-being. Recommendations So, the exercise is, do a little socialization as you can do safely, and the meditation practice three, four times a day of deep attunement. This will help you to weather these times. Phone calls to friends, your zoom conferences, whatever it is that you feel more comfortable, but don't forget these times of silence and of physical activities. Those two are very important to your psycho-physical balance  Namaskar. Many different feelings and emotions come in human life, many different types of experiences. And some of them are very painful, very difficult. Difficult experiences can be unique to you, or you can be part of a collective Karma, where those experiences involve a whole group of people. Regardless of your experiences in your individual patterns or in the collective pattern of the society or in a sub-society, when times get difficult, there are losses, there’s grief, sorrow, anger. All of those emotions arise because of your engagement with the external world, with the environment around you—whether it be a marriage that has gone bad, a child, a parent that you struggle with, a job, friendships. There are many different places that struggle can occur. Or whether it be the collective society and the norms of the society and how they promote injustice, indifference... Can you imagine to have a family member dear to you shot—how you would feel? How many people have suffered? And yet despite their suffering, they have had nothing but injustice for years upon years. Such things happen in human life. They happen individually and they happen en masse—whole communities wiped out in wars. Human beings have an exceptional ability to be cruel to each other: a shadow of human experience that needs to be recognized and addressed, and addressed inside yourself, observing in yourself that shadow which can be cruel; which can be angry; which can be resentful, revengeful; which can be bitter, and want to aggress against others. Observe that part of your own human nature, because it is a part of human nature, a part of the human experience. But there is another part of the human experience: the desire to care for others, to be of service to the world, to love living beings, and to try to figure out how to love them genuinely and sincerely without hypocrisy, without secret motives. This is the challenge of human life, and it is the challenge to follow the path of Dharma toward the deepest love of human experience, towards the one eternal soul, the Self of all beings. It is a journey of learning how to love. The journey of spirit is one of learning how to love and how to let go, how to surrender to the will of the infinite, be it painful or joyous. Today the winds may favor you; tomorrow they may go against you. But can you ride these winds of the world in peace within yourself? Can you find that peace which is lasting, which can surround you and permeate you, and even though life goes high and low, you remain even in that peace deep inside of yourself? Yes, when dealing with the world, you go up and down with the world around you. But you can find that deep peace within you, and that can be a solid rock in the storms of life, a place of calm, a place of love. For peace and love go together. When love is deep, compassionate, and unconditional, it brings peace in the mind. It brings contentment. For the deep love doesn’t vary, doesn’t want anything. It just is: a great compassion that just is. That is the nature of grace, that great compassion that is a shower of infinite love, healing, a healing balm on a troubled heart, a settlement of wounds from the world. That love is something that can permeate you, and not only permeate you, it can flow through you into the world. So that you feel that unconditional love, that shower of grace, that infinite compassion, and it flows through you and into the world of form. Can you allow yourself to open to that grace, to that love which is so compassionate, so unconditional, and let yourself melt into it, melt back into it?  Let go, let go of everything you’ve been holding on to, of all the beliefs about yourself, all your beliefs. Let go and let yourself feel God’s presence; feel that love that the divine has for you and for all beings, and let it flow through you, permeating you, permeating every cell of your body. Let it flow through you into the world, to those around you. Be a hollow bamboo through which the love of the universal one flows into the world.
This is the great potentiality of human life. You have a choice, a choice that you make every moment of your life. You have a choice to follow the lower emotions, the wounds which have hurt you, the injustices; to follow the anger, the resentment, the bitterness, the greed, the fear. You can follow those, or you can witness them as part of your humanity, but choose not to follow them in your life, and instead place yourself in this flow of unconditional love, in the shower of grace, shower of love, shower of light. And let yourself fall back into it, dissolve into it, and let it flow through you and give you the knowledge in every moment of the right action in that moment, the kind action. Because when you align yourself with Dharma, when you align yourself with the love of the infinite and the shower of grace, then that comes through you. You begin to mirror that which you associate yourself with, and you melt back, you have more and more parallelism with that divine existence, and then it begins to express through you. And you become a vessel of Dharma. Then, you can really follow Dharma. If you try to follow Dharma from your intellect and your ideas and your beliefs, it will not work. It is not enough. Dharma has to be followed from your heart. Dharma lies with the great. So when you align yourself with the great, Dharma flows through you. Love flows through you. Then service is naturally there. So you make choices every moment of your life. So be conscious, be aware of these choices, and choose to align yourself with that one eternal divine being that is the core of your own nature and the core nature of all beings. That divine being, Parama Purusha, has only one intent, to draw all living beings home into this ocean of love, ocean of truth, ocean of being, in the peace and stillness of absolute love. When you align yourself with the intentions of that one, and you become a vessel for that grace, then you are truly a Dharmika, one who follows Dharma, and a gift to the world.  Dharma needs to be followed both by individuals and by the collective society as a whole. When an individual is out of alignment with dharma, their life becomes disjointed and they cease to have a harmony with the world around them. They become self-centered and self-absorbed. When a society, a nation, state, social or religious group, is out of alignment with dharma, the society begins to fragment and lose its balance. Prama, the cosmic principle maintaining a stable balance in the universe, is lost. Prama is very significant in understanding dharma and living harmony. It refers to the basic balance maintained in the interwoven web of life, the harmony that makes the universe work as a whole. All beings obey the rhythm of nature’s flow and, in doing so, are in a smooth and blissful relationship to life. People can live in complete composure, unhindered joy and happiness when life is in balance and prama is present. However, this situation of blissful harmony changes with the emergence of desires such as greed, domination, and power, which create a civilization out of alignment with its surrounding world. It also changes in a person’s life when they lose this delicate balance and prama evades them. The collective spirit of a people awakens when fed by the whole of the society. Society needs to support the development of the people within it. If not, it becomes a hindrance to its citizens and members, imposing social structures and norms that impede a person from being able to realize their own personal dharma and feel happiness and success in life. People suffer when their basic needs for food, clothing and shelter, as well as their needs for access to expansive thinking, devotion, and a way to find mysticism in their lives are not met. The heavy hand of oppression weighs down on people under these circumstances.  The materialism of today is the result of the age of the merchant societies, the Vaishya age, coming to a close. The emphasis upon material well-being and material wealth has, in many parts of the world, become so dominant that people absorbed in this material life lose their spiritual hearts.
The materialistic society fosters an attitude of dominance over nature, abusing and mistreating animals and disturbing the balance of life upon the planet. As a result, devastation occurs. Chaos results when dharma has been forsaken and prama is lost. The natural laws that bring harmony to the planet and to all the species of living beings are being violated, and thus the ecological systems and natural order of the world are disrupted. The result is loss of many species, loss of environmental stability and changes in weather patterns. Nature, out of balance, becomes wild, destructive. People have formed societies with the attitude of a conqueror, rather than in harmony with the planet and its natural laws, and those societies are now threatened. The atrocities done to living beings upon the planet in the name of progress have an impact. As the planet moves from order to disorder, from harmony to chaos, the forces unleashed are powerful, and they will reorder the world until harmony is regained and dharma restored. All comments are welcomed. Feel free to browse our store and discover new books, yoga supplies and more. As this pandemic has unfolded around us, perhaps you have felt afraid at times, or at least concerned. You have probably had to reshuffle your life in some ways that are good or difficult, or both. Maybe you have put yourself down for getting worried or tried not to think about things that are scary.
As I have been contemplating my own feelings in this situation, I have come to think that both fear and love have a place. If a mac truck is barreling down on you, you get a surge of fear and jump out of the way. The body reacts to protect itself automatically. This pandemic seems to me to be a kind of mac truck that our bodies react to trying to protect us. If fear makes you wash your hands and saves your life, it has its place.
Let us pray for those who are suffering at this time and offer their welfare to the shelter of the Lord of Love, the Divine Mother, the Infinite presence. Om shanti, shanti, shanti. With love Maetreyii Ma  The situation in the world today is one of shift and change. The more dynamic the change, the more resistance to change occurs. Change that brings transformation is not easy. That which has existed, the status quo, wants to continue to exist. This is true in personal life and in collective life. So, in a true transformation, be it personal or social, involving many people, there is always the dissolution of what has been, in order for the new paradigm, the new level of functioning to exist, and so, this old level of functioning, this old way of being does not simply perish without resistance. There is always resistance—in you—to change; and in the collective of people, there is resistance to change. Change is frightening. It is the unknown coming to exist. And people want to avoid that fear: the uncertainty of something new, something they haven’t experienced before. They want to return to what is safe, what is known. And, so, many times there is a reversion before there is a transformation. And in the world today you see many countries, many people attempting to hold on to their heritage, hold on to their local identity, hold on to their—to what they consider to be their days of greatness for their society. There is backward-looking psychology that wants to find some glory in the past that is safe. But naturally, the past is gone and can never be replicated. What was, will not be again; but what will be even more dynamic, more fulfilling. But the path there may be perilous. You notice the great reaction to the so-called world government. People want their national autonomy. People want their racial autonomy. People want them—want to return to the way it was. And so there is a great wave of conservatism in the world today. Many people hope that in this they can find shelter from impending change, which they sense, but they cannot define. As there’s more and more talk about the impact of climate change, pandemics, situations that affect the global community. Rather than jump to global solutions, many people want to find shelter in ideas and beliefs that no longer serve. They were meant for a society with a much smaller population, where there was no international travel and cell phones, and people were not so interwoven and interconnected. In today’s society, what affects one country will affect everyone, economically, health-wise.  The world is like a spaceship. It is one, one home, and we have gone far beyond the point of being able to return to our small and isolated societies that have relatively little impact on the globe. Now, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves in multiple directions, and the population of human beings is very large. Nature will right herself. And these are not easy times that lay ahead.
It’s a time when people—various assaults will come because of the imbalance in the world, because Dharma, which brings harmony and peace between all beings is not fully established. It is lost, the Prema; the balance in society has been disturbed. The balance of the world has been disturbed. The balance of the planet has been disturbed. And so, nature will right herself, and balance will return. In these times, what a person can do is the real question. What can you do personally, individually, to protect yourself and your family, to survive these times, and to help the society at large? I have said many times recently, it is not the time to bury your head in the sand because soon the sand will be swept away from under you. This is not the solution. It is time to wake up and to take action. Both for your own well-being and those around you, and for the collective of humanity. This is a time to act. What you can do to support those who would support the ideas that help to ease the burden of this change, that help to ease the pain and suffering that will occur in this time of transition—those are the individuals who must be brought to power. It will happen, sooner or later. The desire to return to the golden days in the memory of people—that psychology which thinks that solutions of the past will work in the present—that will fade as the situations become direr and people demand attention and solution to the existing problems of the day. So, to help promote the change,the addressing of the changes as early as possible, those actions will be beneficial. And for each personally, as various threats come, whether it be the threats of illnesses that spread across the globe; the threats of storms and fires, and floods; or the threats of political reactions causing extreme hardships—in all of this, maintaining your Sadhana, maintaining your balance when people are in fear, not giving way to fear, but recognizing that the divine Brahma is in all things and that life itself is transitory. Whether that transitory nature is shown in one way or another, all societies that have existed in the past have faded away. Change is a part of life. And great transitions require great changes. This is a positive transition in the end. But the time of deconstruction of what has been and the building and reconstruction of what will be is a difficult time for humanity. Transformation is not easy. Having your spiritual base, finding your balance, mental balance there; doing work in the world that brings Dharma and as much harmony as possible… No one is immune to these changes, so, to try to hide from these changes, find your safe little corner—it really won’t work. Everyone is on the front line of some of these changes. Even if you are the most powerful king or president or queen, you are not immune to diseases. Even if you are the most powerful person, you will not be immune to the changes on the planet. They affect everyone, poor and rich. Though those with fewer resources may have less ability to cope with them, in the end, everyone is fully impacted. So, be practical, be logical, do what you need to provide practical resources for yourself in potential times of difficulty, and work for Dharma, and try to give people spiritual calm and peace, spiritual understanding, in a time of great transition. Practical steps and action are what is required during these times. As for whether this particular virus that hit the world so concerning will spread wide and far and how many will be lost to it, that is yet to be determined by the actions of human beings. If human beings take significant action, it can change the situation. If human beings take no action, then the situation will be different. The same is true for the climate. Remember to check out Dharma for Awakening and Social Change to find out how you can personally have an affect on supporting the changes we would all like to see in our world.  The teachings of the Tao come from the ancient teachings of dharma. When a being follows the Tao, they are in alignment with their inherent nature and they follow the laws that govern that inherent nature. These laws, the principles and operating forces of the universe, are the fabric of existence. Without them, the natural world would lose its integrity.
To understand the Tao is to understand the inherent nature of human beings, the inherent nature of rocks, the inherent nature of water, the inherent nature of Earth, and the inherent nature of each and every type of living being. When beings are in alignment with their inherent nature, dharma flows naturally. A sense of harmony with all life is the result. The Tao is the Way. Dharma is also called the Way, the law, the path. Dharma is inherent in all things. Human beings have a longing for the Great. There is a restlessness in the hearts of people because there is dissatisfaction with duality and feelings of separation from the whole. Sooner or later, most people experience the existential pain of separation from the unconditional love that is the source of their being. This separateness, and the restlessness that emerges because of it, brings a search for wholeness that may take many forms. People try to acquire things to feed the need inside of them. They grasp for solutions, not only in the physical world but in the psychic and spiritual worlds as well. However, this need to reconnect with wholeness is met only when dharma governs a person’s life and they move in harmony with their innermost Self. Bhagavat Dharma, our human dharma channels our restlessness towards the Great. When we do this, our unique human expression moves towards unity and wholeness. We align ourselves in perfect harmony with our inherent, natural state of being. Dharma is followed when you are in alignment with the natural laws of the universe, with the laws of the Divine Mother. When people find harmony with all that is, life becomes an expression of love, a Seva, a service to others. One feels alignment with the Tao. When you are in the flow of dharma towards the Divine, all that you have seen and known come into a harmonious alignment and become directed towards your innermost Self rather than towards pleasures or worldly acquisitions. When dharma governs your life, the little sense of “I” melts away and is surrendered to the love that is unconditional, that is the larger Self. The pain of duality is dissolved in Moksha, liberation from ignorance, a movement from ego-centered pleasure-seeking to selfless love in the flow of dharma. This movement towards unitary wholeness and liberation is the natural, essential flow of human life, inherent in your own being. |
AuthorMaetreyii Ma: a teacher of yogic wisdom & practices  Archives
May 2023
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