Attuned To The Current Of Life: Radiance Sutras Verse 84

So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras and this is a translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

A beautiful ancient tantric text where the goal is to experience being fully divine and fully physical.

And so in many ways this goes both ways.

You want to be able to experience,

You know,

What would it feel like to be the divine?

What would it feel like to be infinite,

All pervasive,

All knowing?

And then how do you bring that awareness or that feeling into this very unique human experience that we're all having?

How does that fit?

On the flip side,

You want to fully embrace being human.

You want to experience everything.

If you were to imagine why we incarnated here on earth,

Why do we exist in Maya?

Why are we here?

Well,

We're here to have the human experience because it's juicy and interesting and formative and pleasurable and,

And,

And,

And,

And,

And.

There's a million reasons to be here but it's all about experiencing the world in in this body,

In this mind,

And in each of our individual personalities.

And that's a very interesting thing to really deeply embrace because so often we look at ourselves and we think,

Yeah,

But you don't know the life I have and you don't know the family I was raised with and you don't know my circumstances or you don't understand that I'm injured or that people really hurt me or you don't understand why would anyone want to live this life?

And on some level,

We may quietly be wishing we were someone else or there was some other way that we could be.

I remember when I was a teenager,

I always wanted to look like Cindy Crawford.

That's who I wanted to look like.

It's almost like you would pick a famous model that had the same color hair you had and decide that you could look like her.

And so I perpetually held myself against her and was constantly in comparison that one day maybe I could be,

You know,

Four inches taller and like whatever.

And so it's an interesting thing that we've been raised with this weird thing where we compare ourselves to other people and we imagine that something's wrong with who we are because we are disabled or we're sick or we're poor or we're exhausted or we are living in the wrong country or whatever.

We have this idea that there's something wrong with who I am.

Well no,

Until I make this money or have this relationship or lose this weight or start going to the gym,

Then maybe I'm okay.

And it's like there's no such thing as okay.

This experience is the whole point.

It's the whole point.

You get to have all the experiences,

An infinite number of experiences.

Can a person in a wheelchair have the experience of running a marathon?

No.

But there's infinite numbers of experiences.

Like infinite.

There's not 12 and you're getting cheated out of three.

There's an infinite number of experiences.

So the point is to experience this life and within that life it's like you experience it all.

The gratitude,

The joy,

The happiness and everything.

And every time you do it's like you get a little glimpse of God.

You get a little glimpse of that infinity.

Like we joke about you know that orgasm in French is called un petit mort,

A little death.

Or maybe you have an experience that's so amazing and it could be anything.

It could be watching a movie.

The other night I sat down with Tim and William and we watched Return to Me which is I think it came out in the early 90s maybe with Minnie Driver and David Duchovny.

It is one of my all-time favorite movies ever.

It has so many lines in it that my kids and my ex-husband and I we would literally like if you hung out with us for very long it wouldn't take very long before you probably would have heard about four lines from Return to Me.

You wouldn't know it but and then we'd all laugh.

And we watched it the other night and it was so funny because I've seen it 20-30 times.

Like I know it off by heart but I love it.

And so I'm sitting there and both William and Tim neither of them have seen it and I'm starting the movie and I'm five minutes in and I'm already crying because I know what's coming.

Right?

I mean it may seem silly because it's just a movie but imagine what it is that moves me to tears.

What is that?

What is this energy?

What is this passion?

What is this love that moves me to tears and by the end you just feel so happy.

So this is the point.

Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

Vijnana means wisdom.

Bhairava is that God divinity essence and tantra in this instance just means book or teaching.

So to bring the wisdom of the divine infinite God into our daily lives.

That's what this book's all about.

And so today we are going to read Sutra 84.

So we're going to read the passage and have a discussion about it and then we'll do a little meditation at the end if we have time.

Hard to say I was pretty chitchatty today.

All right you guys ready?

So even if you have the book I would just close your eyes.

Let's just breathe deeply together.

Extend your awareness into the bodies of other living beings.

Feel what those others are feeling.

Leave aside your body and its needs.

Abandon being so local.

Day by day constrictions will loosen as you become attuned to the current of life flowing through us all.

What comes up for you when you hear that?

Or what feelings or reactions pop up for you?

That I'm too focused on my own misery.

Empathy.

Omnipresence.

Listen more.

Potential.

Infinity.

Connectedness.

All in the now.

Allow the experience of one of us with others.

Of oneness.

I'm going to read it again for Angie and anyone else who would like to hear it again.

Extend your awareness into the bodies of other living beings.

Feel what those others are feeling.

Leave aside your body and its needs.

Abandon being so local.

Day by day constrictions will loosen as you become attuned to the current of life flowing through us all.

Empathy.

Oneness.

But there's more I can't feel.

Get better at taking care of my body so I can leave my body more.

Ecstatic dance yesterday.

Sensual surrender.

Feeling into others bodies,

Humans,

Trees,

Animals.

Abandoning my physical needs.

Less local constrictions will release.

The ability to feel what others are feeling.

That is what brought me into being in service.

Totally.

It would be fun to feel and see and think from the perspective of others.

It would make an interesting change.

We are all connected.

Empathy.

Awareness and empathy.

Expand keyword.

I feel funerals are one time when drama is dropped and we become a family unit.

It's what I want.

Then the humbling realization is what we all want.

Release the no in life's individual self and listen.

Feel into the awareness of humanity.

I think the passages are interesting when Lauren repeats an idea using different words.

Don't be so local.

Abandoning physical needs got me a bit.

Felt resistance.

True connection comes from empathy.

So let's talk about that for a minute because that's really important.

Because I'm with you.

It's interesting to imagine the intention of this sutra.

Sometimes the message we need to hear is about self-care.

Sometimes that's the next step on our journey.

That we really need to actually take care of our bodies.

We really do need to move.

My daughter and I were watching a guy's video on TikTok the other day and he was talking about his weight loss journey.

He was saying that one of the things he had to change was to stop eating and he was saying that one of the things he had to change was his chair-to-chair-to-chair lifestyle.

For anyone who has a chair-to-chair-to-chair lifestyle,

We know exactly what he meant.

Sometimes it's really important to really look at,

Am I getting enough sleep?

Am I eating well?

Am I meditating and taking care of my stress levels?

There are times to really seriously look at honing this human experience.

But this sutra is about experiencing divinity.

The crazy thing is when we can experience divinity,

The end result of that can be that we end up taking better care of ourselves.

Because sometimes the reason we are so hard on ourselves and nitpicking and ignoring ourselves and all these kind of things is because we are so focused on our wounding.

It's almost like our pain body is ruling our life and we can't see past our own chaos,

Our own whirlpool that's just sucking us in.

And then if we have an experience of being a part of something bigger,

That we're not alone,

We're not separate,

We really are part of something really beautiful and expansive and amazing.

Bit by bit,

That love that we feel from the universe will come into our own life.

And suddenly we'll say,

Oh,

It's like it takes the power away from the programs that are harming us.

So one of the teachings in this sutra is learning to separate our consciousness from our body.

And body also means personality.

But even when we get to knowing we're divine,

There's a transition period.

And that's why the sutra says,

As the days go by,

In time,

You will experience this.

This doesn't happen instantly.

Let's just for a moment,

Imagine this.

Let's imagine that we're in a room,

Let's just for a moment,

Imagine this.

Let's imagine that we all want to have the experience of Bhairava,

God,

Divinity,

Eternal consciousness.

The very fact that every one of us is sitting here right now.

We all have this.

This isn't just for gurus.

This is a spark,

A life within all of us right now.

In the tantric world,

And in many Hindu religion,

Different things.

This is sort of the way that life is.

There is God,

Brahman,

Shiva,

Shakti,

Oneness,

Whatever you want to call that,

Bhairava.

And then there are three bodies.

They call them the causal body,

The subtle body,

And the gross body.

So now imagine this,

Okay,

Like imagine you have this God consciousness up here.

And then you need to be born.

You.

For whatever reason,

Maybe there are karmic experiences for you to experience,

Like there's patterns that you're playing out that you're exploring.

Maybe there's experiences that need to be healed or who knows why.

But whatever those curious themes are,

They form the causal body.

So the causal body,

It's the combination of all of your experience,

Right?

It's almost like your great story arc,

And not just of this lifetime,

Not just this incarnation,

But every lifetime,

Right?

This is your causal body.

So from divinity,

The first energy pattern is this causal body that says,

We're going to write a movie and we need to have these storylines happening.

Interesting.

The next level is the subtle body.

In the subtle body,

Now we have an ego.

So the person,

Like this causal body has now been focused into a person.

And now this is the person,

This is their ego,

Their intellect,

Their thoughts,

Their senses.

In the subtle body,

This is where I see things.

Like we think of our senses as being,

Okay,

So the third body is the gross body.

Not gross,

Like,

Ew,

But gross as in physical,

Manifest.

And of course the gross body is the body that we experience the world in.

This is where this body is made of earth,

Air,

Wind,

Fire,

And ether.

That's what this body is made of.

It's made of the elements.

And through this body,

We experience the world around us.

So if you pop up to the subtle body,

Our senses are part of the subtle body.

Because when you really imagine it,

If you're looking at this screen right now,

There is energy coming into your eyes,

Which is being interpreted energetically by your brain.

And it's telling you what you're seeing.

If I touch my face,

I am sending an energy signal through the filaments of my nervous system all the way up,

Sending an electrical signal to my brain telling me,

Is this wet,

Hot,

Dry,

Scratchy?

What am I feeling?

Our senses are not physical.

Our body is physical,

Which is where we receive the information for our sensors to pick up.

So what's really interesting is if you imagine the consciousness is separate from all of these,

Our consciousness.

On a day-to-day level,

We experience our consciousness in our body.

But this is where yogis like to ask trick questions.

They'll say,

Who are you?

And you'll say,

Oh,

I am Katrina.

And oh,

Well,

Tell me,

Oh,

I'm 5'7".

It's like,

Well,

What if I cut off your legs?

Who are you now?

It's like,

Well,

I'm still Katrina,

But you don't have any legs.

And what if you don't have any arms?

And what if you don't have legs?

And so they're kind of trying to say that whoever you are is actually not your body.

Sometimes we experience consciousness in a dream state,

Outside of our gross body and our subtle body.

And then what I'm going to say now is like kind of pretty out there,

Sort of further along the tantric path,

But there's a state they call Turiya.

And Turiya,

I believe that probably everybody here has had some sniff of Turiya.

And what this is,

Is this.

It's like a moment of bliss that you really are beyond your mind,

Beyond your body,

And even beyond your causal body,

That you really touch infinity.

And most of the time,

They come in these fleeting moments.

It can be anything.

It can be in sadness,

It can be in happiness,

But these little moments of bliss.

And I believe that these are the things that actually draw us to a spiritual path,

Even if we don't remember what they are.

But all we know is that there's more to this world.

Because some part of me experienced it once.

It's like that,

Was it Leonard Cohen who said,

It's the crack,

Which is where the light comes in.

I think we've all had these little cracks,

Where we experienced pure bliss,

Non-duality,

Consciousness,

Whatever,

Where our consciousness wasn't even connected to this incarnation.

It was like literally you just closed your eyes and you were one with the universe.

And the point of all that,

And again,

Some of it may resonate and some of it may not,

But to really be able to sit in yourself and recognize that the consciousness that you truly are actually has nothing to do with your body,

Your personality,

Your life experiences,

Nothing.

I once got to meet Anita Morjani,

Who wrote Dying to be Me,

I think.

And she tells this story of,

She was born in India,

But she was raised in like Japan or somewhere.

And she never felt like she fit in.

And her dad was really hard on her.

He was a very,

Sort of a classical Indian father,

Kind of harshness and criticism of her.

And she really struggled with that.

And then she was diagnosed with fourth stage cancer,

And she was very sick.

And as she was being wheeled into the hospital,

She died,

Essentially.

She kind of went into that in between state.

And while she was in there,

Her father came to her who had previously passed.

But he didn't feel like the man that raised her.

He felt like love.

He felt like spirit.

He said,

That wasn't who I really am.

That was just a role I was playing.

Who I really am loves you.

That's all of us.

Every one of us has a consciousness that is beyond our personality,

The role we were given to play,

The body we were given,

Our circumstances.

We all have this.

So this sutra is saying first,

Recognize this within yourself.

And then expand that into other people.

And imagine that pure consciousness that is within you is also within that person.

And that pure consciousness is activating their causal body,

Creating their subtle body,

Creating their gross body.

And that pure consciousness within you is in that person,

Activating their story,

Activating their experience here on earth.

It's funny,

They say that our attachment to the physical body,

Our attachment to this,

Our ego's experience of life is the number one barrier to entering a spiritual realm.

And this sutra is an exercise to practice that.

And the other interesting piece,

Which circles back to that self-care question in the beginning,

Was the understanding that the body is always a puppet of consciousness.

Whatever state your consciousness is in,

That is what's pulling the strings.

We think,

Oh,

Well,

I'm addicted to this.

It's in your consciousness.

That's where it's to be healed.

The body will follow whatever you want,

Whatever you decide.

And what's interesting about this particular meditation is,

In the language,

In the Sanskrit,

It actually talks about this all-pervasive consciousness will wake up over time.

So you walk around with this very interesting awareness that you and other people really aren't that different.

It's just the details.

So like,

For example,

Just imagine for a moment,

Imagine someone you know and really understanding that they are here living a different causal body experience.

They were brought here.

Their foundation is entirely different than yours.

Their lifetimes,

Their samskaras,

Their karma,

Everything is entirely different than yours.

It's like an iceberg.

It's so huge.

And this human that we're experiencing is just the consolidation of that.

But the energy,

The love that Kelly mentions of her father,

Her abusive father who was deceased,

Is the same.

How would that change how you interact with other people?

Or how does it change whether or not we can forgive other people?

To really deeply know that the consciousness that flows through me also flows through them or flowed through them.

And again,

This isn't something that we just go,

Go,

Oh wow,

Yeah,

That's exactly what it's not.

It's not that simple.

It is something to ponder.

Well,

Let's let's just do a short little meditation.

So wherever you are,

Let's close our eyes.

Let's just breathe deeply.

And I'd like you to bring your attention to your physical body.

Be aware of it.

Be thankful for it.

And we're just going to let it go.

And become aware of your mind,

Your thoughts,

What you can smell,

The feel of the air on your skin.

Now we're going to let that go.

Now we're going to imagine your causal body,

The themes of your life,

The patterns that play out,

The big stories that seem to require you to be who you are to play them out.

Then let's let that go too.

And feel this lovely energy that's left.

And then imagine someone before you who you love.

And then imagine that person who you love.

And in your mind's eye,

Feel their physical presence.

Then let that go.

And then imagine their mind,

Their thoughts,

Who they are as a person.

Then let that go.

And then imagine their causal body,

The story arcs of their lives,

Patterns they live.

No judgment or anything,

Just imagine.

And then let that go.

And feel that pure energy that's within them.

Pure energy that's within them.

Then imagine a third person sitting with the two of you.

Someone you have a struggle with.

And focus on their physical being.

Breathe.

And then let their physical being go.

And then feel their thoughts,

Who they are,

Their identity.

And then let that go.

Then imagine their causal body.

The story,

The karma,

The patterns that formed them.

And then let that go.

And imagine these three energies,

Which are all the same.

Which are all the same.

Sitting together.

Extend your awareness into the bodies of other living beings.

Feel what those others are feeling.

Leave aside your body and its needs.

Abandon being so local.

Day by day,

Constrictions will loosen.

Day by day,

Constrictions will loosen.

As you become attuned to the current of life flowing through us all.

Thank you so much for being here.

I hope you have a wonderful day.