The Ecstatic Light Of Awareness: Radiance Sutras Verse 11

So today we are doing a reading from the Radiant Sutras,

A book by Lauren Roche,

And this is a translation or an interpretation of the ancient tantric text the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

Lately I've had this real fascination with all things ancient and this is kind of a current passion of mine so I can't really describe it fully but so far what I've found in my reading and study is that around 4,

000 years ago a lot of things shifted in the world and especially in the cultures where these tantric texts come from.

Around 4,

000 years ago the Aryans came into India out of the north and they started to shift how people were supposed to see religion using the Vedas and what have you and people were supposed to be separated from religion or from God that that was just for those in the Brahmin caste,

The caste system,

They brought in the caste system which said no no only people in the top caste were allowed to sort of connect that way and so I kind of consider anything ancient as anything that was going on before that and all over the world this was happening.

Empires were rising,

Organized religion began,

All these different things started 4,

000 years ago.

I know I'll have more to say about that over the coming year and years because I'm really intrigued with it but this is one of those texts the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra that existed long before the rise of empires and the rise of kind of this domination culture or whatever that said no no no we only are the ones that connect with God,

We are the only ones that can connect with spirit where as indigenous cultures would say spirit runs through us,

It's what we're made of,

There's no possibility of separating one from the other,

It's just impossible.

It's like I was just eating a carrot and there's moisture in the carrot and there's vitamins in the carrot and it's like saying that these things are not part of the carrot although they are intrinsically part of the carrot and this is what the indigenous cultures would say that it's always us to separate it as nonsense and so when we read this and we listen to the sutra because that's what we'll do we're gonna listen to the sutra we're doing verse two and we're doing verse 11 today,

I only say that because I know some of you guys have have this book but to be able to listen to it from that ancient self that exists inside of all of us even though we live in 2023 and we are fully engaged in Netflix and our jobs and where we get groceries and how much money we have and we're all very caught up in the world and the life we're living we also have the ancient part of us that was around over 4 000 years ago and so it's kind of fun to tap into that deep wisdom even if it feels a long way away or even if you think yeah but that's not me I'm not like that or I've never been good in school or I'm not you wouldn't ask me my opinion that kind of thing we've been really beaten down in our self-worth when the truth is that every single one of us here is connected.

Wayne Dyer used to say that as long as your fingernails are growing you're connected to God and whether those are land that's language that you like or not just translate it into another word but as long as your fingernails are growing we're connected which means every one of us has that direct line to listen so we're going to read the sutra and then we're going to have a discussion about it and then we're going to do a meditation where at the end of the meditation I'll re-read the sutra in Sanskrit and in English and that will be our class.

So let's close our eyes let's just breathe deeply expanding the belly as we inhale contracting as we exhale.

Inside the skull there is a place where the essences of creation play and mingle the ecstatic light of awareness and the awareness of that light the divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place the light of their love play illumines all space rest in that light ever present and gradually awaken into the steady joy of that which is always everywhere.

What words roll through your mind when you hear that what feelings arise feminine masculine merge in the self in joy and peace the ecstatic light of awareness we are the light of awareness everything is here now and always it's beautiful I feel hope at the same time wondering how to remain in such joy and peace I visualize a red thread flowing like a dance producing the entangled creation of feminine and masculine like an embrace from the universe.

What's interesting like if we talk about that the divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place the light of their love play illumines all space so when we really think about that the sport and the dance of the masculine and feminine so in this way so this the place in the skull is at the crown of the head that they're talking about the first word in the sutra in is actually kapala anta and that is the space the crown of the head the crown of the head that's the place they're talking about so in the Hindu mythology the way that we were created was you have this union this wholeness and the heat this wholeness shifted it it split and the masculine state at the crown and the feminine descended into the physical creation and so this is the energy of Shiva at the crown and then Shakti is the energy of creation so the masculine is at the crown and the feminine is creation so if you imagine this in our day-to-day life the feminine is reality this is what is this is is it raining am i alone or am i with someone am i eating am i happy am i 53 years old whatever reality is this is the manifest Shakti and the masculine energy so you can just sort of exist and nothing really happens there's no dance there's no interplay there's no light there's no luminosity there's no change there's no nothing it's just yeah that's just what it is so enter the masculine energy Shiva consciousness awareness but it's not just awareness it's the action of life it's the energy of life so this masculine energy looks at the feminine reality and says what can we do what can we create how can we shift it how can we mold this clay what do i want to do with it and this is very interesting for us in our lives in a very practical way the balance of the masculine feminine within us is the interplay in our life between what we desire our hopes what we see the masculine and the world around us and our reality right now so if you look at your reality right now this is the feminine whatever it is good bad ugly preferred loved hated sad full of shame full of passion full of whatever it is that's the feminine our life happens when we do something with it if we don't have any masculine energy or for some reason our masculine energy has been oppressed or atrophied then we are victims of our circumstances we are dead in the water we're a lump of coal we're just nothing the dance is over we just float along the river being buffeted from one thing to the other depending on the moods and whatever of other people but as soon as we engage our masculine energy and we look at the canvas of our life and we say okay here are the pieces here are the pieces here are the pieces here are the pieces i was given for some reason this is my pattern this is my world this is my incarnation what am i going to make with it that is the dance of the divine masculine and feminine so now you imagine consciousness consciousness of our life well this is where we include everything we don't just silver lining it we don't just say well there's this part i really like but i'm going to keep ignoring what we would call my shadow self the parts i judge or the parts i don't like or of whatever my accomplishments my physical body my relationship status like whatever it is i don't like about myself or even maybe qualities about yourself you wish were different these are what we call the shadow but consciousness is conscious of all things so then all of a sudden let's imagine you're feminine your shakti is all of it every single thing and we put it all on the table in front of us and our shiva energy starts to dance with it so all of a sudden there are people in your life that you struggle with all right what are we going to do about it how do we bring our masculine to dance with that maybe we have an amazing opportunity and we have all of this all these great ideas and great inspiration then we use the same energy to dance with that and to create to make incredible things you know maybe we realize that we are sick we have an illness or we have an injury that's that shakti that's the feminine and our masculine says okay let's make a plan let's sort it let's heal it let's find whatever modality we need let's take whatever herbs or do whatever we need to do to make this better this is where we're alive the divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place the light of their love play illumines all space the joy of our lives is the light in our lives that's what it is you know it's sort of this curious thing where we think we're supposed to be passive and then again maybe this is part of that disconnection from spirit where oh the priests talk to the spirit or the ministers talk to spirit or the gurus talk to spirit but we are just the lowly followers the students so then i don't have that shiva energy like it actually cuts us off from the creation energy in our own lives i'm going to go back to the first part of the stanza inside the skull there is a place now what's interesting about the crown chakra is the crown chakra if you were to go through all the chakras and what they're concerned about the crown chakra has no concerns the first chakra may have concerns of survival it's concerned are we okay is there food am i safe that kind of thing it has good stuff too abundance and all that but right now we're kind of going to talk about survival or we're going to talk about the concerns second chakra we're going to be concerned about our interrelationships with other people lovers children parents neighbors society and lar at large members of our community third chakra we have concerns about what who am i really what am i here for do i even have a mission oh my god i don't even know why i'm here you know that kind of thing fourth chakra it's like the inability to feel love the feeling of being alone in the world the feeling of not enjoying anything this is the fourth chakra concern fifth chakra actually existing on the planet expressing self being part of the world but once we start getting up into the sixth and the seventh chakras are there really concerns the sixth chakra can get muddled in our world only because we're very addicted to knowledge right now we're very addicted to being walking encyclopedia britannica or something you know that we're supposed to know stuff and we're supposed to be able to rhyme stuff off all the time and if we get attached to that if we get attached to our knowledge and what we think we know we can get very lost because also what happens in the sixth chakra is if we get lost in that we think we know better than reality in the sixth chakra is also where we create illusions about our life and we superimpose it upon reality so even though we might actually be very unhappy or even unsafe we might create a fantasy in our our brain in our sixth chakra in this frontal cortex we might create a fantasy that we're fine it's okay i'm okay i'm you know what i'm good there are people in the world that have it way worse than i do so don't you worry about me it's not true nothing no no part of it is true but we've created this fantasy and we're imposing it on our life so the sixth chakra we can still get into a bit of trouble because we're using our psychic abilities to mesmerize ourselves into a reality that's not true that's a huge huge thing that we do but once we get to the seventh chakra first of all we're out of kind of duality we're not we're not going back and forth and battling things anymore the seventh chakra is our connection to the divine i mean again that doesn't mean much but it's infinite possibility it's almost like the seventh chakra isn't really about this incarnation so much it's our connection to the whole so all of a sudden if we start playing in this masculine feminine dynamic if we start playing with what's possible in our life what's possible with the pieces that are on the table of our existence anything's possible anything's possible in the seventh chakra because we're beyond the dualities we're beyond the fears of the first second third chakras the concerns of the fourth and fifth and the nonsense and the six that we do to survive so in the seventh the seventh is a beautiful place where we can create and we can actually envision a life and this is different than imposing a fantasy in the sixth chakra in the seventh we can envision our true joy and meditate upon that which is what we're going to do in our meditation today so and we're still going to chit chat for a bit yet but as we're chit chatting what we're going to do in the meditation is we're going to hold a vision in that seventh chakra a vision of a beautiful reality and it's not necessarily something we're making up it's something we know something we know is possible maybe we believe it's lost and if we if we check in with the first second third chakras they may talk us out of it if we hold this reality in the seventh and the first chakra says that's right that's the reality that we're going to hold if we hold this reality in the seventh and the first chakra says that's ridiculous have you looked around lately and the second chakra says people are going to think you're nuts they're going to put you in the same as it's a really interesting thing to not check in with the fears of the lower chakras or the fear of the lower chakras and the world so our game today our meditation today is going to be to hold our highest truth in our crown chakra we're going to do it in about 10 minutes or so but just to allow that to float through your mind while we're still talking i'd like to read you so we're just going to come at this from a slightly different angle for a moment i also read from a book called the shri vijnana by rava tantra the ascent by swami satya sagananda saraswati and they have a they have a very literal translation of this which is interesting for us today this is their translation having closed the eyes and fixing the attention at the crown of the head gradually stabilize the mind and direct it towards the highest goal which will gradually become discernible having closed the eyes and fixing the attention at the crown of the head gradually stabilize the mind and direct it towards the highest goal which will gradually become discernible this is very interesting because part of the yogic you know when they talk about the eight limbs of yoga and we've talked about that a lot we've got the yamas the niyamas asana our plate and asana is just a comfortable seat in life that as we walk through the world we do it with a comfortable seat walking sitting doesn't matter but we're comfortable in our bodies pranayama that we are breathing we're expanding the spirit in every every step every breath pratyahara that we are able to withdraw from the poking of the universe and stay on our path and in the last three are dharana dhyana and samadhi and dharana it's been the focus of the last couple sutras and this one as well dharana is concentration in concentration it's like training a puppy and you want the puppy to do this and the puppy shoots off to the one side and we don't get mad at the puppy we just take the puppy and we gently bring it back and we focus it again and it shoots off over there and we bring it back and it shoots off and we bring it back and it shoots off and bring it back and this is the same thing so we are going to practice this dharana in the crown chakra concentrating on the highest goal and of course you can imagine right off the hop where that puppy's going to head off into into the fears into oh but that's not reality and what are you talking about and blah blah blah blah blah but life isn't just about shakti life isn't just about the feminine life is all about the consciousness of shiva and it's the dance between shiva and shakti so this meditation is about all right let's really focus on what's possible and then we'll blend it it'll dance it's not it's not oppression we're not using this and then and forcing our life into it we're just adding it to the table adding a different spice to the soup i love the one line in it where he says stabilize the mind and direct it towards the higher the highest goal stabilize the mind that's the goal it's funny right because in our lives it's like our world is our minds are like the world or something and we think it's completely normal that it's just chaotic but every one of us can just stabilize the mind if we want to the other thing just before we do our meditation in the back of this beautiful book the radiant sutures which i highly recommend having in the back of the book he gives us interesting little things to contemplate one for each sutra and this one is niasa and it means putting in placing depositing that kind of thing so you imagine that the skull is this vessel for infinity it's the vessel for our creation today he makes this beautiful which is this is a part of what he said to use the skull as an offering cup of brilliance dedicated to this infinite divinity in which we find ourselves using the skull as an offering cup of brilliance dedicated to this infinite divinity in which we find ourselves and what's crazy about this is he also talks about how much this brings us freedom in our lives how does focusing on your highest goal in your crown chakra bring you freedom and i don't even want to answer it it's just a question to ponder and so what we're going to do i'll just give you the heads up before we begin our meditation is we are going to place in our minds something brilliant maybe it's a vision of the world maybe it's music maybe it's lying on a beach maybe it's being surrounded by friends maybe it's something much more ethereal and difficult to describe maybe it's a feeling maybe it's the essence of peace or light or rainbows i don't know what it's going to be for you the key is that it's authentic to your path that's all that matters there's no right answer here so let's sit nice and tall if you're lying down feel free to stay lying down close our eyes and as we breathe notice the expansion of your belly and ribs as you inhale the contraction as you exhale and let's slow our breath way down expand the belly a little further than last time and as you exhale take a little bit longer to bring the navel in towards the spine we unconsciously hold on to a lot of things that actually need to go into circulation so the key there is to exhale more deeply release whatever needs to go and now just scan your body for areas of discomfort and if you find an area of discomfort allow all of your attention to go there breathe deeply noticing that space noticing that place and then shift to another spot that you might have found that is also uncomfortable then imagine yourself like a tree with roots going down into the earth your body becoming stable like the trunk of the tree and beginning in the first chakra where the roots come out and go down into the earth visualize the world that you live in your neighborhood your home the trees the earth coming into the second chakra visualizing the people in your life your community friends teachers colleagues colleagues coming into your third chakra just above the navel really feeling who you are your I am statement that you exist as a perfectly unique and wonderful human breathing deeply and coming up into the fourth chakra feeling love coming in through the back of the chakra from the universe knowing that you're not alone that you are held that you're loved and then feeling that love pour out through the front of your heart into whatever you love whether it's sunshine or people or chocolate or feel this love flowing through the fourth chakra which is right in the center of your chest and then coming up into the throat and feeling the expressions of your soul your words your art your pictures how you see the world around you your unique expression your movement your dance your body language and then flowing up into the sixth chakra the third eye and imagine yourself on a balcony observing the world from your bird's eye view from this place of beautiful intuition as you observe humanity you observe your own world breathing deeply and then let's move to the crown chakra at the top of the head inside the skull and visualize a beautiful vision maybe it's a vision of reality as you truly see it even if the world does not reflect it right now envision something that brings you joy it's that oh the thought of that brings me so much joy or maybe it's a feeling listening to music or gazing upon beautiful art or a mountain whatever it is i'd like you to hold this vision hold this vision in your crown chakra and we're going to sit with it for a few minutes and allow your concentration to stay there completely if your mind wanders come back to it over and over again expand your vision notice the colors make it brighter i will leave you to your vision for a few minutes and then we'll come that milita lokana kramena manasa dharadhyat lakshayat lakshyam uttamam inside the skull there is a place where the essences of creation play and mingle the ecstatic light of awareness and the awareness of that light the divine feminine and masculine sport with one another in that place the light of their love play illumines all space rest in that light ever present and gradually awaken into the steady joy of that which is always everywhere and whenever it was that you held in that consciousness in the crown allow its essence to flow down through your body trickling down through all the energy channels like tiny little rivers allow your breath to blend it into all of who you are right now let's take a deep breath in together exhale and let's open our eyes and come back together and come back together well thank you guys so much for being here this has been wonderful