Personal experiences
After the Sahaja Yoga Realise Australia Tour in November 2006, we have continued with the regular Sahaja Yoga meetings at the Kelso Community Centre in Bathurst. Many young Aboriginal children come and play at the centre and often join in the sessions. We often adapt the program to suit the children, and hence the programs are very spontaneous.
We found out that a River Dreaming Festival is being organised for Bathurst, in November 2007, to unite all the cultures. It will involve the making of a Big Rainbow Serpent Lantern which will move down the banks of the Macquarie River at twilight. The Rainbow Serpent is the Kundalini in Aboriginal culture. The festival will consist of a parade of various cultural groups in Bathurst with their banners, supported by stalls and music.
Two banner-making workshops were organised at the Kelso Community Centre which is mainly for the Aboriginal people of Kelso. The workshops coincidentally were on the same day as our weekly Saturday program, and we were asked to join in the festivities by making a banner.
Madhavi and I proceeded to make a banner, not knowing what to create. We spontaneously began by tracing Madhavi’s shadow as she stood with her hands
outstretched in the sun. We then painted little Kundalinis on the palms. Above the head we painted a template of the River Dreaming Festival Logo. It represents the elements of fire and water and the river at Bathurst which the festival’s director said is a feminine energy.
Madhavi suggested that blue should be used for the body to represent the cooling down that occurs as the Kundalini rises and is felt over our palms, head and body. We used yellow and orange for the background to represent the heat and dryness of the drought. When asked what the banner meant, we said that if people cooled down from within then the earth would cool down, too, and bring rain. A week later the area had 45 mm of rain!
Many different people were there from a variety of cultures, including people from Malaysia and Ireland, white Australians and people of Aboriginal heritage, all creating their own banners. Madhavi and I could feel the connection among everyone there as we worked together in this united cause.
The Aboriginal children also joined in, making their own little banners or helping with ours. I could feel their Kundalinis were so cool. I observed the oneness of their culture while they all sat together and made little badges.
Kelly Langdon
(Photograph: wikipedia)
In the book, Pagan: the Origins of Modern Burma by Michael Aung-Thwin (University of Hawaii Press, 1985) the author says that written on one of the many hundreds of pagodas and temples that dot the plains of Pagan are the words, “A thousand monks, a thousand religions.” I read this book about twenty years ago, and yet this phrase has always remained with me. I have introspected on this over the years and now, as a Sahaja Yogi, perhaps I know what it means.
Its meaning is that within each of us is the religion, innately built. However, each person’s interpretation of religion is unique. The same Truth refracted through the prisms of our beings takes on myriad hues.
The monk is symbolic of the asceticism that we have to have on the inside because a monk is not created by a change of dress alone. It is the inner part that has to be changed; the outer part is just a reflection of what is happening within.
In Sahaja Yoga the innate religion is realised and actualised through the awakening of our Divine Mother, the Kundalini. Her main task is to give us Self-realisation so that this innate religion, the dharma or right conduct, manifests within us.
Each of us has a Guru Tattwa, i.e. the principle of the Divine Guru. It is called the Void or the Ocean of Illusion. Its physical location within us is the soft part of our abdomen with the navel as its centre. It has ten valencies corresponding to the Ten Commandments given to us by Moses. The ten valencies are unique to human beings, and for the understanding of each of these, an incarnation came on Earth. The first incarnation came ten thousand years ago in the form of King Janaka, with the last being Sai Baba of Shirdi. In between were Abraham, Moses, Lao Tse, Confucius, Zarathustra, Socrates, Mohammed and Guru Nanak.
The Adi or Primordial Guru principle is the combination of the quality of innocence of the three male deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma. The Adi Guru principle is for the purpose of guiding the human beings across the Void, the Ocean of Illusion which is the place of our evolutionary process.
Once we attain the Guru Tattwa, we can become our own guru. The analogy of the monk is to show that the road to becoming one’s own guru is not easy. The journey has to be taken alone because it is our habits and conditionings that have to undergo transformation and/or transmutation to take on their hues of dharma.
Greta More
© June 2007
(Picture courtesy of Divine Life Trust, www.dlshq.org)
A small group of Sahaja Yogis gave realisation at the Woodford International Indigenous Dreamtime Festival over the Queen’s Birthday weekend held on 8-11 June 2007. In all, about forty people received their self-realisation. Of these people, about seven were identifiably Indigenous.
There was, as always, great joy at the transmitting of this priceless gift. We also felt very privileged to be part of the Festival itself. Ancient rhythms and ceremonies combined with the vibrant, contemporary Indigenous music scene.
Original Australians from all over the country and more recently arrived races mixed freely and equally in a manner so rare in the recent history of this country. We were honoured and delighted to be there to share our Mother’s Love, and to learn from an ancient wisdom.
Sue Boyer
Have you ever looked, really looked, without thinking, at the unopened coils of a tree-fern frond? If you give yourself time to absorb the shape and contours you find your attention becomes one with the plant. It’s so mathematically perfect and alive at the same time. You can almost feel the force of life that will gradually unfurl the coils as the fern grows.
As artists and writers we love to find examples in nature of what happens inside us when we enter the meditative state. So, drawing a tree-fern really appeals because we can relate the uncoiling of our own energy to the pattern of the fern’s growth. Spiritually, we are born from the light above, and in that light we can see our own true potential for the first time.
Several of us gathered in a friend’s garden in front of her tree-ferns and looked intently at the plants for some time until our attention became one with them. Then we examined runner bean seeds by separating the different parts to look at the primule and storage material and to search in vain for any image of the bean plant it would have become.
From that we closed our eyes and put attention on the base of the spine where the earth is represented in us and from where the wisdom and innocence needed for our growth into the true self come. Next the attention moved up the spine to the “seed” germinating within the sacrum bone and rising to meet the nurturing energy from the light above. With attention at the top of the head we watched the silence between the thoughts in the same way that we had observed the fern and the seed.
Afterwards, one lady who was new to meditation said that she had experienced a gap between her thoughts for the first time ever. So, we talked about the Kundalini as a mothering, nurturing energy expanding our creativity as we grow closer to our inner potential and about how to use this attention during such activities as drawing and writing. She was able to feel the Cool Breeze coming from the top of her head. We sat in meditation again for some time.
The next step was to write in silence and continuously for about ten minutes on the subject of “myself and my art”. All of us felt it was easier to write after being in meditation and that what we wrote was valuable for our growth in spirit as well as in art practice.
Finally we drew a self-portrait with the aid of hand-held mirrors, while focusing on the thought, “Am I what I see?” You may find this an interesting activity whether or not you are an artist.
Christine Driver