Living the Practice

Rohini Ralby

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Bancroft Press
• Date de parution: 14 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610885775
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

LIVING THE PRACTICE VOLUME I:
THE WAY OF LOVE

Rohini Ralby
Copyright: Rohini Ralby 2021. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote passages in a review.
Interior Design: tracycopescreative.com
978-1-61088-575-1 HC 978-1-61088-576-8 PB 978-1-61088-577-5 Ebook 978-1-610880-578-2 PDF 978-1-61088-579-9 Audiobook

Published by Bancroft Press “Books that Enlighten” 410-358-0658 P.O. Box 65360, Baltimore, MD 21209 www.bancroftpress.com Printed in the United States of America
To my Guru, Swami Muktananda, who is with me always
And to my husband David and my sons, Ian and Aaron, who love and play with me on this journey
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Painting: Oceanic
Poems:
inscription
Shiva’s game
punctuation
the duelists
emergence
seekers
shhh
crossing
Painting: Sad
C HAPTER O NE: FOUNDATIONAL CONCEPTS
Beginners
St. Symeon’s discussion
Human security
Systems
Clarity of Goals and Definitions
What Does It Really Mean to Own Something?
Grace
Risk
Leaving the Fall
How Spiritual Practice Unfolds
You Are Perfect Just the Way You Are
Stop Repackaging the Practice
Practicing for the Right Reasons
I’m All for Nondualism
Talking, Doing, Being
Internal Only
Reaching the Third Level
It’s Not about the Packaging
Knowing the Road
Perfect
What Unity Means
Walking Bliss
Recent Questions
From the Many to the One
Living Sadhana
Shakti and Wisdom
Liberation
Journey of the Practitioner
Beyond Doctrine
Maya and the Five Kanchukas
Painting: Desperate
Poems:
awareness
shunya
the magic formula
wrought iron bars
boredom
Painting: Compassionate
C HAPTER T WO: TOOLS FOR PRACTICE
Tools to Still
What Is a Fourchotomy
How to Use a Fourchotomy
Using the Fourchotomy Game to Get to Love
Resources
Vacations
The Buck Stops Here
The Three-dimensional Fourchotomy
The Wounded Fourchotomy
Where We Are Today
Painting: Brightening Glance
Poems:
Baba’s gift
it’s not personal
honoring Baba on his birthday
Baba’s present
no parting
Painting: Respect
C HAPTER T HREE: GURU AND DISCIPLE: BABA
Guru Purnima 2012
Today Walking Home with Baba: The Heart of Spiritual Practice comes out
Ganesh
Grace Personified
Believing in Baba
Raised by Baba
Surrendering to Baba
The Guru Models
Respecting Lineage
Guru Purnima 2015
Patience
True Guru
Om Bhagavan, Muktananda Bhagavan
Guru Purnima 2016
Baba’s Mahasamadhi 2016
Honoring Baba with the Guru’s Words
Baba’s Lessons Keep Teaching, Part One
Baba’s Lessons Keep Teaching, Part Two
Painting: 15 Persimmons
Poems:
lemming
are you talkin to me
devolition
Muktananda’s gift
Painting: Owned
C HAPTER F OUR: GURU AND DISCIPLE: DISCIPLESHIP
Qualities of a Student
Right Effort and Grace Await Each of Us
No Escaping Teachers
Five Kinds of Seeker
Playing the Field
Painting: Midwinter Spring
Poems:
dissolution
Guru’s Purnima
know your station
ace
abheda
Painting: Turn to the Fire, and Enter
C HAPTER F IVE: GURU AND DISCIPLE: THE GURU
Sometimes I
Walking out of the Darkness.
What Does the Guru Do?
The Gardener
The Business of All Businesses
The Guru’s Grace
My Apparently Useless Gift
Monkey See, Monkey Don’t
The Guru Manifests Personally for Us
I Am Not a Teacher
The Guru Is Not Your Enemy
Painting: Wounded
Poems:
the world matters
erase to the finish
refraction
rasa
know it all
white flag
Painting: Spontaneous
C HAPTER S IX: HUMILITY, ACCEPTANCE, AND SURRENDER
Thank you
We Have to Crack
I Can’t Accept That
We Are Not as Good as We Think
Surrendering to Growth
Acceptance
Whom Do You Serve?
Spiritual Practice Ruins Your Life
Accept, Let Go, and Redirect.…
Give up Good
Mirror, Mirror
Skipping the First Step…
Surrender
So Thankful Practice Is Easy
Accepting Surrender
We Are Always Choosing
Living Humility
The Wrong Surrender
Stand Firm by Surrendering
What We Are Willing to Sacrifice
The One True Sacrifice
Painting: Anabasis
Poems:
see to see
performance
de-spelling poisons
i doctor
variations on a theme
Painting: Love of Life
C HAPTER S EVEN: LOVE: GETTING TO LOVE
The Risk of Love
Who Doesn’t Want Love
Caring
From Despair to Love
Painting: The Harvest
Poems:
rituals
dining in
the joke
happy holy days
all and nothing
wellness
Painting: Joyous
C HAPTER E IGHT: LOVE: WHAT LOVE IS
The Light That Enlivens
What Love Is
Twisted Love
Be Not the Moon
Love Is off the Grid
Love Is Nondual
What Makes Us Human?
Painting: Cinder
Poems:
your move
stasis
no love
secret agency
dim wit
exile
Painting: Hoard
C HAPTER N INE: LOVE: WHAT LOVE ISN’T
Love and Worship
The Love Machine, Part One
The Love Machine, Part Two
The Lovers and the Righteous
Love: The True and the False
Love and Independence
The Delusion of Ownership as Love
Love or Its Counterfeit
Love Is Not Goodness
Misreading Power as Love
Love Is Not Pain
Poem: revelation
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
This book, like everything else of value in my life, I owe to my Guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa. Baba generously shared with the world what he knew and lived. He spent many long hours with me, often alone, instructing me, often wordlessly, in the internal practice that allows us to re-cognize our true nature.
I went to Baba because I wanted the bottom line of life. In 1975, at a retreat in Arcata, California, he gave me the experience of that bottom line. I knew I needed to remain with him, so I dismantled my entire worldly life in order to do that. From then until he left his body in 1982, I worked to be as close to him in his physical form as possible. Since 1982, Baba has remained with me wherever I have gone.
While with Baba, I served in different capacities, but always remained close to him. Most days my job was to spend hours standing near him, often alone, providing whatever he requested. It was during those hours and days that he taught me all I needed to learn. There were times when I asked him about mundane issues, but mostly I just did what he told me to do to the best of my ability at any moment and hung onto his feet.
Baba met with many people and often gave talks in which he spoke of scriptures, saints, and poets. But throughout my time with Baba, though he and I physically and personally interacted, our communication and connection unfolded at a level underneath what anyone watching our relationship would have seen. He gave me what I wanted most in my life: the Truth.
In 1981, after Baba’s second world tour, we returned to his ashram in Ganeshpuri, India. Baba put me in charge of the library, which no one else could enter; only then did I read much scripture. I believe I took in what was in the books through osmosis more than anything else, because my love in that library was to sit on the desk and watch Baba through the window. Through the practice of focusing on Baba’s image, which I did during all my seva (service), whether at the back stairs or in the courtyard or in the library, I would be pulled inward and then rest deep inside.
Since Baba’s passing, I have continued to practice what Baba taught me personally in order to get beyond the personal. I have also found myself studying the scriptures Baba valued, the poets he quoted, and, as Baba specifically had me read other traditions and share them with him, texts from many faiths. All these studies have only reinforced what Baba himself taught me.
Baba especially loved what many people call Kashmir Shaivism—the nondualist tantric traditions of the region of Kashmir—and he would chant its scriptures and poetry. So it is important to understand some of what tantra as Baba taught it is and isn’t. The word tantra is connected with the Sanskrit root tan , which means to extend, as in thread or weaving—and therefore anything set forth or spread out. There are many beliefs, practices, and texts that can be called tantric, but there is no tidy definition of the term. Some texts called tantras are not religious at all; some texts that clearly set forth doctrines or practices that we might call “tantric” are not called tantras. Some of these traditions were dualist, some nondualist. Many focused on the Goddess, but most worshipped the Absolute as Shiva.
Kashmir Shaivism, the greatest of the nondualist traditions, was most completely expressed by a series of Guru-scholars writing in Sanskrit around the 9 th to 11th centuries. The greatest of these, Abhinavagupta, emphatically says that outward ritual is for beginners, and that more elite practitioners should dispense with exoteric ritual and make their practice wholly internal. Like every living spiritual tradition, this “higher” tantra is about lineage. Central to it are the principles that true initiation takes the form of a spiritual awakening, and that the Guru is the means. It is this tradition that was embodied by Bhagavan Nityananda and passed through him to Muktananda, and it is this tradition of interior practice that Muktananda taught me, and that I pass on.
The awakening of the spiritual energy, kundalini , is spoken of in all faith traditions; though the language is different, the substance is the same. Kundalini awakening is like turning on the ignition in a car. It ignites the engine that can make the car move. The Guru turns the ignition key, and is also the one who adds fuel as needed and guides you—the student driver—in what direction to go and what hazards to avoid. Baba continues to do this for me. This book and its sequel will convey much of what Baba taught me, and continues to teach me, about breaking the mirror of delusion and re-cognizing the true Self.