After a billion, what's next for Facebook?
In the beginning there was light, pure consciousness.
From this place, the Ved was born and from the Ved we have everything. You may already be familiar with it, and you may already be incorporating aspects of it into your daily life; yoga asana (movements of the physical body), pranayama (movement of the breath/the pranic body), karma yoga (volunteer work). You may be familiar with Ayurveda, the science and medicine branch of Vedic knowledge, from which Chinese medicine was born. There is Vedic architecture from which Fung Shui was born. Jyotish, the form of Vedic astrology…and then there are the Vedic teachings; found in every religious text from the Bahagavad Gita to the St-James Bible, spoken by everyone from Arjuna to Buddha to Jesus. Vedanta transcends all religions, all spiritual practices. It is the seed from which all trees have grown.
Fast forward about ten thousand years. We are living in a world where it is impossible to escape the stresses of daily life. We can take vacations, work out, go to yoga, take a walk, have a glass of wine, smoke a joint, eat chocolate, take a pill. We have come up with many ways to “deal” with our stress, “manage” our stress. We have normalized an un-natural state of being and more and more people are searching for another way. Enter Meditation, stage right.
What is your experience with meditation? Mine used to look like this: sit in some stiff position, clear you mind of all thoughts..don’t think..whatever you do don’t think- wait that was a thought, so was that; mybackhurtsican’tsitlikethiswaitiamstillthinkingomgisuckatthishasitbeen5mintues?shitnoit’sonlybeen20seconds.can’t.stop.thinking. Exit mediation, stage left.not too subtle, but getting warmer
It used to be that if a person wanted to learn the technique that we now called Vedic Meditation, one would have to make one’s way to the Himalayas with a week’s worth of earnings (a goat, a bag of rice, money), comb a mountain for a reclusive Guru, and if found, hope he was feeling generous. Then one would serve the Guru until he saw fit to give that person their mantra, teach them the technique and send them on their way. This was all well and good until around the time of the industrial revolution. The world evolved so rapidly that became less and less relevant to seek solace from it in the mountains. There was too much to do at home. And so the tradition of the Shankaracharya quietly slipped away.
After 200 years with no one leading the Shankaracharya order, the man referred to as Guru Dev (yes, the guy from the Beatles songs) was finally persuaded to come out of living in the forest and take his rightful place in the order. It was the late 1930’s, and after 50 years living in silence he recognized that the world was in dire need of a shift in elevation of consciousness. This technique of meditation needed to be taught again, passed on to as many people as could learn or the world was going to end up in a very dark place. When it was time for him to drop his body in the late 50’s, his last words were to a man that had entered his ashram as a boy and served him day and night for over 13 years. Those words were : you, speak English. And so with that, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was entrusted with the dharma of bringing this technique of mediation to the Western World.
You may have heard stories of The Beatles traveling to India to learn how to meditate and then wrote and recorded The White Album …Or you may have no idea what I am talking about and already be checking your Facebook page because your mind is so crowded from noise that you can’t get through reading an entire blog with out tuning out and distracting.The Beatles with Mahrishi Mahesh Yogi at his ashram in Rishikesh, India
At some point in the last few decades we began to drift away from the ability to tune in and connect on that much deeper level. So we are stressed out. We don’t sleep well, we don’t feel well. We are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Every gym offers yoga, every yoga studio offers teacher trainings, books about people giving up everything and moving to Bali to ‘find oneself” fly off the shelves, we seek, we blog, we want more than what the relative world can give us but we don’t know how to get there. We all know we “should” meditate, but we don’t know how. It’s too hard, lives run too fast, thoughts are too loud, time is of the essence.
The solution has been here the whole time, and the world is once again embracing it like a long-lost family member.
Vedic Mediation is a very simple, very easy and effortless, eyes closed technique of mediation. The process of learning is painless. You attend an introductory talk given by a qualified teacher, such as myself -the first Canadian teacher!!!(thank you very much) and over 85 other great human beings spread throughout the world. That teacher gives you your mantra that will soothe your mind and take your body to it’s least excited state so that it can start to release the stress you have accumulated. You attend three more 90 minute follow up sessions, and after that you are an expert meditator. You are now armed with a technique that within a very short period of time will rid your body of accumulated stress, make you less reactive and more adaptable, healthier, sleep better, love better, look younger (stress ages us prematurely folks)- and the biggest bonus is that it expands your inner state of awareness and advances your state of consciousness. Which makes you one of the bright lights in a dark world.
People in the dark will always be drawn to the light. More and more people are looking for it."Limitless undying love, whichShines around me like a million suns,It calls me on and on across the universeJai Guru Deva.Jai Guru Deva.Jai Guru Deva."- Across The Universe, The Beatles
It’s good to be home. I’ve got the match, let’s make some light.