Satsang on "The Beloved" (Stranger by the River)
Michael Turner
For Explorers of God’s Inner Sound and Light
© February 2002, 2010
THE BELOVED
- by Michael Turner
(Note. On January 9, 1994, I gave a talk based on a reading from “The
Beloved:” in Paul Twitchell's classic Stranger by the River”. The
following is based on a transcript of that talk.)
The first thing that strikes me about this chapter is the theme of
understanding the need for a living master. I used to think, “Well, I
have the LightSong of the Holy Spirit. That should be enough.”
Indeed, in some ways, it was enough. Yet, just as the master is a
grounding unit for Spirit, he also serves as a crucible of Divine Love
and as a physical point of focus to whom you can give your love, and
in whom you can ground your Divine love in the physical universe.
If one attempts to love God without knowing how to love his or her
spouse, or another human being, then love remains a mental abstraction
and you are stuck in the plane of thought. You can think about love.
You can have an idea of it, a perception of it, and an expectation of
it. But until you know how to love somebody as a human being, you’re
not all the way there. Of course, it’s a tricky thing, because you
can get into personality worship if you love somebody too much, or
it's romantic or an emotional love.
Now there is a common thread in many philosophical systems of
abandoning this physical world for other realms, of “ascending” into
higher frequencies of awareness. And these are good. It is good to
grow and blossom. But much of the time these paradigms proceed from a
pathological theme of negating the physical world, saying it is “bad,”
that this is the “ashcan of the universe” and is therefore to be
avoided. They say that pleasures of the senses are to be avoided
because they hold you down and keep you stuck in your body, and you
don’t want to be stuck in your body; you want to leave your body and
ascend into these higher realms of consciousness.
As a result, it’s easy to become very detached, but not in a good
sense. You become removed from yourself. You become distanced and
stuck in a mental sphere. Of course this raises the dilemma: how are
you going to learn your physical lessons if you are out there, looking
at this place and your human life from a distance?
We are here for a reason. The physical body is a blessing of God,
because it is in the human form that you become fully self-realized
and God-realized, not in the other realms.
Now I didn’t used to understand that, because I thought “Well I can
work out my physical karma here, and then leave this body and work out
my astral karma on the astral plan, causal karma on the causal, plane,
etc.”
But, really, let’s say you make it through the first three inner
dimension and get all the way up to the Etheric plane, known as Sohang
Lok in the east. You’re not going to have true self-realization
unless you can do it in the physical – even if you are one of the
wisest beings in the universe of universes. If you want to pass the
final exam, you have to come back here to earth again. Because if
you’re up in the Etheric plane trying to be aware and drop these other
bodies, you’re only playing one string of the guitar, the Etheric
string. To be self-realized means playing the entire guitar, all six
strings, all the bodies, in harmony, in tune with each other, and
collectively in tune with Spirit, which is why this earth plane is so
important – which is why learning the lessons on this plane is so
important. In fact, you might say that one of the things to transcend
is being attached to transcending things.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. God doesn’t care, so long
as you are ethical, what your personal habits are, what you eat, whom
you choose for a spouse - whether it’s male or female, gay or
straight, etc. - or what you eat, or if you're celibate or not, or
anything like that. What it really boils down to is that certain
dietary, lifestyle and attitudinal choices add baggage. It’s
basically a law of spiritual physics. Certain things have karmic mass
and weigh you down. And if you throw yourself out of balance, you
will need to spend some time meditating on the Shabda, the Holy
Spirit, and drinking juice and clearing yourself and getting your
energy realigned. That’s just a basic result of indulgence.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not denied to somebody based on habits. The
Kingdom of Heaven is here and now. It is pure love. That is all It
has ever been. That is all It will ever be. Whether or not you
reside in the Kingdom of Heaven simply depends upon where your
attention is. Realizing and dwelling in the Kingdom of Heaven is a
question of you being sufficiently in balance with yourself and with
life to be aware that you are in the Kingdom of Heaven right now.
It’s really just a question of how attuned to It are you?
This science of Surat Shabda Meditation, of attuning the attention to
the Holy Spirit, is a methodical process of learning to work with the
Audible Life Stream and apply It to your life. You might say it’s
like applications technology from the spiritual perspective. If you
apply this principle to your life, you will have these results –
guaranteed. Some people take more time, some take less.
The ultimate lesson, and focus, of spiritual attunement is love. When
all is said and done our lives are measured by one thing and one thing
only: our ability to love. Until you can love another human being,
you really don’t know what love is. And of course I realize there is
a challenge in learning to trust somebody enough to really love, trust
and give your heart to them.
There are different manifestations of love and, generally speaking, in
this culture love is looked at as emotional love, being in love,
starry eyed, moonlight walks on the beach, Lancelot and Guinevere,
that kind of thing, riding off into the sunset. That is an emotional
love. It’s a similar love that a lot of people have for Jesus or
various glorified beings. It is a romanticized, idealized version of
the real being. And it always fades. It’s nice to have; but it still
fades.
Beyond this is spiritual love. Being in spiritual love means opening
yourself as a vessel and letting golden, divine love fill you more and
more. You become a larger and larger cup, filling yourself with more
of the wine of God, immersing yourself in It, letting It run over the
top of the lip of the glass and just pour around you. You look at
somebody with whom you have a true bond and you see the Light of God
in their eyes. And then you dive into the eyes of your beloved and,
like two souls in communion, the two of you merge into the golden
LightSong of Eternal Divine Love.
Now the challenge here is that, when you start becoming attuned to the
Light and Sound of the Holy Spirit and see It resonating within
others, there may be occasions where you will meet somebody
(especially if you are looking for a partner in love) and, seeing the
spark of the Light of God in their eyes, you start emotionally
romanticizing them and thinking “Since they have the spark, they must
be my soul mate.” This takes on a greater magnitude among
practitioners of this path because of our familiarity with the inner
worlds. Because there are so few people really who even have a clue
that there are these other realms of consciousness and existence,
meeting somebody who is familiar with the concept is rare enough.
Meeting somebody who is comfortable functioning there so you actually
meet them on the inner before you meet them on the outer, is even
rarer still.
I’ve been through this several times myself, meeting somebody I knew
on the inner, as well as perhaps in a past life. And, because I knew
them on the inner and there was a relationship on the inner, I assumed
that they must know there is a preexisting inner relationship as
well. I figured that they also knew and that we were old friends
going back 5,000 years, that we hung out together in Pythagorean-era
Greece or whatever. And I would get all hyperactive and excessively,
irrationally romantic, bounding like a puppy dog, because “now we are
here and this is so cool because I can meet you on the inner planes
and meet you on the outer planes and you must be my one true love!”
But knowing somebody on the inner is no different from having a friend
from another town. For instance, let’s say I meet you here and we
become good friends, and then I move to Rhodes, Greece. So a year or
two later you move to Rhodes too and we reconnect and start hanging
out together again, and we have more in common than just Rhodes
because we also spent time together back here. Now just because we
have this deeper connection, one that most folks in Rhodes don’t have,
it doesn’t mean we are destined to be romantic partners or soul
mates. We just have more in common than other folks, and we share a
knowledge about a place that most of the other folks in Rhodes don’t
know about.
Does this make any sense? Are you following me? The inner worlds are
the same way. They are just as real and matter of fact as this earth
world. It’s just that most folks haven’t properly attuned their
attention to be aware of them. Those who have done so are rare, and
when you meet somebody who has this attunement (partly because it can
be lonely being the only person on the block who has this awareness
and so refreshing to meet a kindred spirit), it’s easy to think “This
must be it!” When this happens it is important to at least take a
step back for a moment to get a calm look at the situation. Try to be
calm and centered, and see if the romantic attraction is real and
solid, or if it’s just inflamed spiritual passion. Either way it’s
okay. If it’s the latter, you can find the clarity to look at this
person and realize: “Well, you’re a very nice person here, and a very
nice person on the inner planes, too. But we’re not meant to be
partners.”
I’m bringing this up because there has been a lot of fallout in
relationships since the whole “soul mate” theory has become
popularized. People keep finding “soul mates,” and then when they
break up it is especially devastating because they start to question
their own spiritual foundation and wonder if something is wrong with
them because their “soul mate” left them. What they don’t understand
is that the soul mate theory is really just an astral concept of
relationship. It’s a very romantic concept, and it sounds wonderful
because a lot of us don’t feel whole within ourselves. Because we are
taught to externalize our attention and seek outside validation and
love, we believe that if we can only find that one true love then we
will be complete and whole and happy. So it’s easy to get
romantically strung out thinking that this must be the real thing, and
you give all your love and then realize that something’s not working.
And, no matter how good a person is, even though there may be an inner
plane connection, perhaps that relationship is not meant to be a
romantic partnering relationship.
The eternal spiritual reality is, your real soul mate is you! You are
a complete unit of God awareness that manifests in both male and
female consciousness, depending on the lessons you need to learn.
Now, finding somebody with whom you not only communicate on the inner,
and are able to love, but are also harmonious with as a human being,
as Soul, with whom you have similar interests and affinity, that’s a
whole other level. To me, this is where you get into the realm of
real love. Because one of the key ways real love between two people
manifests itself is through affinity. You have a similar perspective
on things, and you’re both comfortable immersing yourself in universal
love and diving right in. Everybody – anybody – can find real love.
You just need to be properly attuned and receptive, and understand
that every individual has their own way of expressing it.
When you can find somebody into whom you can pour the Divine Love
that’s pouring through you, and keep It pouring into that person, it’s
an amazing, amazing phenomenon to behold. Because the more divine
love you give freely, the more you open yourself up to let It flow
through you, the more you get in return, both from the other person
and from Spirit of ItSelf. And that’s the really wonderful thing
about taking the Way of Divine Spirit and expressing It here in this
universe. In doing so you let to go It and find yourself up by the
River of Light and Sound and Love. You become more and more
transparent. The Holy Spirit just keeps filling you more and more.
You find someone you can just keep giving more and more of It to, and
in doing so you increasingly open yourself up to the flow and more of
It pours through you.
This brings me to the point of having a guru that you can love.
Because he or she is an open vessel for God-in-expression, and as a
human expression of God they become an ideal focal point for your
love. They complete the circuit and you find yourself becoming a wide-
open conduit for immense waterfalls of Divine Love. I know for
myself, even though I no longer work in official capacity representing
my mentor, Sri Darwin Gross, I still have so much love for that man!
In my contemplations sometimes, I thank him and say, “I love you,
Darji.” Because he is the one who showed me the way to God
consciousness. Somebody once asked Kabir: “If you stood before both
God and your guru, and you had to choose which one to follow, who
would you pick?” And Kabir replied: “I would follow my guru; because
my guru showed me the way to God.”
Yeah. Love is good. And it’s an amazing spiritual exercise to be
able to love somebody completely and without hesitation.
I like the way Rebazar Tarzs says here that there is no end to wisdom
and knowledge. You can look for wisdom 24 hours a day. You can seek
great truths. But they’re not going to lead you all the way back
home. There’s a library on the mental plane as big as you want it to
be. It’s like “Pick a truth, any truth. Shuffle it. Put it back in
the deck. Pull it back out. You can learn about this one. It’s
really cool.” And when you finish with that card you can pick another
one. You can learn all these permutations on truth. It’s amazing how
many card games the dual power plays with the mind.
But, if you learn how to give love, then you find that the River keeps
flowing more and more. It keeps filling the riverbanks more and more,
and it lifts you up into this state of God Consciousness. You learn
how to not only give love to your beloved (which really gives you
spiritual grounding), you also learn how to give love, pure spiritual
love, to other people.
Of course you again come to the challenge of mistaking emotional love,
the astral plane version of the emotional love (which is more refined
than human emotional love), for spiritual love. Many people fall into
this trap and stretch themselves too thin caring for everybody and
trying to save people, and they don’t take any time for themselves.
You might call it being spiritually co-dependent, trying to save
people from their plights, trying to save people from themselves.
It’s a very common situation.
Now another approach is to just be and put up your sails and allow the
Holy Spirit to fill them and guide you wherever it will. You may look
into somebodys eyes as you walk down the street. They have no idea
who you are. Maybe Spirit wants to look through your eyes into their
eyes to touch them in their heart some way. You may never see them
again, and yet you have touched their life as a distributor of Spirit,
as a harmonious, neutral vessel for love to pour through. They may be
out of luck, looking for a job and homeless, and that little spark
will happen and their life is transformed.
Let’s see. I’m sort of at a loss, really, about what else to say
about this chapter. Love is such a powerful thing, and I feel preachy
talking about it. I don’t like feeling preachy.
Q. “What is the issue of the ability for humans to express
unconditional love? Sometimes I feel like as much as I try, it’s
almost something other than me, like I feel as though there is always
a condition, be it the want and the need to have Spirit move through
me. That is a condition. Is there such a thing as a human being able
to express unconditional love? And, how can we allow that to happen,
not make it happen but allow it to happen?"
M. Well, it depends on your concept of unconditional love. That’s
what I was alluding to with the idea of working compulsively for
charities and stuff. Unconditional love does not necessarily mean
living in the streets with people and giving them everything you
have. Unconditional love is pure beingness. Its been called
“compassion.” You look at somebody in a difficult situation and you
respond with compassion.
It’s easy to be compassionate when somebody is down and out and
suffering. But the real tests of compassion are things like when you
read about somebody who did something horrible in the news, say a
terrorist who commits mass murder or something like that. On a lesser
level there is the challenge of being compassionate to people you work
with whom you don’t like, bosses or supervisors who might be arrogant
or people who are just plain annoying. In “Inner Trek”, Sri Darwin
Gross said that we need to have the perspective of an adult being with
children. We need to realize that this is just a state of imbalance
they’re going through and to have compassion for them, to say within,
“It must not be easy being in your shoes, being so stressed by life.”
Q. “It sounds to me like you’re saying ‘The ability for one
individual to bring out the best in another individual.’”
M. That’s a manifestation of it. And it’s even beyond that,
because it is pure beingness. That, to me, is the kicker. The
Shabda, the Holy Spirit, the Word is really just an incredibly vast
vortex of pure love! And through meditation you learn to let more and
more of It fill you, until you become a living, vibrating conscious
particle of It. That is where you become love. You’re not loving
anybody. You’re not being loved. You are just being love.
That’s the best way I can put it because, beyond that, there is no
verbal capacity. It’s just total is-ness. It’s very warm and neutral
in some ways – not coldly neutral, but warmly neutral, like a mother
holding a fussing baby and bathing it in her love and inner peace.
You know? You dwell in the Ocean of Love and Mercy, and are aware of
what’s going on around you, and you can feel the Spiritual Love
Current just flowing through you. It’s like, right now I can feel
these energy waves passing through me and through my fingertips and
eyes. It is a constant thing.
Q. “Is it kind of like the unlit candle becoming the lit candle
with the Shabda?”
M. Yes. It lights you up. There’s a phrase sometimes used in the
east called “igniting the Atma”. The Master ignites the Soul with the
Shabda, and the Shabda sings you and loves you. It’s not you doing
the loving. You are just being It. And when you become It, you
become love. This is a gradual process and it’s important to be
patient with yourself as you unfold. But if you are patient and
receptive, you will be amazed, and your amazement will be amazed.
What’s cool about this is that, when you start really getting a feel
for the upliftment of Shabda in your awareness, there are distinct
sensory perceptions you undergo when your consciousness shifts into
working with It. For me, it’s a sense of expansion, warmth and
upliftment, and I lift myself up above my body slightly. You learn to
do that a little bit at a time so you get used to it. And then you
learn how to start replicating that. For years, I have meditated and
sung the Hu with my eyes open walking down the road. Another version
is the Sufi mantra, HU-WAH, or other names of God such as SUGMAD or
RADHASOAMI. I walk in time with the rhythm of each syllable and just
practice the presence of God at all times.
A thing you can do in your daily life is look at the people you
encounter and mentally say, “I love you” or “Thank you”. That is a
very simple exercise. “I love you” is a good mantra. Somebody walks
through the door, and you say, (mentally) “I love you”. I use “Thank
you” a lot too when I’m on the phone at work. I say “Thank you for
calling the Sales Department; this is Michael speaking. How may I
help you?” It's an assumptive phrase. “You need help? How may I
help you? Thank you.” You welcome people into your inner
consciousness, and you touch them in gentle, loving ways.
One thing I like about my job is I get a chance to touch the lives of
a lot of people in very subtle, little ways, without even trying.
It’s just my voice on the phone. It’s one of my little ways of being
a distributor of Spirit. Most people I talk to on the phone will
never meet me. All they know is that they have encountered a very
pleasant voice that makes them feel welcome. It’s a good place to
start.
Q1. “I think some of us have a built-in propensity for trying to
direct this. You know? You want to control the outpouring. I don’t
know about you, but sometimes I do. You want to take this love and
focus it in a particular direction and move it and do something with
it. And it’s very difficult for me to learn how to not do
that . . .”
Q2. “Yes. And with all good intention. Of course good intentions
pave the road to you-know-where (laughter). But, I understand what
you’re saying, that desire to serve, as well as need to serve. And
that addresses what I’m speaking about in terms of unconditionality.
What propels us - or what propels me - is the need to do, as opposed
to I havent yet acquired a need to be - simply to be. I have that
humanist kind of approach of needing to do. And I’ve always felt that
I enjoy doing for, particularly for others, for outside of myself -
although I do for myself. I think I’m pretty good at that. I do for
others because it makes me feel so wonderful. And I thought ‘Thats
very selfish of me.’ Do you see why? And I thought ‘I don’t know if
I can get to unconditionality, because it obviously makes me feel so
great to make somebody feel happy or be pleased, that just rushes
through me that there is always a condition! So what is this
‘unconditional love’ that I keep professing?!’”
M. Right! Well, that’s really where neutrality comes in. You
see? Because you are touching people. I had a friend once who was
really active working with soup kitchens and stuff, and she wanted to
know what I was doing for people, how I was helping people. A lot of
people who get involved in charity work are very emotionally attached
to it. They see things through the emotional eyes. And you learn in
this system to gauge a person’s state of consciousness - their
perspective - really fast. And I realized that there were huge things
that I couldn’t tell this individual because she would not
understand. Like I was saying, I will look in somebody’s eyes with
love and say “Thank you.” I open the door for people. That’s how I
help.
A lot of people are into joining causes. They’re compulsive cause
joiners. And really, in a sense, what they’re doing is actually kind
of negative at times, because they are depending on a negative
situation that they can save the day for and rectify and validate
themselves. Ram Dass once joked years ago about how Mother Theresa
was a hunger addict. She was a starving kids addict. She wanted
people to send her more sick people. If the world were a happy,
serene place, there would have been no need for Mother Theresa, and
then she might have been really miserable. She got off on taking care
of people like that.
Q. “I think I, there are very many times in my life that have fit
into the category of wanting to help a situation. And I think that
there’s - or possibly I need to be instructed on this further - but I
think that there is a difference between seeing a need and addressing
it, rather than sitting there and saying ‘God bless you’ while you let
that guy starve.”
M. Well exactly! That’s why it’s a case-by-case basis. You see?
I’m a great believer in randomity - in being random - which really
means living in the moment completely. You see 20 people on the
street who need a dollar. If you only have one dollar, who do you
give it to? Every person has their own answer. That’s why I really
focus on listening to Spirit. Who, at this point in space and time,
does Spirit want to touch through me. I make no decision on my own.
I stay in the moment and let the Holy Spirit guide me to make the
right choice.
As a case in point, there was this time during the Christmas season
where I was at an auto repair shop by a local shopping mall getting my
car worked on, and the mechanics were taking hours and hours to do
it. So I walked over to the mall to do some Christmas shopping. When
I was crossing the street, I saw a young woman standing on the lane
divider by the light with her dog. She had a sign saying “Will work
for food” and she was wearing thin clothes, and it was cold, and she
looked really miserable. And her poor dog just had a few bits of
kibble on pie tin for him to eat.
I was going to buy a book in the mall that cost five dollars, and I
almost did. But then I decided to think about it and go check and see
how my car was doing. So I was walking back to the auto shop and saw
this young woman again, and as I passed I found my hand going in my
pocket and pulling out the five dollar bill and handing it to her. I
hadn’t planned on it. It just happened because right at that moment
knew it was the right thing to do.
Waxing socioeconomic for a moment, it’s a spiritual principle of
capitalism that, if you horde all your money there’s no money in
circulation. So you have to keep money in circulation. There was a
movie that came out in the 1990’s about the life of a twenty-dollar
bill, how it goes into somebody’s cash register, and then to somebody
else for change, and it keeps traveling around. Over the course of
the movie you see how many people’s lives that twenty-dollar bill
touches.
I look at charity, or working with disadvantaged people, in terms of
just what does the moment require? Every moment may require something
different. Maybe a person you see who looks really desperate is
actually a bum, a real bum, as an individual, or a criminal. Maybe
they’re working through the karmic repercussions of their existence.
Q. “I was going to ask you about that particular . . .”
M. You make up your mind on the spot.
Q. “Appropriate action?”
M. Appropriate action.
Q. “But I don’t want to take responsibility for that. I give that
responsibility to - for me personally - to only thing that I think can
and does have a say in that, and that’s the higher self. I cannot
depend – it’s like, if I was to give you $50.00, right? Because you
asked me for it, simply because you asked me for it, right? And
whatever you did with that $50.00 was your responsibility. I met my
human responsibility by giving of it freely. What you do with it
after that doesn’t make me a fool; you have to control that.”
M. Exactly. It’s a free gift.
Q. “Yeah. It’s like people say ‘Oh, well you’ve got 95 people who
need $10.00. What are you going to do?’ And I say ‘Whatever my heart
tells me to do.’ And then, after that, I release it.”
M. Exactly. Because, you see, you have free will. And that’s
where you get into this whole idea of being a co-worker with God,
which really means you are one with It. You become one with Spirit.
So you’re part of the Wave as It’s flowing along, but you’re also an
individual particle within It. You are a unique particle of God Love
Energy with your own interests. Having no opinion does not mean not
having your interests and what you enjoy doing. Some people are
carpenters. Some people are musicians. Some people are artists.
Some people do this or do that. Who knows?
So each individual finds his or her own way of touching somebody’s
life. You see somebody stuck on the side of the road. Do you stop
and help them? Do you call 911? Do you use your cell phone? Maybe
it’s a family whose kid is having an epileptic attack and they’re
trying to work it out. Maybe they have a blowout. Maybe it’s
somebody who just escaped from prison and stole the car, and the car
broke down. So maybe the best situation in that case is for the cops
to come by and bust the guy.
That’s why not even stopping, but just praying for people can get you
in a lot of hot water. Because a lot of people see somebody who is
unfortunate, and get off on the ego thing. You can learn how to have
these powers of blessing people and stuff, and praying for them. It
is a discipline that can be perfected. You can learn to do this, and
affect reality with your consciousness. But then you start getting
your ego involved. It’s inevitable, especially when you’re working
with esoteric, psychic phenomenalogical things. Next thing you know
you look at yourself and say, “I’m a healer.” Look at any of the new
age newspapers, all those people with the really beaming pictures and
captions saying, “I’m a healer and I will help you.” And they think
they’re pretty special. But while it started off well-intentioned, it
just turns into another form of spiritual egotism.
That’s why I say, “Do what you do and let Spirit do the healing.” Of
course a lot of these folks have a disclaimer that says something to
the effect, “It is not “I” who do the healing; it is Spirit. I am but
Its humble receptacle.” First of all, anybody who is truly humble
does not use the word “humble” as part of their self-description
(laughter). If you are, you don’t say you are. Its like Jesus’
injunction to people to not to make a public display of their
spirituality, but rather to pray in private where no one will see
them.
Like I said, I like to be random and let Spirit guide me in the
moment. I mean, it gets down to weird little things like I was
walking outside one day to go see a movie. I got out to my car when I
suddenly remembered I had some videos to return. So I ran back into
the house, picked them up off the table, turned off the light and went
back outside. Now, that whole sequence of events took all of about 70
seconds. That was 70 seconds difference in getting on the road, which
set up a whole different set of conditions, light sequences, cars,
etc. You see? It’s like the old Zen aphorism which I love: “Kick a
grain of sand and you shake the universe.” “If a butterfly
sneezes . . . “ Same difference.
Of course some people can obsess on it. The mind gets in the way and
you’re afraid to do anything because of all the ramifications! That’s
one reason why Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys lost it back in the late
60s. He was doing a lot of hallucinogens and getting into these
telepathic realms. I think the studio caught on fire or something,
and he thought he was part of the matrix that caused the fire. He
wasn’t ready for that level of merging his attention with the super
consciousness and he became paralyzed with fear that, if he put his
toe outside the front door, he’d destroy the universe. And so he
stayed in bed for a long, long time.
So you have to act! You’ve gotta do it! The key is to just kind of
bounce around and say “Okay, where the Holy Spirit directs me, there I
will be.” Maybe I will allow a guy to pull in front of me in traffic
and that simple action will change his life. Maybe this fellow is
looking for the love of his life and by me giving him the right of way
he will get through the light instead of me. As a result, he will
walk into the coffee shop he is heading to 90 seconds earlier than he
would have otherwise and, with exactly the right timing, bump into
somebody who is walking out, somebody he would have missed meeting if
he had been stuck at the light. They will make a karmic connection
that they were supposed to make and both of their lives will be
changed forever. I mean, you are touching people’s lives every
second.
This gets back to an analogy I mentioned earlier, the applications
technology of Surat Shabda Meditation. It is simply a system of
working with this Spiritual Force. By learning to work with It and
become one with It, you become a distributor of It and It has
effects. It’s much better not knowing what the effects are, so your
ego doesn’t get involved. I’m really grateful that my conscious mind
doesn’t always know what soul and the Holy Spirit are up to. I try to
be as ordinary as I can. And it’s not like I’m up on some cloud
saying “I’m trying to be ordinary”. I do my best to try to avoid all
of the mumbo jumbo, buzz words and rhetoric that go with
spirituality. I do have paranormal experiences sometimes, such as
precognitive flashes, telepathic hits, past life readings, and the
like. But I always try to look at them as spiritual treats, to enjoy
them when they happen and not base my existence and self-esteem on how
often and to what degree they occur. I remember once I did some fire
magic by accident with my mind - I was able to mentally make the
flames grow and diminish. At the time, it was really cool, like,
“Wow. I did that?” But I had no expectation that it was a new siddhi
or power that I had acquired.
You see, I don’t want my human mind to know what I am doing as soul
and as an inner guide. I don’t even want a glimmer of knowing. Like
I said, I prefer to leave the heavy lifting to soul, the Holy Spirit
and God. Right now my human focus is in learning to be a better
person, a good father to my son, and a better human being and partner
in relationship. I am focused on improving my ability to bring my
inner awareness into active expression in my outer life, and to be a
better me. Yes?
Q. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember which time it was that we were
together. But I believe you addressed knowing the difference whether
it’s your ego guiding you or your higher self guiding you. And when I
hear you speak, I think: “How do you know you’re not rationalizing
that this fork is necessary and . . . I just know that the mind can
convince you of certain things. So how do you know? Is there some
kind of a test to say ‘Is this your lower self telling you this, or
this really what you should do?’
M. Well, there are two things. A) You can never be completely
sure; because it’s largely subjective; and, B) there’s always a chance
of error, because you’re filtering your higher self through your human
self and bio computer of your brain. Paul Twitchell made a great
comment in 1971. With just a few months left to live, things were
getting a little out of control with his chelas. People were starting
to really put him up on this big pedestal as being infallible, and he
said, basically, “What I do (at that point he called it ‘Soul Travel’)
is I project my inner consciousness into these other realms and,
essentially, extract data and bring it back out here.” When I express
it out here, it is kind of like (and this is my own analogy), but it’s
like converting to ASCII in computer language. You have to take this
inner wisdom and download it onto a brain which, though very advanced
for this planet, is very primitive in cosmological circles.
It’s a matter of translation, just like if you were trying to
translate Russian poetry into English, or English poetry into Russian,
or anything like that. There are some things that don’t apply. There
are similes, analogies and metaphors that may work in one language
based upon a cultural context or a play on words, but don’t translate
into a different tongue. So as Paul Twitchell put it (to paraphrase),
“You never know. I might have a pizza for dinner and have indigestion
so I dont sleep well, or my meditation is not as clear and deep as I
would like, and as a result my transmittal of inner data might be
slightly inaccurate. It never is pure here.”
But, having said that, I have found through my experience that there
is a difference, a palpable difference, between mental perception and
Soul perception. Mental comes from the head. Soul is weightless. It
feels non-gravitational. It is like a golden ball of softly diffused,
warm, humming, loving light - just knowing - being - observing.
So there is a distinct difference and that is something that one
learns. It extends from the idea of working with the HU and becoming
one with It. By working with the HU on a regular basis you start
getting a feeling for that nature of the Holy Spirit, as opposed to
the spiritual energies of the dual worlds where, even if it’s a
positive frequency, it’s still a part of duality. But the Holy
Spirit, the singular Holy Spirit of God, has a distinct sensation, and
you learn to recognize it, know it and become intimately familiar with
it. It’s just like knowing the vibrations of a lover. You just look
in their eyes and you know. It’s like when I work with my Master, Sri
Darwin Gross. I can tell when he is around me. He has a distinctive
energy field. It just is. I know when Paul Twitchell is around,
because he has a distinctive energy field and frequency, as does
Kirpal Singh, Rumi, Shiv Dayal Singh, Guru Nanak and Christ. Every
individual does.
Q. “When you use the phrase ‘Working with the HU,’ does that
simply mean chanting it audibly, or internally, or is there something
more to working with the HU.”
M. The first step is just learning to chant It. The next step is
finding a time to meditate with it on a regular basis, because it’s
like any kind of exercise. It takes a while to get used to It. But
then, you start to really master It. In my case, I worked on the 24-
hour HU before I worked on the 20 minute HU, because I was kind of
lazy in terms of setting up a time to meditate. So I just did it all
the time figuring that would make up for me not meditating 20 minutes
every morning. You start doing it on a regular basis when you’re
walking, working, eating, taking a shower, sitting in traffic, etc.
Do it whenever you think about it, because there’s going to be many
times throughout the day when you’re going to forget. But whenever
you remember, just do it. You might be in the middle of doing
something in the office when there’s nobody else around, and so you
audibly (or mentally) sing “HUUUUUUUU”. You will find that you sing
it more and more because it feels good to do so. It lifts your
spirits, gives you inner peace, clarity, poise and love. It’s a really
beautiful thing.
Q. “My personality comes, whether I want it to or not, sometimes
into my internal activities. And one of them was, it manifested as me
wanting to sing the tone as a melody.”
M. That’s great!
Q. “Well, that’s what I’m asking because, when I did do this,
someone advised me not to.”
M. A teacher? Were you singing off-key? (laughter) Were they
saying not to do the HU?
Q. “No, not a teacher. But they said ‘Don’t put a melody to it.
You’re somehow altering it.’ So I wanted to get another opinion.”
M. Well, the HU is an energy force, and it is good to develop the
singular note of It, because that has a constancy. But, it’s okay to
vary things too. I’ll do Gregorian chant versions of HU. I’ll just
make up little overlays and harmonies and chords and stuff just for
the heck of it.
Q. “And I thought ‘Wait a minute! All this ‘right and wrong’
stuff.’ I just needed another opinion.”
M. In this regard, there is no right and wrong. I mean, I’ll sing
“HU-WAH, HU-WAH, HU-WAH” as a scale or an arpeggio because it’s fun.
I’ll get silly with it. It’s good to get silly with it. Because God
can be silly. You know? Life is silly.
Q. “Yes. Or I call it ‘Affectionately.’”
A. Yeah, exactly! You know that song “Little Wing” by Jimi Hendrix?
It’s like Hendrix is singing about the muse and to the muse. Really,
my ultimate lover is the HU, the Holy Spirit. I mean, It just . . .
is. It is the ultimate lover! But in the early stages of development
in the physical body, you need an outside version of It, to find
somebody you can really practice with it and become anchor points for
each other’s HU.
Another version of the HU you can work with too is using the Light
aspect of it. If you have, say . . . well, like when I have a crick
in my neck, I will focus the HU like a laser beam within, direct It’s
golden light to where the pain is. Remember the light sabers in “Star
Wars” and how they hummed? Imagine the same thing with the HU.
Visualize it, singing “HUUUUUUUU”and narrow It down to this little
beam, and then go within and use the light of the HU to look around
and see what the problem is. Once you find the source of the pain,
you can then use both the Light and the Sound as a means of healing
yourself - as well as uplifting the room around you. Remember, HU is
the LightSong of God and God’s eternal love. It is the fabric the
universe. It is the fabric of all that exists!
Q. “What happens if you aim It at your heart?”
M. I let It aim Itself through my heart. Kabir likens it to the
arrow with God as the archer. The Shabd is loosened like an arrow
straight into my heart. And the pain is so sweet. And the longing is
so intense to merge back with It. It’s really nice when you get the
heart energy happening with it. You will feel the lotus blossom open
itself up and spread out in equal directions in your body and out
through your body.
And you will find yourself lifted up effortlessly into the embrace of
your Eternal Beloved.
Thank you . . . with love.
Google Groups: Alt.Meditation.Shabda
Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SFS
Etznab
Was that an "inner" or "outer" experience? Do you know
what year(s) it took place?
Etznab
TianYue
> (Note. On January 9, 1994, I gave a talk based on a reading from “The
> Beloved:” in Paul Twitchell's classic Stranger by the River”. The
> following is based on a transcript of that talk.)
Just curious about this date you referenced. Had you become God-
Realized by this date of 01/09/1994? As I recall, you and I met to
discuss your becoming editor of the Tucson area eckankar newsletter in
1992. In the intervening 2 years, did you become a master?
Tianyue
Michael Turner
> On Feb 26, 5:34 pm, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > (Note. On January 9, 1994, I gave a talk based on a reading from “The
> > Beloved:” in Paul Twitchell's classic Stranger by the River”. The
> > following is based on a transcript of that talk.)
>
> Just curious about this date you referenced. Had you become God-
> Realized by this date of 01/09/1994? As I recall, you and I met to
> discuss your becoming editor of the Tucson area eckankar newsletter in
> 1992. In the intervening 2 years, did you become a master?
>
> Tianyue
>
I'm not much into labels these days. Sri Darwin established me in
the Pure Positive God Worlds in mid-1993. I began teaching, giving
initiation and offering satsangs near the end of that year.
Michael Turner
> On Feb 26, 6:55 pm, TianYue <tian...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > On Feb 26, 5:34 pm, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > > (Note. On January 9, 1994, I gave a talk based on a reading from “The
> > > Beloved:” in Paul Twitchell's classic Stranger by the River”. The
> > > following is based on a transcript of that talk.)
>
> > Just curious about this date you referenced. Had you become God-
> > Realized by this date of 01/09/1994? As I recall, you and I met to
> > discuss your becoming editor of the Tucson area eckankar newsletter in
> > 1992. In the intervening 2 years, did you become a master?
>
> > Tianyue
>
So how are you doing, anyhow? Still in Tucson? What's happening in
your life?
Peace,
Michael
TianYue
In that same year (1992) I left Tucson to live on a ketch in San
Diego. Lisa and I fixed up the old ketch and went sailing for a long
while down in Mexico. It was during this time I left eckankar.
Here's a recounting of the experience
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.religion.eckankar/msg/51d10dc385bc4fd5:
Michael Turner
>
> - Show quoted text -
Beautiful tale. Thanks so much for sharing!
So what are you and Lisa up to these days?
TianYue
>
> > - Show quoted text -
>
> Beautiful tale. Thanks so much for sharing!
>
> So what are you and Lisa up to these days?
Thanks. I'm glad you liked the tale. ; )
Well, after our sailing adventure, which lasted a few years, during
which we lived in San Diego and then Mexico, I went back to school and
studied Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Fe (an amazing city to
live in). After graduating, I opened an acupuncture clinic. We moved
to Iowa to be close to Lisa's mother, who has Alzheimer's. Soon, we're
moving back to the West Coast. I miss the ocean and the mountains.
Tianyue
Kinpa
> On Mar 2, 11:18 am, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Feb 27, 8:33 pm, TianYue <tian...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > > On Feb 27, 3:28 am, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > > > On Feb 26, 10:26 pm, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Feb 26, 6:55 pm, TianYue <tian...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > > On Feb 26, 5:34 pm, Michael Turner <Michael112...@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> > > > > > > (Note. On January 9, 1994, I gave a talk based on a reading from “The
> > > > > > > Beloved:” in Paul Twitchell's classic Stranger by the River”. The
> > > > > > > following is based on a transcript of that talk.)
>
> > > > > > Just curious about this date you referenced. Had you become God-
> > > > > > Realized by this date of 01/09/1994? As I recall, you and I met to
> > > > > > discuss your becoming editor of the Tucson area eckankar newsletter in
> > > > > > 1992. In the intervening 2 years, did you become a master?
>
> > > > > > Tianyue
>
> > > > So how are you doing, anyhow? Still in Tucson? What's happening in
> > > > your life?
>
> > > > Peace,
>
> > > > Michael
>
> > > In that same year (1992) I left Tucson to live on a ketch in San
> > > Diego. Lisa and I fixed up the old ketch and went sailing for a long
> > > while down in Mexico. It was during this time I left eckankar.
>
> > > Here's a recounting of the experience
>
>
> > > - Show quoted text -
>
> > Beautiful tale. Thanks so much for sharing!
>
> > So what are you and Lisa up to these days?
>
> Thanks. I'm glad you liked the tale. ; )
>
> Well, after our sailing adventure, which lasted a few years, during
> which we lived in San Diego and then Mexico, I went back to school and
> studied Traditional Chinese Medicine in Santa Fe (an amazing city to
> live in).
yes it is, i lived near there...