Drenched in Devi

Drenched in Devi

By Manorama 

Narayani Namo’Stu Te

With my head resting at your feet Ma,

I offer you, my sincerest love and respect.

Saturated in the lap of the mother. Held close to her bosom, her heartbeat, your heartbeat, syncing together… into the veil you pursue and find the blessed rhythm. Lift your courage and glimpse the lost art of yielding, of receptivity, of deep listening awakening to its time, through you, in you. The time of the mother is here.

The Mother:

Listen in silence to the cave of your heart, you’ll hear the sweet jingle of feminine ankle bells that conjure images of swaying feminine form with curving lines.  Enter her abode, it’s nature in all of her glory.  Here you will find you have entered the sacred hall of the mother goddess.

When called, through chant, that goddess enters the temple.  She comes for adoration, for recognition, for receiving the offering.  The mother will tell you that this recognition we extend, is not for her, and she is right. Through it we receive the blessing, the force of protection of glorious union with pure energy that resides within us all.

Origins of Manifestation:

The devi was realized as light that sparked, cracked and sprang forth from the wish of each god.  Through their sacred wish, she rose and lit the sky manifesting for us, in us, through us.  Through lore we learn that the gods unified their light together in one form, and that became known as the devi.  She is the collection of luminous rays manifested from each god. Brahma, Visnu, Shiva and the other gods wanted to appease their suffering devotees of demons so they brought their light together for supreme protection. The gods gave some light from their form, light of their thigh, light of their eyes, light of their arms, light of their weapons, light of their knowledge, light of their feet and the great goddess manifested as the collection of the gods’ brilliance. The gods’ sent her forth to resolve ignorance in us, and so that we could once again feel oneness.

Root of Devi:

In Sanskrit, the root Div means to shine, or light. Devi derives from this root and symbolizes compassion, protection, yielding, gentleness, fierce slayer.  As form, she is woman.  As embodiment, she is all emotion, raw, and receptive, messy, fierce, protectress, curving, weaver of the maya and all that is measurable. To move about with ease in this world, we must make offerings to her.

Growing up:

Growing up with Guru ji, I was ever immersed in teachings surrounding the cosmic mother. Was it tantric? Not so much. It was more that Guru ji was a devotee of Durga Ma and wanted to share his discoveries.  The story goes that during some very difficult time in his life, he turned to Durga Ma for mercy and support and through his singular puja and respect, she granted him blessings and helped him through that turbulent time. Since then he was deeply devoted to her.  In Guru ji’s private apartment rests a small altar that invokes the mother goddess.  She is surrounded by rock formations of power along with the vibration of endless sacred chants which were invoked just for her.

Who is the Devi:

She is Durga, Sharada, Lakshmi, Saraswati, Kali, Parvati, Lalita, Ambika, She is Vidya, Bhavani, Nirmala, Dark and misty like the moon she is Gauri, White creativity, knowledge itself, she is Saraswati. 

As alignment and beauty she is Shri, Lakshmi. As protectress and loving mother whose battle cry is the sweet breath and rhythm of mantra she is Durga. Wild, she rides with skulls clanking as a necklace around her neck and hands spread out swords at the ready, she is Kali. Pure without any lack of clarity, she is Nirmala. As knowledge of all, she is Vidya.  As Parvati, she reflects devotion and singular focus to her lord. Compassionate Lalita granting soothing glances to all who are lucky enough to come under her vision. As the mother of the world and consort to Bhava, she is Bhavani. Becoming embodied in the world as Sita.

She is the determiner of the great Lila, the play of the entire universe that all must pass through. The winding ganga river that nourishes civilization is her gift to the world. She is kundalini rising in us reaching its union within. She is you. She reflects the purpose of your life, embodied. She is the bridge between the manifest and unmanifest. She is the tenderest part of your being.

* All references to Guru ji, refer to Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati in this article.

** Devi means Mother, Goddess, Light.

*** Murti means form, statue.

**** Maya: illusion, manifestation, enchantment, force of love.

© Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies, Manorama 2012/2013

Minimize Stress and Maximize Relief this Holiday Season...

Interview with Manorama

by Lisa Dawn Angerame,

For Yoga City NYC, November 2012

Manorama D’Alvia met her guru at a young age and spent many years learning from and serving Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati. She shares the fruits of that experience with her students through the sounds of the Sanskrit language and the exploration of a variety of sacred texts, including the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads.   

A scholar herself and a graduate of Columbia University, Manorama explores the Sanskrit language as a tool to help students find a connection to the truth. She is the go-to Sanskrit teacher for yogis all over the world but especially here in New York City.  

Since the holidays are quickly coming upon us, I thought I would ask Manorama for advice as to how to make it to the 2013 calmly and in one piece...

Lisa Dawn Angerame: During the holiday season, people tend to lose their focus. Besides asana, how can yoga help?

Manorama:  We have different channels for the teachings of yoga. The practices of meditation and mantra are useful during the holiday season to help heal our minds and keep our emotions in check.

When under pressure, it is helpful to minimize stress and maximize relief. So often during the holiday season, we gather with friends and loved ones and remember things from the past. We don’t realize that as much as we have grown, the people in our lives also have grown too. They may long to be seen in this new manner. When we meditate regularly, we gain access to self-healing and to seeing ourselves and others with greater kindness.  

The more we meditate, the more we come in contact with pure energy which is always present now. Being in the present consistently, each day, gives us relief from pressures and provides an expansive feeling in the heart. Through meditation we experience the Self beyond the movement of the mind and therefore beyond anxieties, thoughts, projections, future, or past imaginings.  This helps us see the same in our family.

Regular meditation helps us stay connected with our center through all of our experiences, which is positive and has a balancing effect on our whole life and we are not thrown off kilter during the holidays.

LDA: You suggested mantra. Can you elaborate?

Manorama: Before we have the experience of what we call interconnectedness, we need to learn how to unify our energy.  One channel we can use to come into contact with our energy in a conscious way, and then ultimately learn to unify it, is the practice of mantra. 

When we chant a mantra, we direct our attention to sounds at different locations in the mouth. These points of articulation follow a clear pathway and create clarity in our thoughts.

I think of mantras as mini gurus, like tiny gurus, that guide us. The more we hang out with them, spend time with them, the more we come to understand the subtlety of their meaning. 

Furthermore, these mantras are not saying, “lets go to the grocery store!” They are saying essential truths like, “I am Shiva” which simply means, “I am the light of consciousness and I align with that highest kindness and clarity that is possible for me at this moment.”

LDA: Can you describe the origin of mantra?

Manorama: Mantras are said to have been realized by rishis, beings of perfected consciousness. Through their inner perfection, mantras emanated.

The creation of mantras is similar to mathematics. No one created math. Different scholars of math worked with numbers and discovered answers to proofs that were already in existence. In the same way, rishis, through the power of their experience, gained access to sound in its subtlest form and mantras were revealed to them. 

LDA: What happens when mantra is chanted over and over?

Manorama: Sanskrit sounds possess a high degree of vibration or echo. Imagine when you’ve been some place where there is an echo, like a canyon, and you say to a friend, “hello.”  You hear it echo, “hello, hello, hello.”  Then your friend teases you saying, “hello, hello, hello.” Sanskrit sounds are similar to the sounds we say in a canyon. They echo due to their vibrational nature. The echo is symbolic of something continuous and eternal. Therefore, saying mantras gives us a taste of the eternal through sound. 

And, mantras quiet the mind.  All of us have busy days with things occupying our focus. When we withdraw energy from thoughts and anxieties and direct that energy towards chanting mantras, it becomes a kind of psychological sublimation. It re-focuses our energy and clicks us back into a pathway with the eternal.

LDA: Can you suggest a mantra for the holiday season?

Manorama: From now through January 2^nd, I suggest students go into what I call Holiday Practice mode, a way of moving through the stress of the holiday season with ease. 

Daily Luminous Shabda Mantra & Meditation Practice

15 min practice

Each morning

Sit on your cushion or chair.

Perceive your physical surroundings.

Connect with your breathing.

Watch your inhale and exhale.

Maintain focus on your breath.

Notice how your breath is like a subtle thread that connects you with all things.

After a couple of settling moments, pause and begin reciting the mantra below:

OM Namo Devyai

Reverence to the luminous force of light

Say this mantra 9 x’s

After chanting this mantra remain still and watch your thoughts.

Notice how the sacred sounds steady your breathing.

Watch how steady breathing calms the mind.

Remain still for 5 mins Open your eyes and bow your head towards that healing light that always supports you.

Begin your day with the ease and confidence that comes from being linked with your core.

The Domino Effect of Witnessing 

by Manorama

Old School Teachings

Early in my training, Guru ji, Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati, taught me that life is either a play or a drama.  He said it would all depend on how I saw it. What he meant was, see life as a play and you will see clearly, see it as a drama and all that it reveals is that your vision is partial. Living from a partial perspective alone causes suffering. Partial vision means seeing life from the individual perspective alone. When we look at life and the situations we encounter through the lens of individuality, we understand the world according to that individual perspective.

After many evenings listening to Guru ji offer teachings, I started to think: How do I develop seeing so I can experience life as a play? How do I access the universal view he spoke about?

During meditation, Guru ji guided students again and again: “Feel what you are beyond the body and mind.  Remain still. Be like the witness and feel your real form, which is true happiness.”

I caught the phrase…‘Be like the witness and feel your real form….’ Hmmm…so witnessing was a bridge between the individual perspective and the universal perspective…though I didn’t understand it then, I sat with it more. After some time, I noticed questions had arisen in me around the topic of witnessing. These questions created an internal conflict.  

Conflict and Fear Around the Practice of Witnessing

Throughout the world, Yoga students are advised to work with witness consciousness. Other conscious practices, such as Buddhism, and the New Age movement teachers guide students to practice watching in order to calm the mind and experience inner peace.  However, many people that hear these teachings may feel, practically speaking, that engaging witness consciousness is of little value. I wonder if perhaps it seems confusing to them as it did to me.  Here is a list of statements or questions that arose for me regarding the practice of witness consciousness: 

1.     Witnessing is boring and un-dynamic because all I’m doing is watching. 

2.     If I am stationed in the witness, will life somehow pass me by?  

3.     If I watch everything, how will I get anything done in my life? 

4.     How will I relate with the people I care about when all I’ll be doing is sitting around and watching? Will I have to be willing to lose connection with everyone to gain some kind of supposedly great thing called witness consciousness, which will ultimately lead me to union with Self? 

My mind reeled, what a price to pay!

If you find yourself relating to any of these questions regarding witness consciousness, I assure you, you are NOT alone. These questions and others like it are normal and common.

With a view towards understanding them, I believe it is wise to allow such questions the necessary space to exist. And rather than agree with them or reject them, my suggestion is for you to work to explore them. When you become established in witness consciousness, you do not become disconnected from your body and mind.  Instead, you experience a shift in perspective. 

The Value of Witnessing

“Witnessing supports internal softening because it creates space.”
~ Manorama

Through a regular practice of witnessing (and by regular, I mean daily), you develop the capacity to shift from a personal perspective alone, to a universal one. Moreover, seeing beyond your own personal point of view causes compassion to rise in you more and more, because you begin to see not only your own, but also another’s perspective, and eventually the whole of a situation. In this way, witnessing enables you to relate and communicate with all beings with ahimsa, compassion.

You also begin to understand the worldly realm more, which includes your body and mind because you come closer to them in understanding. In other words, if you fear losing the ability to communicate with the world around you, don’t worry because the more you move into witness consciousness the more the opposite actually happens. You come into such contact with your self that you are naturally able to communicate your feelings and thoughts with your self and others. 

When you work with witness consciousness, life does not pass you by as you may fear. Witnessing is not just another way of saying ‘lie around and do nothing’. It is a practice that supports dynamic contact with one’s center, as you watch the periphery of thoughts and ideas play out. In other words, live your life normally and in the process hold to the center.  As you engage each experience, practice seeing as the witness and watch how that opens up a fuller perspective for you.

Note: All references to Guru ji in this article refer to Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati.

© 2012 Manorama, Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies

Jyoti: Light, Spiritual Force

Jyoti means light. We see it used in mantras as far back as the times of the Upanisads. 

Upanisad Verse: 

Asato Ma Sad Gamaya 

Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya 

Mrtyor Ma Amrtam Gamaya 

Lead us from untruth to truth. 

Lead us from darkness to light. 

   Lead us from death to immortality. 

Here, the darkness mentioned in the second stanza reflects a spiritual ignorance and a feeling of suffering; while the usage of jyoti (light), references sacred beingness itself, the light which helps us move beyond darkness. Jyoti is the light of Brahman. Holding to that light, and requesting that the divine guide us, signifies our humility and respect for the holy source. 

Copyright 2012 Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies, Manorama

*****

Taken from the 

New Luminous Shabda Glossary

 of Sanskrit & Yogic Terms 

by Manorama

Hosted by the amazing Breathe Repeat

Visit Breathe Repeat & Learn More:

www.breatherepeat.com

Santosha Meditation

Santosha Meditation tm

By Manorama & Luminous Shabda

Suggested Practice: 2 x's per week for 10 minutes

Grounding:

Begin your practice with this guided meditation

Find a comfortable seat either in a chair or on the floor in a cross-legged position.

Pay attention to the space around you.

Be open and one by one, notice the five gateways of perception.

Notice what you see, hear, smell, taste, the quality of the air on your body, is it hot or cold?

Once you are aware of them, start to pull your attention away from the objects you perceive.

Notice that your attention needs energy to exist.

Being with Energy:

Withdraw the energy that underlies your attention and practice being with it inside.

Feel the quality of this energy.

Don't make any meaning about it, just feel it without letting thoughts flood the experience with mental meaning.

Learn and practice the value of being with energy without thought.

Allow your awareness to gently connect with the breath.

Watch the natural in going and outgoing breath pattern.

Feel the lightness and subtlety of your own essence as energy beyond thought.

Have contact with your Self and gently be with that.

Unify your attention, breath, energy by bringing them all together with your awareness.

This is Santosha contentment, which arises from contact with the internal union.

Mapping Healing:

After a few minutes, begin to re-connect with your body and your mind.

Open your eyes and ground in your physical reality.

Place your hand on your heart for 30 seconds inhale and exhale slowly notice how your heart is calm, you feel refreshed and at ease with simply being.

2012 Copyright Manorama & Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies

Ahimsa, Empathy and the Meaning We Make

Ahimsa, Empathy and the Meaning We Make

by Manorama

Beginning of Service

As a child, I took in many stray animals. Leaving food in dishes and playing with them whenever they came near. I recall having the same feeling for impoverished children. This feeling of empathy was brought forward in me particularly late at night as infomercials from the Save the Children organization tickered on.  The montage of images displaying malnourished, disenfranchised children, pulled on me heavily. The next day, I’d ask my mother how I could help them and though she didn’t have much money, she always comforted me and sought ways to support my concern.  Her kindness regarding my feelings validated me. Being seen by her gave me strength. And from that strength, I was able to extend even more understanding to others.

The Meaning We Make

According to the dictionary:

‘Empathy is the ability to understand and share another’s feelings.’ 

Sometimes Yogis offer us support by going into our confusion with us, into our suffering, but they don’t make the same meaning. It seems people often think that going into another’s suffering could possibly make that specific suffering their own, as though it may stick to them.  They seem to feel that they will be harmed, but actually that’s not the case. By extending authentic ahimsa, kindness and understanding, we not only offer healing to others, we also experience healing ourselves.

When we are willing to see others fully, we reaffirm our desire and readiness to be seen. We also build intimacy between that person and our self.  Being empathetic and understanding towards others is also a practice for being compassionate towards our selves. As we practice, we learn how to go into our own pain and one-day lead ourselves out.

  

The yogi offers healing through understanding, he/she walks alongside us in the darkness, studying the meaning we made and then works to help us see a new meaning. 

New meaning here means seeing from a yogic perspective, one that shows us how to grow through the experience. As Yogis do this, they help us dissipate our sufferings and ultimately dissolve them.

‘I Just Can’t Relate’

Last year a friend said something funny to me.  She said, “Ya know, I just can’t relate.” Though she said it quickly and without much thought, the words themselves struck me as strange. A yogi spends his/her life studying the union. Said another way, a yogi stays close to interconnectivity. So, the idea of ‘I just can’t relate’ would not occur to a yogi because that is their very training, to come into relationship with all.  How can a yogi-in-training remain connected if he/she fears sharing in the feelings of those they contact? From this perspective, empathy is a tool for greater harmony and fluidity. 

  

Exploration of Ahimsa

Ahimsa means being grounded in reality and seeing clearly from that place. It is often translated as non-violence. Violence can only happen when we perceive otherness. 

So ahimsa, as a yogic principle, means being grounded in oneness where there is no sense of other and therefore no possibility of inflicting violence. Ahimsa is not only the recognition that we are all interrelated and interconnected, but it is actually living within that reality and extending out from it.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.35 says:

ahimsa-pratishthayam tat-sannidhau vaira-tyagah,

Translation:

“When the yogi is firmly established in physical, mental, vocal and spiritual non-violence, ahimsa, there is abandonment of enmity by those who are in his or her presence.” (PYS 2.35, transl. by Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati) 

The sutra teaches that the more we ground in understanding, the more we are a conduit for kindness and compassion.

When we express empathy and kindness to those around us we reveal our depth of yogic understanding, and show through our actions that we stand firmly on the ground of yogic reality.

Ahimsa, non-violence, is the first step of Lord Patanjali’s Ashtanga Yoga Path. This path is a road that the yogi-in-training follows to experience the freedom, known as union. Placing ahimsa as the first rung on the ladder, is Patanjali’s way of saying that ahimsa is a foundational character element that must be developed within the individual for him/her to be able to fully live in the light of yoga, the unified field.

Copyright 2012 Manorama, Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies

The Qualities of a Complete Person

The Qualities of a Complete Person

With Manorama

I was late to pick up Guru ji. Oddly, it was my usual. I beat to my own drum in those early teenage days. Evening program began at 7:30 pm but I was still getting things together. I looked out my window and saw Guru ji barreling across the main lawn. My pace quickened… “Yikes!”, I thought to myself. And grabbed my bag flying out the door quickly catching up to him. He was breathing heavily and despite his ill health seemed to be soaring to his destination. I grabbed at his bags to alleviate his stress and we had a small scuttle in the exchange. These are moments I recall.  Somehow almost irrelevant yet personal and filled with intimacy and connection and to this day they remain meaningful to me.

Reflecting now, I recall that I felt badly… that I was late and, uh, well… it wasn’t the first time I had run late. Normally, I picked him up and brought him to evening program. That was one of my jobs. Frustrated, Guru ji had set off without me so as to be on time, but due to his ill health it hadn’t been easy for him physically and that was obvious in his wobbly walk, his breathing and in the sweat on his brow. It’s hard to describe, but when people ask me about traditional study with a guru, this story, and others like it, come to mind.  

We were just people together. To me, this means that we shared authentic connection. Sometimes the link was elevated and philosophical or perhaps deeply spiritual focusing on energy and mystical teachings, and at other times, utterly human with its spectrum of life experiences ever unfolding before us.  

As we continued to walk across the lawn, I started to fret a bit over Guru ji. Due to his stroke in 1983, his walking was a bit unstable. So I said, fretting in my voice, “Guru ji, watch out for that rock and don’t forget there is that deep hole by the path over there and…” Out of breath, but never one to miss a cue, he said sharply, cutting me off, “Don’t pay attention to these things. What you attend to, you make manifest. If you do not think on these things (pot holes and such), you will glide above them.” And that’s how he did it. That’s how he offered  his direct students a teaching. You are walking across a lawn aiming at a destination together and you find yourself in the midst of a yogic teaching that will take you years to ponder and eventually integrate into your life. In these moments, there was never anything un-human about the moment. No denial of the form or the walking or the pressures of time and people waiting. Teaching in this manner reminded you that the experience of the divine is not in the denial of the human, but rather in this realm, teaching is best received in conjunction with the participation of our humanness.

Guru ji was not unaware of his purpose in my life or anyone’s for that matter. Not ever. I don’t think any authentic guru would lose contact with that. He knew that  for teachings to land fully there would need to be a place for them to land, a place where they could be supported and take root. As the years went on, I noticed that staying connected with my humanity and not denying it supported the development of grounding. And grounding gave strength and a place where the teachings could evolve from.

Truly my love for Guru ji was a love like no other.  Not better than another, just different. Guru ji was a complete person. And what I mean by that is that he looked to himself for everything. This is not to say that he didn’t ask for support in life or in simple tasks and such, but in the deepest aspects of life, I noticed he stayed close to himself. I understood this in him. The epic Sanskrit poem,  the “Ramayana,” describes the greatest among men, Lord Rama, as he who sought his own counsel in the most important matters. So when I say Guru ji was a complete person I mean that he was someone who cultivated such a genuine and meaningful dialog with his inner Self that he had the capacity to guide him self. Through the link with the inner, he was able to expand and grow his capacity as a human being.  He had true strength and great compassion.  Being in his field was to learn about this kind of inner strength and compassion.

Recently, a close friend asked me if she had any character flaws. She had been suffering emotionally about questions regarding her boyfriend and wanted to see if there was something she had not looked at in herself. I was about to fly to Colorado and was seated on the plane waiting for the airline attendants to signal the shutting down of electronic devices. But I text back, “You really want my answer?” She knew me well enough to know that if asked, I would answer kindly, but truthfully.  “Yes,” she said, “I want to muse with your insights  over breakfast.” I paused, sat with the question and the value of an honest answer in one’s life.  And wrote, “You are wildly intelligent, very funny, you love deeply and it may be useful to expand your capacity for compassion. It seems that others’ weaknesses make you feel uncomfortable. Or it could be that things that are out of their control and yours make you feel strange.  I feel working on compassion could open the field up for you more.” I sent the text.  She replied, “You feel this is a character flaw? Not sure how to develop compassion.”  Knowing that she was struggling with some opposing thoughts that day, I replied that I felt a good place to start was with her self.  

We all have areas to develop, but if you were to ask me about the guru, I would say a guru is a complete person because they have contact with their center and because they have a developed sense of compassion for themselves and others.  I would say if you want to find a guru, look to the simple moments of your life, moments of great connection. They reveal love, harmony and the graceful flow of energy. Ironically, sometimes they are shared with a scuttle and sometimes a hug, but they are always exchanged in the authentically human moments of our lives and in the grounding of that humanity. When we have that true floor underneath us, we then have the capacity to leap into the divine and experience the true taste of union.

Copyright 2012 Luminous Shabda/Sanskrit Studies, Manorama