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Spiritual teachings by Shunyamurti, the founder and director of the Sat Yoga Ashram - a wisdom school, ashram, and the home of a vibrant spiritual community based in Costa Rica. Visit us at satyoga.org
Episodes
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Lower Chakras Lead to Suffering – 12.02.10
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Student Question: In the chakra map, we tend to move within the first three chakras. And in understanding how and why we do it, we become able to use the higher ones. But is it more balanced to move within all seven, or to be within the higher ones?
“The higher chakras are sublimated versions of the lower chakras,” explains Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “But the lower chakras, when you are in and operating from them, they lead to suffering. And they are operated as defenses against anxiety that end up leading to very inaccurate forms of karma. And at the higher chakras, one has unveiled the Real Self that is transcendent of the individual organism, or ego-based identity, and is therefore no longer acting from egocentric—or even anthropocentric—motivations, but can act in harmony with the whole cosmos.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 2, 2010.
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Guilt & Paranoia – 12.02.10
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Student Question: What is the difference between guilt and paranoia?
“They exist at two different assemblage points: guilt is at the disillusionment point, paranoia is at the dispossession point,” clarifies Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Guilt is based upon an identity that has been established in a very strong and healthy way within the ego that takes its motivation from a lineage of symbolic signifiers of tradition and ideals and higher meaning. And that enables an individual, who carries that burden, to operate responsibly and with integrity in the world to fulfill their duty. Whereas paranoia does not have any of those characteristics, and it is more based on the terror that someone will take away its sensory enjoyments and its capacity to act in freedom and will impinge on its sense of autonomy and self-empowerment. And the more paranoid one is, the more [one] will project that the world is filled with enemies who want to destroy one. But this is not, then, an ethical way of responding to the other as an equal, but seeing the other in a demonized form.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 2, 2010.
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Coming Out of Cultural Denial – 12.02.10
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Thursday Dec 02, 2010
Student Question: When you were talking about the trauma that Japan faced in the war, I was realizing that I couldn’t really relate because I feel I’ve never identified with a nation or a culture, and I couldn’t imagine feeling trauma over my country losing a war.
“It wasn’t just losing a war; it was losing their culture,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And the whole of modern history is the destruction of one culture after another by the dominant globalizing culture of capitalism.”
For the Japanese, however, the loss in the war had “profound effects, at that moment, because they were in denial. And it was that forcible coming out of denial, with the sudden dropping of bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that literally left the population speechless. That was shock and awe in the true sense. And not only Japan, but I think the entire world has not yet recovered from that."
They [the Japanese] were in denial of this event happening, you mean the destruction in the war? Or were you referring to a different kind of destruction?
“Of the fact that they were losing; it was inconceivable that they could lose. Just as it’s inconceivable now to many people that the present system can fall. You have people who think, ‘Ah, this will go on forever.’ People can more easily imagine the destruction of the world by an asteroid than the fall of global capitalism. It’s inconceivable and it’s not discussable.”
But this is not the end, “and we have to become very strong, and filled with the inspiration of what is going to be born through this trauma, ‘cause it’s a blessing, ultimately; everything is a blessing if it’s understood in its true significance.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, December 2, 2010.