Episode Transcript
My name is Ken Hanuman and I've been practicing Raja Yoga meditation for over 40 years. In these episodes, I will share the experiences and insights I've gained from meditation and how I've integrated them into my everyday life and all my relationships. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Spiritual Relationship Podcast. My name is Ken Hanuman. I'll be your host. Today's topic is discovering your original self. This is very important in meditation. Meditation can be used for many things. As you know, people use it for relaxation, stress relief, et cetera. Okay, but meditation actually is more about self-care healing and self transformation. in ancient time, actually, Raja yoga meditation was used as a pathway to enlightenment because you need to go in to discover who you are. The physical world on the outside doesn't really tell you much about your self as a spiritual being they act, you know, it's, it's very difficult to know the soul or to understand consciousness while still looking for knowledge from the outside world because everything in the outside wall is really about physical things, and the soul is more about understanding. It's more an inner experience. So in your meditation, we need to visualize the soul. And the way we start meditation is to visualize the soul as a point of light filled with energy, and it's a life force that is giving life to the body. It's sentient energy. Meaning it's energy that know itself. It is, I'm alive, I exist. Simple as that. But that one simple sentence, I'm alive. I exist. That is coming from you. The soul, not the body. That the body is a physical entity and it was born. It grows up. It goes back to the element after death. Now going to the qualities of the original self, the, the first thing, the first experience is that of peace, that I exist. I am peace. You don't say I have peace. You say I am peace, love and happiness is also an inherent quality of the soul, and we all long for it. It. We strive for it. Everything we do actually is to try to get it. But when you depend on physical things, it's very elusive. You get some things, but by nature, physical things have a limitation. So when you going into understanding consciousness or you're trying to understand who you are as this internal entity, we need to understand that it has to come. From this inner experience because these are natural qualities to the soul. Every time you think this, try to feel what that peace feels like. I am peace and feel it. What is peace? What does it feel like? Love I like. What does it feel like When I am loved or when I love others? Gratitude. Say if I'm grateful to the body or to nature, to God. What's that? What, what does that feel like to you? It is the feeling you are going after. You're trying to create a feeling based on the thought that is in line with your true nature. So these are qualities within the self and,, there's another quality to the to the soul, it has inherent wisdom in it. And a good analogy, a good example will be the seed. A seed is dormant tiny, but yet within it has all the information that is necessary for it to germinate and to grow and to become a tree, to have fruits, and to share that with the world. The same with the soul. Within this consciousness of I am you know, you recognize when something is true, what is peaceful or love or happiness. You, that select the seed. We have the capacity to create. And with every human being, we come into this world and we. We can create our destiny. We experience relationships. We enjoy being in a body with nature. So there's a purpose for us being here. And that, in one word, can be happiness, right? So I would like to, a lot of the, some of the things that I'm saying here, I will repeat because in meditation you need to use it. And you need to memorize it so that you can know what to do as you go from one thought to the next in meditation. 'cause we are trying not just to mention the quality of the soul, we want to experience it. As we know, meditation, and there are many kinds of, yoga or meditation out there, and there's the use of mantra. There is the use of, maybe light or candles or there's so many. There are many different, and they all have benefit to it, and there's nothing wrong with trying to use it to see if it can get you to a stage of peace and relaxation and calm. But with raja yoga, we are trying to really understand who we are at a deeper level. In every class, I, I mentioned this, you know that the soul is, it's an energy, right? It is something that we need to remind ourself that we are the soul and not the body. The soul can live without the body. The body cannot live without the soul. So all these things that I said, just like repeat them and think about them in contemplating them in meditation. And then you be, you'll be able to separate out the awareness of the body and the soul. And, and that is really the aim in meditation is for you to make this real. That I'm not the body, I'm the soul, and my nature is peace, love, happiness, power, wisdom, bliss actually. When you completely detach from the body when I say detached, I mean like you're like not aware of it and you are into the self-awareness and you are in totally into the peace and the feeling of love and a relationship with a higher power. You start to feel bliss and bliss is, it's like a one word that encompasses all those other qualities of peace and happiness. You can't do things without the body. So when I'm in the body, I can, I, I am a human being. But when I'm out of the body or when there's separation of death, the soul exists. Right? But it, and it continues to exist, but it can't do anything as a human being. 'cause you really can't do anything. You can't talk, you can't see, you can't you know, do anything without the body. So think deeply about these things. When we look at mind, intellect and the memory, our sanskars. These are aspects of consciousness that function within consciousness. They're not, the soul cannot be divided, but we do have a mind. We do have an intellect. The ability to discern and discriminate. And we do have a lot of memory. We have a lot of things that we have learned and a lot of habits and personality traits. And these are the things from where our thoughts come up. So that is also things that you can think about. What is my conscious mind? What are the thoughts that are coming up? Are they positive, they're negative? Are they helpful or not? And then to no matter what is in your memory, even though it's a very sad or traumatic event, it is possible for me to forgive or to let go or because these things are affecting me in the present moment. So I don't want to past to continue to hurt me in the present because when I'm not happy and when I'm not empowered, when I, when I feel like I have no control over my life or my mind, then you just feel like there's no purpose to life basically. Sometimes some people have gone to that stage and you know, so you don't want to get there. So why not look at the mind and the intellect and even your, some of the things in your memory, it is possible for you to let go and for you to be free and for you to feel like you have the ability to change your life or to create a life of happiness. This ability to move away from your physical senses. When we talk about physical senses, we're talking about the eye, what comes through the eye, what we see, what we hear, what we read, what we're looking at on tv, the information that is entering into me. We have to remember every time we, we see hear things. The mind has to focus on it and visualize that or, you're not just seeing with the physical eye. Your mind is, you can say creating feelings and emotions and responses to it, and then it is creating a memory. So when you understand that process, you realize you have the ability to detach from. Or not engaging, all this information that is coming at you, especially now with the internet, there is so much going on and there a lot of it is negative. So why not protect yourself and cultivate, a condition, a stage of peace and love and, like love of self. Stay focus on your true nature. Try to relive that. Try to rekindle that, try to become, let that be more powerful than the old habits are old ways of thinking, right? The fact that I'm not a body, that I'm a spiritual entity. Is, is really important and to remember that the if I look at where I am, I, the soul, my position in the brain or in the skull, whatever, it's right there at the base, right next to the pineal gland, right by the hippocampus. Which process your emotions. So whenever we feel something or we have an emotion, then a change, it becomes neurochemical, meaning like it affects your body. So if you are scared, if you are fearful, if you are stressed, if you have anxiety, your body is affected by that. And then you have, organs that produce hormones, like you have the adrenals that will produce adrenaline and cortisol. You have the amygdala, which creates with when you have a lot of fear, it, they say it tends to expand. And, so these things are affecting the body. So it's, it's really interesting to think of the, think of consciousness and the soul that it, for the sake of your body and your health, you need to think a lot about what is this? Soul. And what is consciousness? It's, it's not a religious thing. It is actually well, it's spiritual in the sense that it's not physical. But it's something that you can experience as real. You know that you're alive. You know, you can think, you know, you can make decisions, you can change, you can create habits. You can create good memories or you can change bad ones. You have that power because you are responding to what is in you. You are seeing things on the outside through the filter of your past or through the filter of your, knowledge and your past experiences. So let us now look at what is the nature of the soul. But now I'm gonna include silence in, in this. Silence is. In spiritual terms it's not necessarily the absence of physical sounds. I mean, we do need to probably step away from the noise of the world and find a quiet place to, meditate, but also inside of us when we have a lot of thoughts we are actually, when the mind is crowded you know, it's filled with a lot of thoughts and emotions, and sometimes you're thinking so fast you're feeling confused and, stressed and, there's a lot of fear or anxiety. You are not able to even find solutions. So in meditation remember that your nature is divine. Or like I said before, peaceful, if you look at those words, it actually means that they're positive, they're elevated qualities. We should also understand that we have a divine nature deep awareness. And if you were to take away other people's opinion or what you, read in the scriptures or anything, you'll realize that there is a part of you deep down, I guess because we have so much of the worldly stuff still in us, that compassion and empathy or love or, selflessness, benevolence these are divine qualities and these are actually qualities that we admire and we desire and we wish we can have. Look how we look up to some of these, great souls, you know, like, saints and, swamis or whatever. We look up to these people, so why? Because we admire those quality. Peace, right. Self-awareness. If you try to understand the true self, it is a state of, like a self-awareness of presence. The conscious mind is thinking a lot of ordinary thoughts, but internally you can identify with the one that is observing, that is detached and that is observing the mind there's a stillness there, there's a feeling of wholeness. When you can find that space of calm and peace and stillness within, you can observe how thoughts come up in the mind, in a conscious mind, and how if you don't pay attention to it, how it goes away. And then another thought comes up and, and if you get involved with, let's say something happened yesterday or in the past that made you angry. Someone did something that, that irritated you or you know, something very negative or like an insult or something. Whenever you relive that, whenever you bring that up in a conscious mind, you, when you get drawn back into it. It and you are reliving it again, and you actually feel the emotions of fear or hate or anger, you are actually attached to that. You are not detached, you're not separate. You are under the control of that emotion. So it's really important to develop this power of discernment and detachment because when you can observe something without judgment or without blaming yourself, then you are able to change it. Then it becomes possible. So this is why we are trying to use meditation to, let's say, change a bad habit, to change, let's say an impulsive behavior like getting angry you're very sensitive and you get very angry, or you, you feel like you can't stand people or, you get so upset about something that it puts you in a state of sadness or depression. We have to learn how to detach from that and realize that is not who I am. That is a habit that I've learned, while growing up and seeing others doing it, thinking that's the way to be, but if you're suffering, it is not right. If you look at your memories, also, when we think, we think that certain memories, or let me give you this example. Let's say you had a, in childhood, you had a friend, and you think this is your best friend and that you're gonna be friend for the rest of your life and you can do without the person or so on, right? But later on, as you grow up life, happens and you are not close to each other anymore, and everybody have their own life and that memory goes away or fades. And you have new friends and so on. So you could see how memory, if you don't relive it or you don't pay attention to it, after a while it fades. And then in the present you can create something new. So these are, these are, things about consciousness that we can use to our advantage in meditation. Know that it is possible to change anything, but also remember many of the habits that we have, the negative habits we have, have been formed over a long time. So now when you're doing meditation, you need to persevere and to be determined, and to remind yourself who. You are really. So as you practice meditation and you get in touch with your peace, you'll see that even when the there is noise, physical noise around you will not be disturbed. You can develop this, this ability. What I wanna do is to ask you to think about these things about that your true self is that of peace and love, compassion, empathy, benevolence, sweetness, humility. Because when you really examine these things, and if you were to stop the old opinions from coming up, the value system, if you change it and you are honest with yourself. In, in that moment of clarity, you'll be able to accept it, and then as you meditate and you, and you develop it, and you focus on it, it starts to grow. And then eventually you'll see that you'll have control over anger and you'll get back to your true nature, to your original nature. And then your mind will be much calmer. Your mind will be less busy. Your ability to discriminate what is beneficial or not, what is good and what is bad. You would realize that you can use the relationship with a higher power to enhance this process. But you do get help. And blessing, but you are, you actually have to do something for it to become part of your memory or part of your personality. So it's not a question of, of someone above making it happen. They're waiting for something to happen to change them. It doesn't work like that in consciousness. Everything we who, whoever we are right now, we created over a period of time through actual action. So now for us to change it in meditation. The next step to meditation is actually taking that experience, and power from it and changing your actions and your behavior in your words. And what you get as a result is a newness, a renewed personality. A being that can create a new destiny and therefore the world outside even though the world is becoming chaotic, your journey, you know where you're going, you know your destination, and you don't allow the world to affect you. So I will close there. Remember that you are peace. Remember that you're love. Remember that you are eternal energy. You are the power that enlightens, give life to this body, and you have the capacity to share this with the world. Thank you for listening. If you need information on free online classes and meditation commentary, go to the description below. You'll find the links. So thank you for listening and bye. When you walk into a room, life gets little, you. You.
