the medicine of Maya
“There’s a philosophy in India where the outside world — the world of things — all is illusion.
And that’s a way to deal with the sense world ... to get free of it, and go inward, and go into the Atman, the God within.”
A journey of a 10,000 miles begins beneath our feet. It starts even before we take the first step. It starts with a split-second decision to walk. We can start anytime. We’ve already started. But every day we can start again and though I have many times, started again, perhaps that is all we are here to do. After all, everything “I don’t have” right now are all the things I can’t take with me when I die again. That doesn’t seem so bad and makes we ponder the “things” I can take with me.
It can be confusing. We all literally run around trying to do our best and make “sense” of living our lives in a world that often doesn’t feel good to us anymore. The veil of New Age light washing has to be lifted. Throughout great works of spiritual literature, we are taught that within every shadow exists some kind of gift. An offering from the universe for our suffering in some ways - everything is energy exchange. When exchange between any life forms is balanced, the exchange flows freely. When we have taken too much of something, inevitably we will have to give back. It’s not my law. It’s a Universal law.
Karma and Dharma walk alongside each other, within and between us. We always have a choice to add karma by repeating patterns and taking more than we give, but ultimately it is designed to guide us to our dharma - right path, life purpose, divine essence. Our truth, "the big why", and the reason we came.. we run around looking to find what this “should be” in remembrance of the days when we spent most of our time growing or searching for our own food and the rivers and streams still ran freely all the way down to the ocean and humans remembered their own value, Divine intelligence and worth.
The voice of Truth we all carry deep within is in need of great healing. The Truth of Divine Knowing, the Truth of the Sacred Intuitive mind, the Universal Truths that align our world with Source, the Truth we all carry within the Divine DNA matrix of our Souls. Unfortunately, we have deferred our own intelligence to so-called “experts”, relinquished it to “reason”, trivialized it with “logic”, confused it with google, shamed it with social media, influenced it greatly with “media” on what to think, and ignored it completely in our outward pursuit of finding fulfillment. But it is a voice we ALL have and needs to be heard.
The problem is after living in the social matrix for years and lifetimes, we forget. We forget the voice of intuition that whispers truth from within. It looks through our eyes observing every choice we make - every thought, word and action is either in alignment with this deep, inner divine truth or not. The further out of alignment we are with it, the more challenging and difficult our lives become.
But human beings are resilient and stubborn and Maya (illusion) is the strongest bond we have to break. Some say there is no bond greater than Maya for it ties us into the illusion of the material realm. Considering it takes most of us thousands of lifetimes to wake up and listen, it just may be true. Fortunately, there's yoga...
~ The renowned astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington explains:
"The world we see and experience in everyday life is simply a convenient mirage attuned to our very limited senses, an illusion conjured by our perceptions and our mind. All that is around us (including our own bodies) which appears so substantial is ultimately nothing but ephemeral networks of particle-waves whirling around at lightning speed, colliding, rebounding, disintegrating into almost total emptiness—so-called matter is mostly emptiness, proportionately as void as intergalactic space, void of anything except occasional dots and spots and scattered electric charges."
~ from The Second Coming of Christ by Paramahansa Yogananda
What is MAYA?
“Ma” means “not” and “Ya” means “that” ~ Not That.
Maya is the sum of all the illusions, the illusory world, the veil between us and Truth. Maya is that which we are not, though it may seem very, very real. Maya is the world of shadow, but it is also the source of great gifts. Gifts that will remain hidden until we open ourselves up to all that we are, which also means, letting go of everything we are not…layer by layer, this is the journey of the cosmic soul and I am reminded that within this Truth lies the answer to my woeful tears..
“You never identify your self with the shadow cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. Therefore you should not identify yourself with this living body, either.”
~ Swami Shankara
Any challenge, no matter how desperate it feels in the moment, is simply a redirection, a deeper layer, another route, a plot twist and a new opportunity to expand our consciousness surrounding our goals. The world is always changing and these days it seems to be on its way to spiralling “out of control”, but it isn't - not really. The outward chaos reflects our inward state and the divine nature of the universe runs eternal throughout all creation. No matter what we face in this lifetime, we know the universe will not give us more than we can handle and therefore I must once again reach deep to find the lessons contained within the challenge. Each lesson is an opportunity and therefore an awakening to realms of possibility contained within infinite consciousness and eternal creation.
The sooner I can release my attachment to what was, accept the change and move forward, the sooner new possibilities and opportunities will find me, but as long as I am angry, upset, or in any way resistant to change, I am blocking the flow of the new - resisting the Laws of the Universe that cannot be fought without great pain. Change is the Law of Love - we are not here to control it. Control is the ego's game. Control is born of Maya and also feeds it, but the Soul who is free beyond the illusion knows there is nothing to fear.
I release my tears back to the ocean of consciousness, surrender "my plan" and release any judgment or fear I might hold about the future, knowing that the Divine sees more than I could ever see and trusting that my Soul, connected to Source, always knows what to do next and is guiding me every step of the way...
“Beings who have understood how it all is,
who have realized their identity with the ātman,
are stream enterers;
they have tasted the flow of the nectar of liberation.
They are a breed apart from other people in the world.
They know something others do not know.
Every part of their life is colored by that merging.
A free being no longer identifies with the body or personality, with a personal past or future.
The body, the packaging, still has its karma running off and the skandhas, the mental aggregates, continue, but with nobody in them.”
~ Ram Dass, “Enterting the Stream”
Om Shanti Shanti Shanti, Hari Om Tat Sat