by Michael Mamas | Monday, October 19, 2015 | Spirituality |
Truth is often viewed as something that can be acquired by reading the right book or hearing the right speech. Books and speeches are readily available, but only the wise know truth when they hear it. The question of how to pursue truth then is not where to find truth, but how to know it when you hear it.
Truth already dwells deep within every individual. However, if ones life is encrusted with stresses, strains, and impurities, that truth will not well up throughout the physiology and conscious awareness. In such a state, even if truth is offered, the individual will not resonate with it. It will not feel right. It will not ring true. It may even be experienced as offensive. The lower vibration that one is accustomed to will not resonate with the higher vibration of truth. Just as the pristine lotus flower rises up through the murky waters, to hear truth one must rise up through the quagmire of small egocentricity, separateness, polarization, and indoctrination.
Through proper meditation, one awakens to the absolute truth that dwells within. As this is done, one’s understanding of kindness, love, integrity, honor, nobility, beauty, justice, etc. raises to a higher level. Understanding deepens and is transformed as one evolves.
Hearing and knowing truth is simply a matter of innocence and purity – and their meanings too transform as one evolves.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, October 14, 2015 | Announcements, Spirituality |
View my latest slideshow, “The Evolution of Consciousness“, on SlideShare.
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© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, October 3, 2015 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
You may have noticed that world history, when presented succinctly, often barely mentions India. That is perplexing. However, taking a deeper look reveals why.
To begin with, the notion of zero originated in India. Zero, of course, is nothing. How interesting that it is represented by a circle. A circle has no handle, no edge, no tip, nothing to grab on to. A dog chasing its tail forms a zero. Humanity wants something, not nothing. We are taught from childhood to view the world in terms of things. Nothing is not really understood.
The crux of the issue, however, is that the real gift from India is nothing… Pure Nothingness… the Transcendent. When you finally awaken to the true nature of existence, you awaken to nothing… no thing… that which transcends thingness. Nothing is the backdrop of existence. It is the essence of everything. Of course, when the knowledge from India is studied, the attempt is to turn it into something. Attempting to introduce people to nothing is not understood. It can even be received with hostility, as if the receiver feels they are being toyed with. The essence of Vedic Knowledge then slips through the fingers.
Who would have thought that awakening to the true nature of nothing is the ultimate awakening? How many believe that nothing is a simple concept so easily understood. How many believe that understanding Vedic literature is something attained through memorization, the intellect, an emotional epiphany, or at least some thing!
Indeed, India’s greatest gift to the world is nothing! Nothing transcends everything. It is the field of pure consciousness, not yet conscious of any thing. Therein lies the riddle of life… the longing, the impulse, in need to make nothing something. Certainly something, all things, are made out of nothing. But nothing is not something. Of course, you can wrap your brain around that but then it is not that. You just have made something out of nothing and it is then no longer nothing.
When you first awaken to nothing, then you will understand. You will stand under everything. Nothing under stands everything. Everything comes from nothing. Taking that as a concept can even frighten people, as if the world then is viewed as useless. However, nothing can be further from the truth (pun intended). After awakening to Nothing, all things take on a whole new, deeper, more profound, and beautiful meaning. Life becomes truly rich.
Indeed, we can all be most grateful to India, for giving us nothing.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Tuesday, September 29, 2015 | Spirituality |
It is really very simple. Look at trees. Look at water flowing down a mountain stream. Look at anything and everything. The same principles apply. Everything parallels. The same laws of nature are at work on different levels and to varying degrees everywhere. Manifestation of the universe, a breath in and out, the sun rising and setting, trees producing acorns producing trees, what goes up must come down. Everything is, in essence, the same one thing. I am that. You are that. All of this is nothing but that. It’s all the same.
Those principles are well established and fixed, like the notes of a music scale. However, notes are bent, flowed through quickly or held, played loud or softly. Music is infinitely fixed, yet infinitely flexible. So is life. So is existence. Music can be analyzed scientifically, but the meaning is in the music. The meaning is in the feeling. Feelings lie deeper than thoughts. Essence lies deeper than feelings. Feelings reach out to essence. Yet the path home can be quite curved. It’s all the same.
If you start at the surface and try to fathom the depth, you get lost in the complex web of life, charmed by the melody of the magical flute. Yet the web, the music, emerged from something quite simple. If you start at the depth and follow the blossoming to the surface, everything is under-stood.
Awaken to the depth of life. The surface all points in that direction, but you must listen. You must get the message. And at some point, like an acorn falling from the tree, you will finally let go and return home.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, September 26, 2015 | Meditation, Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Question: About a month ago, I saw Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in my dreams twice, once during meditation, and the other in the middle of that same night. The second time I dreamed of him, I felt something burst out of my heart, and a gust of pain went all over my body. Something like this happened to me a few years ago. Could you please explain what happened to me?
Answer: Interestingly enough, I had a dream about Maharishi just about the same time you did. We associate Maharishi with the Transcendent, certainly someone who is spiritually very high. It is possible that you had a moment of transcendence during sleep and the dream was a symbolic representation of the experience of transcending, namely a dream of Maharishi.
With such a powerful transcendence, a deep-seated stress in the heart could have been released, explaining your experience. Having said that, though we can’t help to wonder and try to understand what happened when we have profound experiences, it’s best to be easy with it and not even hope to have a definitive answer about its nature. It is enough to know that your heart is in the right place and you are on a rapid evolutionary path. Rejoice in that and set all concerns aside.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, September 23, 2015 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Oftentimes, people think spiritual attainment is being free from the ego, often referred to as selflessness. If we really take a look at it, that is not exactly right.
Let us first take a look at what the ego really is. We could say the ego exists on two levels: the Personality Level and the deepest level of your being, the Transcendental Level. Typically speaking, those two levels do not work in unison. In fact, the majority of people are essentially unaware of the Transcendental Level of their being. To them, the personality ego is the only ego there is. They live in a world of separation. Their ego versus the ego of everyone else in the world. Oftentimes, their sense of self-worth is all about how they view their ego, their accomplishments, their place in the world, how much money they have, their children, what a good person they are, etc. Though these things can be of great value, that ego exists in the domain of superficiality in contrast to the Transcendental ego. Spiritual evolution is about integrating these two levels of ego so that they function in harmony with one another.
Now let’s take a closer look at the Transcendental ego. It is the level of your being that transcends relativity. It is fully awake to its universal nature. That can be expressed in many different ways: You and God are one; You are one with everything; Aham Bramhasmi; I am the totality; Or, as Einstein would say, “Everything is the unified field,” (that one thing that is the source of everything).
Just as a seed births the tree, the Transcendental Level births all of creation. Just as the seed is the source of all the intelligence and harmony that underlies and guides the growth of the tree, so too is the Transcendental Level the source of intelligence and harmony that underlies your existence.
So let’s take a look at what happens to the ego when, through the evolutionary process, those two levels function in a harmonious and integrated manner. The personality ego doesn’t go away. You don’t become free from ego as some people interpret the spiritual documents to say. What actually happens is the personality ego transforms so your sense of self becomes one with all that is. It is as if Mother Nature herself is functioning through you, as you, spontaneously supporting all branches of the tree of life. You haven’t lost the ego. On the contrary, it is expanded to embrace all that is to cherish, support, and facilitate the growth of everything in creation. This is exactly the opposite of selflessness or egolessness. It is the expansion of the ego to live in harmony with, and breathe life into, the depth of all that is.
In conclusion, a person that has integrated these two levels of their being may not look like your typical depiction of a saintly Hollywood sage on the surface. They do not necessarily speak with a strange cadence or float airily through a room. They may appear quite ordinary. To understand spiritual evolution, we must always look deeper.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, September 14, 2015 | Spirituality |
In a recent conversation about spirituality, someone mentioned that there are all sorts of opinions out there. Suddenly it struck me. Today’s arena of spirituality is a free-for-all. Science is different. In science, things are logically verifiable, or at least justifiable and reasonable. Spirituality is plagued with superstition, convention, indoctrination, and emotionalism. For that reason, pretty much anything goes. Most everyone has already formed an opinion. This is all compounded by the fact that spirituality is generally approached as an escape from having to really think. It is not generally considered to be an arena where things need to make sense. Therefore, a rational approach to spirituality is viewed as just another opinion.
Can you imagine if the field of science was riddled with nothing other than irrational opinions, one valued just as much as the other? If so, there would be no telephone, no automobiles, no television… basically just the Stone Age. Sadly, that is the state of spirituality in the world today. Just as the ancient Rishis said, this is Kali Yuga – the Age of Ignor-ance. This is further compounded in that people commonly take offense at the very idea of taking a critical look at their perspective on spirituality. What a mess.
This all started when the scientific age was in its infancy. The very tenets of spirituality made no sense to those scientific novices. Today, science has advanced sufficiently enough to actually make sense of spirituality. Thusly, the wheat is separated from the chaff. Superstition, emotionalism, indoctrination, and irrationality are filtered out of the field of spirituality. As with science, there is no longer room for a free-for-all of random opinions. Adi Shankara referred to this process as discernment. Discernment is integration of all aspects of awareness – the rational with the emotional, the thinking with the feeling, the heart with the mind. That integration is practically non-existent today. Even those who attempt to approach spirituality from a rational perspective have, for the most part, been unable to put all the pieces together. The true art of discernment has fallen by the wayside. The degree to which someone is spiritual is determined by how fully indoctrinated they are to a particular dogma.
I trust that, at this point, stating that spirituality needs to be redefined will not be viewed as just another opinion. So what is spirituality? Let’s define spirituality as the field that integrates all fields of life into a unified whole. A spiritual life, then, is a life that strives to attain that level of wisdom, knowledge, insight, and understanding. This demands vision, a willingness to look beyond what you currently know, while at the same time looking directly into the face of what you do know, and questioning it: the art of discernment.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, September 10, 2015 | Spirituality |
Question: Sometimes I notice when I’m purifying a lot as a result of meditation that I become weak and feel rather ill. Some people told me it was because I had a lot of bad karma. Someone even suggested I was maybe possessed at one time. Please explain how this is part of the evolutionary process and provide any other comments you may have.
Answer: Most people have plenty of karma. In fact to not is to be an extremely, extremely, extremely rare exception. When a wave of karma comes your way is anybody’s guess. It can last for a moment, several years, or even a lifetime. In the greater scheme of things, in all of these cases, it is just a brief moment in the course of your eternal soul. It really upsets me when people try to judge another’s evolution (or the amount of karma they have) based upon a current set of circumstances. It’s possible to be a highly evolved person experiencing a major wave of karma in a lifetime. It’s also possible to be a lesser-evolved person that is riding a wave of good karma. To the casual observer, the latter individual may appear more evolved, while the former would be judged harshly. This is incorrect, and even worse, can be harmful.
Through meditation we do purify and that can be experienced in different ways – barely noticed, weakness, sleepiness, or even feeling somewhat ill. It’s important to know that it is just purification and not to judge yourself with ignorant perspectives. Most everyone on an evolutionary path for some time experiences periods of purification. In India, the impurities are sometimes compared to elephants. Sometimes they are asleep and sometimes they are stampeding. When they are asleep, enjoy the smooth ride. When they are stampeding, rest in the knowledge that you are evolving as the stresses and strains leave the physiology. It is certainly more pleasant when the elephants are asleep, but when purifying, you do well to maintain the perspective of how fortunate you are to have such rapid evolution, while the other people over there have yet to awaken the sleeping elephant.
In India, there is another saying. Don’t sort through the garbage. In other words, when you are purifying, don’t waste time trying to figure out what put those stresses and strains in the physiology. Just be happy that the garbage collector is on his way. Attempting to sort through the garbage is a task left to the misguided.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, September 5, 2015 | Meditation, Spirituality |
The notion of mindfulness has different meanings on different levels. Let’s start with the highest and go from there. The underlying basis of everything in existence, including you, is pure unbounded Consciousness. As your awareness evolves, you become increasingly awake to that level. When fully awakened to it, it is experienced as a backdrop to everything in existence. I guess you could say it is similar to how a TV screen is the backdrop to all images, stories, and melodramas projected onto it. Mindfulness exists in a place beyond space and time – eternally present. The true state of mindfulness then is a physiological state, the culmination of evolution.
A state of true mindfulness is sometimes referred to as the witness. In the state of witnessing, you are awake to the level where nothing is really happening. This is what is referred to as maya in the Vedic tradition, the idea that reality is all about change, things, relativity, and action. In the state of pure mindfulness, the backdrop, the underlying reality, transcends relativity, duality, action, etc. When first experienced, it is rather a strange experience. It is as if when you are walking, you are not really walking. The body is walking, and the you, your being, your deepest awareness, is just witnessing the body walking. There is, in fact, an entire approach to spiritual growth sometimes called karma yoga where people try to witness. It is remarkable that thousands, if not millions, of people practice that as a spiritual technique, when in fact it doesn’t work. It is like pretending you are a millionaire. It doesn’t make you a millionaire.
This state of true mindfulness, sometimes called enlightenment, is cultivated over time, primarily through proper meditation. Proper meditation, for example the Surya Ram Meditation, has nothing to do with pretending or trying to be in the eternal present. Sadly though, many meditation techniques do exactly that.
It’s important to note that experiencing pure Consciousness as a witness is temporary. The reason it is experienced as a witness is because there is initially a huge gap between wakefulness to pure Consciousness (the Transcendent) and one’s relative experience of life. They coexist, but are experienced as quite distant from one another. As one lives in that state, over time the physiology refines and the gap is reduced and ultimately disappears. This is all a very profound and beautiful experience, the description of which goes beyond the bounds of this article. I have lectured and written extensively about it in other places *.
The term “mindfulness” is often used as a practice of attempting to keep your awareness on the present, trying to be completely mindful of what is going on in the moment – in the room, in the conversation you may be having, in the activity you may be doing, or what have you. In actuality, that is neither constructive nor healthy.
This all takes place on a more superficial level of life. But by superficial, I do not mean unimportant, I just mean different. On the superficial level of life, past, present, and future exist. Even when the awareness and physiology are functioning properly, there are times when the mind’s attention is absorbed in thinking about the future or the past, having little to do with what is going on in the present moment. In the state of true mindfulness, attention on the past, future, and present are all quite healthy and natural. Trying to force the mind to stay in the present moment does little more than cultivate a state of neurosis, compromising the evolutionary process.
Having said that, at times it is of course important to be able to pay attention to what is going on in the moment. That is just common sense. However, attempting to do that as a spiritual technique is misguided.
The bottom line here is that spiritual growth is a normal and natural process. It seems that many think of it as just the opposite, expecting spiritual leaders to be somehow other-worldish and quite different from what most would deem normal behavior. Personal evolution is a subtle process, a normalizing process, a sublime process. Looking for radical differences on the surface of life in an attempt to believe that you are attaining spiritual progress is largely misguided. There are, of course, certain parameters to stay within on the surface of life, like not becoming an alcoholic, getting a reasonable amount of sleep, eating healthy foods, etc. However, attempting to manipulate your life on subtle levels is unnatural and undermining of your spiritual growth. That is like taking the petals of a rosebud and peeling them back one at a time in an attempt to make a blossom. It is the natural unfolding of the bud that births the beautiful flower.
If you take only one thing from this article, remember that whatever techniques you employ to facilitate your spiritual growth, they must be natural.
*
What Is Enlightenment?
How to Get Enlightened
Integrating Unboundedness and Boundedness
Spiritual Evolution Q&A
The Self is Revealed to the Self by the Self
Two Motivations
What is Enlightenment?
The Golden Frog
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Saturday, August 29, 2015 | Spirituality |
Ted Cruz shared one of his father’s favorite lessons to him.
“No one bears greater responsibility for the condition of this country than do the pastors,” said Cruz, quoting Rafael Cruz, who is a pastor. “If the flock stumbles into a ditch, you don’t blame the sheep. You blame the shepherd.”
We can generalize this quote to include all religious, all spiritual leaders. However we must ask, “What’s the problem? What are they missing?” Firstly, I find it remarkable and humbling that, throughout history, so many people could know within themselves the true nature of life and existence without really having a clear understanding of it. That inner knowing transcends even their inability to truly explain it all in a manner that makes rational sense.
Now consider the skeptical group mentality, the group consciousness of our country and world today. For the condition of a country to improve, the deep thinkers must be able to convey their knowledge in a manner that can be understood, and thereby received and accepted, by the people. I am sorry to say that the pastors and other religious/spiritual leaders have failed to do this. To the majority of people, and certainly to a great percentage of the youth throughout the world, the spiritual message makes no rational sense and is therefore rejected. It simply does not hold up to the scientific mentality that has overtaken modern thinking. Be it traditional, alternative, new age, or eccentric in approach, an ever-increasing number of people look at those spiritual perspectives and shake their heads. Answers to deep questions fall short. Demands that you just must have faith do not satisfy. In fact, it offends, compelling so many to roll their eyes and turn away.
I get upset when I see most religious, alternative, and new age spiritual leaders speak on television. It would be better if they just would admit that they do not have answers to all-important questions. Even the intellectual types, those who relate spirituality to modern physics, are unsatisfying in their dry and woefully limited ability to put it all pieces of life’s puzzle together. The New Agers with their warmed over, reshaped, same old proclamations, leave real seekers of truth dismayed, giving even more reason to turn their backs on the foolishness. All too many well-intended and discerning people are thereby compelled to throw out the spiritual baby with the bathwater and decide they are atheist, agnostic, or just ‘socially religious’ on Christmas and Easter. I can’t tell you how many young people have come to me saying, in one way or another, that they would like to believe and have faith, but they just can’t.
I must underscore that what the truly inwardly spiritual know is valid. However, it is not known with a communicable clarity that can be heard by humanity. Thereby, the root of life has been severed from the tree. No wonder our country today ‘stumbles into a ditch.’
Fortunately, a deep rational understanding is there. It clears the cobwebs, casts out any superstition, and deepens the knowledge for all humanity – including the skeptics and spiritual believers. We offer that understanding, if only the jaded masses will take the time to reflect. Unfortunately, most have already made their decision based upon the irrational and unclear teachings that pervade so many traditional and modern spiritual perspectives.
Rafael Cruz was so right… It is not the fault of the people. The responsibility is that of the spiritual leaders themselves. It is our task to turn that around… to provide the understanding that makes perfect sense to our modern, discerning, and rational world consciousness.
In my life I was determined to understand the nature of existence, the nature of this world. I really didn’t care if it would be called spirituality or science. I just wanted answers. I wanted to know the truth. I was fortunate to come across some truly great teachers. My studies included undergraduate work in physics and math. My pursuit then led me to India where I sat with some truly remarkable spiritual teachers. It was through them that the pieces of the puzzle came together. I offer that understanding in terms that modern humanity can hear and receive. It deepens the knowledge and appreciation of all aspects of life. It puts all the pieces of life puzzle together in a manner that fulfills the skeptic and the deeply religious as well. No longer can people say that to be spiritual there needs to be blind faith. In that vein we can thank the atheists and agnostics for demanding that a deeper and clearer understanding of the true nature of life and existence be made available. It is our great joy and privilege that we find ourselves in the most fortunate position as to be able to bring that forth.
Once spirituality is truly understood, religion is understood in a new and fulfilling light that satisfies all aspects of life – all aspects of human psychology, mentality, morality, thought and emotion.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
