by Michael Mamas | Tuesday, February 24, 2015 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
“Gravitas was one of the Roman virtues, along with pietas, dignitas, and virtus. It may be translated variously as weight, seriousness and dignity, also importance, and connotes a certain substance or depth of personality.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitas
The demise of ancient Rome came with, and many would argue, resulted from, the decay of these virtues… the decay of the earlier meaning/understanding of these virtues. Some say modern society is following in the footsteps of that demise.
We are social creatures. Just as the vegetation and animals of a land were born of, and evolved in, harmony with that land, the virtues of a society are born of nature… born of the laws of nature inherent to the very soil upon which that society emerged. The health of a culture is in direct proportion with the degree to which the people live in harmony with nature, with natural law, with our own true nature. Every bit as much as food, water, and air, harmony with nature is our life’s blood.
Cultural values may appear to be arbitrary, but they are not. As people lose connection with the depth of their soul… the fiber of their being… their inner wisdom, cultural values appear more and more to be arbitrary. Instead of inner wisdom, the way the wind blows determines the culture’s worldview. Values then gradually become more arbitrary… without substance, without valid basis. Most anything can be, and is, justified by the intellect… rational-ized. The winds of karma are then free to determine the mindset of the people. Law-makers and spiritual leaders are then selected based upon, not substance, but gusts of delusion. Society decays.
As the drug culture of the 1960’s swept the Western world, the integration of humanity with natural law (inner wisdom… the deeper meaning of Gravitas, Pietas, Dignitas, and Virtus) broke down. It set society’s sail in the direction of that wave of karma that has carried Western mentally off course.
It appears we are witnessing a global reaction. When the pendulum swings too far in one direction, it naturally, in time, will swing too far in the other. It birthed radical extremism. The values, twisted as they are, offer a social code. Remarkably, in a society of degraded social code, even that extremism becomes appealing to some. People turn their back on what a great society was, because of what it was becoming. They then set out to find a society they can identify with… one that at least has a solid direction.
We are cultural/social creatures. Values are not found through intellectual fantasies, ivory towers, or crystalline castles. They are found in the depth of your being… in a place that lies far deeper than the social pressures of a culture that has lost its way.
It is not my place to tell you what to think, what laws to obey. But I will do my very best to assist you in finding that place inside that is one with nature, one with natural law… one with your true nature, one with the source of individual and cultural integrity… one with the true meaning of Veda.
Veda is not just a set of books. Veda means nature. In a healthy society, our true nature permeates all aspects of life.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Wednesday, February 18, 2015 | Spirituality |
Truth is found at the depth of your being, not the surface of your mind. Anything can be justified with the intellect.
As the clouds and fog clear away, the sun is more clearly seen. So too, as the emotions and mind settle down, Truth is more clearly seen.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Thursday, February 12, 2015 | Personal Growth, Spirituality |
Thoughts matter little. How you feel about those thoughts makes all the difference.
Knowledge is accessed through feeling, not thought.
Wise thoughts are the product of refined feelings… i.e. the process of reasoning.
Reasoning is the link between thoughts and feelings that lie deeper within than thought.
The process is called discernment. Distortions from past impressions (samskaras) can interfere with the process of discernment on any level: for example, emotional bias, intellectual indoctrination, etc.
Common sense means sensing the level that is common to all that is… sensing the transcendental level and forming your thoughts based upon that sensing… that feeling.
As that sensing becomes even more refined, it transcends common sense and becomes wisdom.
Wisdom is further refined through the very finest level of feeling to find its basis in the transcendent…
the one thing that is the basis of all things…
Pure Knowledge…
the source of all knowledge…
the source of all that is.
The sequence goes from the Transcendent
to the finest feeling level
to the wisdom level
to the common sense level
to the reasoning level
to the level of concrete thoughts.
Enlightenment means integration (harmonization) of all levels of your being. The winds of life (karma) may blow the branches in all directions, yet they remain in harmony with the trunk and root of life… firmly established in the Transcendent.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, February 9, 2015 | World View |
In the USA, the first ‘star’ you will see rising in the eastern sky these early nights is actually Jupiter. Directly above Jupiter, you will see two bright stars. They are the twins of the constellation Gemini. Then, off to your right (South) you will see Orion. I believe most people know how find Orion in the eastern sky these evenings… or at least know someone who can show them Orion. Imagine the three star of his belt pointing in the direction further to your right (South) up higher than Orion’s head and you will find a faint cloud of half a dozen stars called the Pleiades. Only six of the seven stars are visible to the naked eye and barely so. The missing seventh star is the missing sister of mythology.
Between the Pleiades and Orion you will see a bright red star, which is the eye of the bull of the constellation Taurus. Below Orion you can see two bright stars, which are his two hunting dogs, the brighter of which is Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Orion , the hunter and his two dog stars are forever hunting across the sky for the Seven Sisters of the Pleaides. Betelgeuse is the star of the upper left corner of Orion.
About every evening I run my jyotish computer program to show the location of the planets at the current time in my location. Then I look for the planets. With a little jyotish program experience, it is easy to know what planets will be visible at what time during the night. Over time it is easy to see all the planets. To do so is to feel some sense of connection, some sort of alignment, with the cosmos.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
by Michael Mamas | Monday, February 9, 2015 | Spirituality |
It seems that fewer and fewer people believe in God these days. Even in India, the Land of the Veda, this is happening with many of the young people. We do well to examine why.
When I was a kid, the idea of God was very odd to me. He was presented as someone who was sitting on a cloud somewhere orchestrating our world. Answers were weak at best to so many fundamental questions like, “If there is a God, why is there suffering?” Even I, for a period of time in my youth, could not accept what I was being told. Like most youth all over the world these days, I was brought up with rational, scientific thought. I was taught to think for myself and demand that things made sense. What I was told about God simply did not make sense.
At first glance, this seems to be a terrible state of affairs. However, this cloud does have a silver lining. Over the generations, misunderstanding and superstition have crept into the understanding of God. Also, older understandings no longer address the mentality of our modern age. As I like to say, the knowledge is eternal, but the way it is taught must change eternally to interface with, to be understood and accepted by, the mentality of the times.
If God is something the younger generation is to believe in, these times demand that God must make sense from a rational scientific perspective. The silver lining here is that after older understandings of God are rejected, the nature of existence is pursued anew. Then a deep and rational knowledge of the underlying basis of existence emerges. Then, after long and careful examination, the time comes when one realizes that, when understood in this modern light, the ancient Vedic knowledge is realized to be not only correct, but profoundly correct, extensive, detailed, and scientifically consistent. The only problem was that we were not provided with the rigors of understanding that the ancient Rishis held. Of course, our modern scientific language is new, but that level of rigor and rationality was certainly there in the minds of the ancient Seers.
Adi Shankara said that the knowledge must be revived generation after generation. If not, it is lost to time. So in a sense, we can thank the modern thinkers. It is individuals among them that examined the nature of existence carefully enough to reveal the underlying truths in the language of our time. It is they that are bringing forth the spiritual regeneration of our planet and the rediscovery of the wisdom held by the ancient Rishis.
To those modern thinkers I simply say that in the final analysis Vedic science does make sense to the modern mentality. In fact, I encourage you to demand that it make sense. Do not stop until the nature of life and existence makes sense to you. Purify the knowledge. Cast out any superstition or distortion. Pursue truth. Know that it leads to an incredible place… one that satisfies the mind as well as the heart… one that at first glance may make no sense what so ever, but in time, makes perfect sense.
© Michael Mamas. All rights reserved.
