Satisfaction, a Spiritual Path to Liberation.
‘Wherever the mind of the individual finds satisfaction (without agitation), let it be concentrated on that. In every such case, the true nature of the highest bliss will manifest itself.’
Translation Jaidev Singh.
On Wednesday night in my Sangha, spiritual community, we did this Dharana from my favourite of all spiritual texts, the Vijnanabhairava or VBT. It is a tantric text that has 112 teachings, practices, and contemplations for Self-Realisation.
What is so treasured for me about the tantric path that sets it aside from anything else, is how it is on discovering who we are through our daily life, which is very close to my heart, as discussed in my book the She-Monk. We don't renounce life, we embrace it.
They are in different degrees of complexity and difficulty that only a devoted practitioner can hope to, in time, get to understand from experience and embody. Some sound super easy, but everyone comes with incredible subtleness and brilliance, and everyone has a way to liberation if we stick with it. Dharana is a focus, concentration on one thing that stills the mind and takes it beyond itself to the Self, to pure consciousness.
This particular dharana is one I put in the top five life-changing practices. Whether you are into spirituality, mysticism or not and just want a more blessed experience of life these will help. We have all experienced deep satisfaction at times, but not known this extraordinary gateway it is to bliss, to self-knowledge.
Deep satisfaction gives us focus, a focused, present and penetrating mind that is open and expansive and in a bliss state. That state is an avenue for God realisation. It is God or divine consciousness revealing itself to you as you. That is what these dharanas are designed to do and this is a very easy one to pull off. But it takes some awareness and commitment.
My daughter has this as a gift, a ‘siddhi’ she was born with and taught me as I watched her in amazement. She would often be lost in something with great focus and more importantly, a savouring of the experience. She would come to me as a young girl and say ‘mum that is so satisfying, I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel so satisfied.'
She would do it again and again and then actively look for the next satisfying thing and as a result, was an easy and delightful child to be around. Her mood would rub off on all of us.
The bliss we feel through this satisfaction is the Divine Mother herself, her nourishment, care, love, and blessing. When we take on this practice and actively look for things that bring us deep satisfaction to the point of calming and focusing the mind, then we get stronger at lightening up our lives and bringing shakti or spiritual energy to it also.
The deal is we become adept at being in peace, in a place of silence and pure presence. We stop pause and welcome the present profoundly. We start to savour life through our life experiences and learn to look for opportunities to do this. Other dharanas in the text build us up for this through music, food, fragrance, nature, intimacy and so forth.
You are welcome to join my online subscriber group. Here you get all the recordings and teachings and practices from this extraordinary text which we study every Wednesday evening consistently on rotation as it takes years to get.
If you can learn to extract these moments of satisfaction, become present and savour the experience, the feeling as the moment fades, you are becoming more masterful of your life and enriching your experience of life spiritually.
Find what delights you – art, cooking, bush walking, laughing, making love, hugging, smelling flowers, whatever it is, and make it a part of your daily routine; to become focused and blissful through the deep satisfaction you feel from it. Notice how wonderful it is to have a calm mind and with that calm mind then all kinds of divine energy are available to you, inspiration, ideas, bliss.
Big Heart. Big Mind. Big Being™. Here is one of the pathways, do it every day, prioritise it, and delight in it. This is more important than anything else because, without it, you are still a machine.
We are meant to realise the truth of who we are- the goal of life is self-knowledge. These practices bring us happiness, peace, skillfulness in life and personal mastery and responsibility for our life experiences.
Remember if the mind is agitated, is craving, is controlled by the senses, then you need this work because that causes our suffering and discontentedness in life.
A calm mind is key and is achievable by grace, practice, and consistency in your spiritual practice.
‘One has to plunge into the source of the delight. One will then find that it is the Divine, the Essential Self of all.’ Jaidev Singh.
Jai Maa.
Jai Nityananda.
©MataKamaleshwari.