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The Master/“The Clumsy Alien”

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“The Clumsy Alien”

The beginning of the Path was such a happy time for me! I was overfilled with joy like never before. After all, I was beginning my search for God! And, if I had already met people who had found and cognized Him, and know Him, then I would certainly find Him too! I had no doubt about it: I knew that.

First, I mastered a short course of exercises on psycho-physical self-regulation and on opening the anahata chakra, in which the spiritual heart originates. It was interesting to master meditation, that is, the work of consciousness. And how great it was to see the results of this work!

The implementation of such seemingly simple exercises led to enormous changes both in self-awareness and in my attitude to people. At first, it was unusual to look at them and at all living beings from the spiritual heart. Feelings of warmth, kindness, and compassion for everyone appeared in me. And the world, which to me had seemed so hostile before, as if… was replaced. “Suddenly”, it turned out that it was so beautiful!

Mastering the Pranava and Latihan meditations gave the bliss of the first contact with God as the Holy Spirit, thus far without division into His specific Representatives. An acquaintance with Them still lay ahead.

What a miracle it was for me to feel the Love of God — Living God — and to learn to love Him and everything that He has created.

It seemed: what could be more natural for a person than to live in love? After all, we, humans, were created by God precisely for this… But I just had to get used to living like that! I had to get used both to the fact that I myself love, and to the fact that I’m loved by others. And, for some reason, the latter was the most difficult for me. I had an impression that I was adapting to life on a new (for me) planet, where everything is unusual, and where I myself was a “clumsy alien”.

At first, living with the concentration of self-consciousness in the anahata chakra was only possible for me for short stretches of time. This skill, so easily achieved in meditation, immediately “disappeared” under adverse conditions. I had to constantly be on my guard, tracking whether I was in anahata or whether I had habitually returned to the head chakras.

Determining this became clear based on my reactions to stressful situations, especially to the injustice manifested in relation to me or other people. Usually, I reacted to this very sharply and rudely. Confident that I was right, I didn’t even think about whether I had understood the situation correctly. After all, according to my own understanding of justice, I was the only person who could be considered right!…

I noticed that from the spiritual heart, I accepted any circumstance calmly, while maintaining the understanding that everything that happened was from God. Also, I was able to keep a benevolent attitude even towards those people who behaved in an incorrect manner. If, however, I did respond to someone’s aggression or hostility with my own irritation, anger, or resentment, then this meant that the stability of myself as a spiritual heart had not yet been achieved.

And God has provided me with a lot of opportunities to learn this, and at each next stage of advancement there have been completely new situations.

* * *

My meditative trainings took place mainly among wildlife. I began to spend a lot of time there and was surprised to realize that I had hardly noticed its beauty before! And if I had, it must have been a very long time ago — in childhood… How much richer my life became when vast coastline expanses, rivers and lakes, the silence of the forest, the tenderness of flowers, the strength and purity of trees, and birds became an integral part of my life!

Thanks to this, I made another discovery, namely that I was ignorant about many aspects of nature! I now realized that I was living in a wonderful world created by God for everyone, including me! And that I didn’t know anything about it! What is the name of this flower? What kind of mushroom is this? Which bird is singing so beautifully? Whom should I ask?… In order to overcome this ignorance at least a little, I began to search for information on the internet and watch films about our planet and its inhabitants.

It was a joy to learn to communicate with wildlife: to tune in and merge with its beauty, to master its silence — so that gradually they could become the beauty and silence of myself as a soul. All this helps to refine the consciousness, for without doing so it is impossible to approach God — the Subtlest Consciousness in the universe.

By aligning ourselves with the best that is in His Creation, we learn to feel Him, becoming more sensitive to His Thoughts.

Merging with the beauty of the Creation is the first step towards Merging with Him. And He appears before us first as the Holy Spirits, and then as Their United We, which we call the Creator, God the Father, and other appropriate names.

God is great! He is infinitely huge! And He is Love!

In order to make communication and Mergence with Him possible, we also need to become huge and pure souls, turned into the same Love.

Is it possible for the soul to become so? Yes! Although it is difficult, and it will take years, and even an entire life. And maybe — even more than just one.

First, the soul needs to be cleansed of all the dirt of vices that has stuck and soaked in it, disfiguring it, fettering it, and taking away its right to love.

* * *

When I began my own long journey of purification, my body was in a deplorable state. The list of chronic diseases was long. And I didn’t really try to fight them: either I was tired of this, or I simply didn’t have the habit of caring for my body’s health. I looked at it as something “secondary”, and even as an “interference”. I saw it as an unnecessary “distraction” from a “spiritual” life!

But is a serious spiritual advancement with a completely sick body possible at all? For some reason, it took me a very long time to understand this obvious fact…

The cleansing began for me with the understanding that the cause of the disease is the energy pollution of my body, which is a consequence of my ethical mistakes in the past, including, first of all, the consumption of non-vegetarian food. (I remember how much I sobbed, horrified to realize that because of me, animals had been killed and died in agony and that this couldn’t be rectified!) Other causes of energy pollution include: living in negative emotions, and close communication with energetically coarse people; which is especially true with regards to sexual relations.

The stage of Raja Yoga provides opportunities for combating the energy pollution of the body. At this stage, the cleansing and development of the energy structures of the body — the chakras, meridians, and segments — take place.

For me, very good results at this stage were achieved by cleansing the chakras with the help of using the image of a tetrahedron, “winter swimming”, and meditative running. During training, I listened to the audio recordings of the instructions given in “Ecopsychology”.

Before this time, I had very rarely systematically engaged in sports training, and doing so had always been hard for me. It was also impossible to have called me a hardy person: back then, I used to catch a cold from every cool blow of the wind. What a surprise it was when it turned out that I was able — in any weather, even in the cold — to run for several hours! Running — with pleasure and without fatigue of the body!

Due to meditative running, my health significantly improved. Such training also contributed to the mobility of the consciousness. I learned how to easily move around with the concentration of the consciousness, first within the body and its energy structures, and then beyond it. In addition, such meditations as “Cross of Buddha”, “Giving Away”, “Pranava”, “Latihan”, and working with the image of a tetrahedron — when performed while doing meditative running — were more effective and brighter than when they were performed in the usual way. I managed to feel God better and better!

Mastering “winter swimming” was much more difficult. I have always had a difficult relationship with the cold. Somehow, I can freeze even on a sunny summer day on the beach! So, when I first had to step barefoot into the snow and plunge into the icy water, I had great doubts that my body would survive after that. Probably, I made all possible mistakes then — because instead of the joy and bliss that I had read about, I had… the opposite state as a result…

With time, I have started to learn how to swim in an ice hole correctly: to enter the water in a “dissolved” state of the spiritual heart, being filled with peace and love. Under such conditions, both joy and bliss became the effect!

Swimming in ice water helped me to gain a foothold in the new states of consciousness, acquired at the previous steps. And also, it taught me how not to lose these states in extreme conditions for the body. And I stopped visiting pharmacies as often as I used to, because my body — what a miracle! — was almost no longer ill! But I noticed that when I stopped systematically swimming in ice water, due to a job change and a new schedule that did not leave me with any free time or energy, that the state of my health immediately worsened.

It is very lucky if you can live close to a body of water that is suitable for winter swimming, especially one which does not require a long travel time using public transport. And how stupid it is not to use such an opportunity!

Probably, many people do not dare to start “winter swimming”, which is such an effective and affordable way to gain health, because of fears that it will be too hard for them. They think that only extremely heroic people can plunge into a hole in the ice. However, I hope that my own example can prove the opposite; after all, if such a frail, weak and, to put it mildly, not very brave person like me could manage, then this is possible for everyone!

* * *

During the initial stages of Raja Yoga, I made a “discovery” which is almost comical for me to recall: “it turned out” that, upon moving to each next step, I need to cleanse the body again and again — working with the increasingly subtle quality of energies of each new level. And I had thought that it was enough to just do a “spring cleaning” only once. But the situation can be compared to what would happen if one were to put one’s home in order only once and never take up a broom and a rag again. Or — just once in a lifetime brush one's teeth…

The work of maintaining the energy purity of the body initially takes a lot of strength and seems very difficult. But, as the volume of consciousness increases, it becomes easier.

However, what really is not easy is the achievement of ethical purity.