SPIRITUAL ABC
step by step instruction
Vol 1-6
An Introduction and Complement
to the Online Course in six parts.
by Bjorn Säw
Spiritual ABC - Vol 1-6 1. Self-Inquiry: Who Am I? Starting out we wonder at life, who am I and what am I supposed to do? Do we follow the norm or do we strike out to find our own way? Will we seek the truth of who we are? Do we stick by religion and Faith or can we independently free ourselves? Will you seek your own freedom and liberate yourself from all ignorance and unknowing? Self-inquiry is the beginning of a life lived in spiritual pursuit. A thirst and desire for knowledge and wisdom, for insight and understanding is your fuel to leave home to find answers. Exploring Self-inquiry, Meditation, Satsanga, Service, Submission and Communion is a progression of development on the spiritual path. Yet they are all part and parcel of your make up right now. Inherent in the nature of an awake human being lies these attributes. We will explore and research each of them in six different yet complementing essays starting with Self Inquiry. ‘Who Am I?’ is the famous edict for any spiritual aspirant wanting to understand their experience. This leads us to seek for answers. We study, we read, we contemplate. We seek out teachers and
teachings. We go on retreats and attend seminars. We begin to meditate and ask questions. We strive to comprehend the meaning of life itself. What is the Truth? This probing self inquiry can itself lead to deep insights if pursued with wholehearted effort. Who are you? Before time and space? Before thought and emotion? This method is often one of reduction. To negate what you think you are. Neti neti is a famous Indian saying that means ‘Not this, not this’. This inquiry often leads us to take up meditation as a practice to help penetrate to the meaning of this. But first four exercises to inquire into: 1. Do you want to be free more than anything else? Meaning are you willing to give up what is most important to you in favour of freedom? What is most important to you? Write it down. 2. Can you give up your past and your future? What is your past and what is your future? Write it down and examine each thing. 3. What are your ideas of Enlightenment? What do you think Freedom is? Examine your thoughtworld and write down what you think it is. 4. Contemplate deeply: Who Am I? Before thought and emotion? Prior to time and space? Before age and gender? What is consciousness itself?
2. Meditation: Tranquility and Insight. Meditation is when you want to pursue your spiritual inquiry with something practical, with something you can do. When you have read enough books, heard enough teachings, pondered too long and can’t find satisfaction and your mind is so full you’d just want to go quiet and still inside. Then the practice of meditation lead you into a silence before thought, a quietude of emotion through mindfulness of the breath. Long periods of sitting will establish a sense of equanimity and balance, creating a fertile field of receptivity to insight. Seek out guidance and help to support your practice and progress. Pointers to meditation practice: 1. Designate a meditation place in your home. 2. Set up a day-schedule of 40 minute sessions. 3. Focus on your breath, in and out, at the point of your nose. 4. Settle and fix your posture and let the body be still and quiet. 5. Clarity of intention. Know why you sit. That you want to be free more than anything else.
6. Sit as if you’re not alone, include everything within a larger sense of Self. Meditation will be the passive quiet side of the practice while Self-Inquiry is your active engagement in your questions, using your mind to inquire. Like the two sides of a coin they reinforce each other. One like fire and one like water. Alternate between them in balance.
3. Satsanga: In the Company of Truth. When meditation doesn’t do it for you any longer. When you have exhausted your body as well as mind and you want to move on. When initial insights and revelations have worn out their novelty and you’re still looking for final answers, you may seek out a spiritual teacher. You come to sit at their feet to absorb any hint and direction toward enlightenment. You are now very thirsty, very eager to come to an end of your search. Maybe even with some sense of desperation. Tired of trying to raise yourself through your own effort, exhausted and somewhat disillusioned you come to the spiritual guide for help. Ready to listen. With an open heart you engage your teacher with all your questions, to clarify all your doubts. This is Satsanga, being in the company of the Holy Ones, sitting humbly with the Saints. Be willing to entertain the guidance and follow directions. Throw caution to the wind and give yourself wholeheartedly to the investigation. Meeting a teacher that can help you is a big deal. Maybe the biggest single event that can catalyst you beyond your own capacity. Many will say that meeting your Guru is the turning point on your spiritual path.
Pointers for Satsanga: 1. Don’t be shy, ask questions. Engage sincerely. 2. Listen closely, follow advice. 3. Be persistent and diligent. Don’t give up. Come back for more. 4. Ransack your mind and heart, question your motives. Challenge your ideas. 5. Be ready to leave everything behind. Your meditation and self-inquiry takes on a whole new dimension. Now with the support and guidance of a realised person. It will accelerate your progress beyond belief. What you previously thought impossible becomes possible simply by association with the Guru. His or her grace will affect you deeply and it will have the power to catapult you beyond what you can imagine.
4. Service: Selfless Giving. Having established your practice with Self-Inquiry and Meditation, and after having seeked out spiritual help in Satsanga, you now will have to face your own Ego; the part in you that doesn’t care. Whether or not you have been used to selfless giving prior to embarking on your spiritual path you will now have to include it as part of the practice. How selfish are you? How much care do you have in your heart? Selfless service is one of the greatest learning experiences we can have. Working for others, helping and caring for others teaches us to be humble, appreciative, thankful and compassionate. In small things as well as in large things. Caring for the needs of others while pursuing our own liberation is possible. This is the time to separate the needs of the Ego with the needs of the True Self. Caring for others is natural in a liberated perspective. It will greatly enhance your overall understanding of what spiritual liberation is all about; being able to distinguish between Ego and Self. Your practice is now maturing.
Things to consider: 1. To pursue your own enlightenment for the sake of the whole. 2. To include all other people in your field of vision. 3. To be part of the world yet not of it. 4. To respond selflessly without hesitation. 5. To aid where aid is needed. Opening your heart to the suffering of the world. To realise the pain of Samsara that many are lost in and that we ourselves are committed to overcome through diligence and perseverance. Serve and love our fellow brothers and sisters. Realise compassion. But foremost, learn about your Ego, the greatest obstacle to your own freedom.
5.
Submission: Surrender of self. It’s beginning to dawn on you that you will have to give up something essential. All your work up till now, your Self-Inquiry, your Meditation, your Satsanga and your Service, is waking you up to the greatest obstacle on the Path; your own Ego. The deeper you go in your introspection the closer you will get to the core of the problem; your Ego, your separate sense of self. Over the time on your path you will have had to abandon many ideas and strongholds. Attachments close to you. Like discarding clothes on your body, first the top layers, then the under layers, until you stand naked, nothing left to loose. Yet what remains is that sense of being yourself. Now what is being asked of you is to surrender that very last lifeline; the sense of I. This will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done and it will need a lot of soul searching and sincere thought to come to terms with. It doesn’t matter that you’ve seen the Truth of who you are, the timeless eternal Self that exist prior and
beyond time and space. Your Ego have up till this point enjoyed being the knower and enjoyer of all your spiritual knowledge and will not give up without a fight. It will resist your attempts to dismantle it. But if you have a true teacher, he or she will not let you off the hook. It’s crunch time. Time to surrender. Advice to Surrender: 1. Are you ready to give up your life? 2. Can you leave everything you know and have behind? 3. Are you ready to face the Unknown? 4. What is stopping you to surrender? 5. Do you Trust your teacher? 6. Do you Trust the Truth? You will be very clear and conscious of dying to yourself. You will know if you have surrendered or not. It will be manifested to you. You will be in no doubt. Liberation has come.
6. Communion: Together as One. At last we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. All of our work is finally paying off. Starting off with an individual wish to come to the end of suffering within ourselves, to realise Nirvana, the cessation of our fears and anxieties, to realise it’s not only about ourselves but that it fits within a larger infinite context where we as a person are liberated into a complete whole. We have come to a complete understanding of ourselves and stand free to learn in communion with others. We no longer fear to be lost because we have found eternal salvation and we live within a liberated perspective that is always, over and over, reconfirmed to us. We are now able to share and participate in whatever context we choose to be in, from a freed up mind and heart. Now opens up the possibility to actively pursue a liberated living context with others that share the same passion for a life in the Spirit. With this communion with others we can see how spiritual fruition includes more people than just oneself. It is in coming together as One we get to partake in the promise of Heaven. We get to share the unified Truth that we all belong to.
Things to consider: 1. This does not happen automatically. We need to work towards it. 2. It’s a learning process, we can’t know beforehand. 3. We need to come together with others in the same pursuit. 4. We’d want to realise a shared perspective. A union we partake in equally. 5. The Truth will set us Free. We will set the Ego aside to commune together. The Ego will be there and interfere from time to time but we will learn from its appearances. It’s actually how we learn about ourselves. We will see the impersonal nature, the conditioning that we all also share in. Now the Ego is no longer the obstacle but the very root from which we draw all information from. Samsara is now the very fertile ground of Nirvana. The world is no longer apart from us but is our very own body. And we feel finally that we have come to rest in an evolving exciting world that needs every single one of us.
These six aspects are inherent in our experience of ourselves now and will be part of our realised perspective of Truth as a source of continuous inspiration. • • • • • •
Self-Inquiry Meditation Satsanga Service Submission Communion