Learn How to Fight the Good Fight

Many students ask me, “How can I work with Mantra Yoga and Nadam in my practice?”

Mantra Yoga and Nadam is such a vast, huge, rich subject. It is the means to learn about the mystical sound of silence that resides within you.

“Stay engaged and do something.” ~ Manorama

This first principle from the Luminous Soul and Sanskrit Studies Methods is fundamental to working with Mantra Yoga. You don’t have to do everything, but you do have to do something.

Often what happens is we get overwhelmed when we think of how to approach a practice like Mantra Yoga and Nadam. But it is the approach that is critical. The approach that you use is the most important thing. The process is the critical piece. If you approach the subject with a sense of process, and a sense of staying open, staying engaged, doing something, and connecting with it, slowly and steadily everything will start to open up.

Approaching Yogic teachings with this Luminous Soul Principle of ‘staying engaged and doing something’ helps students from being overwhelmed and shutting down.

September Luminous Soul Exercise

1. Take a deep breath in and exhale.

2. Settle into your body a little bit.

In the Luminous Soul Method, meditation and chanting are not doorways to run away from your self. Meditation is not you getting the hell out of your lousy life. Meditation is you getting more present in your life in all ways. It’s you coming into contact with what is your real life more and more and then living from that understanding.

3. Luminous Soul Invocation Verse

Chant this verse 3 x’s each week for one month

Om

namah śivāya gurave

nāda-bindu-kalātmane

nirañjana-padam yāti

nityam yatra parāyanah

***

We offer respect to Lord Shiva, the inner guru and guiding light.

This inner light reveals itself as nada, bindu, and kala.

The one who connects with and respects this inner light transcends identification with the body and mind, experiences great joy, and realizes the highest Self.

Translation by Manorama

4. Sit quietly and begin to work with the notion of silence. All mantras emanate from silence. In Yoga, silence is not just the absence of speaking, it is the absence of thought.

5. After you sit for Luminous Soul Meditation then you are in a intuitively receptive place to begin working with the deeper meaning of the Luminous Soul Invocation verse.

Working with the Luminous Soul Invocation Mantra

Let’s look at how to approach this mantra. We extend reverence through the mantra to Lord Shiva who is the source of Sanskrit. And, the source of Sanskrit is the bindu, the point. And, the source of Sanskrit is the rhythm. And, Shiva is known as that inner guru or that inner light, that inner luminosity.

Shiva is the inner radiance that exists within us all. And this inner guide will manifest as the nada, the subtle sound, the bindu, the point or consciousness, and kala beyond them both. The one who attends to this light, the one who pays attention to this light, the one who spends time contemplating the light, being with the light, loving the light, understands the light.

You have to fight also a little bit with light to understand it. But don’t misunderstand me. A little, as they say in Spanish, a little pelea, right, a little scuffle. What I mean by fighting is you push against it a tad. You’re trying to understand it, you’re not quite sure yet. To live in a fight, of course, is not good, that’s not the idea of the yogis.

But, to struggle for clarity, and to learn the art of fighting well, fighting for the sake of the relationship is important. Fight for the sake of the relationship, of understanding your Self. The one who connects with this inner light is the one who fights for that. And the one who wants it that much, realizes it. It’s that simple.

***

If the call to fight for your Self, for your understanding, for your light. To push against that which keeps you from clarity, I invite you to join me and students from all around the world for a year of transcending that which keeps us blocked.

© 2015 Sanskrit Studies/ Luminous Soul & Manorama

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