karma blues

Now I’ll attempt to demystify the story I recounted briefly in the post entitled, “Thiru Neela Kantam is a weird sound. Where did it come from? What does it mean?”

It represents seeking self-realization through the  focus of the mind, and the control of the senses and desires and practice of self-discipline.

The gods and demons represent the positives and negatives of the personality. The involvement of both the gods and the demons signifies that integration and balance of the positives and negatives is necessary when  seeking bliss through spiritual practice.   Both the energies must be put to work for the common goal.

The ocean of milk is the mind or the human consciousness. The mind is like an ocean while the thoughts and emotions are the waves in the ocean.

Mandhara, the mountain symbolizes concentration. The word Mandhara is made up of two words Mana (mind) and Dhara (a single line) which means holding the mind in one line. This is possible only by concentration.

The snake used as a rope for churning, symbolizes desire. The snake used in the churning of the ocean denotes that the gods and the demons held desire-even though it was a desire to seek immortality, it was a desire non-the-less – as a rope and churned the mind with the help of concentration and withdrawal of the senses. Desire, if not controlled will overpower and destroy an individual.

The poison symbolizes suffering and pain which is a counter-reaction of the mind and body, that one undergoes at the beginning of spiritual practice. When the mind is subjected to intense concentration, the first thing that comes out of the process is intense suffering and great inner turmoil. These must be resolved otherwise further progress is not possible.

Lord Shiva symbolizes the ascetic principle. His role in this story as the consumer of poison suggests that one can deal with the early problems of spiritual life by cultivating the qualities of Lord Shiva, namely, courage, initiative, willingness, discipline, simplicity, austerity, detachment, compassion, pure love and asceticism.

Like a Bollywood movie, this story has many subplots.  This just scratches the surface.  I’ll explore further and keep you posted with the findings.

Karma is your pre-disposition and is one of the primary influences which decides whether you will have money, relationship etc.
karma is the fabric of your life, and it encompasses almost all of the experiences that we go through life after life. Ever wondered why some people have tons of money, great romantic life and vibrant health while many others suffer for the want of it? This is due to karma which rules all aspects of human life like health, wealth, education etc

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Food choice is an action with consequence, so you could say that eating is karmic.  karma is basically ‘you reap what you sow’, so think about this: Is what you eat free from the involvement of creating pain, suffering and death by eating another creature?  By eating meat, fish, poultry, eggs etc you are reaping suffering caused by your choice.  Even if you didn’t kill it yourself, the flesh carries forward the energy of pain, fear and death into the food.  The energies in the flesh may be affecting your energy field.

If you do kill and prepare the flesh yourself, is it done with consciousness around it?  Like native Indians giving thanks to the animal for giving up it’s life force for their benefit.

Think about the food you eat.  Consider the cook who prepares your food?  Is that person happy or are they angry and despise their job?  Are they an addict?  Or are they giving off good vibes of love and positivity while cooking?

You are what you eat.

karma is what governs life.  Mantra is what corrects it.

The literal meaning of karma is action. Action in this case needs to be defined not as an impulse at the physical level, but an impulse at a subtle or psychological level. Hence, thinking is action. Everything that you think creates vibrations and leaves impressions. The Buddha said that one’s whole life consists of one’s thoughts. This is the best definition of karma I have ever found. You caused the life that you are now living. You may think that the reality that you have created is very ugly, but at the moment you created it you thought that this was the best that could be accomplished. That’s why you created it. When did you create it? You created it in a number of previous births. The desire to create this reality was so intense that you ended up creating it. Nobody was responsible but you. Why did you do this? You did not know any better at the time you created it.

Once a psychological reality becomes a material reality, it is very difficult to undo it. I am not saying it is impossible, only very difficult. At the thought level, the reality is like water, but at the material level, it has become like ice, very solid and very real. It takes time to diffuse it. The reality that has become material is called prarabdha in Sanskrit.

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Thiru Neela Kantam (tee roo neeeee la cannnn tummmm)
This sound phrase or mantra comes from the Sanskrit meaning ‘blue throat’. What the heck? What does this have to do with karma you say?
I’d like to share a really cool story about “The Churning of the Milky Ocean” in Hindu mythology that uses archetypes to relay to us many esoteric themes. In this case I’ll stick to the theme or aspect of karma.

Cool Story: Samudra Manthan aka The Churning of the Milky Ocean
Indra, the king of heaven was cursed by a great sage one day, when the sage offered a garland to bless him with fortune came across a sage who offered him a special garland. Indra’s elephant was irritated by its smell, grabbed the garland and stomped it into the ground. This enraged the sage by this seemingly disrespectful act and cursed him and all the other gods in heaven by taking away all of their strength, energy, and fortune.

Before that, the gods had a bit more power to overcome the demons but after this many battles were fought to gain control over the universe. They each wanted to make the rule permanent so sought out the nectar of immortality that was located at the bottom of the milky ocean. The gods were advised to be very diplomatic with the demons if they wanted an opportunity to have the nectar, so they formed an alliance with demons to jointly churn the ocean and then share it among them. The demons went for it.

They decided that the best way to retrieve the nectar was to churn it up from the bottom. They used a mountain for the churning tool and a snake for the churning rope. The gods held the tail of the snake, while the demons held its head, and they pulled on it alternately causing the mountain to rotate, which in turn churned the ocean. The mountain soon sank and the snake, feeling queasy from all of the twisting and squeezing, vomited up its poison.

The poison was toxic enough to destroy all of creation. Shiva was called upon to save the day and out of His compassion, He drank the poison before it could corrupt the world. It was so strong that it changed the color of Shiva’s neck to blue. For this reason, he is also called Neelakantha (the blue-necked one, nila = “blue”, kantha = “throat”).

How does this apply to your life?  To your karma?  Stay tuned and I’ll attempt to decipher the meaning of the myth.

This morning I listened to a tele-seminar with the “Youtube” guru Dattatriya Siva Baba. He said that karma is a way of thinking; rather, a predilection or obsession with a way of thinking. It made so much sense. Whatever we were obsessed with ‘then’, we are obsessed with now. We become what we think and karma is a way of thinking. Poverty is a mindset, as is wealth consciousness, teacher mindset, baker mindset, farmer, scientist, or playboy mindset.

In order to change our karma, to change our life, we must change our thought process. This can be done with the use of sounds or mantras (which are sound waves)discovered by yogis deep in meditation. Manifesting cannot really be done until our present karmas are cleaned up. Only then can we think of prosperity and enlightenment.

The mantra to ‘bust’ karma is “Thiru Neela Kantam”
(tear oo knee la can tum)
Let this mantra, these sounds, repeat in your mind all day. Fill your consciousness with the sound making no room for the thoughts that you were obsessed with.

“Everybody comes from the same source. If you hate another human being, you’re hating part of yourself.”
- Elvis Presley