When I was driving yesterday, I followed a car with a license plate that read 'manifest", so I thought it might be a good time to continue the train of thought that I started about manifestations and avatars.
In The Hindu Way of Awakening, Swami Kriyananda writes that:
The meaning of avatara, Yogananda stated, is not that Divine Consciousness, which has never known imperfection, appears in human form to show us a reality completely alien to our own. Krishna, Jesus Christ, and all other avatars are not only manifestations of Spirit. They are descents also in the sense of knowing, from experience, what it is to be human beings who attained oneness with the Divine. Their example shows us our own divine potential."
There are several floods in my book. Section I begins with a flood and ends with a flood. Floods are rich symbols. The flood myth is a story in which deities send a flood to destroy civilization as a form of retribution. Religious texts are littered with them, from Noah to Zeus.
Flood myths also typically contain a hero, like Noah who represents the powerful force of life. Penelope is mine. The current dialogue about manifestation seems to be pretty formulaic. Step 1. identify goal Step 2. Meditate on goal, etc... That's not quite how I see it. If you use the metaphor of the atom and think about the colossal amount of science and energy surrounding fission, then, for me, it comes into focus more. What has always struck me as a writer and in general about life is our lack of imagination. That is why I love biographies, because it shows me how unexpected and complicated life really is. We are so limited in our own visions for ourselves. Why did we go to the moon, because Kennedy said one day that we would do it. Then the scramble to manifest it began. One of my struggles with manifestation is that we are so limited in our imaginations or visions of what is possible. In that way Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 doesn't really work for me.
For true, radical manifestation (the ones the avatars teach us about), I think that there first has to be a washing away, a flood. If you think of it in terms of a seed and all of the life potential of a seed or a blossom to bloom. Think how painful that might be to crack open and let life out. Think about how it feels to be a flower and peel away the husk to the internal bloom and then stretch it out and expose it to the world. Yoga is what has made me think it might be painful because I have experienced so much real pain on my mat breaking through the layers and layers of protection.
Like Noah in the flood, with manifestation, what do you bring with you and what do you leave behind?
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
William Shakespeare
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than darkness.
Robert Fulghum
In The Hindu Way of Awakening, Swami Kriyananda writes that:
The meaning of avatara, Yogananda stated, is not that Divine Consciousness, which has never known imperfection, appears in human form to show us a reality completely alien to our own. Krishna, Jesus Christ, and all other avatars are not only manifestations of Spirit. They are descents also in the sense of knowing, from experience, what it is to be human beings who attained oneness with the Divine. Their example shows us our own divine potential."
There are several floods in my book. Section I begins with a flood and ends with a flood. Floods are rich symbols. The flood myth is a story in which deities send a flood to destroy civilization as a form of retribution. Religious texts are littered with them, from Noah to Zeus.
Flood myths also typically contain a hero, like Noah who represents the powerful force of life. Penelope is mine. The current dialogue about manifestation seems to be pretty formulaic. Step 1. identify goal Step 2. Meditate on goal, etc... That's not quite how I see it. If you use the metaphor of the atom and think about the colossal amount of science and energy surrounding fission, then, for me, it comes into focus more. What has always struck me as a writer and in general about life is our lack of imagination. That is why I love biographies, because it shows me how unexpected and complicated life really is. We are so limited in our own visions for ourselves. Why did we go to the moon, because Kennedy said one day that we would do it. Then the scramble to manifest it began. One of my struggles with manifestation is that we are so limited in our imaginations or visions of what is possible. In that way Step 1, Step 2, Step 3 doesn't really work for me.
For true, radical manifestation (the ones the avatars teach us about), I think that there first has to be a washing away, a flood. If you think of it in terms of a seed and all of the life potential of a seed or a blossom to bloom. Think how painful that might be to crack open and let life out. Think about how it feels to be a flower and peel away the husk to the internal bloom and then stretch it out and expose it to the world. Yoga is what has made me think it might be painful because I have experienced so much real pain on my mat breaking through the layers and layers of protection.
Like Noah in the flood, with manifestation, what do you bring with you and what do you leave behind?
"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
William Shakespeare
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than darkness.
Robert Fulghum
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