Sat Yoga: A Post-Jungian Approach to Meditation ~ Satsang Teaching & Guided Meditation -Shunyamurti

[Music] so let me explain a little bit about how meditation works what it is from the perspective of Sat Yoga we use an approach that is very similar to that of sri ramana maharshi who taught what he called Atma vichara which is often translated as self enquiry or self investigation self discovery and we have fleshed it out a bit and explained it more in terms that the Western ego mind and structure can digest perhaps and make use of with more clarity than then the more simple and direct explanation that Ramana was able to give to people of India or people who were on the already let's say the path of non-duality or the path of realization of the consciousness that transcends the ego so to explain meditation we have to understand that in our childhoods we were taught through the acquisition of language to represent ourselves and to create an internal self representation made up of words based on the I thought the I am but I am this or that I am the one who carries a certain name a certain body body type a certain body style attitude and and so the the basic representation of the self incrusted itself gradually with more and more self image and self-concepts and we learned to live in the plane of representation and we lost touch with the real with the self we were originally before birth or before the acquisition of language and we gradually hypnotized ourselves through the continual flow of internal mental chatter that would support the representation of the self and the selfs attitude toward the representations of others because this internal representation of the of the self also contained and contains the representations of those who taught you who you are supposed to be and what they desired from you and demanded from you and what they considered you to be and the worth they considered you to have to them etc we Freud called those the super-ego figures so the self representation or ego is is an internal representation that has become extremely complex over time because there have been a number of variations of self-image that we would create one for the mother one for the father one for the siblings one for the people in the playground and one for the teacher etc etc and so we would have a number of different ego fragments oh I'll use he said that the outer layer of the ego he called the persona or indeed there were several different ones so persona I and the floral and this was the the part of the self representation that we would use to have interactions with others to lubricate social situations to accommodate to act friendly even when we didn't feel friendly basically to put on a false front and to navigate our way through difficult situations and we would gradually get a very let's say nuanced or set of persona one for when we were at work and one for when we were playing football and one for being on a date and one for doing whatever other kinds of things were doing one for family reunions and etc etc and and they were all fake of course but we learned that in certain situations we had to act tough in other situations we had to act sweet and etc etc and so we got a repertoire of masks and the problem is that in some cases the masks got glued on to the face and then once we couldn't take it off we assumed well that's who I am didn't they make a movie or that wasn't that a Jim Carrey movie I think of the mask I didn't see it but I saw somebody showed me clips it was too horrible to show here I think but it was the idea is right so we have this this problem of some of us being stuck in a persona that we can't take off and don't even know that it's a persona anymore and then in other cases we just we know it's a persona but we feel like we can't afford to to reveal anything deeper than that we don't want to be invaded we don't want to to to be known we don't want to be too vulnerable and part of the reason for that is that in general we learn to use language as weapons words were for accusing somebody else of doing something bad or to demand something from them so because words were weapons and people hurt people very badly with words it was a good idea to have a thick skin and a very thick persona that couldn't be penetrated by somebody else's attacking language and so the the outer edge is just like the crust or the bark of a tree is a defensive layer and that's unfortunately ended up being robotic Lee used without great reflection and habitually people tend to remain in a kind of defensive stance with the ego and often will create social situations in which that's justified and so that the problem is if you have a defense or you have a more aggressive one you're the one who sends out the accusatory attacking words it's because it's better to attack first than to to be hurt and then try to retaliate everyone comes up with a certain kind of defensive strategy in dealing with a social system that is very competitive that that's filled with a lot of envy and a lot of negative energy between people who are competing for the biggest slice of the pie so the persona is one of the the first layer that we want to peel away and be free of because it doesn't serve us it just keeps us closed in in a very small defensive stance in our own consciousness so what the persona we could say is who you want other people to think you are and the ego is who you think you are but it's only who you think you are at a conscious level that is the one that is still attached to the values that it received externally and took in as its own but it's not an authentic self it's a it's a self that is adapted in some way to the social situation it's it's that level of the self that enables you to hold a job or to maintain a relationship maybe raise children do do the kinds of things you're taught you're supposed to do with your life but it's a self that has not reflected very deeply on its true nature and it can't reflect too deeply on it because it doesn't have one it's an artifact of the identity and the way of thinking that you learn to do in order to understand in the best way possible the reality that you were in so it includes a particular frame of reference and if you have learned a frame of reference that from the social order it may be one that doesn't serve you any longer when you want to go beyond the ego and discover what you are at a deeper level so for example most people were raised in an educational system that to convince you that we're living in a material world and that matter is the primary substance of the real and mind is a byproduct of neuronal chemical activity in the brain but it's not it's it's not a primary reality epiphenomena and they call it a byproduct what matter is what's real and so we deal with problems in a material way if you have mental issues we give you a chemical pill the psychiatrist's much prefer to give you pills and to have to listen to you and they don't even know how to listen to you and they don't know how to help you if they do so a materialist paradigm is basically what we've been taught about reality including a Darwinian or neo-darwinian belief system about how we got here is a function of random mutations of organisms and had nothing to do with any intelligent design or any power beyond the the material and the the random there's no order there's no meaning to reality and you can create your own meaning but it's it's not going to stick because the world doesn't really have one and whatever meaning that you have decided on is your own fantasy but there will come a time when it won't it won't work it'll meet some reality that resists it and it's it's going to create problems now I think that is actually true for the material this paradigm itself because quantum physics has pretty much overturned it I so have other advances in science but it's still what's being taught how many people here believe in a materialist paradigm of reality is there anyone who's a materialist here well I'm so very amazing it's useful not to be a materialist if you want to meditate you can meditate and be a materialist but that frame of reference is going to make you believe that there isn't anything behind the chattering ego mind and so it's not Monteux was a balloon - a dough is the equivalent of what Freud called the unconscious or the subconscious of the ego the personal subconscious mind but the shadow is everything that you're supposed to not think and not want and not be and not talk about in the family system or the social system and so for in the Victorian age the shadow of course contained all kinds of sexual desires and all of that that weren't allowed to be talked about in good company these days that's really not what's in the shadow because that stuff is already in the ego you know so the old shadow has taken over the ego and now what ends up being in the shadow is actually the good stuff that you weren't supposed to show because you're raised to be a cynic you see and so if you have any you know pious noble tendencies you have to hide them you know that's not gonna work you're gonna be laughed at you know if you are someone who has very high values so so things have flipped into their opposite young himself predicted that he called that an ante otro Mia when the pendulum swings to the other side so so we have the the old classical shadow has usurped the ego and acts out in a very conscious way and the dreams that people have now are not so much about that stuff but they're actually very much about the archetypal level and the good stuff that people aren't allowed to express in their conscious lives and for some people growing up in family systems that still had a kind of regulation between those who had an anatomical body that that was female or one that was male would try to give a certain kind of gender identity to their children these days even that isn't allowed and you are so you have you have people who have great gender confusions but it may well be that someone in a male body has as as his male aspects in the shadow and the more the feminine and the ego and vice versa for the female or there can be all kinds of mixtures or one can have the feeling function in the ego but the thinking function in the shadow or vice versa there are people who can think but they're not allowed to feel so we understand how how every shadow is going to be individualized but that for the most part it's what young used to call the golden shadow that people are dealing with now that they're not allowed to see how great they are rather than how bad they are so Jekyll and Hyde of Reverse places so for young for young the self was an archetype the archetypes we could say for us in the Kundalini Yoga map that you'll all probably learn if you stay here for a few more days beyond the weekend is a fifth chakra artifact so there are from the mind beyond the ego the the consciousness from which the ego derives the there is an an image of the self that's a blueprint that isn't given by the parents it's given by a transcendent source and that image of the self has all of those noble values all of that understanding of what the self really is but it only has it in symbolic form and so the self as a symbol of the supreme reality a symbol of let's say what in religious terms would be called God or our Buddha nature or Brahman or or whatever term for the absolute people have the the expression of that on a personal level is a mythological expression so in in one of the forms of Indian philosophy Shiva is the name for that and you see on this famous sculpture Shiva's dancing on the back of a dwarf that's the ego but the one the dancer the one who's who's mind really is is whose intelligence let's say is really able to flow through your organism if you allow it is an intelligence that you didn't get from school or from your DNA or anything else it comes from that supreme source before you were born Shiva literally means the zero point so it's the very center of consciousness for most of us that Center has not fully incarnated because we haven't gone that deeply into the layers to reach the center so we have the self as an archetype which is an image and an under standing of it at some point in our meditation that understanding is going to open up as a yearning and as a readiness to receive from the the consciousness itself the the true energy that it symbolizes that's that's really what we want to get to in meditation so but is real ok and when I say real in this sense it means not an imaginary not a a symbolic form but that which cannot be expressed in language its indescribable and the reason it can't be expressed in language no matter how sophisticated your vocabulary is that language is embedded in a dualistic model of reality language is organized as subject-verb-object so whatever the subject perceives the subject perceives as an object but the self is never an object but nor is the self the subject because the subject is the one who believes that he or she is an eye and is a perceiving the world through language because once we acquire language we perceive everything and instantaneously label it we no longer have raw experience our experience is always interpreted before we even become aware that all we're perceiving is an interpretation not what's actually there and because we have all of these internal images in our mind the super-ego figures etc in most cases what we are actually going to see is a projection of an image of a being in our own mind projected upon someone who is in in current space-time so someone may project their mother on you and somehow suddenly they will treat you like that if they project it with enough force you'll start even acting like that person even if you never met her and you'll find yourself in what they call the projective identification because projections have energy the mind projects with an energetic charge so information is always being transmitted we are constantly transmitting information with our minds to each other we we are telepathically all linked but we're not accessing consciously that channel but it still has effects on us so the the fact that we're projecting is also unconscious to most people and the fact that we are being projected on is unconscious the deeper and the more subtle your meditations become the more you will feel you'll be aware of both of those and you'll be able to interpret the information of the projection you're receiving and the energy of the the aura the field that is being transmitted radiated out by the intelligence of all of those various layers of the consciousness of whoever you're with so the energy field here with everyone in it has a huge amount of information if we can coherently organize it and interpret it at the level that transcends language because we would never be able to to put it into linguistic terms but it does have a logic in terms of vibrational frequency now there's an another thing that young left out of his mouth we need to put in so first of all this these three what we would call the ego proper that is a structured entity with the the mask the conscious mind we might as well put ego super-ego dyad and the shadow the archetype of the self most people are not aware of as part of the rego it's more part of what we call the soul consciousness and the self of course is separate but there's one other agency Freud did talk about this in the early days but then dropped out of the Freudian discourse and Jung didn't continue it it's that there's a censoring agency within the ego and just like a sense or in a government agency this is the central intelligence agency of the ego and it is that agency that's actually in charge not your conscious mind the conscious mind is aflac it's the the press agent of the president who's told what to say but has no idea if he or she is lying or not they always are but because they don't know that they can they can speak with some level of straight face you know so the ego doesn't know the secrets of the shadow or of the other information that the sensor doesn't want you to have that's basically what the censors job is to make you tune out any information it doesn't want you to know so there may be things I'm saying tonight that you have somehow not taken in all right you you you lost your attention wandered at the moment I said something that you were didn't you weren't allowed to know right but there's a lot of things that people are not allowed to know a lot of skeletons in the family closet from the past there's a lot of social information you're not allowed to know for example today is the anniversary of the assassination of john f kennedy's nobody remember that that's still something yet the public is not allowed to know who actually killed him what was that about there was a coup d'etat but it's never spoken about in the press it's forbidden information even today not not to mention 9/11 and all of the other forbidden pieces of knowledge that you're not allowed to have at a social level and so the society decides what you can know and what you can't know and what you're supposed to think about various events and what you're not supposed to think you may rebel against that and you you know nowadays you can go to alternative websites and get other theories about what happened on this or that day and some of them may be as false some of them may be better it's very difficult to know information from this information these days so we are in a situation where the censor makes sure that you don't get information that would enable you to liberate yourself from the homeostatic continual stability of the ego at the level of intelligence and emotional attitudes etc that it has determined that you should be at okay and so therefore that sensor can keep your growth stunted and for many people it doesn't allow them to grow out of the the egoic attitudes that they had as children and it doesn't allow a freedom to think without preconceptions a sense of guilt if you start thinking in ways that you're not supposed to and so the effects of guilt and shame and anxiety are used by the censor to keep you away from going too far in a direction that you're not supposed to go so you have these internal controls on your consciousness so these become the enemies that you're going to have to deal with we have to slay the demon all the demons the persona and the ego demons that keep us living at a superficial level living with a with desires that we don't really want to want anymore but we can't stop wanting and fears that we can't stop fearing even though we know that we shouldn't be afraid of those things but we can't let go of them so we're ruled by irrational beliefs that the ego itself doesn't have the power to eliminate so this is the catch-22 the the ego wants to be free but it's it's got an agency within it that will not allow it and that will threaten it with with not only emotional instability but literally depersonalization or some kind of a massive breakdown if it goes too far into the unknown so the unknown is forbidden territory and yet if we want to meditate that's exactly where we have to go we have to discover the unknown self okay so this is the problem if we didn't have internal resistance we would all meditate once and be enlightened and liberated and it would be over the problem is when we get the mind to deep deeper than the ego so that we can see the ego for the Frankenstein monster that it is the mind parasite we can say that sucking our life and that that's making us live a less beautiful and fulfilling life than we might be able to live without it the moment we try to free ourselves from it we get attacked and and we can have such anxiety or such guilt or whatever that it won't want to allow us to let go so this is the the problem the good news is that whatever the ego or the censor throws at you is only an illusion it's your mind it doesn't belong to the censor okay the censor did get imposed or installed like software into your system when you were a child but you have the power to remove it and delete it from your system the only thing is that you won't know who you are when you do that and so you have to become comfortable with not knowing who you are and that's where meditation comes in and the reason why why I say that is that what Atma vichara is to get back to the key to what we're doing when we're meditating is we are observing our ego we're observing the mind we're observing every movement of thought emotion and mental image and we are observing it with the understanding that all it is is an appearance an object in the mind and it is not who we are and so our job in meditation is to dis identify from our own mind to realize that the representation of the self is not the self so the I thought is not I when the when the mind thinks I want a cookie that's not my real self wanting the cookie okay and because it's not my real self I can say oh you know I don't really want to cookie you have that ability but most people will just have the thought I want the cookie and they'll go to get the cookie assuming that that thought meant that they wanted a cookie okay it's not the case do not be fooled your mind will tell you you want things or you hate things or whatever you feel about different things and and it wants you to be hypnotically suggestible enough to do what it tells you if you can refuse to do that and decide to get a second opinion from your heart from your silence from asking is that thought true and and to not buy into it immediately you will begin to have what's called free will but you don't have as long as you believe your mind as long as you're identified with your mind and the problem is your mind identifies you with the body and so you become obsessed with the body because the mind wants the body either to look good or to feel bad because it doesn't look good or to have have some kind of relationship to reality into the world and to others on a bodily level because the ego enjoys the sensory world because that's all it knows are the five senses it doesn't know that there is a deeper level of consciousness beyond the sensory it that is the real and where real beauty is and real truth and intelligence and willpower and nobility and all of the the power that comes from that that level of our being that's eternal innate not born not created not conditioned by family and society so if we want to become unconditioned and unconditional and real we have to stop believing the mind and then the second step is you want to stop mental activity entirely so that you can discover is there some intelligence beyond the mind that is being obscured by the interference patterns created by the chatter so when we stop the chatter in the silence we can suddenly become aware of a much deeper level of the real and that's when meditation becomes interesting because we can become absorbed into that deeper level of being that we never know as long as we're thinking thinking prevents the revelation of being thinking is about becoming and the world is in constant change nothing is the same the Buddhists call this impermanence right there is nothing you can depend on everything is different at every moment Heraclitus said you can't step in the same river twice so the ego mind is constantly struggling to keep up with the changes and it's only interested in dealing with that externally a changing a phenomenal plane it's not interested in the changeless eternal presence that is present regardless of the situation outside it was present for you before you were born and will remain present after the body dies it's that presence that you want because that presence of the real self has no fear and it is extremely intelligent it has no sensor it has nothing to stop it and it is the intelligence of the designer of the cosmos the intelligence that is unlimited and infinite and cosmic and scope that your intelligence is part of so the more that we are connected to the real self that we meet in silence and can be absorbed into and realize we are that self is universal that self is not partial to any particular bodily organism it's the self that recognizes that the entire world is an appearance within its own consciousness therefore the world is your dream you're not born and victimized and traumatized in a world that is separate from you no that's the frame of reference of the ego and why it's defensive and why it's fearful etcetera no it's a dream and if you can become lucid in the dream of life you can re dream it okay it's very important that you realize your power which requires you to take responsibility for your dream that means you have to stop blaming other people for why you're unhappy and blaming the situation's you were in or the government or the the society or whatever once you recognize the power you have to redream at least your aspect of the world that which you'd encounter on a daily basis you will discover that you can dream a beautiful world no matter where you are and each of us is in our own private world even though we share a collective each of us lives in our own individual unique private world but that private world is a world that is usually disconnected from the intelligence of the real self if we can connect it then the private world with all of its troubles gets washed away and the cosmic world the infinite world that is the the world of unchanging consciousness is able to be transmitted into this world this plane and and bring its beauty and its goodness and its truth into it so life becomes very different when you are vibrating at the level of the real self you discover another thing which is that that reality is vibrational in nature and and we can modulate our vibrational frequency like a radio we can tune to the persona or the ego and the super-ego and get all kinds of nasty thoughts or we can raise the vibration to the real and get some incredible downloads of genius level information and beauty and the great composers the great artists the great scientists are all of our the people who have learned how to tune in to the real self and then bring new information into the world that was never imaginable from an ego level today the world is exhausted even technology has done its we're basically at the end because there's no one downloading from that anymore so the world of art is pretty exhausted you don't see too many genius artists anymore in the world you don't see genius playwrights and most movies are not made for the genius level they're they're made for the child ego and there's very little uplifting artistic activity or scientific activity all they focus on now is making weapons and and control a surveillance apparatus etc it's the the world is not oriented toward bringing beauty and truth in its oriented towards something else but if we can change our frequency we can actually have an effect on the world as a whole it's a we have a very great power that no one is using if we can create a network of of that frequency of goodness and beauty again and make a grid of that level of coherent information and transmit it powerfully it will overcome the negative incoherent noise the signal of truth will overcome the noise of the false but there aren't enough now who are focused at that level to be able to complete that task but it is within our power to do it so when we're meditating we're connecting to a universal novo sphere as ty yarder Sean de Chardin called it knows from knowledge we are able to tune in to the Akashic records that Edgar Cayce called it the information from the future we can have pre cognitive information and from the past that we have amnesia about we can have all kinds of information but before we can receive it and download it and understand it we have to be in our real self we have to have mastered the mind and have learned to turn off the noise so the signal comes in clearly so that's what we're doing and it can be done quickly if you can delete the sensor and disidentify from the ego-self representations it's that simple but you have to want to do that and and you have to be willing to disobey the superego commands that tell you no you shouldn't do that you'll go crazy or you'll be taken over by the devil or you will not be able to handle the energy or whatever it is that some part of your mind tells you to keep you from the infinite you have to be smart enough and courageous enough not to stop to take the hero's journey all the way to the goal of the realization of who you are beyond the illusion we have time to continue a little longer let's do a first meditation just a short one to get your feet wet in this okay we can turn down the lights a little bit and we'll just meditate for five minutes or so but just to get people accustomed so the first thing is keep your back straight if you can so that the energy flows up the spinal cord take a few deep breaths breathe out any stress when you meditate you want to be relaxed so scan through the body and if there are any muscle areas that are tight or contracted give them permission to let go don't try to force anything but give permission to relax be at peace you're safe feel how it is to be safe in your body to allow the body to relax into a level of serenity where you can forget about the body and the body will be able to slow down its metabolism so the next thing you want to do you can close your eyes and really pay attention pay attention to your heartbeat and give it permission to slow down your breathing will naturally slow down and your brainwaves will shift into alpha or maybe deeper into theta or Delta as you slow down your metabolism your mind will also slow down and the more relaxed your body is the more peaceful the emotional state will be and the more quiet your thoughts will be so because meditation wants to get away from the ego and the ego thinks it's the one doing everything meditation therefore is a non doing simple being [Music] but be the nameless presence bear awareness no thoughts if thoughts arise they're not yours don't take possession don't take ownership don't entertain them don't follow them the thought will let go and disappear again but you focus your attention on yourself as pure awareness you have no form so you're not an object you're not a thought you're the awareness of thoughts and of objects but you are not any of those therefore you cannot know yourself as another and therefore all you can do is realize you are already the silent presence that is ego less now just be what you have discovered you are without intention without expectation just be the silent awareness and keep going deeper into the silence just by being you'll find yourself being absorbed deeper and deeper into this internal ocean of consciousness and the longer you stay in silence the more peaceful you may become aware of subtle energies you may become aware of an inner luminosity doesn't matter just remain silent presence and at some point there will be a an understanding a silent understanding that this awareness is unchanging and unrelated to the ego or the body just stay with it in it realize you are the silence it's not just that you have this or touching into it this is who you are and you have forgotten it perhaps because you would paid attention to language and the sensory world but this is who you've always been unconditioned nameless formless timeless and just feel how enjoyable the piece of freedom from thought is now the longer you stay in this state the deeper you will go and just as going into the depths of any ocean some extraordinary discoveries will be made regarding what abides in this ocean but you are the ocean and whatever inhabits it is a power that can be used in very wondrous ways because the deeper you go the more you are encountering the source of your creative imagination but we want to be in the silence in which all thoughts and imaginings are potential but not activated we want to accumulate potency power and the longer you stay in the silence the more you'll realize that you have given yourself an energy charge that increases your willpower your clarity your ability to focus your ability to persevere your ability to open your heart and in the peaceful silence you will realize that you don't have to put on the ego garment again you certainly don't have to put on the persona mask you don't have to be ruled by a super-ego or a sensor you are free and at this level you can claim your freedom and function much better than before but differently ego Leslie so now the trick that I want you to attempt to achieve is this want you to come back from the meditation without leaving it in other words stay in the inner silence realize you are the silence even after your body starts to move and your voice may start to speak and you your mind will start to think but you can remain silently aware dis identified and detached and unaffected by whatever happens at the superficial levels okay let's open your eyes when you're ready ohm shanthi okay was that useful for people feel more peaceful okay so the practice for this weekend is stay in the silent self even while the body is active in other words meditate all the time not just when you're in some formal sitting realize you are the silent self you've never been anything else but pure awareness and then go through life under manual control of the ego not letting it act out not accepting conventional thoughts and attitudes and not trying to be some funny persona or some other kind of presentation of yourself that's inauthentic but let yourself relate from the depths of your real silent self and you may discover that some very wonderful events occur because of the energy that you are radiating you [Music]

Channel: Sat Yoga Institute

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Keywords: shunyamurti, spiritual teacher, sat yoga, ashram costa rica, spiritual retreat costa rica, silent retreat costa rica, meditation teacher costa rica, eckhart tolle, Wayne Dyer, Ramana Maharshi, Mooji, Meister Eckhart, Tara Brach, Jaggi Vasudev, Sadhguru, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, Carl Jung, nonduality teaching, Advaita Vedanta, ego death, science and nonduality, how to meditate, ego, persona, Self, Shadow, how to understand the Shadow of Carl Jung

Id: _w5pSQvTmfU

Length: 58min 46sec (3526 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2020