Have you ever watched a blue sky and a wisp of clouds floating by?

The depth of the blueness of sky and the almost transparent whiteness of the clouds.

What do you focus on when you see this? The sky or the clouds?

 

Through the habitual patterns of our minds we have come to place our focus on the moving clouds most of the time. The clouds are our thoughts that seem to govern our lives and we value them, or judge them. It does not matter which way because the end result is that we focus on the clouds. Our perception meets almost like a wall that it does not, dares not penetrate although the wall is just as insubstantial as a cloud in the sky. And we keep watching the clouds as they are floating by...

 

Ascension Attitude is quite literally a choice to see the blueness of the sky, the stillness of its presence instead of the movement that is seemingly between us and That. We stop our eyes from wondering with the clouds, we become aware, even if just momentarily of what is beyond the trailing clouds of thoughts.

 

Sometimes the clouds are just barely together and sometimes they can become huge thunderclouds with deep darkness threatening us to the very core. The quality of the clouds never affects or changes or touches the blueness of the sky. But our awareness gets caught up in them even more easily now because the wall seems quite real and for the forgetful mind it is unlikely that there is peace, stillness and blueness behind all that monstrous activity.

 

Because we lack familiarity with the peaceful blueness we have a tendency to try to master the clouds. This is where much time is wasted and nothing much is gained. True memory is to know and experience the blueness of sky in all weathers. To never be fooled or be distraught by the moving clouds.

 

Do you remember flying in an airplane and rising above the clouds? The sun shines and peace is from here to horizon. You can watch down to earthly affairs and people busy in their lives and how do you relate to them? All what you thought was so important as your feet were on the ground now suddenly seems different. Why? Your perspective is momentarily uplifted into greater heights and your world takes on a different look. The vastness takes over the smallness, the fragments melt into universality. 

 

The thoughts and the Attitude that we enliven in our daily lives can be that of always rising to meet the blueness of the sky or one that stops half way and sees the clouds or perhaps has not yet even looked up from the ground.   

 

Our consciousness is metaphorically this blueness of the sky and the clouds are the thoughts that wander through our minds every day. This is a subtle and very inward process as we learn to ascend into deeper and deeper levels of the mind. We learn to have the perspective that is born from that which is the same in all situations. We learn to recognize the nature of our true essence, the pure consciousness, the Ascendant One, and we also learn to distinguish That from the thoughts that we have and that our world is created from. We add one more thought into our mind to know what lies beyond all thoughts.

 

 

 

Nataraja Ishaya

 

 

 

 

The Father Consciousness

 

 

My presence as your inner consciousness is just as infinite as my unending presence in the cosmos all around you.

 

Like an iceberg on the sea, nine-tenths of which is out of sight, I live within you in the form of mind with nine-tenths of me being submerged beneath your awareness. The expanse of an iceberg underwater is just as real as the tip extending above the surface. And the expanse of mind submerged below your conscious awareness is just as real as the surface mind with which you do your thinking.

 

The submerged mind  is like a sunken treasure chest, chock-full of wonders, waiting for you to discover it and draw it to the surface. For the most part, it lies neglected and untouched even though I have stored within it all my powers, all my wisdom, all the truth in the cosmos, the record of existence, the force that quickens and perfects, the peace that passes understanding, the love that conquers all.

 

This submerged mind is your center of divine wisdom, an area of mind that does not think in the normal sense of the word -- it knows. The nature of it is pure and holy, it has never been touched by limited or negative belief; it is a living part of me. When you have learned to elevate this submerged mind and integrate it with your surface consciousness, your entire being will take on its holy nature and you will come to find that as Jesus taught, it is indeed not robbery to be equal with God.

 

Ruby Nelson, The door of Everything

 

 

 

The mind

 

Awareness of the environment and our thoughts is the function of the mind. The mind is not the same thing as awareness: rather, it is a machine that is operated by awareness. Awareness is primary; the body and the physical brain are secondary.

The various functions of the physical mind are performed by an extremely complex network of interconnected neurons: every neuron is connected to many thousands of others through direct synaptic connections and to millions or even billions of others through its receptor sites for neuropeptides. There are fifty trillion cells in the body; each is capable of producing the neuropeptides which communicate with the neurons in the brain. Thus the mind is not limited to the cerebral cortex; we are in fact body-minds -- the whole structure of our physiology is intelligent and capable of talking back and forth with itself. It is all alive with wisdom; it all reflects our individual awareness.

Memory and learning occur when we repeat a behavior enough that new neurological pathways are created. The more any action is repeated, the deeper the groove in the brain becomes. When any behavior is thus locked into the physical structure of the body, the habits, beliefs and judgments that are associated with it become extremely hard to modify.

The self-sense that is our ego is built upon the groundwork of these mental structures. The mind resonates easily only with that which corresponds to previous impressions. New experience does not easily lodge if there is no similar internal pattern; the mind automatically filters out that which it cannot understand and discards it, particularly if the new information appears to pose a threat to the continuity of the ego.

Thus the cycle of action-experience-desire continues and is difficult to break. An impulse of desire arises from the Ascendant, collides with a previous impression which colors the desire; the warped desire leads to action to fulfill itself; this action leads to an experience which strengthens the initial impression. The cycle can never be broken in its own Universe: there is no escape from action-experience-impression-desire on its own terms. What is required, of course, is a new program -- Ascension, for example, provides the means to rewrite the old internal structures effortlessly, for the mind opens to new experience along the path of increasing enjoyment.  

MSI, Ascension!

 

 

Two kinds of thoughts

 

 

Primarily, it is guilt and fear that keep the mind caught in the belief that it is not enlightened. This may not be  immediately obvious, but a careful and honest scrutiny of you own mind will reveal that there are usually only two kinds of thoughts -- those that are based in love and are unifying and those that are based in fear and are dividing. If you closely watch your mind for even five minutes, you will probably be quite astounded by the myriad of pointless and mutually contradictory thoughts and desires you experience. We have in our possession the most incredible machine in the Universe, capable of experiencing any reality, competent to discover any truth, equipped to accomplish any desire. What is typically being done with this magnificent machine? The standard mode of operation is to switch between mutually contradictory thoughts and desires dozens of times every minute! If the mind was a radio receiver, it would be as if it were being switched between channels every second or so -- it would make for a noisy, unpleasant reception, hard to follow. It would, in fact, be so hard to follow that you would feel exhausted after trying to listen to it for few hours; you would be forced to turn it off and just listen to nothing at all for a time.

This is our experience in the waking state. The mind is receiver of perceptions, images and thoughts; they file through it in unending succession until it becomes so exhausted it has to shut down to restore its badly depleted molecular resources and subtle powers. Hence we sleep.

When the mind is experiencing the silence of the Ascendant, there is no motion of thought. Like a perfectly still pond untouched by wind, there are no waves, no ripples, no motion of any kind when the mind is opened to the experience of the Ascendant.

MSI

 

Commentary on Bhagavad-Gita

 

 

He, who is not established has no intellect, nor has he any steady thought. The man without steady thought has no peace; for one without peace how can there be happiness?

 

 

When, during meditation, the mind enters into the experience of subtle level of thought, it becomes more collected, more steady, with every step and therefore feels itself entering a field of increasing charm.

If the mind is more steady, it is in a better position to experience greater happiness. As on a calmer surface of the water, the sun reflects more clearly, so a calmer mind receives a clearer reflection of the omnipresent bliss of the absolute Being. As the mind fathoms finer fields of thinking during meditation, the metabolism is simultaneously reduced. This establishes the nervous system in digress of ever-increasing peace. Eventually, when the entire nervous system comes to a completely peaceful state, it reflects Being, and gives rise to bliss consciousness.

The state of transcendental consciousness cannot be gained unless the nervous system is completely peaceful. This is the truth revealed by the words "for one without peace how can there be happiness?". The bliss is already there; it is only necessary to calm down the wanderings of the mind.

During meditation the mind, entering the subtle phases of a thought, becomes more collected and more peaceful, that is why it proceeds automatically. This truth is expressed by the Upanishads when they declare that happiness varies in different states of creation, at different levels of evolution. As the mind evolves to higher levels of consciousness during meditation, it experiences increasing degrees of happiness, until it comes to absolute bliss in the most highly evolved state of pure transcendental consciousness.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

 

 

 

 

Upcoming First Spheres

 

 

 

 

Michigan, Grand Rapids 

August Friday 25th thru Sunday the 27th

Contact: Carol (616)- 735 0464

or  michiganascension@yahoo.com

 

Portland, Oregon

September Friday 1st thru Sunday the the 3rd

Contact: Dani Vitale mxpaloma@yahoo.com

 

Yachats, Oregon

September Friday 22nd thru Sunday the 24th

Contact: Sylvan Simmons (541)- 547 4428 or (541)- 272 6084

              sylvansmosiac@yahoo.com

 

Alaska, Anchorage

September Friday 15th thru Sunday the 17th

Contact: Fay Reilly (907)- 243 0704

 

Trogen, Switzerland

September Friday 15th thru Sunday the 17th

Contact: Nika Baer (071)- 3400 609

             nikabaer@gmx.ch

             dharaman@ishaya.biz

 

Tallinn, Estonia

September Friday 29th thru October Sunday the 1st

Contact:  Sven Aluste

               sven@myyri.ee

 

            

 

 

 

Michigan center information website

http://michiganascension.tripod.com 

 

Also a new Ishaya website for Europe is now up and running. 

Go to www.ishaya.biz. All the old newsletters are readable in this new website and the course schedule for Europe can be found here. This site is also translated into finnish in its entirety and the translation work into other languages is currently under way. 

 

          

 

Teacher training begins Sunday Oct. 1st, 2006 and will end Saturday March 31st, 2007. 

The course fee is $10,800 US. A non-refundable deposit of $2000.00 US is required to reserve a place in this course. Space is limited and will be given in the order deposits are received. 

Participants should arrange to arrive by 6:00 p.m. for dinner.

The Ishaya Tradition