Uncategorized 623
The Unity of God, the Soul and the Guru
Written by Carina Elizabeth Szabo
God, guru, and soul are One.
The statement that ‘God, guru and soul are one’ posed a conundrum to me that required further investigation. As a seeker, I felt compelled to find the answers for myself, not only to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, but also to open a door for my guru’s wisdom and teachings to penetrate my being and transform my life, to be more than who I currently am.
The Human Condition
Suffering is part of the human condition. Those who suffer emotionally, often ask God to relieve them of their suffering, and it is they who become the seekers, driven towards spirituality.
When the Student is Ready, the Master Appears.
It is only when the seeker is ready, like a ripe fruit, that the guru appears in the seeker’s life. The guru is needed to awaken the potential within the seeker. Since the guru has already achieved supreme consciousness, he/she is connected to Source, brilliantly enlightened, with access to knowledge and wisdom that is inwardly sourced, rather than from the external world.
The guru serves as a guide, helping seekers in their spiritual progress towards liberation. Through the guru’s spiritual, psychological, and practical insight, his instructions are tailored according to what is needed for the seeker to learn and advance spiritually.
Supreme Consciousness
God and guru are One in consciousness, it is guru who connects the seeker to God. The guru teaches the seeker about God, as he has attained a level of mastery, and as a master, the guru is more than a human being, he is evolved.
The magnificence and brilliance of God is indescribable, although His energy is likened to that of a thousand suns. Guru similarly possesses a brilliant enlightenment that draws seekers to him like moths to a light.
Being Omnipotent, God is all knowing, of past, present and future – and present in every atom. The God particle that exists in every atom, exists in you, as it does in me. We are all part of Divine Unity – God, guru and soul – all One.
The role of the guru is to connect the seeker to God, so that the seeker can appreciate his own divinity and free himself from a life of suffering through enlightenment. Once the seeker has self-realized, attained mastery, the need for guru ceases, and the seeker merges with the Guru and they become One in consciousness. There is no longer any distinction or separation. The seeker becomes the Guru.
Soul is Unchangeable, Always Peaceful
The soul is eternal, immortal, and immune to any changes. It is always peaceful whether it is in a body or not. It is eternal freedom, and it is not attached to the roller coaster called life. Soul, much like the petrol that runs the engine of a car, is not concerned with anything. If there is petrol in the car it runs; if not, it stands still.
The purpose of the soul is to move from being a fragment of light to merge into Supreme Consciousness – a part merging with the whole, referred to by some as liberation. When the soul has identification – flavours and memories – I’d call it an entity. When the entity takes a body,I’d call it a being. Liberation is only in terms of having a form – from identification to formlessness and dissolution of all identities.
The State of Liberation
When one has really dissolved or attained the state of true liberation, there is no mind present to distinguish between states or to even realise that there is this state. It all merges together and you expand from there to become the entire cosmos. Everything becomes you or you become everything. The soul as such doesn’t have a separate identity unless it is in a form and therefore the soul as such doesn’t have goals. But the soul with an identification, flavours and memories, longs for liberation.
Guru, with or without Form
Much the same, guru takes a body as an enlightened being, a master, to awaken the inner being of the seeker, for the seeker to identify and understand the guru and his purpose. The true nature of the guru is not limited to form, he is formless, like soul and God are formless, so too is guru. This means that guru can appear in and out of form and is not limited to the form in which we recognise him. He can appear in many other forms that help lead to realisation.
God does not Talk to Us
God is non interfering and the most silent part of our life. God does not talk to us, nor does God ask anything of us. Just like soul, God is not involved in any of the activities of the world, however God is the energy that supports all of the the activities of the world. God is present in an atom and in the universe in its entirety.
God is everywhere.
Omnipresent.
Non-interfering.
To know how God operates, observe how your soul operates. They are very similar – non-interfering, supporting and providing.
All of the information provided in this article was sourced from gurus and based on my understanding of who and what God, guru and soul are, and answers a question I posed last year, about why I need a guru.
References
1. https://mohanji.org/blogs/satsangs/2021/11/23/soul-vs-spirit/
2. https://www.ramdass.org/god-guru-self/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDRadDDQts
4. https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/md-42
What you should know about RTT?
Written by Rosna Milisic
My name is Rosna Milisic and I am an RTT (Rapid Transformational Therapy) practitioner, hypnotherapist, IT engineer, Yoga instructor, mother, wife, daughter, friend…
Behind all those roles and that name, is me and my life experience. I was born in Montenegro, below Mt. Durmitor. The first landscape of my life was stone, rock, and lots of snow. The hot highland blood was tempered and softened by Slavonia (Croatia), where I lived for a part of my childhood. I didn’t live the second part of my childhood; we were refugees. In that part of my life, I just existed and I was lost. Montenegrin genes softened by Slavonia were shaped by Serbia during the many years I spent there.
Have I managed to find myself after all these years? I can say that I’m starting to find myself; I’m starting to feel. I can also say that the “Path to Self” is the most wonderful possible path, but very painful, at least in the beginning. Every millimetre of ourselves explored, of our authenticity explored, brings us that much closer to returning to the Source.
I spent 20 years in IT, and IT taught me about life, gave me the opportunity to meet many people and to perceive myself very intensively through interaction with others. It gave me the financial means to live my dreams. I have to admit that I couldn’t, at that time, live my dreams, because my programming and my patterns didn’t allow me to, but I had the financial freedom to support my working on myself. I believe that the money I have spent so far on that is the equivalent of the cost of a small apartment in Belgrade, maybe even one in the suburbs (very expensive real estate).
Like the power of the Montenegrin stone and of my ancestors who survived through the centuries, I too survived, only this time I survived all those fears, programs, patterns, and beliefs consciously, both my own and theirs. I was determined to get out of the vicious circle.
And so my life pulsated with its own rhythms until 3 years ago. Then a miracle called Mt. Kailash (a mountain in India considered to be the abode of Shiva) happened. After that, my life went in a completely new direction. I didn’t do anything; things happened by themselves. I became a wife, an RTT hypnotherapist and a yoga instructor. All that at age 43. Not to mention that I ended up in Australia.
My greatest love, of which I became aware as a child through Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, is psychology. It is my deep passion; I have found it everywhere, analysed it, worked on myself, understood it, and accepted it, but life has taken me somewhere else. However, that did not stop me from dealing with psychology in all possible and impossible ways. And I got the opportunity to deepen, frame, and formulate all the acquired knowledge and experience through a phenomenal tool, RTT hypnotherapy.
In working on myself, I went through countless topics and used different modalities, and they really helped me. RTT went a step further; it gave me the experience of seeing what it looks like when I help someone, of witnessing the transformation in a person. Apart from personal growth through education, RTT gave me a purpose.
Rapid Transformational Therapy is exactly what its name suggests: a phenomenal new method, one of the most powerful for, and fastest at, releasing beliefs, habits, programs, and as a result, the illnesses caused by them. It also gives incredible clarity and awareness of why we behave in a certain way, why we are in a certain emotional state or have a certain illness.
Our body communicates with us in many different ways. Often, our deepest traumas and suppressions are stored in the causal layer of our subconscious mind, and then our body and mind communicate them through a number of symptoms and ailments, whether physical or mental.
RTT hypnotherapy is equipped with an array of techniques and tools that are crucial, not just for teaching you how to communicate with your subconscious mind, but also for directly accessing and transforming whatever blockages may be there.
The method was designed by the amazing Marisa Peer, as a product of her over-thirty-year-long and successful career as a psychologist and hypnotherapist. RTT is also the holder of numerous recognitions and awards for its effectiveness and innovation in the approach to people’s mental and physical health. This technique is a combination of hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, NLP, and other methods. The most important elements of RTT are hypnosis, regression, and personal recording. These three elements are interwoven with various tools that help clients become aware of how events from the past have affected their state today, that is, their belief system. The treatment actually ends with listening to a personal recording for 21 days, which supports the client, in a very individualized way, in the process of letting go of old states and beliefs, and establishing new, positive, useful ones.
I deeply believe that being healthy is not just the absence of physical pain. We are not just a bundle of memories of our past experiences and reactions projected into the future, but an amazing being beyond all dimensions, capable of being connected to ourselves and to cosmic consciousness, living a truly liberated life, which is our birthright. We align with our highest potential and make life choices from that perspective of all-encompassing love for the good of all once we release the stresses from our body, mind, and all energy systems.
The Conscious Cooking Project
The Awakening Times loves and supports all projects that promote true human values and inspire people to become the change they want to see in the world. Below we bring you an interview with Ivana Surya from Croatia, the founder of the Conscious Cooking project.
The Awakening times (TAT): Dear Ivana, thank you for taking the time for this interview. I am glad that today we have the opportunity to talk about your great project.
Ivana Surya (IS): Thank you for taking notice of the Conscious Cooking project. I am grateful for this opportunity to present it.
TAT: To begin with, tell us what inspired you to start Conscious Cooking?
IS: Conscious Cooking is inspired by Mohanji’s teachings of ahimsa, gratefulness and interconnection of everyone in the world. Mohanji said:
‘Whatever nature has created has a reason. Nature’s children, including us, have our positions; all of us have our relevance. Everything is interconnected. We must be aware of it and we must respect it. Just like we should respect our body, we should respect everybody. We must know that all have relevance. All have their right (to live) on earth, just like us. We have no right to kill indiscriminately. We have no right to torture, use or abuse.‘
TAT: Can you tell us a little more about the project itself?
IS: Conscious Cooking is a project for sharing vegan recipes and tips on how to make vegan meals healthier. We are spreading messages of nonviolence and raising awareness of the impact our daily decisions have on the environment, other people and animals. This project is for the Balkan region (in local language) to bring this important topic to non-english speakers.
Ahimsa means ‘non-violence’ in Sanskrit and denotes non-violence towards others as well as towards oneself. Compassion is a key part of ahimsa. One form of living the principle of ahimsa is veganism. If we want to bring more peace and happiness into our own lives, we need to stop causing violence and unhappiness in other people’s lives.
The position of the American Nutritional Association and Nutritionists of Canada is that a properly planned vegan diet is healthy, nutritionally sufficient and provides health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases and is suitable for all stages of life.
It has been scientifically proven that eating plant-based foods reduces:
- obesity,
- the risk of getting type 2 diabetes,
- lowers cholesterol and blood pressure,
- the risk of heart disease,
- the risk of prostate cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer
Farming animals for food causes 15% of the human impact on global warming. In comparison, transportation causes 16% of the human impact on global warming. By choosing a vegan diet, we influence the reduction of harmful gas emissions and consequently reduce the impact on global warming.
TAT: What are the key principles on which Conscious Cooking is based?
IS:
- Ahimsa (non-violence)
- Gratefulness
- Health benefits of plant-based diet
- Ecological impact
- Fair-trade
TAT: Are people interested in switching to a vegan diet and are they interested in things produced in an ethical and sustainable way? What are your experiences?
IS: More and more people, especially Millennials are aware of the importance of a plant-based diet for the future of the planet and their health. In the last 5 – 10 years we are witnessing the raise of the plant-based products that makes the transition to the plant-based diet easier and smoother. With the higher offer of the plant-based products more people are ready to embrace the change and join the growing number of vegans and vegetarians. People consciousness is rising in frequency constantly and I am positive that the future of our planet is vegan.
TAT: I know you’ve been a vegan for a long time, so I’d like to dispel some prejudices and myths about vegan nutrition with you. “You don’t get enough protein”, “The best proteins are of animal origin”, “What do you eat if you don’t eat meat?”, “vegan food is monotonous, you only eat vegetables”, “I couldn’t be vegan, because I couldn’t give it up ice cream”…
These are just some that came to my mind at the moment, please comment on them.
IS: As I mentioned, today is easiest to switch to a plant-based diet with all the products that are substitutes for the taste, texture and nutrition of the traditional food. Vegan milk, ice cream, cheese, burgers, meatballs, cream, omelette, cakes, pastries, everything is easy to find in the plant-based version. Those myths are busted today, especially about the lack of proteins in the plant-based diet. So many professional sports athletes are switching to a plant-based diet and performing amazing results. Our body is designed to use plant-based proteins easier than animal-based which makes the resting period shorter and leaves more time for training. The best documentary on this subject is ‘The Game Changer’ by James Cameron and I would recommend everybody to take some time to watch it.
TAT: How to bring people closer to the fact that we are all part of the same whole and that by disrupting one part, we are actually harming the entire planet? How to encourage people to live unconditional love equally towards all beings?
IS: Mohanji is teaching us to say a little prayer of gratefulness before we took the first bite of our meal. It is a great practice, to pause for a moment and express gratitude to our Guru, Tradition, ancestors and to everybody who was involved in the production of our meal. If we do this at least three times a day, we will witness our transformation, as we will get humble, modest and aware of the blessings that we’ve been showered daily. In that awareness, remembering that animals went through suffering and death just for the pleasure of our tasting buds results in the change of our perspective of animals as a food source to animals as living beings with a strong desire to live. With more modesty, humbleness and gratefulness come awareness and unconditional love towards all beings which brings motivation to live the principles of ahimsa in our everyday life.
Today we live in the abundance as the products from every part of the world are available in our markets. Bananas, rice, coffee, and chocolate… are produced and transported from different parts of the world. Thanking all of the people who were involved in making this product, from the field to our plate makes us aware of the fact that we are all interconnected. In the Conscious cooking project, we are encouraging people to choose ‘Fair-trade’ products whenever possible. Although these products have a greater price, choosing ‘Fair-trade’ we are aware that someone will get fair compensation for their work and be able to provide for their family.
Awareness that our lifestyle brings harmony to nature, thriving of life and prosperity for many beings, brings us a deep sense of peace and love in our souls.
TAT: Do you have a final message? And could you please share a quick and easy recipe with our readers?
IS: We all have the power of choice that can change the world if our choices are insightful. Making everyday decisions about what we eat we are choosing the world we are living in. Let’s choose the world of love, compassion, peace and abundance for all living beings.
A Buddha bowl is essentially a simple, one-bowl meal, typically vegetarian or vegan. The best Buddha bowls start with a base of rice or whole grains which can be served cold or warm. Top with your favorite plant-based protein (tofu, seitan, beans or legumes), add fresh greens and fresh or roasted veggies. Next, drizzle with flavorful dressing or sauce and sprinkle with seeds or nuts. Top with fresh herbs.
TAT: Thank you for this conversation. It was a pleasure to hear your inspiring story.
IS: Thank you for the great questions. I hope this interview will bring transformation and awareness to the people reading it.
To learn more about Conscious Cooking and get inspiring vegan meal ideas,
please click here.
To learn more about the importance of fair trade, please follow this link.
Documentaries recommended by Conscious Cooking team:
- The Game Changers
- Cowspiracy
- Seaspiracy
- What The Health
- Forks Over Knives
- Earthlings
- Eating Animals
Humanity at Peril – A Photographic Tale of Refugees & Migrants
Zoran Milišić is a Bosnian-born Australian photographer. He started his career as a journalist photographer, but his real passion is documenting life as a street and portrait photographer of everyday people.
Zoran explores human life and spirituality through his unique style and regularly exhibits his works on various topics. His style of strong contrasts and large grain give his photographs a timeless feel and stark look, and it leaves the viewer with plenty to contemplate on. National Geographic has published a number of his photographs.
Art is not there to satisfy the person. Instead, it is a language of Creation that transforms the person.
The artist becomes one with the art and disappears in the process.
From introversion in which I find the depth of myself to extroversion and the opening towards manifested and apparent form, I take the photographs as a silent observer of life. The process of creating is followed through my personal and deep contemplation.
Black and white photography is my passion. Whether I work in digital or analog format on 35mm film, I insist on pronounced grain and deep contrasts. This combination gives the photographs a unique look and conveys the energy of the present moment.
The only difference between the apparent outer and the infinite inner is in the size and color of the grain. In some sense, the appearing manifested universe is in contrast to the infinite, unmanifested universe.
The depth of contrast gives the drama of the moment because only in the contrasts of life we recognize ourselves while we only grow in the shadows of life.
Color photos are in digital format but with analog vintage lenses that give today’s modern digital perfection an authentic and vintage look. This combination of techniques gives photographs a timeless dimension that leaves a meditative note about them. I use various cameras and lenses, but my favorite cameras are vintage film cameras. Why? Because they make me slow down and be one with the moment in my silence.
Saltworks Son – The Art of Salt Production
Written by: Lea Kosovac
Like many children, I grew up listening to stories and fairy tales. One of them left a deep impression on me, and only recently, searching the internet, I found that it originates from my part of the world.
It’s a story about a king whose three daughters wanted to express how much the king meant to them through birthday presents.
One daughter brought jewels to the birthday party and said that the king was like the most valuable jewels to her.
Another offered a piece of gold, saying that the king was like dry gold to her. The third daughter brought a lump of salt, and when she said that the king was as valuable to her as salt, the court burst into laughter.
Everyone at the birthday gathering made fun of the young royal, and she got expelled from the kingdom. A few months later, the kingdom ran out of salt. All residents began to fall ill with various diseases.
The daughter, who was in exile, returned to her kingdom bringing salt.
After saving the kingdom, she became the new queen and lived happily ever after.
This is a short interpretation of my favorite story that originates from Rijeka, Croatia.
Visiting the Saltworks Ston, the oldest in Europe, I came back to that story, and through it, I understood why people used to fight wars over salt and why a gram of salt was worth more than gold.
The first records about Saltworks Ston date from 1333. At that time Pelješac peninsula became the property of the Republic of Dubrovnik.
Due to its good location, Mediterranean climate, and high salinity of the sea from the Ston Canal, this locality has become ideal for salt production.
At that time, salt meant life, and whoever had a monopoly over it could do whatever he wanted. Back then, it was the wise Republic of Dubrovnik.
After taking ownership of Pelješac, they first renovated the salt pans and built the Ston Walls in the 14th and 15th centuries to protect this strategically important product. The pools of Saltworks Ston got names after saints, all but one, which got the name Mundo after the Spanish word meaning world. Salt from that pool, by order of the municipality, was used by workers and the poor. The fact that the municipal rulers at that time cared about the workers and the poor is fascinating.
The people of Dubrovnik made good use of their ownership of the Ston salt pan, and because of their neutral position, they traded with the Ottomans and the Mediterranean countries. All healthy men were obliged by the law to help with the harvest.
The production capacity of Saltworks Ston has remained the same today as it was during the Republic of Dubrovnik. On 400,000 square meters, there are seven sea evaporation pools and ten crystallization pools.
The production process has not changed either. And this sets this Saltworks apart from all others in Europe, and perhaps the world.
The salt produced in Saltworks Ston comes from natural sources only, sea, sun, and wind. And the whole process is done manually. What is interesting is that salt is not collected, it is harvested.
The process starts in April, and the picking takes place from July to September.
The final product is pure ecological salt, without additives or supplements, which is a rarity today. For people who care about their health, or deal with energy work, the importance of ecological salt is invaluable.
She is more than jewels and more than gold.
Although today salt is spoken of only in a negative context, at least when it comes to nutrition, the importance of ecologically produced sea salt should not be neglected.
If we learn to value the right things and use them in moderation, they can only be good for us.
The key to a quality life is not in renunciation, it is in moderation.
However, always take everything you read with a grain of salt.
If you plan to spend your vacation in Croatia, we recommend you visit the Saltworks Ston, located close to Dubrovnik.
It is worth visiting the salt museum, taking photos by pools where the salt is stored, and if you have time, you can always lend a hand in picking.
Recent Comments