All of us know the fact that the speech of some persons penetrates to the heart of the hearers while the speech of another will bring no effect on the mind, though he speaks beautifully. In the former, the speech is charged with prana, and in the latter, it is merely intellectual. The great profits and saints had the most wonderful control of prana, which gave them that sort of tremendous willpower that brought thousands toward them and made them think as the prophets. They could produce a tremendous amount of prana and their thought vibrations were charged with the pranic energy that gave them the power to sway the world. All willpower comes from the control of prana.

THE COMPLETE ILLUSTRATED BOOK OF YOGA, Swami Vishnu-devananda, 225, !960, 1988, The Julian Press, Inc.

Will be continued…

The case of Jesus finds Jesus for forty days voluntarily out in the desert involved in deep spiritual activity. Jesus was getting his head together. The retreat of Jesus is a model for you to go off alone as much as you can in the natural world and find yourself. The natural world is not computers and cell phones. The internet is not part of the natural reality. The internet contains a great many illusions. The longer you can go off by yourself the better. A retreat puts you in a setting that enables you to naturally eliminate illusions that keep you from the clear state of Enlightenment. In a retreat, you get away from the pull of other minds and find your own. This is called Self-Realization. Some spiritual writers equate Self-Realization with Enlightenment and others do not. Some consider Enlightenment the next level after Self-Realization. A Self-realized person has integrated and aligned their heart, mind, and gut with “what is.” Until a person eliminates the illusions that keep the light of consciousness out the person feels separate from others and that something is missing. Meditation and other disciplines help a person cope with society but the pull of other minds is always there when we are through with meditation and other disciplines. So right now we have to control our environments more in order to find peace. Existence in society will become comfortable and peaceful as the state of Enlightenment becomes more common. This is because one Enlightened person has a great positive effect on the masses. So imagine what it would be like if there were more enlightened people now.

So a personal retreat is a solution. To further use Jesus as a model who has the spiritual image of God inside him as is said we do and who possessed a material body as we do let’s consider the lost years of Jesus. So Jesus is like us. There is evidence that Jesus from the age of twelve to twenty-eight was in other lands involved in an adventurous retreat studying and striving for perfection. This type of adventure has been referred to as the Hero’s Journey. Presently, it is extremely difficult to be “in the world but not of the world” until a person has experienced long retreats and this is because of the pull of other minds. If available studies and disciplines that help people cope were combined with long retreats they would be much more effective.

A sadhu is a person in Hinduism and Jainism who renounces the world with a prolonged retreat with the intention of reaching Enlightenment. Sadhus are common in India. Many sadhus have already been householders who have raised families and are free to retreat and truly find themselves. This tells us that we can attempt the hero’s journey at any point in our lives. So until society becomes more comfortable and peaceful models like Jesus and others are there for us.

Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel, by Thomas Keating, is found at books.google.com. This book is designed to initiate the reader into a deep, living relationship with God. Written by an acknowledged spiritual master, the book moves beyond “discursive meditation and particular acts to the intuitive level of contemplation.” books.google.com

Thomas Keating, O.S.C.O. was an American Catholic monk and priest of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. Keating was one of the principal developers of Centering Prayer, a contemporary method of contemplation that emerged from St. Joseph’s Abbey, Spencer, Massachusetts. Wikpedia

To truly awaken the heart chakra has to open. It gets murky here because of the limits of language but this is what I am coming out with today. When you truly forgive yourself for wrongs committed you are surrendering to “our” Universal Spirit which is the real you. It does not matter if you are confused about God. You actually make a heartfelt surrender to the truth of yourself. You are surrendering to your Real Self, Higher Self, or True Self which is the same in everyone. You accept yourself in the truth of who you are with no false self fantasies. Part of the surrender of self-acceptance is also accepting your life’s conditions. This complete surrender frees you from the bondage of “illusions” that you have had about yourself and reality. You have released the “false” energy you held about yourself. Now you have your foundation in you which is “our” True Self or “our” Universal Spirit, e.g., Divine Indwelling, Atman, Image, and likeness, etc. If you have been serious enough about your surrender the heart chakra should open for you. This is where higher love begins. An open heart chakra is the beginning of Super Intuition. Here you learn to trust your intuition more about reality. You awaken to yourself among others realizing you are not separate. You come out of illusion. Your love for yourself and others continues to grow. You have become aware of “the Game of Life.”

It’s the same Self in our different bodies.