Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chunking, evil, fasting, good, mantra, meditation, nlp, prayer, Siva, Sivohum, spiritual exercises
I always laugh when I hear of someone who claims to be an avatar of Siva because, of course, everything is a manifestation of Siva. All of creation is, of its essence, Siva and anyone aware enough to understand that knows that there can be no individual avatar because individuality is an illusion.
There is a simple exercise that I have always enjoyed because of its sheer functionality. It is an exercise that is within the capacity of everyone. It requires no repetition of prayers or mantras. It demands no physical exertion, no pilgrimage, no fasting, no penance, no sitting in meditation. It uses principles that anyone familiar with NLP will recognise as related to Chunking. It requires only to recognise all things as the one indivisible Siva and in recognising, to apply to every, apparently separate thing the phrase, “This is Siva”
By way of illustration consider the act of eating a cheese sandwich. The bread is Siva, the butter is Siva so is the knife that was used to spread it, but so, also, is the act of spreading it, and cutting the cheese. We can take each component of the sandwich and to each apply the phrase, “This is Siva”. We can break the bread into its component parts, the flour, water, salt and yeast, and to each of these apply, “This is Siva”, but also to the act of baking, to the baker, the fire and to the oven. We can look at the processes and people who made the oven. We could take the flour and how it came to be, the seed, the soil, the sun and the rain, the farmer and the miller and of each say, “This is Siva”. We can look at the eating, the hunger that motivates, taste and the processes of digestion; we can break each of these components into their constituents, every fluid into its elements, each organ into its cells; ultimately we can chunk down to the atoms and electrons, and the empty space between and of each say, “This is Siva”. I do recommend using the phrase, “This is Siva” for each thing you consider rather than groups. It has been my experience that this exercise can transform how you relate to the world. Applying the phrase, “This is Siva” to your mood, if you remember, can transform it. Depression, for example, can become a different experience when it is recognised as Siva. Admittedly this may be a stretch at first, but even saying, “This is Siva” compells you to reexamine events.
How can it be possible to apply to the horrors of war or the concentration camps, “This is Siva”? How can we say such evil is god? Only by careful examination; as well as breaking an event or object into its constituents, we can chunk up and apply, “This is Siva” to a wider context or to a broader category. It is easy to see God in the good, it is much more challenging to be aware of him in that which we reject or which makes us uncomfortable. Of course as well as seeing Siva in the disease he is also the remedy, as much in resisting evil as in evil. It is in forcing ourselves to see him in the world as it is that we will make it possible to see him in the world as it should be. Then perhaps we will more easily say, “Sivohum”.
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