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Friday, December 31, 2010

Pain

 Pain in the present is experienced as hurt. 


Pain in the past is remembered as anger.


Pain in the future is perceived as anxiety.


Unexpressed anger, redirected against yourself and held 

within, is called guilt.


The depletion of energy that occurs when anger is 

redirected inward creates depression.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

My Books by Torkom Saraydarian

My books
are not sheets of papers
with prints
and diagrams
and numbers.

My books are
vortexes,
energy waves,
lightnings.

They are visions
and roaring
waterfalls
and rivers and rapids.

My books are not written
on sheets of paper,
they are frequencies
in Space.

The forms of my books
may perish
but the Spirit
will live forever
traveling with spirals
of visions. 

It is not the pages,
paragraphs,
sentences,
and words that
are important,
but the target,
the significance
they reveal
in the souls
of readers.

They carry you
from the unreal
to the real,
from your not-self
to your Self,
from your Self
to the All-Self. 

Each book is a
stepping stone.
They do not move
under your feet
but they will help you
to move toward the All-Self.

If you hate
or love the book,
you cannot move on. 

My books are not intended
to make you
a learned person,
but intended
to make you
actualize the greatness
that is within you. 

On every page
of my books,
you will meet yourself
and demand that
you transcend yourself.

Only
by transcending yourself,
you will fulfill
the purpose
of your life.

My books
are whispers
from your soul
to your ears

- A Poem written by Torkom on July 8, 1993

Monday, December 13, 2010

Experience - Real Experience

“Experience is not what happens to a man. It is what a man does with what happens to him.” 

Experience means to come face to face with reality on the level where you are.

Experience means to understand the course of the event and the effect of the event on you and your environment.

Higher experiences are collaborations of experiences in the past and present. Higher experiences are buried experiences within us which do not have interpretations.

Experiences have many levels and we can give them various names to differentiate them.

1. Accidents, mechanical experiences.
2. Events which are the result of our stupidity.
3. Painful experiences.
4. Pleasant experiences.
5. Uplifting, enlightening experiences.
6. Experiences of contact with reality.

7. Experience of achievement.

Accidents, mechanical experiences: An incident turns into experience when a lesson is learnt from it.

Events which are the result of our stupidity: we experience the result of our stupidity then the event becomes the result of what we had planted unconsciously.

Painful experiences: Painful experiences occur when we lose a great friend or a relative or when we are involved with a friend who is full of ego, vanity and spirit of condemnation.

We would prefer experiences that are not harmful but increase the wisdom we need to help others.

Pleasant experiences: Any true experience is a reaffirmation of the reality of the experience by the corresponding inner reality.

Uplifting, enlightening experiences: an event is an unfolding, enlightening and uplifting experience when you assimilate the energy, light and revelation hidden in the experience and then transform yourself.

Experiences are given in many forms: for example;

· Experiences in color
· Experiences in sound
· Experiences in rhythm and motion
· Experiences in fragrance
· Experiences in beauty
· Experiences in joy
· Experiences in freedom

Experiences of contact with reality: Experience of contact with reality are experiences related to the contacts of your inner core, with the hierarchy and with higher beings.

Experience of achievement: Experience of achievement are when you realize that you are functioning on higher plane with a higher body. When you see that you are able to wield energy and use it for a purpose; when you have experience of expansion of consciousness, inclusiveness, utter humility.

Discrimination between experiences makes a great difference in saving time, energy, money, or in losing such sources of future service.

An experience can be pleasant now but in the future it can cause pain.
An experience can be painful now but it can into a joy into a future.
An experience can be joyful now, and remain joyful forever.

We must try to have experiences that at least bring us joy in the future, or remain joyful forever.

So, we have 3 factors that lead us to real experience.

1. The ability to see the laws and principles behind and in the event.
2. Confirmation from your soul that what you see corresponds to an inner realization.
3. Seeing the result and confirming it as experience.

People on earth do not have real experiences; that is why things repeat in their life over and over again. The signs of real experiences are:

1. That unpleasant, harmful, limiting events never repeat themselves.
2. That pleasant, releasing, joyful, healing, expanding events rhythmically repeat in our lives.

Real experience must teach us what principles and laws to use to avoid unpleasant and limiting events and to increase the pleasant and expanding events.

A true experience is a reaffirmation of the discovered principles and laws by inner, existing principles and laws. One does not need to cut his head to have an experience of how one feels in cutting his head.

Experience is not a collection of feelings, sensations, pain and suffering, or pleasures, but it is the realization of the laws and principles of life in general.

For example, if you touch a flame and burn your finger, you will never try to touch the flame again. But if you touch the flame for the second time, you never had an experience with the flame.

People often ask how one learns without having an experience? The answer is that you will never learn if you do not have a true experience.

An experience is direct contact between the causes, laws, and principles and the corresponding laws, principles, and causes existing within you.

You can see that most people use the word experience in a wrong way. An experience is an extension of your inner reality and its fusion with the similar outer reality.

A true experience is one that teaches you a principle, a law, a fact, a weakness that you have, a virtue that you have, a revelation through which you expand your consciousness or see the true nature of certain events and their causes.

Experience can be etheric, astral, mental, which can be synthesized in the etheric centres.


- Torkom Saraydarian (Excerpted from Ageless Wisdom book)

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Books as Teachers

It is not essential to find a teacher in the flesh - he may be in print. A book may become a quite effective teacher and guide.

                                                   
In the absence of a sage's personal society, one may have recourse to the best substitute - a sage's printed writings.

Inspired texts, portions of scriptures, great men's writings and sayings offer guidance on the course of action to be followed, the ethical considerations to be heeded, the decisions to be made under certain pressures, crises, or confrontations - decisions whose consequences are often quite grave. Who can price the value of such readings at such times?

Books are most useful to those who, whether by necessity through lack of sincere competent instruction or by choice, to avoid narrow sectarianism, seek the goal by themselves.

Most students seeking inspiration have no other choice than recourse to the printed words.

The personal contact with a master does not necessarily require a face-to-face meeting. It can also be effected through a letter written by him - nay, to some degree, even through a book written by him. For his mind incarnates itself in these productions. Thus, those who are prevented by circumstances from meeting him physically, may meet him mentally and gain the same results.

The perspicacious student will cling steadfastly throughout his life to the writings of illumined masters, returning to them again and again.Their works are the truest of all, pure gold and not alloys.

There are men whose thought went deeper and understood more clearly than that of their fellows. Their record exists, their sayings and writings also. Their study is worthwhile, their precepts can be put to the test in practical everyday living.

In these books the voice of men who were spiritually illuminated long ago speaks to him. They are the only way in which it can speak to him today. Therefore he should respect and cherish them.

Those who have towered above all other men as Masters, who have left records of their path and of its attainment, can be good guides.

Why not make these great men your teachers through their preserved teachings? Why not be the disciple of Socrates, Buddha, Saint Paul, and dozens of others?

However distant a teacher may be, whether in country or century, by means of this written record he is able to help whoever is willing to lend his time and eyes.

If a book gives correct teaching about the quest and necessary warning about its pitfalls, it should be studied with proper care and respect.

A man can take from the printed word what he is unable to hear from the spoken word.

The truth-seeker will be wise to make use of such outward helps as appeal to him. They may be the written word, the printed book, the molded statuette, the pictorial representation, or the human photograph - always provided they are referable to a genuinely inspired source. He should study the words and works, the lives and examples of practising mystics, and follow in their footsteps.

Good books are not to be disdained, despite contemptuous references by fanatical mystics or ill-balanced ascetics. Negatively, they will warn him against misleading elements likely to cause a deviation from his correct course. Positively, they will guide him where no personal guide is available.

But he must beware of imagining that the pleasure he derives from spiritual reading is any sign that he is making progress in spiritual living. It is easier to read lofty thoughts than to think them out for oneself, and to live them is the most difficult of all.

Books, too, serve as guides if they are properly used, that is, if their limitations are recognized and if their authors' limitations are acknowledged. In the first case it is the intellect's own inability to transcend thought that stops it from realizing truth. In the second case it is the evolutionary status of the man's ego, and the accuracy of his attitudes - themselves victims or controllers of his emotions, passions - which matter. For if his mind cannot register the impact of truth, because of the blockage set up partially or even all around him, the author's work will reflect his ignorance. He cannot teach what he does not know; his own mental obscurity can lead only to the reader's obscurity. Yet such is the deceptiveness of thought, that a wrong or false idea may be received and held in the mind under the belief that it is a right or true one.

The writings of these Masters help both the moral nature and the intellectual mind of the responsive and sensitive, who are excited to the same endeavour, exhilarated to the same level, and urged to realize the same ideas. These stand out from all other writings because they contain vivid inspiration and true thought.

The very fine writings of philosophers and mystics of all times may bring into one's life some emotional inspirational and intellectual guidance, even, possibly, stimulating his power of will. Through the long, unavoidable years of struggle on the Quest, they can, to that extent, act the part of a teacher or guide. However, it must be remembered that some are infinitely more worthwhile than others, and it is essential for one to be able to discriminate between what is true and helpful and what is false and worthless.

These subjects are becoming more widely known and more studied than they were a half-century ago. There has been quite a flow of literature, original works, commentaries, and translations in our time making both mystical and philosophic ideas more available.

With the universal spread of elementary education, and the issue of cheaper paper-covered texts and translations, it is now possible for most earnest seekers living in the free countries to come into possession of the teaching.

If he cannot understand the more intellectual portions of these books he should not worry because they are written for different classes and those portions which he cannot follow are particularly addressed to highbrows and have to be expressed in a more complicated and scientific style.

If the literature on these subjects is so much larger today, the problem of choosing correctly what is most reliable is so much more difficult.

Book teaching is too general. It makes no allowance for individual differences, for the wide variation from one person to another. It is always necessary for the readers to adapt the teaching to their own sex, age, character, strength, and circumstances.

From these great writings, he will receive impulses of spiritual renewal. From these strong paragraphs and lovely words he will receive incitement to make himself better than he is. Their every page will carry a message to him; indeed, they will seem to be written for him.

Every book which stimulates aspiration and widens reflection does spiritual service and acts as a guru.

With such books he will feel for a while better than he is, wiser than he is.

One of the helps to kindle this spark into a flame is the reading of inspired literature, whether scripture or not - the mental association through books with men who have themselves been wholly possessed by this love.

A chance phrase in such an inspired writing may give a man the guidance for which he has long been waiting.

The words of inspired men are like a lighthouse to those seekers who are still groping in the dark.

Perhaps one prime value of a book is its power to remind students of fundamental principles and its ability to recall them to the leading points of this teaching, for these are easily lost or overlooked amid the press of daily business.

He will draw from such reading the incentive to keep on with his quest and the courage to set higher goals.

It may not be in the power of any piece of writing to guide a man all the way along this quest but it certainly is in its power to give him general direction and specific warning.

Let him study the literature of mystical and philosophic culture to become better informed about the Quest, about its nature and goal, and about himself.

By comparing what is described in the books with what he has so far experienced for himself, an aspirant may check and correct his course.

Those who were awakened by this reading could then look elsewhere for the personal guidance they seek.

Through a book help is given without involving the helper in the personal lives of the readers, but through a letter or a meeting involvement begins.

Friday, December 3, 2010

.......Each one does not condemn in his heart.......

What do we do actually if we really watch ourselves? We condemn each other. People are occupied eighty percent in condemning each other. “He did not do that”. “He did not come”. “He did not appear”. “He did say so”....Condemnation. If you sit down and really examine yourself, you are condemning other people. Because of your stupidity, laziness, insanity, arrogance, baseness, you start condemning others.

WHATEVER YOU ARE CONDEMNING IN OTHERS, THE SAME THING IS A POINT OF WEAKNESS IN YOURSELF. 



So in our life the most difficult thing is not to condemn with your mind and heart. You can stop condemning with your words, with your actions, but what about in your heart. You condemn and condemn. In condemning you make your mind stupid, because you hide under condemnation and do not start seeing yourself and analyzing the situation. You start hiding. You play hide and seek, instead of dealing with the problem that is within you.

When people do not condemn each other they become the people they think they are. They start thinking, analyzing, seeing, appreciating, and learning not to force each other with their personal interests.

Meditation means no condemnation in your mind.

- Torkom Saraydarian.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Characteristics of a Real Teacher of Wisdom

 There are a few major characteristics of a real Teacher. He gives great value to simplicity, joy, love, enthusiasm, and beingness. His expressions are clear and simple and arranged according to the level of the student. He also expects simplicity and clarity from his students as far as their thoughts, words, and expressions are concerned.

                                                     

A real Teacher creates an atmosphere of joy and love in which the assimilation of knowledge becomes possible. He is always enthused with his task and the subject he is teaching. This enables the student to absorb the Teaching. He always emphasizes the application of the Teaching through which transformation of the personality and the formation of a new beingness become possible.

A real Teacher is not glamored by the knowledge or social position of the student. Knowledge can be a recorded tape, and position can be the result of karma. No matter what the student knows and what his position is, the Teacher starts with the fundamentals of beingness.

The fundamentals of beingness are:

1. application of the Teaching to life
2. manifestation of certain virtues
3. overcoming habits
4. cultivating tolerance and understanding
5. choosing the most essential
6. manifesting joy
7. living in solemnity

After one has these fundamentals, his knowledge and position can be considered as assistances in his service for humanity. If the student is ready, he will look for these qualities in the Teacher, and he will gradually notice that besides these qualities, his Teacher has another quality: the ability to create crises and tensions within the student by putting his finger on the most sensitive points of his nature. If the student can bear such a tension, he will slowly become a co-worker of his Teacher, and his Teacher will give him more daring tasks to perform.

There is another quality of a real Teacher which can be known only by advanced students. This quality can be called by various names. You may call it "abundance" or "depth." This quality shows that the Teacher is not a shallow or one-faceted being, but that he is multidimensional and his depth cannot be reached. He is always able to open new windows and doors within your being and make you meet different sides of his own being. Also, when you begin to believe that you really know him, he makes you realize that you still do not know him.

A real Teacher encourages his student to strive and choose a field of service in which to apply his wisdom, knowledge, and attainments. Once the student creates his field of service, the Teacher slowly withdraws and lets the student cope with problems and their solutions.

A real Teacher does not create followers. Once the wings of his students grow, he lets them fly away. Co-workers can be created when the Teacher lets his students work independently in their own fields.

The real Teacher never looks at his students as if they were inferior to him. He looks at them as future heroes who will engage themselves in greater labor for humanity.

A real Teacher sees his own growth in an advancing student, and a good student sees in himself the growing beauty of the vision his Teacher awakened in him.

Striving toward vision keeps the student from using his knowledge as a means of exploitation.

The Teacher provides those steps for which the heart of the student is ready. In every age, the great Teachers built the ladders of ascent toward Infinity by Their own attainments and creativity. Each Teacher is the result of the accumulated energy of past achievements and a striving toward future vision.

In teaching students, the Teacher applies a spiral method. He emphasizes the fundamentals on higher and higher spirals, sometimes giving the impression that he is repeating them. But every spiral leads the students toward Infinity. The Teacher never gives the impression that the subjects he is teaching end with what he presents. He always makes the students realize that their true work starts beyond what he gives them. In every subject he opens the door toward Infinity. No subject is a dead end; no subject is used to encourage students to apply it for superficial interests of the finite, but each subject is a guide to Infinity.

Life after life those who persist in their striving find the right Teachers, and the right Teachers express gratitude for finding the right students.
______________________________


Excerpted from Challenge for Discipleship By Torkom Saraydarian.