LIVING WITH THE SENSES

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

On having spoken about the silence, it is necessary to remit us to the quietude and to live with all the senses. For it I am going to transcribe some exercises of meditation that Anselm Grün narrates to us. It is not a question of proposing big targets. Rather, the exercise consists of remaining gathered precisely without much ado in ourselves, of being present in the proper senses and of experiencing the world with them.

It is necessary to look for a quiet space, out of the city – if it is possible to do it in a country - or in a quiet sector of the city. This first exercise is easy, in the first ten minutes of daily walk, to limit yourself to look: What do I see?, to notice the scenery, the gardens, the flowers, the field, the forms of the trees. To observe the sky and how does play with the clouds. It is not a question of a curious look: the eyes do not stroll around constantly of a side for other. Is to be completely immersed in seeing. In seeing the amazing beauty of the creation, to perceive the force of the nature. That's why for the Greeks, the sight is the most important sense for the meeting with the power of the universe. Do not watch as a spectator, but as merge with the sight.

This is also what means “contemplation“: looking it is possible to discover the bottom of the things and there, in its depth, to discover the knowledge of the nature. To "meditate" means also: to look inwards, to visualize the proper light. The light of the sun that guides our look towards the interior light of the soul. There to discover the power that generates the universe not like a certain image but like foundation of all the images.

Then, during another ten minutes try to limit oueselves to listening. What do I hear when I walk along the scenery listening attentively? I hear the rustle of the wind, of the field, of the birds, the barking of the dogs, the noise of the city. And I hear my own steps. When everything is immersed in the listening, finally also listen in all the noises the quietude, not disturbing the peace, makes it perceptible. And sometimes, in the middle of a lot of noise not to hear anything, but only the calm, those are wonderful moments, since we will not listen to cars that circulate along any place, or noise of any class, at that time the absolute calmness reigns. And then we hear a light rustle again. It is something delicate that makes audible for us the calmness that wraps us. To listen always has a mystery aura. In what we hear we perceive, in the fund, the audible.

In the ten following minutes, to devote ourselves only to smell. I smell the scenery, the fragrance of the flowers, the trees, the field, of the shrubs that rise at the edge of the way. If we concentrate completely in smelling, we will state that every scenery has its own smell and that a scenery smells of different form in the morning than in the evening, of different form after raining that while it rains or that when it shows the sun, of different form in winter than in spring, summer or autumn. We smell the diversity.

The smell is a sense loaded with emotions.With the smell, there comes to us the memory of the smells of our infancy that were important, who were transmitting a safety sensation. But also the affronts that we experience of children are associated often with certain smells. When we smell, the thoughts stop fluttering in us. Then, we are completely in one of our senses, in our body, not in the mind. To smell communicates us with intense experiences of our infancy, adolescence and also ripeness. we remember our holidays and we it associate at once the smell with our adventures, with the good moments that we spend in certain places and the smell causes in us a feeling of freedom as well as a safety sensation, and at the same time, there is in this fragrance a slight sign of transcendency, of mystery. It is clear that, the harmony of the cosmos itself touched us.

Next, we try to have the senses focus only in our skin. We notice the wind, which sometimes caresses us tenderly or it is up to our bones. We feel the heat of the sun in our face. Then is when we wonder about the mystery of the creation. We extend the arms and perceive its powerful energy that wraps and encourages us. We feel the sun, the wind and how is so good to us. Or we touch the grass, the flowers, the leafs, the crust of a tree. There we can concentrate entirely at once in touching, of experiencing the calmness. Now only we perceive. We are immersed in feeling and that pacifies us.

When we are overturned in the tact, we touch something that is major than we are. We are not satisfied neither with comparing the different experiences, nor with evaluating them from a scientific point of view. We touch in the things the untouchable, the excellent mystery. Then, by means of the tact, all that surrounds is calmed down. Everything is silenced and does not speak any more than of the indescribable.

When we walk along the nature with all the open senses, it stops the tumult of the numerous thoughts. Rather, we are immersed in looking, listening, smelling and feeling. The thoughts remain completely awake, for example, when we smell come to our mind certain fragrance of the infancy, of the youth, of the first kiss or hug, but we do not continue reigning on it. Our thoughts do not stroll everywhere. We are in the moment, we are in our senses and this way we calm down. The senses moor to the spirit and plunge it in the quietude.

For many persons to walk along the nature is an important footpath towards the quietude and the meeting with our-self that is the microcosm and we slide to the macrocosm to feel its nobility and power that goes out to our visible, audible, odorable and palpable.

OUR WISDOM

What is indispensable to understand is the Being owns by right the quality of a “true man”

Victor Manuel Guzmán Villena

Confucius teaches that there are two classes of wise people, by birth, while others do so through their efforts. We must remember here that the wise person as he understood, represents the highest degree of the Confucianism hierarchy and at the same time constitutes the first grade of the Taoist hierarchy, being placed thus in certain way in the limit point where the domains exoteric and esoteric meet.

In these conditions, we may wonder whether, when speaking of a wise person by birth, Confucius had wanted to designate in this way only the human who by nature own all the required qualifications to accede and without no other preparation to the hierarchy of knowledge, consequently, did not have any necessity to strive in climbing little by little, by means of more or less long and laborious studies to the degrees of exterior hierarchy. It is very possible effect and even constitutes the most likely interpretation; such sense is, by the way, so much more legitimate whatever that implies the recognition at least that there are beings who are destined, by his own possibilities, to move immediately beyond that exoteric dominion.

All effective knowledge constitutes a permanent acquisition obtained by the Being once and for all, and nothing could never make lose it. Therefore, if a being who has reached a certain degree of accomplishment in an existence state, that advance to another state, will take the knowledge that has been acquired, who will appear then like “innate” in that new state; this clearly, on the other hand, is a realization that remains incomplete, without the passage to another state would not have any conceivable sense, in the case of the being that happens to be in the human state, this is the one who has particularly interested in here, this one accomplishment has still not arrived at the overcoming of the conditions of the individual existence; this one can be extended from the most elementary degrees to the point nearest to those who in the human state are up to perfection. We say only to the closest point, because, if the perfection of an individual state indeed had been achieved, the being would not have to go through another individual state.

Also it is possible to be spoken of a being who already reached a certain degree of realization before being born to the human state, will own by birth the degree corresponding to this accomplishment in the human world, degree that can go from the one of wise person to the one of the “true man”. Nevertheless we would not have to think that in the present conditions of the terrestrial world, this innate wisdom can pronounce spontaneously, as happened at the primary time, because evidently is precise to consider the obstacles in our media . The Being will have then to overcome these obstacles, which means that absolutely he is not exempted, as it would be possible to be supposed erroneously, of the entailment to a “initiatory chain”, in the absence of which, in a human state, he would remain equal to as he were when entering, and as immersed in a species of spiritual "dream” that does not allow him to go more far towards his realization.

Could still be possible, with rigor, expressing externally wisdom without having necessity to develop a gradual an state of the wise person, because is still  in the upper limit of the exoteric dominion; but, for everything that is beyond, the initiation itself, at the moment, an indispensable condition, and, moreover, sufficient; in the unique case in which this condition does not exist is where the realization is descendant , since presupposes the ascending realization has been fulfilled until last term; then this case is evidently different from  that we are considered now.

This being apparently is going through the same degrees that the initiate who simply has started from the state of the ordinary man, but the reality is however very different; indeed, not only the initiation, instead of not being in the virtual beginning, will be immediately effective, but also “will recognize” these degrees, of a form that can be compared to the “platonic reminiscence” and even is without a doubt, one of the meaning of it.

This case would be comparable in the order of the theoretical knowledge, someone who already is aware of certain doctrinal truths, but is incapable to express them because does not have at his disposition the appropriate terms, and that, from the moment when he is resolute to announce them, recognize them in their sense without experiencing any difficulty for assimilation. It may even happen that, when is in the presence of the rites and initiatory symbols, these appear as a well-know, in a manner, somehow, “timeless”, because he owns everything further and independent of the particular forms, constitutes the own essence.

Another consequence of what we have said. is to walk on the initiatory road, a being as the one that we spoke does not have any necessity of aid from a exterior human Guru, since in fact the action of the true inner Guru operates in him from the beginning, making the intervention evidently unnecessary of all “provisional substitutes”.

Some being feel the need to look for the initiation, which only indicates that they are ready to enter this path and does not mean they have been in the same path in another state, these confusion is because, before all initiation, they have seen some “brilliance” more o less vague, of psychic order rather than spiritual, in sum does not have anything of extraordinary and no more special than any “premonition” which may occasionally have every man whose faculties are a little less limited than the present humanity, and that, for this reason, is less locked up in the corporal modality of his individuality, which on the other hand, of general way, not even implies necessarily that he is truly qualified for the initiation.

All this does not represent insufficient reasons to try to be able to do without a spiritual Teacher and yet to reach an effective initiation, not less than to exempt ourselves of all personal effort in views to this result; the truth to say that there is a possibility that exists, but also belong but to a very small minority, although, in sum, we practically must not even take into account. Who own this possibility will be always consciousness of it at the opportune moment, a certain and doubtless way, and that is to say, is the unique thing that matters; as far as the others, if they are let drag by theirs vain imaginations and they give credit to them, behaving consequently, they will be taken to the most annoying deceptions.

EFFECTS OF CONTEMPLATING NATURE

Anselm Grun says, to walk along the creation with the awake senses is a way of experiencing quietude in the nature. Teaching us that there are other ways of finding calm in it. Many persons already have their preferred placed in the nature, in the park or under a tree with which they are identified to contemplate the scenery.

Some places exceed a deep interior peace. When we come to our favorite place we feel a deep interior peace that takes us and gives us full pleasure of life. The proper scenery is a pure tenderness and peace. Equal if we go out of the city, to the field, and only on having contemplated the crops, the country houses, automatically a safety sensation and belonging arises in us, of being received and supporting by the power of the nature and little by little we are taking root to respect and to protect it, since it give us many experiences and knowledge for our well-being.

Sometimes there are energy places that are good for the persons who visit it. They radiate something very certain. We do not know why, but there are places that address straight to us, that transmit to us the sensation of being surrounded with something more powerful. It is interesting to walk along these places that cause an intense feeling in our inner self, since it belongs to the ambiance of the indescribable thing, that is to say that we cannot explain with words what happen to us. It takes possession of all our being, unleashing a subtle, mysterious impression. What is this phenomenon about? There are the overwhelming forces of nature, there is present the soul of the nature that melts with us. It is an evocation of the history, the highest spirit of a place is there, and such moments remain recorded in the memory as a state of exception, like perceptions not so much of another reality all that of the invisible mystery of the reality. There are moments of intense plenitude.

In the forest

From immemorial times, the forest has influenced of distinctive form into the persons. The forest fill us with sensation of being protected. In the sleep, it represents the unconscious one. When we are inside a forest we contact ambiances of our unconscious one that, otherwise, we would not perceive. The type of forest does not lack influence in our sensibility. Some trees like the eucalyptus gives us the sensation of a fragrance that penetrates even in the deepest of us, other trees for its corpulence make us participants of the force that they possess. But the forest,no matter which one, always leads us to feeling protected, they always allow us to take part in his mystery, quietude, but also with its depth and extension.

What everyone experiences in a quietude place depends in grand part of the infancy experiences. Where like a child experienced calm. In the same place will experience the calm and peace also like a adult. Many times it comes to us to the memory of the school holidays when we were spending time in the field, gathering wild fruits, bathing of the rivers, enjoying the calmness that the forests were offering to us, we were feeling protected and were turning more fortresses with this summer calmness that was wrapping us and was strengthening us to continue the studies. For the ones who have been lucky to experience the calm of the forests always arise this big wish of live it again, to perceive the serenity in our soul in the middle of the turbulence of life. All this makes us marked forever and often being far from the forests of our infancy, we can return them, lying down in anywhere that we were, close the eyes and direct our spirit to that forest with which we were acquainted by the ancient experiences. This way we will experience again the sounds, the smells, the mystery and feel as no noise will bother us feeling in calmness and wrapping ourselves of happiness and fascination for the life.

The water

For others,  relaxing is to sit down to the shore of a lake, of a river, in the beach, the sea. There we can spend hours sat listening to the symphony of the water that flows serenely. What has the water that makes it so sedative? It is soothing, the  flowing of a river, the murmur of a small creek addresses to the deepest strata of the soul. When we sit down to the shore of a lake and contemplate it, we contact our soul. That's why in the sleep, the water is usually the image of our unconscious. To the glance the water, on having felt it with our senses, we deepen ourselves in our unconscious one and symbolize that our life has not dried off.

To contemplate the movement of the water, the sound that it provokes, at once comes to us this sedative virtue, produces fascination to us of meditating and we establish associations of promises with the life and of the fruits that we will give to the humanity. Everything hard inside us comes alive,and is softened by the water, it transmits a protection sensation to us.  Perhaps remembers us the original state in the maternal bosom, where also we were sheltered by the water.

The water is fascinating because is soft, flexible and tolerant. It does not have marked edges. That's why it is a conciliation element. It occurs literally tangible, at least like sleep, what with so many vehemence is wished for us: the destruction of the walls that separate us from the others. A look to the lake, to the sea is a look to the distant horizons of a brotherhood without reservations. Also we can associate with a feeling of looking for the deep solitude. We can experience that on having gone to a solitary lake in the high mountains, which for the access roads are difficult to come. If we are alone with the lake thoughts will come to us like we are being observed by a eye of the nature. In those moments  we will live along with this solitary lake through our own experiences and will contact the proper soul. The lake looks at us and makes us open the eyes so that we appear to the depth of our being and to discover there the extract of our soul. It is an idyll between the lake and us. The same way the sea exercises in the persons a singular fascination.

We can remain hours and hours sat to the shore without getting tired of contemplating the extension and the force of the sea, especially when there are thunderstorms the waves they get up and then they break, producing a sublime spectacle. having seen as the water is waved, transmitting fabulous energies to us. Also to the gait for the beach and to exhibit us to the howls of the sea, it turns out to be relaxing, and healing since we are participants of the infinity.

But not only the lake or the sea have a distinctive fascination power, but also the river. When we contemplate the river flowing, diverse ideas occur to us, everything is played down, everything flows, we cannot retain anything and the same way the problems are played down. Before our eyes it keeps on flowing and disappearing and we receive conscience of which the river that we are contemplating is flowing by millenniums. We see its history and as it has survived. It flows and flows, nevertheless it supports the same personality, it is the same, although its waters are in constant change, and that leaves a lesson to us showing us the mystery of our lives, of my history, since it will keep on existing when we die. But also it is a promise of that ,it impels us towards the goal, which is to deliver generously its water to the sea. Flowing of the river has in itself  soothing effects. It calms the rough feelings. We reach the quietude and the flow of the waters that drag the whole ballast makes us think that we must eradicated from us all the problems, sorrows, worries and sufferings so that the water of the forget takes all, and this way remain purified and  loved unconditionally, to be able to come back home refreshed, purified, renewed like the water that flows without recess.

THE POWER OF THE SPIRIT

VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

The world is subject to its own vision. If you observe thoroughly what the habitants of the earth feel, and of which way they can help to satisfy theirs desires and needs. On having listened to the thousands of sounds that surround us and that normally are audible, like the singing of the hummingbird, the sounds of the new-born sparrows, singing of the rooster announcing the new day, the notes of the cricket that they sing to attract the female, as well as other thousands of musical sounds that are much over the scope of the human ear, we will notice that these creatures are capable of feeling, of controlling and of expressing sounds that can produce diverse types of emotional sensations as love, peace, harmony and perfection that they benefit to the whole world. Also they can amplify and express the vibrations of the sensation of abundance and big happiness, of a way that surround and penetrate the whole humanity up to a level of wanting it, any unit of the human family can enjoy them.

When the existence of this condition is recognized, any human unit cooperates amplifying and expressing these vibrations, then what the humanity needs takes form between their members. Desires are satisfied when the necessary vibrations are activated, and we cannot escape to that presence. In this way are taking form all the perfect desires of the human being. The vast ocean of the creative, unlimited and mobile space, it is very clear; nevertheless, it is full of vibratory energy. This energy is know as a watery substance in which all the substances are in the soluble state or in suspension, in a harmonious relation, ready to answer to the call of the vibratory rhythm that will allow it to get mixed to give place to the forms. When the correct vibratory influence is established across the thought of the human unit, in cooperation with everything, the elements lack another option and for it they prepare to occupy the mold arranged by the desire. This is an absolute law and nobody can separate from its course.

On having listened to a musical instrument that plays in a very low tone, which little by little goes down until it turning out to be inaudible to us. The sensations or emotions of the sound that we have experienced persist inside our brain. With the vibrations the same happens, although it is unaudible. Now let's raise these notes across the musical scale until they are so sharp that they turn out to be unaudible again. The sensation or emotion persists; the same happens with the highest vibration. We know that none of these influences stops although they are out of the scope of the physical ear.

This is what we name a spirit. When the physical loses the control, the spirit takes it; and this control is much more definite, that merely physical and it turns out to be more sensitive to control the mental influences or vibratory, since the thought is an ally very near to the spirit. The physical limits itself to the body and does not spread beyond it. The physical is limited to the actions of the body, but not to its reactions. When it is a question of corporal reactions we are a spirit; this way we can see how limited the physical body is.

The spirit is not only fills every atom of the known physical, but also penetrates the tiniest of any substance, whether solid or gaseous. In fact, the substance takes its various forms from the impulse to forge its mold. The human being is the only projector and coordinator of the various guidelines that takes the substance. There is an invisible link, as the impulse of thought or heart amplified into billions of cycles, which run through the spiritual orders that control the universe. Those big throbbing pulse or heartbeat circulated through intelligence that floods all around the cosmos aqueous its spiritual counterpart. These giant currents of life beats at every atom of the cosmos and keeps moving in a perfect order and rhythm. In this infinite cosmic vastness diseased cells can not exist, or conflicting because, with only one of them could unravel everything. The result would be chaos for a while. That's what happens to the human body when disturbed by the discordant thought. Hence the term "Divinity" emerged from this central control. The beat of the human unit corresponds to this beat, but on a small scale.

The human being, the oneness of humanity, is a well-organized universe. However, it is necessary to assume that divinity as a unit and take charge of it, since it is part of a large intelligence that runs the vast cosmos in perfect harmony. Are the physical forces that act on this perfect control, and is present in all releases, in aqueous and even in the lowest physical forms. If disaster strikes, humans not only have that power, but is its own power which is transformed into primitive intelligence in which there is destruction. When the calm reigns again and harmony has been restored, the humanbeing who has returned to begin again, to maintain unity with the infinite and afford to wait for conditions mature for the manifestation of universes. Then, aware of past experience, is better equipped to assist the induction of a more streamlined and durable condition. The human master can not fail fail in this regard, since it is more accurate than any other form, and failure is not written on the horizon or on his conscience.

When the wise person says: "I am immortal, eternal, timeless; there is nothing in life or in the light that I am not be” he is contemplating this scenery. This is the real divinity. Is his truly ascension.