2024 August

The Radiance Sutras: 112 Gateways of Wonder and Delight

August 8, 2024

Article highlights:

Something lost that found me
And amazing text

Around 1997-98 an acquaintance sent me a website link he thought I’d enjoy. It was early days of the internet, remember, so I was taken to a very basic website, one we’d now consider rudimentary. It was a lot of text and nothing more.

But oh the text! It was amazing. And for that period it became one of the most important contributors to my spiritual development, leaping me ahead in bounds. What was it?

It was translations of sutras from an apparently famous Sanskrit text, one I’d never heard of. They were transportive to me and I went to the website often for a year or more until one day the website was no longer maintained and functional.

Over all these ensuing years I’ve tried to find them again in some form. But I couldn’t remember the Sanskrit name of the sutras, and an author wasn’t given on the website since the translations came from ancient texts. So without enough information, I never did find them.

Until they found me again recently via my friend Anne. When she told me about a book she was enjoying, I began to feel excitement that it might be those sutras. I got the book and wasn’t disappointed. It was indeed the material I’d seen so many years before. I can’t wait to share one with you today! But first, a bit more about this.

I learned that what I’d seen long ago was the 112 dharnas of Vijnana Bhairava – you see why I didn’t remember that? They were an English translation by Lorin Roche and were originally published by him in 1993 under the title Subtle Bodies. The website didn’t include the entire book, only his translation of the sutras.

The book I have now is that author’s material, retitled, The Radiance Sutras – 112 Gateways To The Yoga of Wonder & Delight, by Lorin Roche, PhD. The Forward by Shiva Rea begins with the words: “In your hands, you hold a treasure,” and I think that’s absolutely right… it’s a great treasure.

To me, they feel like love letters from God Within. Love letters – in a way – from myself to me, from the divine in me dancing with the Yin and Yang of my being, loving me into the divine I Am. And I think this contemporary interpretation makes them transformative, even in English.

Each Sutra is very short but I find them truly amazing in their ability to transmute my moment from the mundane to that of divine consciousness.

Today’s was:

Elaborate rituals and garish images

May be useful in meditation when your mind is

whirling with thought

Of sex, money, and power, wandering like an elephant

in heat.

Go ahead and use these tools, yet know,

Beating drums and blaring trumpets

Cannot summon the One who is already present.

I am not a collection of incantations

known only to experts.

I am not a ladder to be climbed,

Or a sequence for piercing energy centers in your body.

I am not to be found at the end of a long road.

I am right here.

It’s said that hearing them chanted in Sanskrit is a special experience, so I’m including a You Tube video of that. The video is 44 minutes of beautiful Sanskrit chanting. I’m having wonderful experiences with it. It’s a blessing to listen to – whether for 5 mins or letting the entire length work it’s way into my being. Or simply having it on in the background of my day.

Enjoy!

With love,

Mayet Leilani

How To Perform Miracles

August 1, 2024

NOTE: I wrote this before recent political changes, obviously. I’m leaving it as was because it kind of proves my point that all these pronouncements and predictions we make are a waste of words.

Dear Miracle Worker,

Naturally you’ve wondered as I have from time to time how Jesus and others accomplished their inner feats of spiritual growth and outer feats of healing and miracles. Some interesting information came to me recently about that that’s worth contemplating together today.

“The man, Jesus – and those who walked with him who kept somewhat astride – kept to their paths with single-mindedness, refusing to become distracted by life and the times, wanting above all to do their spiritual work and be at one with the mind of God rather than man.

Doing this, he, and they, gradually began to enter a space, to discover a space that was separate from the surrounding turmoil. THAT came about by maintaining single-minded focus on why they were really in form, and by taking guidance from Inner Voice and Mind which is hard to hear if distracted by life’s drama.”

This made me wonder about something. Because it’s been a week in which I have heard the following statements from various people:

“Things are going to crash.” “If Biden wins, we are lost, he is a criminal.” “If Trump wins, we are lost, he is a criminal.” “If Biden wins he won’t serve his term, he’s going to die before.” Trump is sick and won’t make it.” “A new Covid is coming, worse than ever, and they will declare martial law.” “The 2025 plan is going to succeed in taking us back 200 years or more, into slavery and anarchy.”

I have heard all these speculations and questions from people like ourselves. That’s what make me wonder. Talk about being immersed in the distractions, right? After all our training and all the teachings we’ve been privileged to receive, why are we wasting our time on these rabbit holes and distractions? And in thinking and saying things like this, what are we doing? What are we helping create in the world?

When we get distracted by world drama like that we loose touch with the Source of our Being.

With our connection to Source,
we become the miracle-makers of our own life and times.
Without that connection, the miracles have no reach.

As with the Christed one and others like him, single-mindedness about being in touch with the Source of our Being is what keeps us strong together and each person strong within themselves. And it’s what makes miracles possible. Pondering all this today, I feel it might be a good time for me to share something I feel passionate about.

There’s a commitment I have that goes like this: Regardless of how things look or feel – or even how all the world “stuff” might create problems in my own life – I hold one thing above all: I am a point of peace and Light and I hold that to be true. I hold it with all the balance and strength I can at any given moment – as I have been prepared to do.

I do not lower into the daily distractions and separations and issues. Doing so only serves to weaken my resolve and certainty about who I am and what I am doing and what I am here for. I meet all those rumors and issues with my connection to the truth of my Being.

I hold steady and I bring myself back to holding steady when I am shaken. There is such peace and joy in doing this work of holding steady, one that I find hard to explain. It is a task for which I came and I know myself to be supported in doing it by all the resources of goodness and grace.

Like you, I see and hear and receive in my in box so many rumors, so much nonsense. I do not give it lip service nor do I wobble about with it. Focusing on the world’s wobbles in that way is just such a colossal waste of time and energy and good health. I suspect you’ve found the same to be true.

With our single-mindedness, let’s perform some miracles together instead!

Holding steady with you (our first miracle together),

Mayet