caspex

Cycles of Optimism and Pessimism As I have said earlier I do pooja/Bhakti at 9 PM. I feel so optimistic of my coming future and self after pooja however as I go to sleep and the next day comes, the effects of the pooja are slightly gone. By the time it's around 1-2 PM the next day, the effects are all gone, and I feel anxiety and negative towards what's happening. I do not believe it's due to a negative being attached to me, as I have checked using the Camphor Method. I'll explain that in a bit. These negative feelings are logical and valid, so when I am in that state I am baffled at my previous self being so optimistic. By the time it's time to do pooja, I almost don't want to. But when I start doing pooja, I love it. I am optimistic again and couldn't remember why I was feeling so negative. I have a few ideas as to why this is and I am sure it has to do with my lifestyle. I need more energy and therefore I will be incorporating yoga and pranayama earlier in the day. My chakras do not feel active anymore, and I think that's because I am not doing 100 chalisas a day like I was doing before. That's fine, because I had not taken a Sankalpa beforehand anyways. What's a Sankalpa? Sankalpa means "Determination" and it's something you do before you undertake a period of pooja. Let's say you want to commit to a period of 21 days doing 11 Hanumana Chalisas a day. So, you take some water in your right hand, say your intention "I, [name], will do 11 Hanumana Chalisas each day for 21 days starting today on [date]." and then drop the water on the ground and let it evaporate. The reason you would do this is because the fruits of your pooja are actually transferred to you and not taken by any other entity. It's also said that Indra, the king of Gods, will get the fruits of your pooja if you don't take sankalpa beforehand. Anyways, it's like a promise to the deity that you will do something. You can then ask the deity for something, by stating the reason you are doing this period of pooja. Once you take a sankalpa, you can't get up from the spot before you fulfill it, so in the previous example, you can't get up until you do 11 chalisas that day. It need not be said during the Sankalpa because these rules are implicit, but deities have their rules attached to them if you want to successfully impress them. During a Hanumana Upasana Sankalpa period, you should not eat non-veg items, eggs, onions, garlic and drink alcohol. Those things are strictly off-limits and to the extent you decide to follow these rules decides the extent to which Hanumana is impressed by you. Like you can choose to eat onions and garlic and avoid everything else. There's another rule that you can do which is sleeping on the floor only. Where you lay down a mattress or something on the floor. If you fail your sankalpa then you have to start over. The deity might even be angry at you depending on how you failed your sankalpa. Kapoor Vidhi (The Camphor Method) This method is used to check if you have any sort of negativity messing you up, giving you bad luck and all that. You just take a camphor square and hold it in your hand while you read 21 or moreso Hanumana Chalisas. You would just add this in your normal practice of bhakti, you don't have to change much. If while reading the chalisas you start feeling a lot of discomfort or pain in your hand or forearms, or your hand starts getting super heavy, or it feels like the camphor is burning your hand, that means you have a negative entity attached to you. How bad it gets shows how bad the influence is. For me it was simply a heavy hand and some pain in the forearm yesterday during the last few chalisas yesterday, and today it felt like it burned a little bit. So I do have negative influence but it wasn't very uncomfortable so I know it's not that bad. It's possible every person has atleast this amount of negative influence. If you hold it too tight or are too paranoid you'll obviously feel uncomfortable so be relaxed about it. These feelings should happen on there own. Once you are done with the chalisas, take that camphor bit and set it ablaze and let it melt away, then end your pooja normally. You do this once in the day and once in the night for however long the problem persists. I am doing this only at night because that's when I do pooja. That burning of the camphor is symbolized as Hanumana beating up that negativity. Some More Things This post is too long right now so I'll talk about this next time but I had a very shocking dream. I will not reveal a lot of the details as it is very personal but it really disturbed me. I put on those clothes I bought on the statue of Hanumana I have at home and he honestly looks so cute but also intense. It has really helped me increase my bhakti and focus more though. I also put him over a red cloth. These are the standard practices to keep Hanumana Murti(Statue) at home. You also have to use a mixture of orange vermilion powder and jasmine oil to put/color the statue periodically. It has a nice scent. This is why when you search "Hanumana Murti in Mandir" you'll see some orange statues of him. I'll try to connect concepts I have learnt here on Actualized.org with Bhakti as I slowly get more experienced in it. As it stands now I am a lot more well-versed here than in Bhakti lol.

Quality over Quantity I find it important to update that I have dropped the number of chalisas that I do each day from 100 to 51. Meaning the whole pooja(the process of Japa and Bhakti) takes 2 - 2.5 hours instead of 3.5 hours now. I start at 9 PM and end it at around 11:30 PM. The reason is that even though I am perfectly capable of doing 100 each day, I can only do proper Bhakti till half way through. This is because of my limited capability of being able to do Bhakti. This can be increased gradually which I didn't do. It's better do 51 Chalisas with amazing Bhakti than 100 chalisas with mediocore Bhakti. It is said that performing Japa of even one chaupai (a set of two lines from the chalisa) with heart is better than performing Japa of the whole chalisa in a robotic way. And that makes sense, Hanumana is not a robotic machine that you can get your work done with, he is an entity, an entity much more intelligent and powerful than yourself. He is said to roam the earth in a physical body as an immortal at the current moment. So you really have to be genuine and honest with yourself about how you view him. It all comes down to your love and faith in him. But that's not to say Quantity plays no role at all. The amount you decide to do, and successfully do, also shows your dedication. Visiting a Hanumana Temple for the First Time I could see his statue from the doorway, 5 feet tall, garlanded and fully orange. It didn't feel like a normal lifeless statue to me, it felt as if it was actually looking at me. My senses had been alerted. I went inside and bowed to him, placing my forehead on the ground. I could feel an intense energy radiating from the statue showering my head and my back. I am sure someone who is not a bhakt will not feel this as intensely if at all. That's all I did this time, I just wanted to witness the temple. I realized something. It's important to visit temples and witness the real energy of these deities and not to stay holed up in your home. This is because what you do bhakti towards at home starts connecting with the energy from the temple. The energy you worship becomes more authentic. And this temple wasn't even some big deal. It was just your usual Hanumana temple you'd find multiple of in every district. I can only imagine what the designated famous temples for Hanumana like Balaji Mehndipur would feel like. It is said to visit Hanumana Temple every Tuesdays and Saturdays and this is what I have decided to do. For if I don't do this my Bhakti will not progress as fast. What's Up with Statues? A statue more than 6 inches tall has a ritual done to it known as "Prana Prathista" in which you infuse life force / prana within it. Every temple is expected to do this but not all of them do, and as a sensitive person you can clearly feel which statue has had Prana Prathista done to it. The idea is that it will be infused with some energy connected to the deity, so when you do your pooja or connect your pooja to it, you have better connectivity to the real deity. At home one is supposed to keep statues less than 6 inches tall because if you do keep a statue with Prana Prathista done do it then you have to treat your home like a temple because you have to think of the statue as the deity itself in your home. The statues you worship at home are supposed to only represent or symbolize the deity and help you in bhakti towards it, but that doesn't mean the deity, once it has it's eyes on you, does not care what happens to the statue. Out of bhakti I bough some clothes and other garments, a red cloth to sit on and some other necessary things for the statue I have at home. The cleaner and well-kept it is, the easier it is for you to do Bhakti towards the deity. You could also have a picture of the deity instead of a statue, which serves the same purpose. Obviously whether an entity like the deity is all in your head or not has nothing to do with decorating your symbol of it at home. As for the temples, you can literally feel the intensity of energy if you have been doing Bhakti of the deity. It's very interesting and I will treat it all of it as real, because that's what's intended and expected in the practice of Bhakti.

Law already tries to separate good victims and bad ones. I do not know if you study law but if you do you must know what kind of rules and strategy they employ to separate good victims from the bad ones. I think you would get an idea of how it works if you study that and will be able to make similar distinctions of your own regarding different matters. What you asked is a very wide question and the process of separating good victims from the bad victims depends on the matter at hand. For the death penalty, law already tries to find out the intent but it's obviously far from perfect. You need to really grow yourself and have lots of integrity and hours of contemplation behind your belt before considering to decide people's fates or who is a good or bad victim. Your answer cannot really be summed up in a post. I believe a proper answer would be as long as a book. There's just so much to cover and so much to contemplate. I am pretty sure there would be books dealing with similar problems. Good luck!

Think of something to improve this forum right here, don't think of an escape plan for all the 'quality users'. If what you said is implemented than this forum will devolve even more, what quality it has now will get largely transferred to that 'premium' forum. The purpose and intent of this forum would be undermined. Moreover, the skill to quickly differentiate the bullshit from the legit is indeed a skill. Scrolling through this forum practices that. And what's legit is something determined by you. Something seems like garbage or too low level to you is just the right level for someone else. What we should work on is finding solutions that increase the density of quality on this forum, not separate it to somewhere else. Compared to other platforms this place is heaven already.

Lots of people don't even have the energy to learn properly. They have the technique down, they know what to learn, and they have the ways to learn, but they can't stay consistent because they don't have the energy to. Lots of people are dealing this basic problem of energy. So if any of you are considering doing deep learning in a field make sure you have a good amount of baseline energy. I for sure struggled with this and didn't think having a good sleep schedule, exercise etc. mattered for learning. But they make a big difference in how energetic and alert you feel, which directly translates to how much you learn and retain.

Confidence is an inner state that is often brought about from being able to to do something or having faith in oneself. But this inner state is not limited to these triggers. You don't need to be able to do something, or have faith in yourself to have this state within you. You can be confident in your approach even if you know you are gonna fail. What confidence as an inner state comes down to is survival. If you really hinge the survival of your selfhood on what you are doing, confidence is much harder to achieve. The reason something like no-self would give you insane levels of confidence is because your survival ain't hinged to a sense of self anymore. People think confidence is having a strong sense of self or identity, but it's actually having the capability to let go of that self or identity. This is why you would not be afraid of failing. It's not only the self that confidence hinges on but other aspect of your life. If the thing you are about to do deals with winning or losing the whole game, you would be a lot less confident unless you are able to let go of the attachment to winning. Confidence isn't the presence of a state but it's the absence of the state of attachment. Therefore confidence is the natural state of a human being. This is also why we think of people with too much anxiety as having a mental illness because they are not at all connected to their natural state of confidence. The reason confidence is even given a term for itself is because an average human being has loads of attachments and in areas where he does not have attachments or does not have attachments to his attachments (i.e. does not fear losing that attachment to something), he is seen as different than normal, he is seen as 'confident'. It is really not that tricky of a concept.

I am thinking of doing water fasts every Tuesday and Saturday. What do you think?

Bhakti When Sick Yesterday was tough, I had caught a cold and chanting made me inhale more air from my mouth making it a little worse. What was the worst was that I was so dizzy and sleepy that I kept forgetting the Chalisa mid-way and had to start over again. I managed to get through it somehow and apologized to Hanumana that I couldn't focus on the Bhakti today. It's said that it's ok if you do not worship on a particular day if you are sick. Although it's great if you do and shows to the deity that you really love them. What's also said that if you are so sick that you cannot sit upright, just chant laying down. It might seem harsh but if you really love the deity you'd WANT to do the chanting in whatever way possible. For someone who is only doing this for the sake of material or other gains, and doesn't know how to actually love the deity, they'll find any excuse to off-put the chanting. Basically, the extent to which you decided to go for the deity is the extent to which you'll receive benefits. Material Benefits I May Have Received Yesterday something big happened. I cannot disclose it on here but it's something my family had been trying to achieve for years. It went smoothly and honestly the past half a month has been going very smoothly. Whatever we intend to do gets done smoothly. Life feels much more frictionless. These are all the material benefits that are said to be of Bhakti since the deity you worship starts helping you out. My mother also worships Hanumana, and she saw a dream that Hanumana entered our home and is guarding it. Any dreams or visions related to the deity are seen as practical information in Bhakti. While one can argue the reason Hanumana was in her dream is because she has been chanting of him everyday, from the perspective of Bhakti a dream like that shows that Hanumana has started guarding our home in reality. It's important that in these matters one can hold both the perspective simultaneously without leaning too much on one side. I am gonna do Bhakti for atleast another year before I make judgements on what is actually happening. What's important right now is that I do Bhakti as it is intended to be done.

Connecting Self-Realization and Bhakti Yesterday I decided to connect Self-Realization and Bhakti together. The result was that I felt that I had lost the whole connection and power I had built up using Japa until now. This is where I realized something important. I had been powering up that connection between ME and the DEITY. But when I lost the ME and entered the egoless state, the connection obviously vanished. What one needs to do is not love the deity in relation with the self. It's to love it selflessly! The self should be taken out the equation altogether. Simply dissolve in the bhakti of the deity. Make sure to do that through the Anahata Chakra, so it stays activated. This way the Bhakti practice stays super peaceful, satisfactory and even joyful throughout. This will increase your Bhakti up a magnitude. Modern Aids to Bhakti The ancients did not have YouTube nor did they have edits. They had made songs and poems so that they could enjoy and increase their Bhakti towards their deity, but we don't have to limit ourselves to that anymore. We have detailed paintings, youtube edits, AI and so many other capabilities that can help us in increasing our Bhakti towards the deity. Some Examples:

Battling a Negative Entity Context: Before starting this current Upasana practice, I had started seeing eyes in my visual field every time I closed my eyes. I wasn't imagining them, or at least wasn't trying to. I know that I lot of those eyes had been pulled from my memories. Nonetheless, it was weird so many eyes. It never stopped, and got even more intense at night. Being mostly malevolent looking eyes, it was quite hard to ignore. I often got startled when closing my eyes to relax. Telling myself it's only temporary didn't slow it down. In the midst of all of this, I often saw 3 opened eyes of Maa Kali, with the middle one being the third eye. What Happened: Started doing my current Upasana, and it stayed the same for the first day, but the second day on wards I started seeing full blown faces. Terrifying faces, mainly when I was doing my upasana. I kept getting distracted. So, on the third day's upasana, I decided to bite the bullet and treat this as something real. Hanumana, being infamous for THE deity to go to deal with negative entities, is also the one I have been doing bhakti of. So I naturally asked for help during the chanting. It a was real battle trying to weaken that entity. It took 5 hours but by the time I was over, I felt like I greatly weakened it. I saw its face clear as day. White skin, circular eyes, and a wide grin. It often left, giving me peace but came back once again. Later on trying to mimic the face of Hanumana, it's face was still white as salt, and it still had a wide grin. I had my eyes closed, but after finally connecting with Hanumana during the last batch of chalisas, I felt as if I grew 10 times my size, still inside my body. With such magnified strength, that entity didn't dare appear in my visual field again. The next day I still saw eyes but I ignored it and did my Upasana as usual for the Shivratris. I have just noticed it today but I have stopped seeing eyes in the blackness altogether! It's all black again when I close my eyes! But if I focus, I can sometimes see some pairs of eyes, but it's not always guaranteed. If these are actual entities, me focusing to see eyes is basically inviting them to look at me. Right now I see a pair of eyes of what I believe should be an Owl. It's two little eyes in the top right. What I Think: This is TRULY BIZARRE for me. I am torn between whether these are actual entities or my mind playing games with me. When it's happening, I am fully certain it's the prior, but otherwise when I am analyzing the situation like this, it seems it could just as easily be a mind game. I mean, it did intensify when I gave it the benefit of the doubt and treated it as real. It even used eyes and faces I had already seen elsewhere on the internet. But the fact that it kept popping up at random in my visual field, even though I never gave it enough attention, really makes me think otherwise. Either way, I am well now, and have this weird ability to see weird patterns, designs and all kinds of random things now when I close my eyes and focus. Something I Learnt: The face I saw, and even the eyes, were combo of scary faces I have seen on the internet over the years. I determined its source by the end of that upasana. It MAJORLY pulled from a meme I saw, which had a scary face in it. The meme is supposed to literally haunt you as it talked about how that entity is behind you at all times. Obviously this is not true, but once you imagine that situation to understand the text, coupled with that face, it LITERALLY does haunt you. Obviously I am a lot more sensitive, is why that picture really affected me, even though I initially shrugged it off and forgot about it. What I have learnt is that horror content or any similar sort of media really occupies a space in your mind and come back to haunt you one day. I really would not recommend anyone to watch horror media anymore. This is the most rational conclusion I can arrive at, and is what I subscribe to currently. BUT I still find it so weird why my imagination has suddenly EXPLODED. I was NOWHERE close to this sensitive before. It's like I have multiple layers of imagination now. One layer which is the normal and the least real looking. Another layer which look as real as your average dream. And another layer, which has just developed today, that looks as real as a vivid dream. Let me write about this in the next post. I invite any person who might know what's going on to DM me about this experience to share any knowledge regarding this. I would appreciate such knowledge. I would also appreciate a more scientific approach, from anyone concerned, on top of spiritual interpretations. Honestly, I am a bit concerned as well.

Why do Bhakti towards a specific deity, when you can devote yourself fully to GOD, being in constant love and devotion towards reality/infinity itself? What is the need for a middle-man? I was genuinely confused about this question. So I joined my hands, closed my eyes, and asked Shri Rama. I sat down and had this inner urge to suddenly speak. So I spoke, very loudly and with energy. I am paraphrasing here, it was in Hindi anyways: My Thoughts This was unexpected. I didn't know what I was going to say, I was forming words one after another as I spoke. I agree with this statement though. I would like to add the nuance that Bhakti itself can be a limitation, but that's only at very very advanced levels. For the masses and for a lot of people on this forum, Bhakti is perfect as it's an all in one solution including shadow work, integration, embodiment, spiritual development and possible material help from deity. Not to mention it's widely agreed that deep Bhakti leads to various Siddhis. While Leo will argue this is all human bullshit, I'd say yes it is. But it's some of the most high quality bullshit you can involve yourself in. Until you let even Bhakti go. For those not into Bhakti, do not dismiss this practice as simple Dogma. It's amazing. Imagine you're doing spirituality manually, while it's automatic for someone doing Bhakti.

17 May '23 Yesterday's upasana was much better than any previous ones. It felt so loving and relaxing for the first 1.5 hours due to the bhakti, but then my mind got too tired to be able to focus, and it became hard to do the rest 1.5 hours, but I did it anyways, and it felt amazing as usual. Something new: Yesterday night I cried to Hanumana because I was really anxious about today. I cannot reveal why but it's safe to say a bunch was on stake, or at least I believed so. I was super anxious and stressed out. When I started doing the upasana and leaned into the devotion of Hanumana and Rama, this anxiety suddenly just got destroyed. I felt an overwhelming sense that it will be fine. I would not feel anxious even if I thought of today. It was as if the stress and anxiety was being forcefully destroyed, and there was this flooding of optimism and joy from the diya in front of me. I felt very happy for the first 1.5 -2 hours or so when I was in bhakti. The rest 1 hour had cycles of anxiety and cycles of peace. By the time I ended my pooja, I felt accomplished and a trust/faith in the universe that it'll be fine. How Today Went: It went well, much smoother than I expected. In fact, what happened today ended up being BETTER than what I wanted to happen. I had another chore lined which would last about 3 hours today, but I found a shortcut and I did it in about 20 minutes. What I Think: I have realized that there are various forces within me. For the sake of simplicity, let's call the negative emotions as negativity, and positive emotions as positivity. Bhakti boosts your positivity as well as destroy the negativity. Whether there are entities out there feeding on your negativity, and negative environment, I don't want to debate. I genuinely think there is some higher power at play as well, but let's observe for another year of this before I make any judgements.

15 May '23 + 16 May '23 It was about 18 - 19 years ago the last time this opportunity came. Two 'Shivratris' one after another. This was an amazing opportunity to supercharge your mantra japa. These two days are said to grant you energy worth 41 days or so worth of upasana. Basically, do as much as possible in these two days. I found this out a day late, but I still did 108 'Malas' of "Om Rama Ramaya Namah" in the day that I had. For those who don't know, a 'Mala' is a sort of necklace with 108 beads in it. It's a tool used for counting your japa without taking focus off whoever you are worshiping. So, 108 Malas would be 108*108 = 11664. It took around 4 hours. Which I followed by a 3 hour japa of 100 Hanumana Chalisas. Hanumana is said to be a Bhakt of Rama. The biggest Bhakt infact. So if you worship Hanumana, worshiping Rama goes hand in hand. Worshiping Rama separately, like I did for this Shivratri, works even better. Benefits The constant japa of "Om Rama Ramaya Namah" created a constant vibration in my chest, where the Anahata Chakra is supposed to be. Pair that up with the Bhakti/Love for Lord Rama I was generating, and you've got a recipe for Anahata Activation. The amount of activation and the amount of power generated was crazy. I can still feel it right now a day later. My heart chakra, which I couldn't even feel beforehand, now is so energized it feels as pressurized and activated as my Agya Chakra. Well, the Agya Chakra is a little more activated. I have been feeling an intense pressure (in a good way) and pleasure since the Japa last night. This pleasure is situated in my forehead. It's concentrated between my eyebrows. Similar pressure and pleasure in my chest. I feel so much happier every moment of my day, as compared to before. I feel more grounded in my body as well. I feel light. Even breathing is enjoyable.

@Leo Gura Can you elaborate on this? I genuinely want to know, do you think 'non-doership' is bullshit? Only reason I can think of is that since everything is being done by the only thing that can do anything, God, reality is absolute-doership, not non-doership

You can call reality everything and nothing at the same time, it just depends on what perspective you want to take. Both of what you said is true simultaneously

I have been seeing eyes for the past 2 weeks as well. Every time I close my eyes, there's a chance something pops up. Recently it has evolved into full blown faces. I have seen loads of terrifying and malevolent eyes and faces till now (Particularly when my heart center is active). I am basically having the same experience as you, These faces are always looking at me, imagine if it were an entity observing you. I have also seen a bunch of good ones as well. A lot of animal eyes and faces as well. Today I kept seeing the face of a lion. I don't know what this indicates but I am very curious like you.

You have an internal conflict, that's what you need to solve. You're not being authentic by telling that to your Grandma, you are only being impulsive. It's not authentic to vomit your inner smoothie made of bullshit onto others, it's impulsive. There's a big difference. To truly be authentic, you need to truly be you. What you are truly, as a human, is covered by all this guilt, confusion and ignorance. If you really want to be radically honest, you need to figure out who you are truly as a human being, as a person born onto this earth. Then, you wouldn't be facing these dilemmas anymore. Solve these inner conflicts before attempting to be authentic. Purify your inner smoothie, and you'll realize there's no smoothie left, no bullshit to vomit anymore. So then take the lid off the mixer and be as authentic as you want. When you are radically honest, you're honest completely, inside and out. You are you, completely. Currently you are broken into fragments, that's what your problem is. Even when you are truly able to be authentic, it's important it's done with civility, in case of family or public matters. There's no reason to be polite in case of seeking the truth ofcourse. Being polite comes naturally when you know who you are truly. It's not a mask over your authentic words, but just a flavor. It's like giving a kid some medicine. They're easily able to drink it if it's sweet as opposed to bitter. It doesn't make the medicine any less effective.

Don't worry. Life goes through cycles and the spiritual journey is of no exception. Just focus on the beginning of your next cycle. Relax for now. Gather energy to go all out next time.

There advice wasn't as thorough and complete as would be of someone who embodies it, but they correctly identified my problem and pointed me to the right direction. I think the reason they could do that was because they were dealing with the same problem, and the solution to this problem is something that requires consistency, and while they couldn't be consistent with the solution, the problem of consistency is an entirely different matter than the issue at hand. They are basically parroting what others have already said, but what they parrot could be of value to you if they correctly identify your problem. And as I said, it wouldn't be as thorough and nuanced as would be someone's advice if they actually embodied it. Another thing is that if you ask them more questions about the initial knowledge, they might start making shit up, which is not related to your problem. All in all, I have received advice about fitness and even spirituality from people who couldn't embody it, but I could because I had some pieces of the puzzle they didn't.

I have met a few people who give incredible advice but fail to embody it themselves. Their advice has worked for me. But I think what you're saying should be the default rule when judging whether to take advice or not. But I just wanted to add that nuance.

That's the whole goal of tantra. To annihilate the self and becoming a walking avatar of the deity you worship.

Yeah I do this all the time. Whenever I read back to my posts on this forum, it never feels like I have written it.

You sure smoking weed and jerking off is sustainable? I get your concept and it really does make sense. But the practice you're advocating seems inefficient to me. I think even if you don't look at reality from the lense of sex, you simply raising your consciousness is penetrating or getting penetrated by reality. I'd say there's a lot better ways to do that then.

It's obvious isn't it?

If I am being completely honest with myself, I'd get stuck in a loop of consumption, burn-out and recovery. I would achieve nothing and learn nothing for a long time. I need to fix this before I even look for my LP.