Spiritual practice, which allows a person to develop himself and the world around him, is without exaggeration the most important component of our harmonious life. We complain about the superficiality and spoiledness of children, their lack of interest in reading, their excessive enthusiasm for computer games and cartoons of questionable quality. Technical progress and an increase in the standard of living and comfort lead to an overabundance of toys, entertainment, and clothing. Their attention is so unfocused on all these unimportant little things that kids simply do not have energy for the most important thing – their spiritual affection and respect for their parents. By placing children in such conditions of “comfort”, we ourselves contribute to the growth of their excessive egoism and exactingness.
Today, one of the most common phenomena in child psychiatry is child aggression. Unlike adult aggression, this phenomenon is most often characterized by the fact that it does not have pronounced, lump-sumly manifested, open causes. The adult falls into a state of irritability or anger, most often having for this at least an obvious, concrete occasion. Children express their hostility often in unexpected situations, that is, without obvious grounds for doing so. However, the reason for this behavior is quite weighty – lack of mental comfort. There is no understanding that parents love a child, and do not get rid of him with numerous toys and entertainments. The best pastime, in which your children will feel calm and kind to the world around you, are joint activities with parents. Things that require the direct involvement of an adult in the process (drawing, modeling, construction, joint outdoor games and walks). After all, all these actions for the child will be colored by the joy of your joint pastime.
Children do not have unloved games or toys, but they may have not enough attentive parents. This is proved even by psychological experiments. For example, a mother was asked to choose from the mountain of toys the one that uses the lowest popularity of her baby, with which he almost never plays and shows no interest in it. For a while, the mother played with her child every day with the participation of this toy, and in a few days it attracted the baby’s greatest attention. He independently reached out to it and initiated the game. This happened precisely because at the sight of this toy the child (even if he is at an age when the psyche and the nervous system has been formed not completely) recalled those positive emotions that he received at the moments when his mother was nearby and gave him all her attention.
And now think it over, if the attitude towards the world around be the same of such children and the children, whose parents distract their attention with gadgets, cartoons, around the clock demonstrated on TV, sweets, attractions and other entertainments? In the end, these children will associate parents only with a source of pleasure, since they are deprived of their sincere interest and attention.
And how can they be friendly to the world around them? It turns out that in their soul there is no peace of mind, but only an endless race for new purchased entertainment. As soon as these entertainments are inaccessible for various reasons, the reaction “They don’t love me” is included, and there is a complete rejection of the surrounding reality.
So it turns out that often we characterize the younger generation as more aggressive, mercantile, spoiled and cheeky. Saying, today’s children do not have spirituality at all. Of course, modern education and values imposed on media for youth are aimed at eradicating even the rudiments of this very spirituality. Because the one who has the spiritual, will not buy much material, which means that he is an unprofitable consumer. However, we forget that the first school of life for a person who comes to this world is a family. The first people, thanks to whom the image of the whole society and the whole vast world is laid in the mind of the child, are parents. There is a wonderful wise proverb: “Do not educate your child. Anyway he/she is going to be like you. Educate yourself”! Therefore, instead of reading tons of books on child psychology, attending various seminars and getting lost in the mountains of information in an effort to educate your children correctly, start to lead a healthy and spiritual way of life.
The concept of “spirituality” exists in the cultures of all nations and in all religions. In Rus since ancient times there existed a moral principle “to live according to conscience and in harmony with nature”. In Yoga, spirituality is introduced and fixed at the very first stages of practice and represents ten ethical norms of behavior - Yama and Niyama (non-harm, truthfulness, non-theft, abstinence, etc.). In Christianity, these rules are expressed in the form of the Ten Commandments.
Thus, the whole life of man is permeated with the subtlety and sublimity of universal laws, according to which the whole universe exists and which must be respected and observed by all living beings. In the age of Kali-yuga, the obscure human consciousness seldom recalls this. In order to recall the existence of higher and more powerful forces, one usually has to endure a severe shock, misfortune, loss. Only then do we understand that we are not the kings of nature, and very few are subject to us in this world. Namely – only we ourselves, and we are allowed in this life very little time to work on ourselves. What practices can help a person to raise his spiritual level?
The practice of altruism. Perhaps, this is the most important principle of harmonious coexistence of the soul with the universe and its development. The meaning of it is to give to others more than we leave to ourselves. There is an old wise proverb: “What you gave to others is left for you, what you left for yourself is gone”. Indeed, we have been given very little time on this planet. If we spend our life energy only on ourselves, all our efforts, our whole life will be wasted. Because leaving this world, we will not take it with us. But we can use the same energy in order to launch a succession of kindness and good deeds in the world around us. And then our effort will not fail, because this chain will go on. Each person will put a little effort to maintain it, and it will grow longer and stronger. The consequences from it will grow and bring good, both to the addressees of our efforts, and to ourselves. Just imagine how the whole planet will benefit. In what world our children will live.
The conscious decision to become parents is already a manifestation of altruism to some extent. As the saying goes: “ to decide to give birth to a child means to agree that from now on and forever your heart will run separately from you”. Yes, it can be considered as the first step to altruism. After all, earlier, the object of your care and responsibility were, basically, you yourself. Now in your family the soul comes to you, which will be forever associated with you. And, at least, at first, this soul will need all your care, attention, strength, and most importantly and valuable – your patience. The modern generation of young people was raised by a certain system extremely infantile. Many of us have claims to our parents about how our childhood went, how we were brought up, what we were taught. We consider ourselves much more developed intellectually, the authority of parents does not exist for us. That is why, only having independently passed the way of raising children, we can fully understand how many forces this cost our parents, show our egoism, how much everything was sacrificed for the sake of our carefree life in contentment. The basis of all altruism is patience. The highest achievement in a person’s life is not only the persistence of patience, but also the spread of it to all surrounding people. After all, every living being has either been your child in the past, or will be in the future. How can you not show kindness to him?
Since birth, we all have unconscious selfishness in order not only to survive in this world (the baby cannot tolerate hunger and cold), but also in order to understand the rules of life in the world. Nevertheless, the more consciously our age becomes, the less egoism in us must remain. We have already grown up, we are able to give up something to bring good to our neighbor. This is what it means to be a Man. If your child sees that your actions are most conscientious and directed, first of all, to the development of other people, this behavior will become his ideal. And you need to demonstrate altruistic behavior to the child from the first days of his life, since up to a certain age (up to two or two and a half years) children do not perceive our moralizing due to the peculiarities of the formation of the human psyche. But they very carefully note all the nuances of our behavior, all acts and deeds. For them, because there is no life experience at this age, there are no concepts of “good” and “bad”. But for them there are concepts “like mother” and “like dad”. And, of course, they do not understand, you act kindly or badly. For them, everything that parents do is an installation of good, correct, adult behavior. The great Soviet pedagogue Vasiliy Sukhomlinskiy wrote: “When my children begin to live in a collective, first of all, I take care of the fact that the worst misfortune of every child was another’s misfortune, the greatest joy and consolation was the thought that he brought joy to another person”. Accordingly, in order for your children to grow up worthy, you need to live worthy too. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama once said: “If I have compassion to a certain degree, it's all due to the grain that my mother infused into my heart, and not religious practice at all. Of course, later, Buddhist teaching greatly contributed to the outgrowth of the altruistic mindset from this grain. But the grain was received from my mother”. When giving, you will never lose anything.
Practices of spiritual self-perfection. To maintain our own energy at the proper level in the conditions of the life of the modern consumer society, Yoga offers us a wide range of tools. All these techniques are very ancient means of developing ourselves and the world around us. In terms of spiritual self-improvement, the most effective for understanding our inner world are the practices of pranayamas, mantrayanas and concentration of the mind (meditation), reading spiritual scriptures. These techniques help not only to accumulate energy, but, most importantly, to change the quality of the energy that is generated in the thin channels of a person as a result of his daily activities. Living in this world, we are constantly exchanging energy with people who surround us. Accordingly, the way of life, worldview and dependencies of these people can enter our consciousness. And just in order to separate your view of the world from another’s and to improve the quality of your own energy, it is necessary to engage in spiritual practices. This is the so-called “energy hygiene”. The positive effect of the constant maintenance of your soul in purity, morality and virtue will necessarily extend to the external environment, that is, our environment. After all, the most important principle of working on yourself sounds like this: “Change yourself and the world around you will change”. Namely by applying efforts to our own development, we can create a world for the quality life of our children.
Why is it so important to start practicing Yoga before inviting the soul of a child to your family? Because we can give birth only to a reflection of our inner world. If a man and a woman live in cloudings (darkenings), unconsciously, then the soul at the same level of development will incarnate to them in the family. Will this family be happy? There is a very high probability that parents with the child will pull each other lower and lower, to the degradation of consciousness, to which the media and the images installed in our minds contribute so much today. However, if the future parents devote several years to the development of such qualities in themselves as conscious living, grace, goodness, altruism, the soul of the appropriate level will come to them. After all, beings from higher, more perfect worlds have the opportunity to choose, in which family to incarnate.
The scriptures tell us that when Buddha Shakyamuni, being on the planet Tushita, heard the request of living beings to descend into our world to give the Teaching, he chose for his birth the representatives of the great Sunny genus Shakyas - King Shuddhodan and his wife Queen Maha Maya. Similarly, enlightened souls have the opportunity to choose parents for birth in order to continue their development path. Such a soul will give parents much less worries, troubles and sorrows than if it were born in the family of modern consumers. After all, selfishness is the most serious spiritual disease. If everyone (parent and child) pulls the blanket on himself, there will be constant strife in the family, aggression, lack of kindness, caring and understanding. Between the needs of others and his own needs, the child will choose the concept of “for himself”, because his parents used to live this way.
The well-known researcher of energy and human fields, Sergey Lazarev, in his work “Diagnosis of Karma” writes: “Then I treated the patients directly and did not expect that after a while I would be able to see the souls of future children, diagnose them and treat them. I did not yet know that in our field there are matrixes of dwellings of future children's souls and they can be polluted, that is, the ejection of “dirt” into the future can bedraggle the souls of descendants up to the 3rd, 7th, 13th tribe and so on. … Now, in order for a harmonious child to appear, parents need to cleanse their souls. Or, after his birth, they will be cleansed through sickness and misfortune”1. Lazarev also notes that not only karmic pollutions of parents affects the quality of life of the child, but also the fact, how the child will live, will affect the purity of his parents’ karma.
And Yoga allows you to change karma not through suffering and pain in everyday life, but through the experience of asceticism in practice. Asceticism (ascesis) is called voluntary self-restraint in pleasures and entertainments, a gradual experience of discomfort of the body and mind during the practices of asanas, pranayama, meditation. Thus, after dedicating several years to your own development, you can become parents of a child with higher spiritual qualities than it could be if you did not apply your efforts and were a “normal consumer”. Such a soul will allow you to develop further, and the soul will evolve due to the efforts you have made, will have a so-called “high start” already at birth. And the life of such a child will be much more effective for him and his family, and for the whole planet.
Hatha Yoga. In the classic work of the 15th century, the Hatha Yoga Pradīpikā compiled by Svātmārāma, the concept of “hatha yoga” in addition to the pranayama, mentioned above, includes 2 more subjects: shatkarmas and asanas. Let us consider more in detail each of these concepts, as well as the effects they exert on a person.
Shatkarmas is a system of specific purification techniques for the body. For thousands of years, these practices allow a person to maintain his body healthy and clean. All the newfangled “cleansings” of internal organs are based on the principles of the work of the human body, to which the wise men of the past addressed. At all times people understood that a living human organism periodically needs “cleaning”, that is, the hygiene of the body must be not only external but also internal. These practices make it possible to remove pollutants and toxins from such important organs as the stomach, intestines, liver, respiratory tract, organs of vision, etc., to improve and rejuvenate the entire body. They are described in detail in the ancient texts on yoga, which are now available for review: Hatha Yoga Pradipika, Gheranta Samhita. In addition, today there are many comments to these practices of authors of the XX and XXI centuries in the form of books or numerous articles on the Internet. Nevertheless, it is strongly advised not to master the practice of purification only from written sources. It is more correct and adequate to do this under the guidance of a competent person with the necessary experience. And only after properly mastering one technique or another, you can continue to practice it from time to time on your own.
During preparation of both partners for conception, shatkarmas are a sensible alternative to various synthetic vitamins or supplements to maintain the immunity and health of women and men in general. However, it must be remembered that this system is aimed primarily at the prevention of diseases and ailments. If a person already has health problems, the use of shatkarmas will be limited to a number of contraindications, which must be read before practicing any of these cleansing actions.
It would seem that the shatkarmas system as a preventive measure for various body diseases, even though it allows us to dispense with pills and the intervention of modern medicine, is nevertheless directed to work purely with a physical body and has nothing to do with spiritual development. О However, this is not at all the case. Here we need to get acquainted with such a concept as “apana vayu”. The human body consists of energies, different in quality and properties, enclosed in different parts of the body. Apana vayu is the heaviest and lowest energy that downs to earth us much and prevents consciousness from growing and rising. This vayu (energy) is associated with the sexual and excretory systems of the body and, accordingly, is always directed downwards. Its location in the body is the area from the navel to the foot. We work namely with this energy through various Yoga practices at different levels to raise energy and our spiritual qualities higher. By subtle practices, we resist that force of gravity that always strives to lower our consciousness down to the level of satisfaction of primary needs and obtaining primitive pleasures like tasty food or regular copulations. Many shatkarmas influence the current of this energy, cleanse this area and, consequently, it becomes easier to achieve any subtle results by changing the currents of energy and the ratio of their proportions in the body. If a person has any dependencies or addictions (for example, bad habits) shatkarmas can tangibly change the situation in a positive way. Also, these techniques contribute to the adjustment of the work of many body systems, which in the end allows the couple to approach the moment of conception of the child more clean at the level of body and energy than this could be manifested and affect both the baby and the life of the family as a whole.
Asanas. Asanas have the effect similar to the effect of the shatkarmas, - work and qualitative change of the body not only on the physical, but also on the energy levels. However, if doing shatkarmas we are required to make from time to time quite definite set of actions that influence our body in a concrete way, then with asanas everything is more difficult. The thing is that the systematic effort to perform exercises on the rug is almost always exclusively controlled by our head. No biological processes, as in the case with shatkarmas, will happen by themselves. Thus, regularly performing asanas for 1-2 hours, we work out tapas as it called in Yoga, it is called in a more simplified version in the West - willpower. We consciously undergo some discomfort (austerity) and clean ourselves energetically through working with the body. Here we also often work with apana vayu, not in vain beginners usually have postures aimed at working out the flexibility of the ligaments and joints of the legs, the most difficult to master. Namely, apana vayu stiffens this area in our body.
So, why is it important for both partners to practice asanas regularly for a more or less long period before the conception of a child? Voluntary austerities, which we tolerate during practice asanas, and tapas, which is produced as a result, is an effective and accessible to the most people tool for working with karmic pollution. Unfortunately, the rhythm of life in which we are forced to live does not imply under itself satisfaction and peace of mind. The system that surrounds us often purposely provokes us to the crudest loss of energy. First of all, the negative manifestations of the muladhara chakra (the very first, the root chakra) such as anger, irritability, wrath, envy, aggression refer to these states. It is precisely such a frequent manifestation of these states, caused by some small thing from our daily life in megacities, provokes in our aura the appearance of black energy spots – karmic pollutants. We will certainly be forced to work with these pollutions in the future through our own health and well-being, and we will also influence the well-being of our descendants. Segey Lazarev writes that today in modern Western society the problem of infertility is so dramatic in part because of the fact that around the potential future parents who live the ordinary social life with all its rules and concepts and do not engage in self-development, there are a lot of black energy spots. As a result, the child’s soul cannot break through these barriers. Only souls from the same dark worlds can interact with such energies. If a couple embodies such a soul, the life of this family will be really hard and dramatic. Therefore, it is much more favorable and more adequate to apply efforts to yourself and change your own energy and karma.
Retreat. Most of us find it very difficult to find motivation or strength for practicing Yoga in everyday life. Our dodgy mind comes up with so many different excuses in order to postpone the practice for tomorrow. However, as the great yogin
Milarepa said: “If you postpone the practice for tomorrow, you can suddenly find out that life has slipped away.” In order to find and maintain this very motivation, we lack the experience of active immersion in practice. This is where the retreat helps.
Retreat is a temporary solitude of a person, a departure from the usual life in society and the dedication of most of the time to various practices of self-improvement. It is best to choose any place remote from the city, in nature, for such an event. For beginners, an excellent option will be a group retreat. This is association with like-minded people for a certain time and joint implementation of practices of hatha yoga, pranayamas, various types of concentrations, singing mantras, etc. Why will this option be effective at the first stages of development? Usually it is very difficult for us to force ourselves to do something ourselves, and if it still succeeds, the threshold of our patience in practice turns out to be too low. As soon as the thought comes: “So much for me, I can no longer”, we retreat. However, each of those who practice in the group will prevail over his own limits, seeing that other participants do not stop making efforts. Thus, when our mind would have said long ago: “It's enough for today,” we actually can go much further than we think we can. We can achieve a much more significant result. Like-minded people always motivate each other to overcome their own limitations.
The option of an individual retreat can be chosen and for experienced practitioners. In order to force yourself to follow a planned program of practices every day, you need a really large supply of tapas. People’s gratitude is needed even more, whose life has been qualitatively improved thanks to your personal example and dedication of energy for the benefit and development of the world around.
Usually, it is very difficult to sustain the passage of the retreat both for our mind and our ego, deprived of everyday comfort and pleasure. But this is precisely the best result of such events. Retreats force us to grow above ourselves, challenge our egoism. Retreats show that we can achieve much more than we used to think, if we make efforts. In addition, this concentration of practices of self-development over a period of time (3 days, 10 days, a month, etc.) increases results, burns negative karma, inspires further studies, improves the quality of life for you and your loved ones. Consequently, the chance to draw into your family a bright soul that also wants to develop among like-minded people increases.
The coming into the family of the child, who is aligned with the parents for the same worldview and tasks, is one of the highest forms of good. Such a child will allow you to develop, and not create problems, taking away energy and strength. And he himself will be provided with a fine example for imitation and a start for his own spiritual development.
Club OUM.RU regularly conducts vipassana-retreat “Dive into silence” in different cities. Details on the site www.vipassana.oum.ru. Join us, if possible!
Invitation of the soul to the family. Few people know or think about the fact that now between the souls of the high worlds there is a lot of competition for the birthright in this world for self-improvement. Accordingly, such souls are looking for a suitable family. Incarnation in such a family will allow them to realize as much as possible the task, for which they come to this world - self-development and service. Therefore, when you are ready to invite such a soul, it is also necessary to do this as much as possible consciously and respectfully.
It is very valuable to have an opportunity to visit special places of power and to raise in them an appeal to higher spheres of existence, to express your invitation for that soul that is connected with you karmically. The best option is the places soaked with especially powerful female energy of great mothers. For example, Lumbini (Nepal), where in the park under a large tree the queen Maha Maya painlessly gave birth to the Great Teacher Buddha Shakyamuni. Traditions say that the gods themselves descended from heaven and moved the queen and her son to the sacred lake Manasarovar (Tibet) to wash the body of Buddha. This lake also has a special energy, it is not accidental that it is called a lake with living water. It is believed that a woman, who touches his magical waters, can bring to this world an extremely high soul – a bodhisattva. In addition, Manasarovar is the abode of Parvati, the wife of the great god Shiva, the Mother of all that exists.
You can also use various spiritual practices (meditation, mantras) to express an invitation to the soul to come to your family. Certainly, the birth of children is karmically conditioned, therefore, this event will not occur sooner and not later than the due time. However, working on themselves, parents work with their own karma and defilements, making it easier for the soul that is destined to come to them.
“In October 2015, my husband and I took part in the “Journey through the Buddha’s places” with the OUM.RU club. It is known that the Most Noble of the World recommended the followers of his Teaching to visit 4 places associated with the main milestones of his Path on this planet: the place of his birth (Lumbini), the place of his Enlightenment (Bodhgaya), the place of the first turn of the Dharma Wheel (Sarnath), the place of parinirvana (Kushinagar). It was in Lumbini, which is now the territory of Nepal, in the park under a large sprawling tree, the queen Maha Maya brought the prince Siddhartha to this world. This tree is revered by all the locals and pilgrims from different countries. In this place of the Force, I invited a soul into our family who wished to incarnate in the world of people for his own development and development of the world around him. Apparently, thanks to the accomplished pilgrimage and the strength of this place, filled with universal maternal energy, karmic ties lined up quickly enough. And next year on the next pilgrimage, to the beautiful mountain Tibet, I went already on the seventh month of pregnancy.”
Alexandra Shtukaturova, yoga teacher, Leonid’s mother
“About a year before the conception, my husband and I got acquainted with the lectures of the Oum.ru teachers and Aleksey Trekhlebov, after which we switched to vegetarianism and started practicing yoga. We went on a pilgrimage tour, visited the seminar of Olga Verba, after which it became clear where and how we will give birthAnd after I finished the course of Olga Verba on perinatal yoga, our intentions were only strengthened, and there was a strong faith in my own strength, in help of the midwife and the divine forces”.
Julia Trofimovich, teacher of perinatal yoga and aqua-yoga, Daryana’s mother
“Not so long ago I gained an incredibly important experience – the experience of bringing a new soul into this world! When I became pregnant, it turned out that I was unconsciously beginning to prepare for this event several years before its onset. It is interesting that from the moment I wanted to become a mother, and to be honest – the grandmother of a large number of grandchildren, in my life yoga and spiritual development as a whole began to appear. And when became pregnant, it became clear why many competent people believe that the key to successful passage of pregnancy and childbirth is to prepare the body for conception, that is, long before pregnancy itself. While practicing yoga, I regularly did various cleaning procedures: shatkarmas and kriyas, for example, netti, shankhaprakshalana, kundjala, nauli, agnisara kriya, I starved, kept brahmacharya. In addition, I practiced asanas, went to retreats, tried as much as possible to spend time in clean, energetically strong places. All this helped to sort out with myself, to bring the body into a clean state and, of course, to give birth easily.”
Varvara Gagarina, yoga teacher, Yuriy’s mother