Ravi S. Iyer: Spiritual

Last updated on 1 Oct. 2025 I was hesitant to share my view about this statement attributed (don't know if the attribution is correct) to the great Nisargadatta Maharaj, in a Facebook post : "It is the person you imagine yourself to be that suffers, not you. Dissolve it in awareness. It is merely a bundle of memories and habits." After some internal debate, I decided to share it, as I thought it may be of some help to some spiritual aspirants. Dissolve suffering in awareness - I find that very interesting as I am very much into "Dissolve in Awareness-I/God meditation" nowadays. "Dissolve in Awareness-I/God meditation" is giving me great contentment and peace but only when my body is relatively free from significant issues or when I am not facing other serious problems. However, as of now at least, I cannot dissolve suffering in awareness. I have to try to resolve any suffering issues I have by prayer to help cope with them and also prayer to get them ...

Last updated on 2 Oct. 2025 Over the past several months, I think I have got some mental clarity on the big and very confusing issue that has been quite dominant in my life since my health emergencies of early 2022. That issue is about what is the best approach for me as a single spiritual aspirant, to handle health challenges and associated financial burden. BTW my health issues are quite under control now with regular medication and lifestyle control but there are many limitations these health issues have introduced in my life as compared to my life before 2022. This 'mental clarity' is, as of now, only at my thinking and mental preparation level and has been stable over past several months. But I really do not know whether they will stand the tests of any additional real life major health challenges in future. Nonetheless, earlier on, after early 2022 challenges, I did not have even this mental clarity, and had got into a lot of major confusion about what is the right way fo...

This post captures some recent spiritual contemplation of mine. In this post, by 'contemplation' I mean: considering (thinking about) something thoughtfully for some time. The ever-present, unchanging and indestructible awareness (awareness-I/Atma) is a great mystery of (my) life, perhaps the greatest mystery of my life. It seems to me to be almost impenetrable. Note that ever-present and unchanging aspects of the awareness/Atma are direct experience for me but the indestructible aspect is a deeply held belief backed by strong intuition. Recently it struck me that the awareness/Atma can be considered partly to be like the mysterious Monoliths in Arthur Clarke's Space Odyssey 2001. Almost impenetrable! Monolith replica pic , Monolith wiki page , Video clip of the Moon Monolith in the movie (3 min. 47 secs.) . I believe and feel (through intuition) that if I am able to uncover or dissolve into or penetrate the awareness/Atma then I may have a clear pathway to go beyond my b...

Last updated on 30 July 2025 This post shares key points related to meditation practice part of my spiritual practice/journey since my last post update on this topic around 2 months back:  Based on my spiritual practice, my understanding but not yet experience, of two possible ways of going beyond body consciousness .  The above post has a section: Method 2: Dissolve into awareness-I / Dissolve into God. I have now become steady in this method for my meditation practice. It is jelling well with me. I am able to get into this meditation method and stay in it quite easily. So I am quite satisfied with this method. But I have not been able to get into a trance or go beyond body consciousness. At times, I do get into a sort-of deeper zone and that's a great feeling but no trance, as of now. On Sundays, I try to spend more time in meditation. Today (27 Jul 2025) being Sunday, I had a good meditation session using this method which was for around two hours though with some spir...

Info given below is based on my usage and also on a recent chat with ChatGPT: For display of blog posts/pages: On Android, Chrome dark mode shows Blogger posts in dark mode well. On desktop PC on Windows, Chrome dark mode for Blogger website does not seem to work or work well. I use a Chrome dark mode extension on desktop PC which works well for display of blog posts/pages.  There seem to be some CSS and/or JavaScript solutions to provide dark mode support for display of Blogger blog posts/pages. But I do not want to get into them now as these approaches will need to be tested well before regular use on my main blogs. For editing blog posts/pages: Blogger website as well as Blogger mobile app does not support dark mode. On desktop PC (on Windows), I use High Contrast which is not a great solution but quite OK. [Windows High Contrast toggle keyboard shortcut: Alt+Shift+PrintScreen] On Android, one of ChatGPT suggestions of "Settings > Accessibility > Color inversion"...

Last updated on 29 May 2025 This post follows up on a recent spiritual notes post of mine. See 10th May 2025 entry in post: Spiritual (Chanting & Meditation) Notes (Edited) from 26 Dec. 2024 to 10 May 2025, https://ravisiyer.blogspot.com/2025/05/spiritual-meditation-notes-edited-from.html . In fact, some of the content of this post repeats what I have said in this earlier post. I decided to put this up as a separate post instead of adding to my earlier post, as I think the topic deserves a separate post. At the outset, I would like to say that I have not been able to go beyond body consciousness despite having tried to do that over a few years now. But in the process, I think I have a clearer idea of the way that could possibly, I repeat, possibly be achieved. Method 1: Raise core of my being to beyond top of my head This method involves fair amount of mental effort, which is first identifying and then staying in what I sense as the core of my being, which is a little behind the e...