Kashmir Shaivism speaks about…
01 – Kashmir Shaivism speaks about…
Kashmir Shaivism speaks about the experience of the Truth as unmesha, a flashing forth. In a split second you perceive it. Within a moment, you realize it.
Let the Truth flash forth and then hold on to it and contemplate it. In this way, instead of living your mental projection, you will learn to live in the experiences of the Truth, the Truth that is unmesha, that flashes forth here and there: in the laughter of a child, in the noise of a machine, in the sound of footsteps, or as you watch a bird flying through the sky. It doesn’t matter where or when unmesha happens; the Truth, the light of the Self, will shine forth.
Hold on to it. In it, great strength exists. In it, wonderful understanding exists. Learn to hold on to the flashes of the Truth, the light of the Self.
As you begin to experience the Truth in every grain of food, as you begin to experience it in every word, in every action, slowly but surely, you become more and more established in this experience.
— Swami Chidvilasananda
I study tarot for the flashing forth of the Truth — in an image, a number, a word, or an idea.
— Wald Amberstone
Filed under: Tarot Musings, A Cup Full of Tarot, Unmesha on July 5th, 2007
How nice! I’ve had these moments when the truth of a situation flashes through, and I’ve held onto the energy for a fleeting moment. Would that the contemplation was longer. While sitting in
contemplative prayer the Truth shines through. When
sitting in my garden, in contemplation, the Truth comes forth in the color of the trees, the grass, the sounds of nature. These are special moments that I cherish and hold onto as long as I can.
Thank you for these very nice blog.
David
I’ve often thought of unmesha as the whole blinking into our usual stream of vision. When this hiccup of entirety completes, the flow of time seems timeless, boundaries and directions, self and other disappear and throb forth refreshed. Innately astounding and astonishing, unmesha seems wholly everything as renewed as everbeing ancient and primordial, uncreated as itself. Unmesha seems like the spark that ignites the full flame of spanda, throb, vibration of pure awareness. As truth it is root and seed more than extrapolation. There is no seeming about it as it is the entire immediacy of full consciousness. Gently it may well be the seam that threads continuity of self and vision, as well as the flash of discontinuity of the whole.
In tarot unmesha may be intimated in the completion of the field of meaning between the cards as an entirety. It is the flash of insight we inspire between and beyond the cards as laid out. Here we may find the truth of a situation as every fresh and it is before as the source of when we begin to draw correspondences or otherwise explain.
Umesha is a nice word for that “flash of insight we inspired between and beyond the cards as an entirety.” As Taroists we all experience this flash from time to time, wondering, “now where did that come from?” I look with expectation for these moments when I am able to speak with clarity that seemingly is not of my doing. I attribute this “flash of insight” as my intuitive “still small voice” that is always there waiting for me to move out of my resistance to its truth. What is “spanda?” There is no definition in the dictionary.
Spanda is a term unique to Kashmir Shaivism. It is the divine pulsation of pure consciousness. It is energetic and peaceful, bliss and awe, the uncreated root of all creations: the 1s and 0s, the blinking on & off, the breathing in & out, the stops between the breaths, the spaces between thoughts, the timelessness holding of time, present, past and futures.
Unlike Vedanta where the world disappears into nonexistence (end Maya) when supreme nondual awareness becomes established, in Kashmir Shaivism the reality of all the worlds is affirmed as pure consciousness (ultimate redemption). What is destroyed is the self-forgetfulness (veil of Maya) that all is purified in the all-consciousness of Siva (Self). It is experienced as a blinking on and off sequentially that quickens to a timeless simultaneous blinking of and on, where there is only one (completely open ended and transcendantly immanent) and there is no otherness.