Swami Dhyan Giten
SONG OF MEDITATION.
- An Inner-view with Swami Dhyan Giten
SWAMI DHYAN GITEN, spiritual teacher and bestselling author, has more than 30 years of experience in individual counselling and in teaching awareness and meditation. He is trained in both modern psychology and in classic Eastern methods for awareness and meditation in USA, Italy, Sweden and India.
Giten experienced his first satori, his first glimpse of spiritual awakening, when he was 9 years old. This created a deep thirst and longing in his heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole.
Swami Dhyan Giten has dedicated his life to teach the art of awareness and meditation. He conducts individual consultations, seminars and courses internationally. His quotes, articles and books have touched the hearts of thousands and are appearing with increasing frequency in magazines, blogs and websites.
Since he began to meditate when he was 15 years old, he has dedicated his life to the study and exploration of the inner journey in order to move out of his own way, to be in a flow, and to discover the authentic inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, the capacity to surrender to life. He does not belong to any spiritual group or tradition; he is only interested to explore what it means to live with open eyes.
Giten’s first professional passion when he was 15 years old was to become an actor. After training as an actor, he worked as an actor until he was 23 years old. Working as actor taught him a lot about life and to emphatically understand the situation and life of other people, since acting is really a spiritual occupation. It taught him about spirituality, since working as an actor means to play a role totally, while at the same time as you know deep down that you are not the role you are playing. After working as an actor for a number of years, Giten began to understand that his early passion for theatre was really an unconscious search for a spiritual discipline. When he realized this, he began to feel a thirst to work with people in a more direct way in awareness and meditation.
In 1982, when Giten was 23 years old, he was directed by the Divine presence in a trance session with the American trance chancellor Lin David Martin: “You have listened to your intuition, to your true inner voice, more than most. You have been searching for the contact with the Spirit for a long time and now it is beginning to manifest on the outer plane. You have been gifted many times in previous embodiments and now everything will come rather easy for you. I want you to put your energy into the lives of others, because you can”.
He is author of the best-selling book in Swedish "Meditationens Sång – Om meditation, relationer och andlig kreativitet" (Solrosens forlag, 2001, available from Internet book store Adlibris: http://www.adlibris.com), and "The Silent Whisperings of the Heart – An Introduction to Giten’s Approach to Life" (2008, available as paperback at Internet book store Lulu.com and as free e-book at award winning book site Obooko.com), "Presence – Working from Within. The Psychology of Being" (2011, available as paperback at Internet book store Lulu.com), "Meditation – A Yes to Life", "Healing Is Pure Love", "Presence – The Inner Source of Love, Truth and Wholeness" and "The Language of Silence – From Darkness to Light" (available in paperback at Lulu.com). The last four books are also available as free e-books at book site Obooko.com).
Visit Giten’s World – A School for the Heart. 350 Pages of Medicine for the Soul: http://www.giten.net
Giten's blog with the latest information: www.swamidhyangiten.wordpress.com
The inner journey
Can you say something about your own inner journey?
Life is like playing hide the key with God. God has hidden the key and now it is up to us to find the key again. It also takes us a while to realize that the key is hidden in our own heart. The heart is the door to allow life to guide us. The heart is the door to say "yes" to life. The heart is the door to surrender to life.
I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth – the inner language of silence. Now I also notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence.
First this brought up fear, but now I am enjoying this meditation of disappearing into the silence and to be nobody. I have started experimenting with this phenomenon to understand how to consciously go beyond the ego: yesterday when I took a cofee at a restaurant, I consciously turned my attention within and disappeared into the silence, which was like finding an inner source of bliss.
In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, your are not. When I am walking, I consciously experiment with being with Existence without having the mind constantly commenting. I try to just be wordlessly with the people and situations that I meet on my walk. When I can just be with Existence, it opens the door to be one with the Whole.
The most valuable insight I have got through my own inner journey is how Existence continuously has guided me towards a greater awareness that life is fundamentally one. Existence has continuously guided me with a greater lovingness and caring than I ever could imagine. Long before I was even aware of it, life has continuously guided me through periods of love and aloneness, joy and sadness, light and darkness, success and failure and negative and positive experiences. My own inner journey towards awareness and meditation has step by step developed the trust, sensitivity and subtle listening, which is necessary to surrender to life and to allow life to be my teacher.
Life is continuously communicating with us and it is a valuable experience to look back and see how life — despite my sleep, unconsciousness, lack of trust and resistance — continuously has guided me towards a greater awareness that life is one. Life has continuously lead me to the people I need to meet, to the situations I need to experience and to the places where I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since we are all small rivers already leading to the ocean, to the whole. Awareness is not about swimming faster or fighting with life, it is about relaxing and floating with life in a basic trust that life is already leading towards the ocean of consciousness, towards the whole.
I was 9 years old when I had my first glimpse of wholeness. It was early Christmas morning and I was standing in my pajamas in the living room and looked out of the large windows. Outside the white snow flakes silently singled down toward a snow clad landscape. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling of being one with the slowly dancing snowflakes, one with the silent landscape. I did not understand then that this was my first taste of meditation, but it created a deep thirst and a longing in my heart to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole.
The deepest pain in my heart has always been to be separated from life, to be separated from the inner song of meditation, to be separated from the Universal song. The most important thing in my life has been to discover the inner song of meditation in my own heart and being.
I have always felt deep within myself that I do not trust that I am already OK as I am, and that I do not trust that life takes care of me. But now I discover a silent place in the depth of my inner being, where I am already one with life, where I am OK as I am. It is also a silent inner place of healing and wholeness, where I can find a love and acceptance for that which is imperfect within myself.
Being and working with people in courses has also been a meditation in itself for me. It has been a valuable experience in learning to trust and listen to my intuition, to the inner source of love, truth and wisdom, to the Existential voice within. It has been a lesson in how we through our intuition, through the silent whisperings of our heart, is in continuous contact with Existence.
Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us. Intuition is a capacity of our heart. Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us, instead of being directed by our ideas, desires and expectations. Since the days of Aristotle’s, we have been taught that logic is the only way to reach a solution. But while logic works in a step-by-step-process to reach a solution, intuition simply takes a quantum leap to a solution without any intermediate steps.
Intuition is the language of silence, the Existential language. The word "in-tuition" means to listen within yourself. Intuition is the silent voice within, which is already in contact with the Existence. Intuition is the voice of God.
The more you come in contact with the inner silence, the inner emptiness, the more you have access to your intuition. Silence is the nourishment for intuition.
If something increases your love, joy and silence, it is the criterion that it is the right path for you. If something decreases your love, joy and silence, it is a sign that you are on the wrong path.
Do not compare yourself with others when it comes to take a decision about what you should do, follow the love, joy and silence of your heart and inner being. When you are in contact with your inner silence, you just know what you should do - you do not have to think about it, and you do not need not compare the pros and cons - you just know. You can listen to the advice of others, but always listen to your intuition, to your inner teacher and guide in life, when you take the final decision. The intuition, the language of silence, will always lead your right.
To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.
When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”.
I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.
Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be committed to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness to happen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.
It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with Existence. It means to find the whole Existence within myself, it means to discover that Existence is alive in my own heart and being.
The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an ecstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole Existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God.
Life is really very simple. In each moment, we have the opportunity to choose between saying “yes” or “no”, to listen to our intuition, to listen to our true inner voice, the Existential voice within ourselves. When we say “yes”, we have contact with Existence and we receive nourishment, love, joy, support and inspiration. When we say “no”, we create a separation from life and begin to create dreams and expectations of how it should be. We begin to live in the memories of the past and in the fantasies of the future – as if any other time than here and now really could make us happy and satisfied.
I had a magical day during one Sunday when I walked out in nature, which taught me much about life. On the outside this day only consisted of taking a walk out in the beautiful sunny weather and cleaning my apartment, but on the inside everything suddenly changed. When I walked out in nature in the sunny weather, a silent explosion suddenly happened within me and my whole perception of reality changed. In a single moment, everything had changed, although nothing on the outside had really changed. Everything on the outside was exactly as before, but my way of seeing had changed. The difference was that before I did not see and now I could see. My eyes were open. Suddenly I was one with everything, one with the stones, one with the trees and one with the people that I meet on my walk.
My heart danced with joy together with a feeling of: ”I am God”. Not that I am the creator of everything, but that I am part of the Whole, part of the divine. It felt like coming home, that Existence is my home. I also saw that even if the people that I meet did not understand that they are a part of the Whole, they still are a part of the Whole. I felt the waves of Existence in my own heart and being and I felt like a small wave in a great ocean. It gave a taste of the eternal, a taste of the limitless and boundless source of creativity. In just a few moments, I learnt more than during 20 years in university.
Wisdom is basically the understanding that we all are part of the Whole. We are all small rivers moving towards the ocean. I laughed at the fact that enlightenment is really our innate birthright, and that small children already live in this mystical unity with the Whole.
SONG OF MEDITATION.
- An Inner-view with Swami Dhyan Giten
SWAMI DHYAN GITEN, spiritual teacher and bestselling author, has more than 30 years of experience in individual counselling and in teaching awareness and meditation. He is trained in both modern psychology and in classic Eastern methods for awareness and meditation in USA, Italy, Sweden and India.
Giten experienced his first satori, his first glimpse of spiritual awakening, when he was 9 years old. This created a deep thirst and longing in his heart and being to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole.
Swami Dhyan Giten has dedicated his life to teach the art of awareness and meditation. He conducts individual consultations, seminars and courses internationally. His quotes, articles and books have touched the hearts of thousands and are appearing with increasing frequency in magazines, blogs and websites.
Since he began to meditate when he was 15 years old, he has dedicated his life to the study and exploration of the inner journey in order to move out of his own way, to be in a flow, and to discover the authentic inner being, the meditative quality within, the inner silence and emptiness, the capacity to surrender to life. He does not belong to any spiritual group or tradition; he is only interested to explore what it means to live with open eyes.
Giten’s first professional passion when he was 15 years old was to become an actor. After training as an actor, he worked as an actor until he was 23 years old. Working as actor taught him a lot about life and to emphatically understand the situation and life of other people, since acting is really a spiritual occupation. It taught him about spirituality, since working as an actor means to play a role totally, while at the same time as you know deep down that you are not the role you are playing. After working as an actor for a number of years, Giten began to understand that his early passion for theatre was really an unconscious search for a spiritual discipline. When he realized this, he began to feel a thirst to work with people in a more direct way in awareness and meditation.
In 1982, when Giten was 23 years old, he was directed by the Divine presence in a trance session with the American trance chancellor Lin David Martin: “You have listened to your intuition, to your true inner voice, more than most. You have been searching for the contact with the Spirit for a long time and now it is beginning to manifest on the outer plane. You have been gifted many times in previous embodiments and now everything will come rather easy for you. I want you to put your energy into the lives of others, because you can”.
He is author of the best-selling book in Swedish "Meditationens Sång – Om meditation, relationer och andlig kreativitet" (Solrosens forlag, 2001, available from Internet book store Adlibris: http://www.adlibris.com), and "The Silent Whisperings of the Heart – An Introduction to Giten’s Approach to Life" (2008, available as paperback at Internet book store Lulu.com and as free e-book at award winning book site Obooko.com), "Presence – Working from Within. The Psychology of Being" (2011, available as paperback at Internet book store Lulu.com), "Meditation – A Yes to Life", "Healing Is Pure Love", "Presence – The Inner Source of Love, Truth and Wholeness" and "The Language of Silence – From Darkness to Light" (available in paperback at Lulu.com). The last four books are also available as free e-books at book site Obooko.com).
Visit Giten’s World – A School for the Heart. 350 Pages of Medicine for the Soul: http://www.giten.net
Giten's blog with the latest information: www.swamidhyangiten.wordpress.com
The inner journey
Can you say something about your own inner journey?
Life is like playing hide the key with God. God has hidden the key and now it is up to us to find the key again. It also takes us a while to realize that the key is hidden in our own heart. The heart is the door to allow life to guide us. The heart is the door to say "yes" to life. The heart is the door to surrender to life.
I have always had the capacity to go within myself and to discover the silence within, the inner meditative quality, the inner source of love and truth – the inner language of silence. Now I also notice that this silence is going deeper, and that I go beyond the ego and disappear into the silence.
First this brought up fear, but now I am enjoying this meditation of disappearing into the silence and to be nobody. I have started experimenting with this phenomenon to understand how to consciously go beyond the ego: yesterday when I took a cofee at a restaurant, I consciously turned my attention within and disappeared into the silence, which was like finding an inner source of bliss.
In aloneness, I experiment with being consciously alone as a door to be egoless. In conscious aloneness, the ego can not function. In aloneness, your are not. When I am walking, I consciously experiment with being with Existence without having the mind constantly commenting. I try to just be wordlessly with the people and situations that I meet on my walk. When I can just be with Existence, it opens the door to be one with the Whole.
The most valuable insight I have got through my own inner journey is how Existence continuously has guided me towards a greater awareness that life is fundamentally one. Existence has continuously guided me with a greater lovingness and caring than I ever could imagine. Long before I was even aware of it, life has continuously guided me through periods of love and aloneness, joy and sadness, light and darkness, success and failure and negative and positive experiences. My own inner journey towards awareness and meditation has step by step developed the trust, sensitivity and subtle listening, which is necessary to surrender to life and to allow life to be my teacher.
Life is continuously communicating with us and it is a valuable experience to look back and see how life — despite my sleep, unconsciousness, lack of trust and resistance — continuously has guided me towards a greater awareness that life is one. Life has continuously lead me to the people I need to meet, to the situations I need to experience and to the places where I need to be. There has never been any real reason to worry since we are all small rivers already leading to the ocean, to the whole. Awareness is not about swimming faster or fighting with life, it is about relaxing and floating with life in a basic trust that life is already leading towards the ocean of consciousness, towards the whole.
I was 9 years old when I had my first glimpse of wholeness. It was early Christmas morning and I was standing in my pajamas in the living room and looked out of the large windows. Outside the white snow flakes silently singled down toward a snow clad landscape. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling of being one with the slowly dancing snowflakes, one with the silent landscape. I did not understand then that this was my first taste of meditation, but it created a deep thirst and a longing in my heart to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole.
The deepest pain in my heart has always been to be separated from life, to be separated from the inner song of meditation, to be separated from the Universal song. The most important thing in my life has been to discover the inner song of meditation in my own heart and being.
I have always felt deep within myself that I do not trust that I am already OK as I am, and that I do not trust that life takes care of me. But now I discover a silent place in the depth of my inner being, where I am already one with life, where I am OK as I am. It is also a silent inner place of healing and wholeness, where I can find a love and acceptance for that which is imperfect within myself.
Being and working with people in courses has also been a meditation in itself for me. It has been a valuable experience in learning to trust and listen to my intuition, to the inner source of love, truth and wisdom, to the Existential voice within. It has been a lesson in how we through our intuition, through the silent whisperings of our heart, is in continuous contact with Existence.
Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us. Intuition is a capacity of our heart. Our heart is the door to allowing Existence to guide us, instead of being directed by our ideas, desires and expectations. Since the days of Aristotle’s, we have been taught that logic is the only way to reach a solution. But while logic works in a step-by-step-process to reach a solution, intuition simply takes a quantum leap to a solution without any intermediate steps.
Intuition is the language of silence, the Existential language. The word "in-tuition" means to listen within yourself. Intuition is the silent voice within, which is already in contact with the Existence. Intuition is the voice of God.
The more you come in contact with the inner silence, the inner emptiness, the more you have access to your intuition. Silence is the nourishment for intuition.
If something increases your love, joy and silence, it is the criterion that it is the right path for you. If something decreases your love, joy and silence, it is a sign that you are on the wrong path.
Do not compare yourself with others when it comes to take a decision about what you should do, follow the love, joy and silence of your heart and inner being. When you are in contact with your inner silence, you just know what you should do - you do not have to think about it, and you do not need not compare the pros and cons - you just know. You can listen to the advice of others, but always listen to your intuition, to your inner teacher and guide in life, when you take the final decision. The intuition, the language of silence, will always lead your right.
To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.
When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”.
I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.
Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be committed to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness to happen. You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of “I”, to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being.
It is astonishing to realize that growing up actually means to become one with Existence. It means to find the whole Existence within myself, it means to discover that Existence is alive in my own heart and being.
The song of a bird echoes my own inner voice, the beauty of a flower reflects my own inner beauty, a dog becomes an expression of my own unconditional love and friendship, the majestic mountains create an ecstatic joy, and I discover all the shining stars of the sky within my own heart. It is to realize that the whole Existence is alive, and that the underlying thread of consciousness is God.
Life is really very simple. In each moment, we have the opportunity to choose between saying “yes” or “no”, to listen to our intuition, to listen to our true inner voice, the Existential voice within ourselves. When we say “yes”, we have contact with Existence and we receive nourishment, love, joy, support and inspiration. When we say “no”, we create a separation from life and begin to create dreams and expectations of how it should be. We begin to live in the memories of the past and in the fantasies of the future – as if any other time than here and now really could make us happy and satisfied.
I had a magical day during one Sunday when I walked out in nature, which taught me much about life. On the outside this day only consisted of taking a walk out in the beautiful sunny weather and cleaning my apartment, but on the inside everything suddenly changed. When I walked out in nature in the sunny weather, a silent explosion suddenly happened within me and my whole perception of reality changed. In a single moment, everything had changed, although nothing on the outside had really changed. Everything on the outside was exactly as before, but my way of seeing had changed. The difference was that before I did not see and now I could see. My eyes were open. Suddenly I was one with everything, one with the stones, one with the trees and one with the people that I meet on my walk.
My heart danced with joy together with a feeling of: ”I am God”. Not that I am the creator of everything, but that I am part of the Whole, part of the divine. It felt like coming home, that Existence is my home. I also saw that even if the people that I meet did not understand that they are a part of the Whole, they still are a part of the Whole. I felt the waves of Existence in my own heart and being and I felt like a small wave in a great ocean. It gave a taste of the eternal, a taste of the limitless and boundless source of creativity. In just a few moments, I learnt more than during 20 years in university.
Wisdom is basically the understanding that we all are part of the Whole. We are all small rivers moving towards the ocean. I laughed at the fact that enlightenment is really our innate birthright, and that small children already live in this mystical unity with the Whole.
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