Pongal - Vedic New Year

"Wishing Everyone Happy Ponggal and a New Year. May all your wishes come true and GOD bless you with Good Health, Prosperity and Enlightenment this year !"

From January 14th, the Sun begins its journey northward as it transits into the constellation of Capricorn, signaling the end of darkness and the return of ever increasing daylight through July 16th.

In astrological terms, it is the Vedic Winter Solstice and in India it is referred to as “Pongal”. The transit is a powerful opportunity to change your old ways and rewrite the rules for the next year.


Your old ways might not have brought you the affluence or poignant happiness that you have been yearning for. The celebrations associated with this transit carry a strong vibration which can stir up your awareness and help you receive what you rightly deserve.

The morning of January 13th prior to the transit is the time to clean your homes and your mind. Run through your closets and throw out old items from the past that no longer has a place in your life. Spiritually this is the time to overhaul of your current self and getting ready for a higher self. This festival celebrates leaving behind the old way of doing things, be it relationship, money matters or health habits.

Jupiter's Benefic Influences Makes for 6 Possible Great Sun Transits
The first day of the Vedic New Year, Thursday, January 14th, is the day when Sun enters the sign Capricorn. Winter comes to an end and there is a gradual onset of sunny days. It is interesting to know that even Indra, the king of heaven, rejoices during this time of abundance, fun, luxury and happiness.
The Sun governs your health; both physical and mental, self-esteem, proper functioning of the heart and your vision. On the Winter Solstice the Sun moves into Capricorn forming an auspicious "yoga" or configuration with Jupiter. The Sun remains in one sign for 30 days. Fortunately, the Sun and Jupiter will be continuing to form auspicious yogas even though the Sun will transit into the next zodiac signs. These good luck times continue when the Sun is in Aquarius, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, and Gemini which ends on July 16th. Accelerating the benefic effects of the Sun using remedies can augment your good luck time, like sailing with the wind at your back.


Customs & Celebrations
Thai Pongal generally includes customs & celebrations that are the expression of jubilation over life's renewal. On Thai Pongal, the family begins the day early. Every member of the family gets up early in the morning, bathes, puts on new clothes and gathers to cook the traditional Pongal (rice pudding). The front garden is pre-prepared for this ceremonious cooking. A flat square pitch is made and decorated with kolam drawings, and it is exposed to the direct sun light. A fire wood hearth will be set up using three bricks. The cooking begins by putting a clay pot with water on the hearth.

A senior member of the family conduct the cooking and the rest of the family dutifully assists him or her or watches the event. When the water has boiled the rice is put into the pot - after a member the family ceremoniously puts three handful of rice in first. The other ingredients of this special dish are chakkarai (brown cane sugar) or katkandu (sugar candy), milk (cow's milk or coconut milk), roasted green gram (payaru), raisins, cashew nuts and few pods of cardamom.

When the meal is ready it is first put on a banana leaf and the family pray for few minutes to thank the nature sprit, the sun and farmers. Then the meal (Pongal) is served with fruits (banana and mango) among the family.

Spiritual Lessons Revealed From the Movie Avatar

Avatar - Top 5 Spiritual Lessons Revealed From the Movie Avatar

Avatar, a 2009 movie directed by James Cameron, has several spiritual lessons embedded in it. Here are the top 5 spiritual lessons from the well acclaimed must-watch movie.

1. Everything is Alive. Each particle of creation is filled with awareness, life force energy, spirit, and intelligence. These objects have different consciousness than ours. The universal consciousness, also known as 'Animism', is an integral part of several primitive cultures. This beautiful planet on which we live is not a dead lump of rocks circulating around the sun in space. Everything in this earth is pulsating with energy. Every culture knows it differently. Chinese calls it Chi, Indians call it Prana, Japanese call it Ki. The "bio-botanical neural network" described in the movie is real and we can experience it by increasing our consciousness. If there is one thing that I take home from this movie, it is that we should treat this earth and every living and non-living thing on this earth with respect and love. The "tree of souls" is as real as you believe it to be.

2. Love is the most powerful purifier of all. When our heart is filled with love, it heals us. This positive frequency goes out from us and resonates with everything around us. The heart filled with love creates electromagnetic field that affects the physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being. Love purifies the spirit. It cleanses the soul.

3. Everything is born twice. Your physical birth is simply the beginning of your consciousness. What you do with your life and how you earn your place in the community decides your second birth. Most people never reach the level of consciousness to be born again. To be born again, a person has to earn his or her place in the community. A real warrior has to earn place in the community by cultivating fearlessness and good heart.

4. Balance is the key to all life. "Mother earth does not take sides; she protects only the balance of life," a quote from movie reveals that mother earth promotes balance and harmony over everything else. Several Hindu and Zen spiritual theories promote balance and harmony as well. For long term sustainability, nothing takes precedence of balance.

5. This world is a collaboration of energies and every individual has something to contribute. Everybody has a purpose in life. Living a purposeful life puts you in attunement with rest of the universe. All the life force energy comes to your aid when your purpose is in attunement with betterment of the universe as a whole. "All energy is only borrowed...You have to give it back" - a direct quote from the movie reveals the quintessential aspect of how energy of both living and non-living things interacts and creates our universe.

Living your life by these 5 principles is bound to fill your life with love, joy, and serenity.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amy_C.

Kumbha Mela - Holy Dip

Washing Away Your Sins in the Sacred Ganges
Kumbha Mela is the largest group of humans to gather in one place. Their purpose is to take a holy ritual bath, together with ash-smeared Naga Babas, Sadhus, robed saints, hymn-chanting priests, yogis and preachers. This assembly of assorted characters also consists of astrologers, villagers, curious foreign tourists, Indian emigrants and various other seekers of salvation. The Naga Babas hold the distinction of bathing first, and all other seekers are invited to take the dip afterward.

The Spiritual Importance of water:
Water has a central place in all the practices and beliefs for two main reasons. Firstly, water cleanses. Water washes away impurities and pollutants, it can make an object look as good as new and wipe away any signs of previous defilement.

Water not only distils objects for ritual use, but can also make a person spotless, outwardly or spiritually, ready to come into the presence of their focus of worship. Secondly, water is a primary building block of life. Devoid of water there is no life, yet water has the power to destroy as well as to create. We are at the mercy of water just as we are at the mercy of our God/ Gods. The significance of water manifests itself differently in different religions and beliefs, but it is these two qualities of water that underlie its place in our cultures and faiths.

Ganges being the site for convergence, between land and river or two, or even better three, rivers, carry special significance and are specially sacred. Sacred rivers are thought to be a great equalizer. Through the rivers, the pure are made even more pure and the impure have their pollution removed if only temporarily. In the sacred water distinctions of caste are supposed to count for nothing, as all sins fall away. These places are believed to be where drops of amrita - the nectar of immortality - fell to earth during a heavenly conflict.

The ultimate goal of this Kumbha Mela festival is salvation and liberty from the endless cycle of birth and rebirth.

As this pilgrimage is the single most important pilgrimage, people from all over the world make their arrangements years in advance. Accommodations are over loaded, and most planes, trains and automobiles are all already booked full for the occasion. Yet AstroVed understands the desire of others around the world to partake in this festival, and we are pleased to offer you the chance to be involved on many other different levels.

Thanks to the blessings of our founder, Sri Dattatriya Siva Baba, we can ensure the authenticity of the ritual services we offer. Due to extraordinary efforts by devoted staff who will travel on your behalf, we can offer a range of options for you to participate in.

It is our great privilege to invite you to respond to the inner call for Kumbha Mela and to unite yourself along with others in the AstroVed global family with this unique, powerful and transformative spiritual event, the last Kumbha Mela before our planet encounters the shifts of 2012. If you have never participated in Kumbha Mela, this is the year to do so.

Together, we can all do our part to help prepare our planet to go through the upcoming predicted changes as peacefully as possible. We are making it possible for our valued members to participate in the great purifying vortexes of Kumbha Mela to purify both on a personal and on a global level. The renewed purification of each person can and DOES make a difference to what happens to Planet Earth going forward!

The Naga Babas Come Out of Their Himalayan Caves for Kumbha Mela: An Auspicious Time for the World!

The Naga Babas (naked holy men and also some holy women) aim to resemble Siva, the Lord of Consciousness, who when naked, symbolizes his primal condition and non attachment to the world. They regard Siva's pure consciousness as the ultimate austerity. They are naked in their innocence and shave their heads symbolizing an infant taking its final birth and rub their body with ashes from their holy fires as the symbol of death and rebirth. They live high up in the Himalayas, renouncing the ordinary world to live in the extraordinary world of higher consciousness and direct experience of spirit. Yet they voluntarily leave their caves or hidden forest locations and begin a long trek across parts of India to rendezvous for Kumbha Mela.

They come out of their normal solitude of meditation and appear naked in public at the Ganges for this initiation once every 12 years. They are drawn to be present so as to be part of this auspicious planetary shift.

Kumbha Mela literally translated from Sanskrit means 'pitcher fair'. There is a significance to this...'pitcher' is the symbol for Aquarius, the water bearer who is pouring out water from his pitcher to share with others. 'Fair' is also a festival or gathering, and Kumbha Mela is a very large gathering of spiritually minded people as well as an extraordinary collection of saints and illuminated souls.

Astrologically this event has a special timing. Kumbha Mela takes place in years when the planet Jupiter enters Aquarius, and the Sun enters Aries. This combination does not happen every year. These planetary positions occur together only every 12 years, and it said the positive energies actually medicate the river water turning it to nectar on these auspicious days making enormous purification possible.

The Mythology:

The origin of the festival is very old and dates back to the time of the story of creation, or the churning of the primordial sea. There was a tense war between the gods and demons over possession of the nectar of immortality. To prevent the nectar or 'amrita Kalasha' being taken by the more powerful demons, its safety was entrusted to the gods who are also planets, Jupiter, the Sun, the Moon and Saturn.

These four planets ran away with the nectar to hide it from the demons. Learning the conspiracy of planets, the demons turned ferocious and chased the 4 planets running with the nectar. The chase, lasted 12 days and nights during which the gods and demons went round the earth and during this chase, some nectar spilled out at Haridwar, Prayag, Ujjain and Nasik.

Therefore, every 12 years, this holy Event is commemorated at the above 4 sites when the three planets Jupiter Sun and Moon are in the below said signs.

Haridwar - Aquarius, Aries, Sagittarius

Prayag (Allahabad)- Taurus, Capricorn, Capricorn

Nasik- Leo, Cancer, Cancer

Ujjain- Leo, Aries, Aries

In Search of Salvation
The main attraction is to take a Holy Dip or bath but there are also activities like discourses, devotional singing, and mass feeding of the holy-men, holy-women and the poor.

All the pilgrims believe that if performed at the exact prescribed time they will be purified of their sins and all their prayers will be answered, that they will shuffle off this mortal coil. Purity is essential to access Light.