The Festival of Shiv: Days 5, 6 & 7 -These are some of my Favourite Shiv Things!

Days 5 and 6 of the Festival of Shiv leads me into the weekend and after the big night of Shiv celebs I figured I'd take it a bit easy on UCP's very own Festival of Shiv and show you on these days...in a combo blog...some of my favourite things related to Shiv. Of course it's not about Shiv really since Shiv is formless and timeless and boundless and everything less! In fact in some Vedantic traditions it is said that Shiv is everything that is not! However for me, try as I may daily and with especially hard effort yearly on Maha Shiv Ratri (the big night of Shiv). I'm still not Shivoham Shivoham and as a result I'm still Om Namah Shivaya(ing)and have these favourite things that I like about Shiv that perhaps will one day make me Shivoham Shivoham...I am Shiv...I am Shiv...for it is my life long pursuit to become more Shiv like!

So here are some of my favourite Shiv things...if you've been following UCP you may already be acquainted with some of them but as I journey forward...I learn and acquire some more favs...so here they all are!

1. The photo of Shiv's murti in Rishikesh that I use as a guru...mimicking his posture so that I can become as meditative as him.



2. My favourite recitation of the Shiv Rudrastakam that I only stumbled upon in the last days of 2009. And I've since been starting many a mornings with it! :)



3. An older favourite is this recitation of the Maha Mrityunjaya Mantra but really I love any version of the recitation of this mantra. And my favourite explanation of it is on this CD version I have that is not on YouTube but I received from my grandfather in 2002 or there abouts and the swami who speaks I know not his name...however perhaps one of these days I'll share it here on UCP all the same as a sound file...if I can figure out how to do it Shiv willing! :)


4. The Shiv murti that I saw at the end of my pilgrimage in Kartik of 2009 to the El Dorado Shiv Mandir here in Trinidad.