Mahashivaratri 2014

I wish to all the sweet blessings of the great Lord on this His day!

Om nama shivaya

The center place

What I call the "center place," is where I feel cidrūpatā, the touch of God consciousness.

Finally I understand the instruction to focus on the two places where the breath stops.

When I am focused on that place, I leave my breath and the realm of movement, movement which recedes into the background as I turn my senses inward, and I become completely still, no sound or light, only PRESENCE. The most sacred, most blissful presence. Beyond these qualities.

This is cidrūpatā.

This is where the shakti that would go out through the senses is contained (rather than spilt willy nilly).

This is where equipoise comes from, a solid place to "sit" without moving off of it. My mind moves me off, again and again, sends my senses outward again. My discipline is returning again and again. 

I have wanted these things for so long.

I can only slip the bonds of maya for one second because of the grace of my guru.

From a lesson given by Swami Laksmanjoo on Tantraloka, Ahnika 5 (not yet published) Universal Shaiva Fellowship

Never to wander

How many times I passed this spot on the way.

The way to this, not this... what about this?

I felt bliss again, and this time I stopped... then at last I sat down.

Endless bliss... 

My guru has been here forever.

Did we ever move at all?

Here I am at my guru's feet.... never to wander away again.

Here in the buddhi mind

I am journeying, and there is no place but here, no where to go.

I do not try. And that's all (this is not an intellectual technique).

I am HERE.

The kriyas.... the kriyas are Goddess moving.

I hear the plane on the tarmac all the time. (Pack your bags, my guru said). Sometime in the late afternoon or evening, the bubbly tinkly prana rising through the akasha begins, and now I notice the moment it starts.

And finally I understand, though it seems so obvious now. Which is fine because understanding is the booby prize.

That said...

Sound is very different from vision. Sound inside arises, and I am enchanted, I stop and tune in to the lovely divine tinkling... ohhh. Nothing could sound more beautiful.

This: the sound is about going inside.

For me, I fell from meditation, from japa and dharanas... fell through them and here in this velvet darkness it is suddenly so quiet, so still, so alive.

Outside I have equipoise. Oh, this is what is happening... I go with whatever it is. I can turn on a dime. Okay, now this.

My mind is steady. When mind does acrobatics, I am here in the buddhi mind, simply here.

The head falling forward kriya takes me deeper into the center place, where my mind is completely steady. No movement. No thoughts. Several times a day.