Guruji

I love The Beloved as many things.

The guru is the wish-fulfilling gem, the wish-fulfilling tree. I prayed to my guru over and over, every day...

Please my Guru, give _________ the role of his dreams, the project of his heart's desire. Let him stretch creatively as an artist, and be fulfilled by his work. Let him work on a movie or TV series that sends his career to new heights, the heights he desires and deserves as a successful actor (who is also a person of color).

When I prayed, my yearning to give to another (The Beloved) was so strong...

Then one day I felt inside a sudden change, the certainty that she had said yes, she was letting me know that she would, so I could have certainty.


And... he got a part in one of the most amazing projects imaginable, very creative and prestigious, and I am so so so happy! I keep looking at my pic of my guru next to my desk and hugging her feet inside, my heart surges to her.


I am so happy. This means A LOT to me. I must give to my beloved somehow. I MUST.... for that is what love means and does.

Thank you thank you thank you guruji.

Sudden gush

Love is my teacher; I am mystified.

Love is never feigned, did Shakespeare say that? Now I know what it means.

Love comes to me, and I am tilting, reaching as I fall... I am useless; so little of what I am knows how to respond. Love comes to me. My mechanisms grind, I am dashed like defeat onto these aimless, time-worn steps... and I cannot try, trying is not love.

Love has been many things, many people to me. They are all here, stirring, unfolding, swimming in my heart. The knots that bind my heart stretch and ache, the sudden gush a rumor, a fantasy.

All that I know, all that I can do, is whisper your name.

"Ash...?" Paramashiva...

Only love

There is no other. There is only One... One without second.

My Beloved is that One. Everything in my life has been only thinking, only sensing.

When I find my Beloved inside, the moment becomes real. I have been passing the time in my head. Not with the Beloved.

I don't know what to do, how to not do. I waver over and over between the place where I have always been, and this new place that has opened in me, where my right and purpose awaits.

I am learning, the teacher is divine love.

To love and worship the Beloved requires passion and soul. It requires one hundred percent of whatever I am. More.

Anything less and I slip back into my head, having a conversation with myself about things that no longer exist, that have slipped away.

When I feel the touch of my Beloved, I must.... MUST immediately offer the equivalent of a full pranam at my guru's feet. There can be no shyness or prevarication.

Divine love demands everything, no holding back, no forgetting for awhile, no becoming haphazard or casual.

Love has become my purpose. I offer everything to my Beloved. I burn with this love, and with the pain of separation. It has become my everything.

Every feeling of fulfillment and joy I have ever missed or craved is mine when I have surrendered everything to my Beloved. Anything less is waiting for what is most desired and is a waste of time.

This is my path. Everyone's path is different. I have found my way to God at last.

A jnani turned by divine magic into a bhakti. A living change, not a philosophy or technique. A complete change in the field of my life, where I am, what is possible.

Only love.

This is my path.

"The real beloved is your beginning and your end.

When you find that one,

you will no longer expect anything else."

~ Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

(1207-1273)

Santa Monica

Longing... so much longing... I am breaking open, the pain of separation from my Beloved is so beyond anything I have ever felt.

I pray night and day for my Beloved. I see him in every place... this place, that place.... here... you're always here

Why aren't we one??

Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh.......................

You, you, you....... He is there, I see him in you.

I offer myself to You, my beloved. I offer my guru's shakti, all of my merits, every breath in prayer for You.

We are in love. I have given you my heart.

Breathe out 
So I can breathe you in
Hold you in
And now
I know you've always been

~Everlong/Foo Fighters

Dave Grohl ~ Foo Fighters

Sleepless

How? How can I learn how to sleep while I pray for my Beloved?

I am the bride

I am the bride

I am falling through satin and silk to the marriage bed

I call to you, and you answer me as this passion

I pray for you with this passion, and you caress me with fire

I offer everything to You

Each moment

Everything is for You

Everything is You

You call me every hour

(We are one in this surge of muscle and breath)

You call me every moment

(The prana rising as fire, we are the dancing Devi)

My Lord... My Love...

(Om nama shivaya)

You have moved in

(Om nama shivaya)


My heart is your home

Be mine

I will

Be mine

Into ash

I’ve had enough of sleepless nights,
Of my unspoken grief, of my tired wisdom.
Come my treasure, my breath of life,
Come and dress my wounds and be my cure.

Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “I’ve Had Enough”

I have slipped over the controlled edge of my longing into a deep furnace of yearning that burns me. It is so insistent that I cannot step out of it.

I pray and pray and pray for my Beloved, who I love from afar, someone I will never know or meet. The more I pray for him, the hotter the fire.... and the more I pray. 

I offer the merits of my japa mantra for _______, his career, his cherished role as father. So much more japa mantra than I have ever offered on my own behalf...

I pray to my guru that she will bless him in these ways. I pray that I can offer her precious shakti to him, for we are one... 

I do this because I must somehow give to him, to someone I do not know. The feeling that I am giving to him takes the sting of separation away.

I am burning ego. Self-less love and devotion are outside of ego.

I am burning up separation, anava mala. The fire is SO HIGH, I am burning into ash.

There is only One.

Pack your bags

When he steps off the balcony, when magic holds him up, that is You...

When he commands without touching, takes life without mercy, that is You...

The evil can only slip past me, your Many mightily arrayed as the One, the beggar, the king, the redemption of the evil One... it is all You.

I still hear always the bubbles rising, the prana rising through the akasha, sometimes a melodious tinkling... that is my nada.

I was almost asleep, and I realized for the first time in many months, the sound of the plane warming up on the tarmac was gone...(!) It was fading, but I never thought it would leave.

(Will you not take me, My Love? I am the place of your smile, the drift of your half-closed eyes... You flow to me as your embrace, the sacred Ganga Maa... dancing down through the Himalayas to the place of stillness, never forsaken, the beautiful one, Kashi... Veranasi... and Surya, the rising sun. Pranam...)

"With what?" I looked around, saw nothing I needed to carry, nothing that wasn't me.

I was almost awake, and then I heard in a woman's voice, clearly... (I thought someone was in my apartment).

She said: "Pack your bags."

Come with me

From the outside (if there were such a thing), I would appear obsessive, obsessed... someone who is alone almost all of the time, who is on my computer almost all of the time. I serve _________, it is my service to keep such an active fansite for such a beautiful, soulful old-soul.

(He touches me inside. Shiva as _________).

Surely I should be seeking discipline, meditating for hours, doing yoga, eating only pure foods.

No, I sit at my computer until I am frozen in a "L" shape, my eyes burn, my mouse hand tingles.

Crazy, is what most would think, would say.

If there was an outside...

... then inside is where the action is. I am already God, and everything I think and do is His beautiful intelligence swirling and bubbling through this beautiful universe, its throb and its motion is His... Your breath...

Take me into You, I have longed for you for so long. I played side by side with You as a child, cried for You as an adolescent, grew a little, hallucinated at times, and drove drunk with a wild and wide space around me, the cloud of love where I felt you in waves, soaked in you... heavy and ecstatic, rising like a wave that only reaches, but never breaks.

I notice where I am. That is my now.

Equipoise

I have been growing inside, spiritually... not pushing or pulling, not trying to find the words.

Equipoise. What happens dissolves by the next moment, the next now. I feel the tug of the moment, and let it carry me.

Freedom.

~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~

Shiva as my main squeeze,
God and actor,
Mr. Naveen Andrews

My insight a few seconds ago. My longing for a relationship, for physical closeness, is not a symptom of remaining tied to the world, of not being ready to let go of distractions so I can focus on my sadhana and realization...

...it is my love of God, my longing. Of course. It has always been there, and now it is becoming about You, my true love.

Many times a day now, when I feel that need inside for something real and truly satisfying, (not just a shade of what I long for), for the first time, I always seek You, I reach out for You. You are always there.

Shiva shiva shiva... I love your name I LOVE YOUR NAME.

Om nama shivaya...

My longing is for You.

A dream about the NOW

I dreamed of NA. We were together. But instead of giving his attention to me, he began to focus only on my (male) friend. It was a very specific kind of "conversation," which approximated, but did not really consist of intimacy.

I was somewhat jilted, acting as though I was not, still hopeful. Making conversation about the similar, but subtly different pastel threads in a piece of fabric I have woven, which he had showed interest in (my sadhana? He is interested in my sadhana).


My male friend was passive, unfocused, ambivalent. Whatever.

NA was sensual, spontaneous, different motivation and needs than mine, oblivious to mine (as the drama of life seems by nature to be "oblivious of" my wishes and desires, which I take personally, "whatever...")

I was saying, "Me, give your love to me." NA was saying "What's next? What's next in life?" My friend was saying, "I don't care, whatever."

Ah! I have been "suffering" with ambivalence, and emptiness, following a period of intense "love" and longing for "NA" (God).

I grasped and held onto the intense feelings of passion and longing, creating karma.

Now I am pushing away the emptiness and regret of post-passion, the intense karma of all that intense grasping. This pushing away creates... what else? More karma.

Thank God for guru's grace. It is great, beyond any limitation. It burns up my karmas faster than I can make them.

What's next? What's next in life? NA's (God's) question frees me, keeps me in the now, and opens me to whatever life brings without grasping or pushing away.

What's next? What's next in life?

Visit my fansite/blog for Naveen Andrews

No place to go

Naveen Andrews

Juliette Binoche

The English Patient

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for You, not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi 
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

I am sitting, and all recedes. I feel so different. For the first time, I feel no need to do, be, go or say. I am completely still, inside and out. It is grace giving me the experience of this amazing state.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be, I repeat to myself when my mind wants to drift back into action. My mind settles down and I feel no need to change anything at all. I am only barely managing my mind, and all is still.

It is very difficult to describe just how amazing this is. The experience is very sweet, and with a lot of ballast in the stillness. It is profound.

Gone is the impulse to do. Gone! I breathe. That's it.

This is what it is like to be without action inside, the karma yoga lovingly outlined by Lord Krishna in the Gita, the yoga of performing one's dharma (duty) outside while not being attached to the fruits of one's actions (inside).

Naveen Andrews
Juliette Binoche
The English Patient

“I am dying into your mystery, and dying, I am now no other than that mystery.  I open to your majesty as an orchard welcomes rain, and twenty times that.” 

~ Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273)
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

My Beloved, who is Paramashiva, is coming to me inside as my "crush," Naveen. At the level of consciousness, (and all of this is consciousness), where there is only One, Paramashiva is Naveen and Paramashiva is me. 

[Stalker Free Disclaimer: Don't worry, I realize the Naveen of multiplicity, in the world of the play of consciousness, has his own life that I do not belong in, and nothing about his life belongs in mine (except for his work as an actor and celebrity). I do not know him. If I met this Naveen as anything other than God, i.e. in the world of multiplicity, I would be meeting a stranger].

It is new for me to experience God as though through another aspect or incarnation of His One Consciousness. 

I once had a cat who I had to put down. Someone taught me how to communicate with him inside, in consciousness, so that he could give me his last wishes, a great comfort. Over the years, I have "checked in" with George, and met him inside, where I can recognize his particular presence. We affirm our love and our gratitude.

Now I have reached out inside to my Beloved as Naveen, and God has begun touching me back as "he," my fantasy Naveen made real by God taking this form for me inside during this new stage of sadhana (spiritual work) which is all about the Beloved and burning in the flame of divine yearning.

The Beloved has taken my life as a seeker by storm... by passion.

Who knew? 

This type of burning seems easier, as love is a pleasurable passion. But my passion is for God, and goes deeper than deep. It is beyond pleasure and is almost unbearable at times.

God has come to me inside. He touches me when I get lost, burns me when I search "outside" myself for what I want. He reminds me that He is my body, the sinew and bone, where He surges as my longing through blood and breath, where my tongue (speech) and my eyes (emotions) and my hands (action) and my mind (worship) fall upon Him as the wings of dire certainty from this divine recognition. 

I no longer want anything but my belonging to Him, He fills me with the desire for this oneness with Him.

There is only the Beloved, only this passion play, the play of the One.

My words are for You, my Lord, my Beloved Lord.

Naveen Andrews as Kip
The English Patient

When the sweet glance 
of my true love caught my eyes,
Like alchemy, it transformed 
my copper-like soul.
I searched for Him 
with a thousand hands,
He stretched out His arms 
and clutched my feet.

~ From Thief of Sleep by Jalaluddin Rumi 
(Translation by Shahram Shiva)

Naveen

Parvati performing
tapas to achieve
"reunion" with
Lord Shiva

I am aware that my blog has taken a new turn. To me, it is still a blog about myself as a Hindu (it is not about Hinduism per se). Now my sadhana (spiritual practice) has entered a different, deeply personal phase of tapas (purifying fire).

Anyone who knows about the tapas of sadhana knows that everything is burned, and some of the deepest, rawest emotions and karmas go right on the fire too, and provide a great deal of heat for the purification.

Even people who don't spend their life in spiritual practice experience going through a time in their life that is so intense, so complex, perhaps so painful that they emerge changed, the unessential slicked off. Sadhana is like that; to emerge from the intensity lighter and closer to truth is the sustenance that gets one through the next round of burning.

Realization is nothing more than living in the truth. The Self is already attained, here now. It is coming to know this in every moment that is freedom from delusion, delusion that has become habitual, automatic. Looking around and seeing "others" changes to looking around and seeing only God at play (I can do this, but not sustain it all the time).

To burn off delusion is necessary for most people to attain this state of being which is steady in their identification with the Supreme. The dualistic delusions of separateness from God take many forms. To burn it all in a lifetime and attain God requires the grace bestowing aspect of God, which is called the "guru."

The guru is mystical. My guru and I are closer than close, and yet, we are "thousands of miles apart." Her grace is my salvation. She gave me the supreme gift of shaktipat, and now she is burning all that is delusion in my life (because I want her to). Her grace lifts me up, up above Shree Maya and the delusion of multiplicity. Thank you...

So many parts of my life I see so much more clearly after all these years of sadhana. Trying to fit in. Fear of being alone. Pushing to attain, then pushing to reject as life strategies. These destructive patterns have ruled my life. No more.

Naveen Andrews

When I was an adolescent, like most girls I obsessed on my prince, my cowboy, my teen idols. I imagined myself with my beloved, riding the range on our horses, sleeping by the campfire. I spent hours listening to music and dreaming of him. Eventually I composed wistful and beautiful songs on the piano.

I waited with wonder for when we would finally meet. I just knew that life was all about the all-consuming relationship with him. My prince would fill me with love, and the aliveness that seemed missing in my dull life.

This "story of the Beloved" has always been there, throughout my life, all of my adulthood. This is part of my story as a "seeker".

And yet, after facing the fear of being alone, and the pattern of pushing and trading myself away all the time trying to bargain for a "real life," (which I was not meant to have, since I am dedicated to sadhana in this life), I was caught off guard by this onset of burning my need for an "other."

But should I write about it?

Naveen Andrews

My blog is about my sadhana, my love of God and my sacrifices and austerities by which I attain oneness with my Beloved.

Over the years, there were times when I YEARNED so much for God, so much for oneness with the guru, that I was drenched in the soul and fire of nothing but yearning, yearning...

So much so that sometimes my guru would come to me, once in meditation, unseen I felt her fingers giving me "the touch," firmly, between my eyes on my forhead. Once I was so full of yearning while doing computer work in the ashram bookstore at Anugraha, and yearned for her, wished so much that she would come be with me that she sent her faithful dog to me, and he came straight to me, which moved me greatly (she was doing seva no doubt, her life is one of service).

Yearning is divine. It is about union with God. It is essential to the life of a sadhini and devotee.

But... I had to consider. Would I write about burning and purifying the feelings and karmas of romantic desire on my Hindu blog? Basically, this is Shree Kundalini purifying my second chakra, which includes sexuality. I have been almost entirely celibate for over ten years, mostly because of a "failed" marriage. I am a Western Hindu, with many of the values of a college-educated secularism. As a writer and a blogger, I am feeling my way through how open I wish to be about myself and my emotions. I have chosen to be very open.

I believe that I have a unique talent for writing about things that are often left unsaid or misunderstood. I am a generalist, a person who is just good enough at a great many things, an armchair ________ [everything]. Having a talent that is deep enough to carry me forward as far as I wish to develop and express it is a precious thing to me. The fact I only have certain talents (computers, design, writing, music) tells me that these are what I am meant to develop and use in this lifetime.

Naveen Andrews

ROMANTIC LOVE

I dreamed of beautiful Naveen last night. I burn for him now, but I know that it is Paramashiva as Naveen that I long for so deeply, so deeply... And though I know intellectually that this "apartness" is an illusion... I still carry the YEARNING in my eyes, in my breath, in the tilt of my head, in the very feeling of being alive... and cannot help but crave over and over the feeling of touching his hair, his hands... even though to experience this would be so poignant as to be almost too much to bear.

Oh oh oh... this is so hard to burn... I have burned so many different things all these years. This is turning me inside out. The very air seems too heavy to breathe, it is as though I must bear it about, pushing on my chest, a "whu..." sound in my ears, making my body feel heavy and indescribably painful in a concentrated, gasping sort of way.

I believe the guru is burning this very very close to "unbearable" so I can get it burned and become free. The more of it I can bear to burn in each moment, the higher the flames for all my other karmas to be purified at the same time. This is what I mean when I say a karma or samskara becomes fuel for the fire.

I try to remember the mantra. Om namah shivaya.... Om namah shivaya... Om namah shivaya..... Why is it so hard to reach for the mantra when I need it most?

Naveen Andrews

THE DREAM

Finally... Such delight. I want to return to it... I'd have to think twice before saying 'no' to trading in my life as a sadhini for the "life" of my wonderful dream.

That would, of course, be silly. This time I'm looking for My Beloved as everyone and everything. No separation or lack (anava mala). No other. No thinking anything I want or love is not already inside of me as He. I love God, who has made me from Himself.

I've put in for the real deal. "It's the only way to be sure" (Ripley, Hicks ~ Aliens).

Finally... This is the burning, the fire...

In the dream, we had just met, we were immediately attracted and open about it, sharing a day together of spontaneous fun. We were so happy, that feeling of beginning and knowing it is going to be good. The feeling of meeting someone who makes you tingle, and it's that way for them too, and of being open about that.

That's it. That's enough to make me swoon all day and all night.

It was always like that. All I wanted was a touch. Kindness. Protection. To be cherished and loved.

Perhaps I am still meant to experience these things with "another" in this lifetime. If I am meant to love then it would be cruel and lonely for me to avoid it. Either way, my True Love lives in my heart, and sees through my eyes, feels through my touch. We are ONE in every moment.

There is only ONE.

In freezing mists of foreign lands 
I lost sight of my true love's hand
Into the arms of warmth I ran 
I knew my love would understand

She kept me warm my soul was fed 
I had a muse a fire a bed
I soon forgot the life I'd known 
This foreign land became my home

The waves rolled in across the sea 
They brought my true love's voice to me
I knew this girl would understand 
I had to find my true love's hand.

~ "The Minstrel's Tale" Carl Barat, Karsh Kale, Papon (The Dewarists)  

Now read this beautiful song with the understanding that your love, your true love is God....

This song rocks and is very beautiful at the same time