The One who slept

Look! Wow!!

(A gentle hand). Be still. Smile. Find wholeness within.

Oh! Oh no! 

(A reassuring touch). Be still. Smile. Find contentment within. 


God is at play here.

The entirety of God is here. I find it inside. Always here for me.

At last I can catch myself at the start of the surge toward or away from. Soon after an instant in which I have travelled so far, and not at all.

My dharana: I look around with a new awareness, strengthened each day with practice.

There is only One here. 

My dharana: All of this, including me, is One. How peaceful it is to have no other. Endless, perfect solitude. This unity consciousness surges through me as great bliss.

How my Lord loves to be found, observed and known with the awakening gaze of one who has slept.

I awaken in Your arms.

How my Lord loves to be found, observed and known with the awakening gaze of one who has slept  

The end of delusion

My mind keeps running around! Around!! GET BACK HERE.

My mind might run, but I'm the one who likes and believes in the feelings of gratification it seeks. I choose to pursue them.

Tiny little lights that sparkle and charm, that make me shimmy a little with excitement and release. In this way I miss out on the true treasure.

The Guru's feet symbolize a divine mystery, the place where Guru
and disciple meet as One in the ocean of divine consciousness

The place of action is to look at it, to put consciousness on it. What is this? Why do I pursue soimething that is not really there?? I believe over and over in gratification, and think I am achieving it, even if only for a moment. More pursuit. Repeat.

It's a sparkle!. A shimmer! A happy shimmy! No more. NO SUBSTANCE.

I want what is real.

I have disciplined my mind in key ways. This is next. I no longer believe in gratification.

"I don't believe in ________" is my playful way of saying _________ is an illusion."*

I don't believe in suffering. Suffering comes from wrong thinking. It is only consciousness. Nothing happens to me.

Now, I do not believe in gratification. Believing in it is followed closely by thinking I am experiencing lack, or frustration. None of these things are actually happening to me.

I don't want to fly on this mental swing, mistaken storymaking anymore.

Consciousness dissolves consciousness. 

The place at the Guru's feet is a place of surrender which transcends the physical.
The physical Guru offers service to Her disciples by accepting this worship of
Paramashiva, the Guru that is all. Worship at this place is beyond profound.

*In Kashmir Shaivism, everything is made of divine consciousness, which is real. This includes consciousness as delusion. Everything. It isn't things or consciousness that are not real. 

The beginning of delusion is to believe in something that is false. The experience of delusion is persisting in being mistaken.

A visit from my guru

Steady.

Tonight I was working on my aquarium, arranging my new plants. I was bent over the top of my tall tank, rearranging the wood. My left arm was up as I grabbed the wood. It was a little precarious.

There. At my left side. A gentle touch, steadying me. A soft touch, with pressure that radiated gently. It lasted for several seconds.

"Who is here?" I asked aloud. I could feel someone's presence. "Is it you?" She has visited me before.

The slight pressure was gone, but there was still the feeling, the shakti of this touch. It lasted for an hour or so. It was on my side under my arm, even with my heart.

Steady. Be steady.

Like the touch that breaks the egg, the symbol of the ego, this touch changed my subtle body, releasing a layer of constriction and impurities.

Direction from the guru is priceless. I have learned about confidence. Now I will work with being steady, and I will learn about taking the guru's direction through steadiness.

Everything for me is about freedom. Freedom from wanting and avoiding, freedom from satisfaction and lack. To see with the eyes of worship and love every molecule, in every place, as every movement... Shiva sporting as Shakti, as all, as me.
  
That is all that there is.

Everything I touch and see

I no longer feel torn between the world and my true destination.

I have said my goodbyes.

To myself, to everything I say hello.

Everything I touch and see is You. All of this is Your body. Sacred.

The language of my lover is bliss

The language of my lover is bliss.

Cosmic doorbell

All of this is a gift from my Guru.

Imagine my surprise when God has begun to be at play in everything. I experience the play as waves of bliss that I tune into at will, and which tickle me, ringing the universe's most profound doorbell.

But I thought...

Lord Shiva is the Lord of the Dance

I thought liberation would be intellectual, that I would "see" my liberation, mapping it with my mind. But I don't see it with (that part of) my mind.

My liberation dances as bliss.

Now I know why Shiva is the Lord of the Dance. All of creation is dancing. His dance. The dance.

(For the first time I really comprehend how the divine comes to each in their own way).

I feel my liberation like a bubbly plunge into liquid unknown, flowing with the constant certainty of unformed feelings of knowing recognition. With eyes closed I am cresting and sailing without moving, the arching waves of bliss, intelligence at play.

"Whoosh."

There are no rules or concepts to it. No "up" or "down," no "here" or "there," no "this must be ____."

No "inside" or "outside."

That thrill in the story when Sherlock Holmes said it, filling the reader with delight and anticipation that didn't exist in the previous paragraph: "The game is afoot!"

Perhaps I am sometimes outside of the realm of the senses. I have learned how to withdraw my senses for a time, and keep them in check. I have learned how to tamp down my mind, holding it tightly and gently as I am still in the center place. I experience what is outside of my contracted mind, that which contains it.

I recognize in the moment. I don't know what or how, simply a recognition of what is greatest, what is essential.

I am thrilled with bliss, with all that is right here.

Imagine my astonishment when this bliss keeps calling to me, a revelation of dancing both large and small that appears in my stream of consciousness, calling me to open to what is real, filling my heart, the dance.

I did not know. A swirling play of bliss has no blueprint, no rules, no expectations... just The One whirling with bliss that creates an entire universe, *creating and dissolving, all on the fly.

Ecstacy. The Lord of the Dance.

All of this is a gift from my Guru.

Whirling Dervishes in a State of Bliss by Lance-Daniel-Smith

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

*In Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva is the supreme creator and performs five functions: creator, sustainer, dissolver, concealer and revealer

I am returning

I feel as though I have a hidden cache of the solution to every problem, the solution to even having problems. That which my soul craves. All I have ever dreamed of, longed for, felt a soul-stinging lack of, lamented with no relief, none.

Oh yes, I whisper to myself every time I reach for all that I have ever desired, here in my soul.

I carry the living shakti of my Lord, paramashiva. He lives in my heart. He isn't in my mind, (except as mind), I don't perceive him with my senses, though I do feel the emanating bliss of the eternal flowing through me in waves.

This is real. Not because I decided it is.

I have chased so many things in this life. But I only found the idea of all of these things, including God. I loved God so much as a teen, but I felt separated from God, empty and profoundly unfulfilled. I tried everything, tried escape in fiction. Everything was bright, shining cardboard. I felt so empty.

Look, I say to myself. This treasure... This universe without end in my heart. The gift of shaktipat, of endless love and shakti. Thank you...

And I slip into it like dark, cloudy cotton, like fresh and fragrant sheets, so cool. I slip into the chosen place between two worlds, the place where I become.

My treasure. There... whenever I reach for it. It doesn't go away!

When I offer pillow mantra. When I mediate throughout the day, my eyes open meditation. Always there, whenever I reach out (in).

I am rich beyond every need or desire, so far beyond any, any.

God lives in me. God answers my touches with bliss and more bliss. The bliss is changing me, dissolving me.

I love this inner darkness measured by light years of travel, of flowing, of not moving as the universe dances around me. Not as thoughts. Not detected by the senses. A living reality, my source.

I am accepting the gift of freedom. I am becoming free. I am returning. I am home.

A different day

The step is different, it starts a different moment, a different day.

A step outside of story, history or time.

Now. The little step that embraces freedom, free because I experience just this, the place that dreams of this, but I am more.

God can be anything, paramashiva is not fettered in any way. He/she takes Her pleasure by becoming everything. I am one version of so very many that can be.

My story includes shedding my story, at just the pace and delight of my Beloved, finding Him just so, in just this way. It is a beautiful, delicate dance that includes the liberating fire of karma to purify me, to render me as essence, intention and love.

I finally understand why the story doesn't end as soon as I know who I am. What happens after I know who I am is part of the story, the best part.

I honor my Beloved's delight in me, taking me back at last. I am finding my way back to Him. In this and every moment, we are already One.

Extraction

Extraction means an assist under duress in leaving the field of battle safely and with honor.

I am extracting myself from the story of "my" life, from the places where I am still attached to the story, where I think the "little me" is affecting what is unfolding.

These stories aren't nearly as interesting to me anymore. It's a pull on me that is uncomfortable, now that there is freedom for me around these places.

I feel free. profoundly free, and calm. I need never "rev up" in life again. And this freedom unexpectedly opens me again to this play. I have a part and I still serve and protect.

I worship the play of God, a swirl of pure intelligence with no weight, no imprint as history.

N o w .  N o w .  N o w .

Longing

My karma must be burned. I think that most of us must burn it. The grace of my guru fills my being with the constant heat required, and the impurities rise up on the flames and are burned.

My karmas and samskaras, my life of malas and of gunas, it all goes into this heat of grace and burns so high, higher because by their nature the karmas are made personal, I lived them as my truth, I became attached to them and then fought with them when I thought I had to become free of them.

The attachment is what is burned. The false belief any of that had anything to do with who I am, that it happened to me.

I did not see it coming... I have burned in so many different ways at different times, and I have become so much more free, and my mind so much more under my control.

I did not see it coming... my fire now isn't all about the past, burning the enslavement of limited understanding.

My fire has become about longing. All day, all night, my whole body aches for God. I see God physically manifest in the things that catch my eye and it rends me, I feel myself hit my knees inside again and again, over and over. I am crying, there is no relief.

I catch a glimpse of a photo of a man my age, someone from a TV series I watch, and in the photo he appears to be looking right at me. He is full of purpose, there is no hesitation. I am transfixed.

I am about to be possessed, my suffering's perfect answer, a match in this world at last. My fires answered, I will be sated.

Only in my mind. There is no relief. None.


I am burning, burning for you God. The belief in separation is a burden, a deep wound. It is unbearable; do not fault me for hiding from it when I can, however I can. Because to embody it is excruciating.

This is all about God, dear reader. Most of us end up this way. I hope this doesn't put your sadhana back by a lifetime or two. I can still laugh.

(You and I who are paramashiva, one without second... different mirrors of the same image).

This is Shaivism

This is Shaivism...

http://www.lakshmanjooacademy.org/excerpts/

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...