Magic

My sadhana has become very subtle, outside of my mind, beyond words. I live for my Beloved, who is all the forms of God and the Guru, all that is.

My Beloved, you hide in plain sight as everything, you love me as whomever you find in my heart. You draw me away from attachment to the world of the senses, to the place beyond, the place of magic I have longed for all my life.

Come, I will bring you across...
to me, to my world of magic,
for I created all of this,
I am all of this,
I am all that is inside
I am love
I am love
I am you

The change

There came a moment, I think it was less than a week ago, where I said, "no more."

"I'm done."

I watched myself decide with complete certainty that expecting anything in return for participating with this play in my mind was a complete waste.

There was a shift. The "inside" world became more important to me than "the play," the play that has occupied me every moment of this lifetime, until now.

An invisible door closed. It has stayed closed.

It's still closed when I awake in the morning. It's still closed whenever I inspect it.

Yes. Still closed.

This may or may not last. 

That's not up to me.

How different my state is. I concentrate on whatever I am doing.

I am no longer making up a story about life as I go. 'Now' is all that is real. 

Not because I think it is so, (laugh)! It's just how I live, how I am alive, now, here.

There is a change in my subtle body, in my energy. Absolute steadiness. When I choose to consciously experience this feeling of steadiness, I can increase it at will.

(I remember when she visited me a few times recently, invisible, touching me so slightly. "Steady," her touch said, communicating the feeling of steadiness to me. Grace.)

I have finally got full control of my mind. Nothing knocks me off of my center place. Drama comes and goes around me. There is no question of participating. It is jarring, irritating to think otherwise.

I am finally, fully confident that the steady progress of discipline is NOT my path, and that I am not deluded in thinking so.

I remember recently the moment I found there was no difference between inside and outside. God has become so close I was supremely embarrassed for a few days.

Moments come during my day when God touches me, reminds me in my being, again and again, rising through me as a tickle of loving bliss. My every dream, my heart's desire, coming true as eternal union with my Beloved. 

My realization takes the form of a magical fairy tale, in my heart. I always tear up, cry a little when this touch of romantic bliss comes. 

A gift. From my Guru. From God. The perfect gift. Forever. It is all because of Grace.

My ego is not involved. This may or may not be happening to all of my guru's other devotees. I don't need to know either way. I feel no need to evaluate what is happening to me by this or any parameters.

For the first time in my life, I am not struggling to shape an intellectual response to what is happening. I am not trying to bring the previous moment into the current moment as part of a recipe for achieving progress and attainment.

I'm not thinking of attainment.

I'm only writing all this down so I can refer to it later. I'll want to remember how it happened. My guru advises doing this, journaling.

I was born within 100 miles of Zion's National Park. My roots from this incarnation sink deep into this soil.

Bhagavad Gita: The Four Yogas

My sadhana has been juggled around, and is moving in a new direction. I believe my Guru has been leading all of us up to and through this change.

I have to realize that actions that attempt to use discipline to overcome my limitations and delusions currently never work for me. I have spent my whole life disciplining myself and wildly grasping with super-human effort to try to get the grand experience I have been seeking, and to address what has been missing, and my misery about this.

For me, the "dos" like disciplining my activities with specific goals about meditation and other practices, as well as trying to keep spiritual experiences permanent, are not the opposite of sadhana. ALWAYS using my life and moments to try to create a new and permanent state is based on a delusion that I am lost, unfulfilled, away from God. Grasping and doing for my own limited results has created huge karmas and samskaras for me.

I found myself writing about how Karma and Bhakti Yoga--and much of Jnana Yoga--have come to the fore in my sadhana. The fourth Yoga, Raja Yoga, is a synthesis, with elements that form a system based on discipline, which is not helpful for me.

Krishna talks about how an individual will find that some yogas will work for them better than others.


1) KARMA YOGA~THE YOGA OF ACTION: Any time I am grasping or pushing, trying or making myself do anything, I am jumping on the great wheel. The harder I push and hang on, the harder I'm going to fall when the wheel goes around the other way. Rajas creates karma. I've got way too much longing made into rajas in every moment!

My path is not doing, and it is not not-doing. HOW? Through dharma/duty. Lord Krishna has taught me about Karma Yoga, and this knowledge and yoga is very important to my sadhana.


2) BHAKTI YOGA: Bhakti Yoga is a new emphasis for me. It is divine love, longing, and worship in a personal relationship with a chosen form of the divine. This is the "doing" that I offer, avoiding karmas (Karma Yoga). Commitment to experiencing love and worship for the Divine fills me with an intensity of shakti that is burning my impurities away.

A short description of a very powerful yoga.


3) JNANA YOGA: The focus of my sadhana for the last few years has been to notice and name the elements of my mind in action. I challenge delusion by noticing what arises and holding what will bring delusion. When I hold a train of thought or etc., it naturally dissolves. Consciousness dissolves into consciousness.

I have for the most part eliminated self-pity, collapsing (giving up), and self-hatred, and I at least notice many things such as jealousy, anger, and competitiveness. I especially have benefited from noticing when I begin to make a story about what is happening in the moment, with the assumption that it is happening to me.

My mind has become much more still and centered.

Other parts of Jnana Yoga which have been important are recognizing what is transitive in my reality and letting go my attachments to these things. "That's not real," and "that isn't permanent" are my mantras in using my mind in this way. I also practice "seeing" the world of the senses as consciousness, and remembering it may promise many things, but none of it will be truly satisfying or permanent.


4) RAJA YOGA: Royal Raja Yoga is a higher yoga that incorporates elements of the other yogas in a powerful synthesis. It is based on meditation and other tools to work with the mind.

Systematic and disciplined is not helpful or useful to me at this point in my sadhana. When I meditated, I went after dinner. I wanted to meditate. I ran down the steps to the kriyaloka meditation room at the ashram, sinking into my spot, my consciousness dropping into the depths of me as I settled in.

"It's almost 7:00, time to meditate doesn't work for me, at least not now. I have to wrestle with myself about it, my intention, and my fear. It is very unpleasant. It runs me, and I am stuck with it.

I need to go around this stuff. I realize almost all(?) yogis do this. I think I did so much of this in a past life that this time I am doing something else.

Consciousness check

S H O R T

Guru, worship

I see the world from within myself, a transparent play

I see my attachments as illusion and futile, painful

I withdraw my senses, hold my shakti

I love my appetites, and slip off the hook

Shanti shanti shanti

Brahmacharini tapasya,
the unmarried version of Parvati

L O N G

Choose the world of the subtle body... inside... falling backward...

See the world from within...


Now, instead of concepts and story...

Breath, mantra... posture, subtle body...

Floating, meditation...

Love and worship and longing...


My Self, my Guru, Lord Krishna...

Mata Durga, Sree Parvati, Maa Brahmacharini

Paramashiva, who is Shree Kundalini at play...

Love and worship, longing and consciousness...

Now.

Brahmacharini tapasya to become one with Shiva

No doing it right

My mind: Do it right for Krisha.

Me: I am Krishna. I am his big toe. There is no doing it right for me.

The nectar of that nearness

When that time will come? I want to ask You, when that day will come for me, when that day will appear, when I will leave all other things, all of the other activities of the world, and be focused only to that point, i.e., just to embrace You and taste the nectar of that nearness of that devotion, love? When that day will come for me? Tell me.

~Swami Lakshamanjoo commentary, Utpaladeva's Shivastotravali, Chapter Nine

Now I am melting

It took me so long... to stop my mind from charging about with the full moments.

Don't run with it. Just feel it, be it. Let it be me.

Now I am melting. This Kundalini bliss. There is no place but here.

I am already there.                                                                                        

Romeo y Julieta - Franck Dicksee

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.

Someday it will happen to me

When will I find my Beloved? When will my Beloved find me?

From War and Peace 1966

Who I am

Om Shree Kala Bhairavaya Namo

At last, I understand.

Om Shree Kala Bhairavaya Namo.

The reason I like the night, the dark, the quiet, the eerie, the wistful.

Om Namo Namo.

My sadhana is solitary. Who I am is solitary.

Om. 

My Lord is here, the One who is outside of the circle of life, fierce, dark, the Lord of outermost cold and the innermost flame.

Others run. I open my arms to You, elemental and inexorable, guardian of the temple of my heart—I know you at last. I recognize my Lord, my true Self, my Ishta Devata.

Om Shree Kala Bhairavaya.

Pranam. Namo.

You are the hidden places,
wild and unknown by any but your own

Om. Salutations to You, Kalabhairava, Shiva. I bow to You.

Om namo namo.

I bow again and again.

Om.

At your feet forever.

Om Shree Kala Bhairava Namo

I'm all in

Lifelong obsessions are burning up.

Desperate hopes and cherished dreams are in the fire, rising as a multitude of sparks. There, the Lord of the Dance, my Beloved.

I'm all in. Svaha.

Diamonds are forever

Shiva Parvati
I think I see Kama's love arrows

I was humming a tune I don't remember ever paying much attention to. I laughed, as I realized I was singing about trading up from the disappointing charades of the world for that which is permanent, most precious, luminous, and which will linger forever.

My Beloved will never leave in the night. He will never desert me. Nothing will hide in His transparent heart to hurt me. He never lies. My lover lingers.

He is forever.

“As the earth dies your spirit will bloom; as the world fades your soul will rise and glisten. Amongst the dehydrated crevices of a desert earth you will stumble upon your diamonds; in between the dry skulls and cracked bones you will find your sapphires.” 

― C. JoyBell C.

Diamonds Are Forever by Shirley Bassey

Diamonds are forever, they are all I need to please me

They can stimulate and tease me

They won't leave in the night

I've no fear that they might desert me

Diamonds are forever, hold one up and then caress it
Touch it, stroke it and undress it
I can see ev'ry part, nothing hides in the heart to hurt me

I don't need love, for what good will love do me?

Diamonds never lie to me

For when love's gone, they'll lustre on

Diamonds are forever, sparkling round my little finger
Unlike men, the diamonds linger
Men are mere mortals who are not worth going to your grave for

I don't need love, for what good will love do me?
Diamonds never lie to me
For when love's gone, they'll lustre on

Diamonds are forever, forever, forever

Theme from the James Bond film 

"Diamonds are Forever"

Happy Kirshna Janmashtami 2016!

Happy Birthday Dear Lord Krisha!

Jai Govinda

Lord Krishna is playing his flute for Radha

Treasures in my heart for You

"He who perceives Me everywhere and beholds everything in Me 
never loses sight of Me, nor do I ever lose sight of him." 
Lord Krishna—The Bhagavad Gita VI:30

The Guru within is everything I desire, that which I have sought all my life. And we are becoming One! We are each other's destiny. 

The Guru is here, has been here all along. My own self, everything. Everyone kept saying, but now I know.

You can't make this stuff up.

I am blessed beyond every blessing. 

I worship You with every moment of worship I have ever felt or offered over lifetimes, stored as treasures in my heart for You. 

Free

Evening aarati at Rishikesh

I was so attached to the story.

I pulled away from it, a little every day. For years. I wanted to be free of it, to only live in the inner world.

And now. To my great surprise.

This is who I am, where I am. I don't have to get somewhere here or away from here, now or later. God is me... as this.

Enjoy it! Be of service. I am free.

Free.

I worship You, I worship You

So great that You are everything and everywhere I go

Gurupurnima

I feel SO MUCH gratitude. Thank you Shree Guru for bringing me forever to my place at your feet. I am blessed beyond any measure.

It is so much better

It is so much better to step out of the world's frenetic twirl, to be this soft smile of shared bliss. It is so much better when I remember, and want to stay, not just wander by. I have dreamed of just this, all of my life.

My bliss in your instruction, in your abode. 
There is no place, no other for me.

What I WANT to do

No. Not what I'm supposed to do.

What I WANT to do.

I need you so badly

Just like a lover, I plead over and over... "Please don't leave me, I need you so badly."