Why?

Why am I apart from God? And if I am not, then why do I think that I am?

Some things torment me, some every day. Why? If the torment isn't real, then what is?

Hold

Steady.

This pulls me. That repels me.

Emotions and sensations happen.

I wobble. But I don't elope with them.

I want not to want.

I don't want to avoid.



No. Steady. I feel the pull.

Hold.

My "go to" contemplation

My "go to" dharana/dhyana. My focus and practice. My contemplation. 

My "go to" dhyana is to nudge myself out of multiplicity. I experience myself as formless, unlimited consciousness, the knower, and everything else a play of consciousness on the screen of life, the known. The play normally seems three-dimensional because of the magic of maya.

Inherent in this contemplation is acknowledging that the projection of maya cannot satisfy/protect me, or cause lack/harm me. Thinking otherwise is bondage. 

I want freedom. I see myself "unlatching" from the screen of the world going by. I let the illusion of satisfaction and lack slip away. It becomes a dance of light. And I choose freedom, the source. The real prize.

I can only do this because of the grace of my guru, because I have received shaktipat.

Step well

I also use my mind to slip out from the experience of multiplicity. When I am in this state, I experience Oneness, One without second. A singularity. My awareness resides in the great consciousness, the only Self. Immediately I am filled with great bliss.

I can reshape my consciousness like this for several moments at a time. 

An interesting aside is that my ability to shape my own consciousness was greatly improved by my years in Wicca, where "spells" are created by this containing and shaping of awareness, a discipline and practice that grows in effectiveness over time.

I also use this skill as a writer of fiction.

Swami Lakshmanjoo:

The word dhyana means “contemplation.” It is another mode in anavopaya (a means of enlightenment). Dhyana is contemplation on some point.  

There are different forms of dhyana. For example, you are practicing dhyana when you contemplate on the lotus in your heart, or on the meaning of some mantra such as the mantra “so’ham” or the mantra “Shiva.”  

This is a higher form of anavopaya because it is contemplation without any shape, without any form. If you were to contemplate on Lord Shiva as having a particular form, a particular shape, that is a lower form of anavopaya. It is contemplation with form.

Source: Kashmir Shaivism, The Secret Supreme, by Swami Lakshmanjoo
All Content is subject to Copyright © Universal Shaiva Fellowship, John Hughes.

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.

When I reach

There is no unity. No focus, none. I am undone. No boundaries around my consciousness. Free floating.

And yet, I find words.

Several times per hour. Several times per minute. I open inside to the bliss, the expanding place of sacred trust inside. Dare I say it?

It is always there when I reach for it. Then, bliss. Head falling forward, spontaneous meditation.

The play is made of fading, transparent movements on the walls of my consciousness. Thinking I am interacting with that is unhappy delusion and empty frustration.

I am this place inside. I am alone. I am One. 

I have chosen. No going back.

I am yours, dearest, sweetest Lord Krishna.

Hare Krishna . Hare Krishna . Krishna Krishna . Hare Hare

Feeling lost

I feel lost now when I am lost.

I am God in motion

I am God in motion. 

"Space and time are God's way of making sure everything doesn't happen at the same time and in the same place." ~ unknown

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.

It was always about this freedom

Once I realized that what is gained is freedom, nothing could hold me.

I don't believe in doing

Krishna Radha

I am not what I do. I observe the parts of the play that I think of as me.

Yoga, meditation and other "do's" hamper me, chain me.

Do whatever comes with this form. To liberate myself from bondage is my dharma. To choose freedom in this way is supreme bliss.

To live this way is to "do" without creating karma.

I don't believe in doing.

Someday it will happen to me

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

From War and Peace 1966

Spiritual topography

Veil of ash

A Coign of Vantage by Alma-Tadema

I've been hiding from You. I hide from everyone.

I'm afraid of You. You can see right through to where I am hiding. Your gaze is stern, You are stern. You mirror my crisis of worth. My ego filled with full panic, with nowhere to hide.

You burned me for years. You were just about to look at me. Panic. Over and over, you turned your body to face mine, but never your head. Never your gaze. Each time, I was singed, a curl of smoke rising from my veil of ash.

Just enough fire to weaken my fortress. How shall I be released?

Every moment, a crisis of worth. I offer this crisis of worth.

I offer this, my weary ego, my tiny prison of historic battlements, a coign of vantage, my impassable moat disguised as a lazy pool of leisure. I stand at this muddy shore and breathe the wider world, imagine myself roaming there, and try... Again and again. No. No shakti there for me. I cannot. At last I am defeated.

You are my world.

Then, at age twelve, I was encapsulated in the moment when all was lost. The world. My parents. My worth. Only hope survived. I have tended to it all these years, my sanity.

Svaha. I offer the belief that any of this happened to me.

Svaha. I offer ego, I need it no longer. I am here, at your feet.

Svaha. I offer all that I am, to You.

I welcome your gaze, I pray for it. Please gaze into my eyes, into my soul.

Break open the prison.

Svaha.

The scenery moves

I am not moving. My body and the scenery moves.

Shri Ganesh Gayatri Mantra

Shri Ganesh Gayatri Mantra

ॐ एकदन्ताय विद्महे

वक्रतुण्डाय धीमहि।

तन्नो दन्ति प्रचोदयात्॥

Om ekadantAya vidmahe

vakratUnDAya dhImahi |

tanno danti pracodayAt ||

Om. May we know the one with a single tusk

May we meditate on the one with a curved trunk

May that tusked one illumine our path

and enlighten us

Like all Hindu representations of God, the form and customary worship of Ganesh is based on spiritual symbolism. In this mantra, the following characteristics of Ganesh are highlighted:

• single tusk ~ Ganesh has broken off one of his tusks, which symbolizes the breaking of duality, and the associated destruction of all obstacles.

• curved trunk ~ When Ganesh's trunk goes straight down from his forehead and then first turns to his left, this symbolizes his ability to bestow moksha, or liberation, which is often symbolized by a bowl of sweet balls in his left hand.

• illuminate ~ Powerful Ganesh illuminates the pathway to enlightenment. His vehicle, a mouse, symbolizes that there is no where in our lives or souls that Ganesh cannot go.

Ganesh mantras are powerful, and are chanted by many people every day. It's easy to see why! Ganesh is a very popular, widely loved and worshiped form of God.

Ganesh or Ganesha? Both are correct. In Sanskrit some words that end with a consonant are pronounced with a subtle "shuh" or "hah" (or similar) after the last consonant(s). Writing and pronouncing Ganesha and raga (for example) in English overstate this sound, while Ganesh and rag understate it. It is somewhere in between. If you try, you'll find that tiny breath. Breath sounds are very important in Sanskrit.

VIDEO: I prefer this gentle, traditional chant of this mantra, 

chanted by Brahmin priests

(begins with opening mantras)

My lifelong obsession

Photo: Raymond Eldstad 

I have discarded the lifelong obsession that I will somehow fix my broken life. 

I finally reached a moment where I stepped back and looked at myself. I noticed that I was in a great deal of pain. Familiar pain. Constantly unresolved pain. I was contorted by it, the last to know.

I freed myself. I whispered to myself, "I don't care." I no longer care about my life's work, a lifelong obsession to fix a ruined life. I don't care about the many past moments of failure and pain that flood into the my consciousness at the cost of now.

"I don't care" is the mantra to loosen caring too much.

My dance with this obsession is bondage, and letting go of an epic grip on my life is freedom. The details do not matter.

"I don't care." 

I visualize each painful memory when they arise—a slip of consciousness that I mistakenly thought was happening to me, the truth traded in for a kind of karmic coat check. As I focus my consciousness on the memory, I see it slipping away from me, burning in a sudden whoosh, or turning to dust, the pain rejected and spun off like dross. Consciousness disolves into consciousness. Immediately I feel lighter, slipping into the center place of bliss.

I am not the story, the places or the people. I am this inner place of bliss.

Needful fire

Have you ever stepped back, feeling a boundless dance of pain slip off, and asked yourself in that moment, "Why am I committed to this pain?"

In that moment you have seen your karmas burning, your investment in the currency of ignorance becoming the fuel for a needful fire. The karmas feed the fire. The fire leaps higher, burning more karmas. Sacred. Needful. Fire.

Consciousness.

How to live without creating more karmas?

YOU have stepped out of the dance, your duty and dharma keeping your place in it.

You have become still, watching.

Freedom.

Everyone

Love everyone? Oh, no no no.... I love only my Beloved who is everywhere, and everything.

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.

I am free

Because I have worked every day for years to control my mind, I am steady in the midst of a coordinated attack.

I am so grateful. I was given an extreme circumstance to step back from all of my social media projects. The further I stepped back, the better I felt, the lighter an underestimated burden that began falling away.

I burned so much karma yesterday. I burned those things we all think happened to us (but did they? no). I am grateful.

I felt the decision to step away was right, (even with 8,000 likes and followers!), and then the very next tweet I received was so horrible and mean, it made it all so very clear.

Protecting the fruits of my love from those who do not love it is futile.

I will not play at this game anymore. Why would I play a game where I can be brutalized? This is not the part I want in the play in this world.

Playing is my job, and freedom my mentor. I send love to all on this new day. Love, and the shakti of my guru. Love and blessings. Sweetest nectar. Sparkling freshness and delight.

I am free.

I love you. Every one.
I will always love you.

A joke I sent to the person I sent my highly misunderstood tweet to:

"I'm on the phone with Damon [Lindelof], Shatner is on his way over for some coaching "keep your hands low," and Horowitz sent flowers *sobs*"

"Keep your hands low"