Become that place

When others talk to me, I remain steady inside. No more leaping and dancing with them. I look and sound like I am participating, and I am. But I am only participating by listening and talking. I do not squander my shakti. My state stays steady.

The motion and sound is often shocking, jarring and disturbing, I think particularly from people who are trying to subtly manipulate my state, i.e. codependents.

There is a stillness. I experience it at the center place, inside. l have become that place.

Photo: unknown (indecipherable)

Devotion

The poet saint Mirabai

I felt the pull of the magical love, the supernatural love from outside of life, forbidden, beyond what is known.

And I thought for a moment of the other things I "must" attend to first.

Immediately my entire being was filled with love, with a warmth and pressure that I chose to open to, again and again, praying it would stay.

I thought, "this is the love that I dissolve into."

My heart's desire. My heroine's quest. My story of stories.

Bhakti and devotion are the words I notice in the words of today.

Mirabai

My post on the SYP website:

Yesterday, as I sat contemplating the day's tasks, I felt myself filled to overflowing with a surge of love that was subtly permeating me, expanding my being and consciousness from within.

As I chose over and over to open to this love, I observed that this gentle force of constant expansion from within was the energy which will burn away my karmas and mental impurities, freeing my luminous being as I merge into this wider energy made of love.

I thought, "This is the love that I dissolve into." I felt that some gentle tears had begun.

I have reached for this feeling so many times since girlhood. My heart's desire. My heroine's quest. My story of stories. I have tried so many different ways to express a certain posture of worship and devotion within. It is becoming real at last!

Bhakti and devotion are the words I am finding in the words of my Guru and her teachers and devotees. Words from the very source of my joy.

Sangham

For the first time, I feel that my Guru's teaching for the year is for me.

Instead of trying to find my way outside of the sattvic sadhana of the sangham. The sadhana--my sadhana--is sangham.

It is something that unfolds. No intellect or comparisons apply.

Pure shakti.

Painting by Rajhastani (1950)

Layers

The less I try, the less I fill in, the more empty I become.... the greater the space for God.

The layers of "me" are melting away.

Touch it

A river of grace flows to me. Touch it. It is real, it is all around me, through me.

She is the where, here. The moment, now.

Touch it. All around.

A river of grace flows to me.

Touch it.

Glass smooth

Memories that used to tear me apart are swirling glass smooth on the dark surface of my consciousness.

As we dance

How strange it is that others seem to progress via sadhana from illusion to perfect form--the goal of sadhana--while I progress from form as illusion to the perfect chaos of all forms in One.

I feel, I dance. Only now.

I fall apart, fall to earth, lost again, conquered by what is most petty, ego's sure advance, retaking all ground.

Then it starts again, the perfect dance, with no form, spontaneous, coming up from within.

I don't need to know anything at all, except the bliss, the divine that transcends "in" and "out."

The continuum is not divided in any way.

God is so close, there is no gap between us. The energy of all holds my consciousness as we dance.

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

The beautiful consciousness

Horse pucky! How to make progress, what to do to call grace.... what to do. NO.

I need to master doing like I need a hole in the head.

I am, the Self is my truth, which I can feel at any time, because of grace, exquisite grace.

Someday-at any moment-I may become "established" in the Self, able to experience the truth in every moment.

I am a traveler in the beautiful consciousness of God, as me and as everything. My dance of bliss and travail offered to Lord Krishna is my treasure. I knew it years ago when I looked at my past with new eyes and realized it was all a precious strand of pearls with everything I ever wanted in it.

Passion, strength, being devoured, becoming again, crying with my soul, yearning and yearning for magic, for an awakened life.

I wanted an awakened life, which I am living now, in this moment.

This is my truth. This is what is true, the dance. And it only exists in now.

Melt

The things that used to spin me around now melt beneath my languid gaze.




Photo of Lyda Borelli

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.

Be the awareness

Realization isn't about getting from point A to point B, from now to the goal. I am ever traversing everything in between, all in an endlessly varied order. God's will is unfettered. 

Maya plays. All of this doesn't look like God because of the magic of maya.

To continue to (pursue illusion and) swim with or against the current, to strive to control or change this in one way or another, causes karma and pain.

Accept grace. Look at the known (objects that make up the play) with the knower's eyes. Be the awareness.

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.

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

This moment is not a vehicle

This moment is not a vehicle. I do nothing with it.

I absorb this truth as bliss: the highest is already attained.

Real all the time

My spiritual life is now real to me all the time.

Most of the time, I realize my spiritual life is not only mine. My spiritual life is a gift that comes as shakti from my Guru, how and when and how much she gives me.

My spiritual life is also one with her other devotees. She has an overall plan for all of us, for becoming one with her. My ego doesn't care much for this.

My mind is set aside

I use my mind to describe, but I set my mind aside to experience.

No more

I'm in the wrong place.

No more.

Bhumisparsha mudra

It is my birthright, my nature, to feel this bliss in every moment.

I can shake off these mistaken beliefs. I will not claim them. 

Now. The truth is where I stand.

In Buddha statues with the Bhumisparsha mudra, the Buddha, more specifically, the historical Shakyamuni Buddha is seen seated with his right hand as a pendant over the right knee reaching toward the ground with the palm inward while touching the lotus throne. In the meantime, the left hand can be seen with the palm upright in his lap. 

This gesture represents the moment of the Buddha's awakening as he claims the earth as the witness of his enlightenment. 

Just before he realized enlightenment, it is believed that the demon Mara tried to frighten him with the armies of demons and monsters including his daughters who tried to tempt him to get out of meditation under the Bodhi tree. While the demon king Mara claimed the throne of enlightenment for himself, his demon army claimed to be the witness for Mara's enlightenment. Mara then challenged Siddhartha about the witness. 

Then the former prince reached out his right hand to touch the earth as it is believed that the earth itself roared "I bear you the witness!" Hearing the roar from the earth herself, the demon king disappeared. The following morning saw the first appearance of the one who is awakened, the Buddha. Hence, it is believed that the Bhumisparsha mudra, or "the earth witness" mudra commemorates the Buddha's victory over the temptation by the demon King Mara.

burmese-art.com/about-buddha-statues/hand-positions/bhumisparsha-mudra