Guru dream

I had a long dream of my guru last night.

I don't remember what we might have talked about. She basically invited me to go with her for part of her day. We went to different rooms as she talked with different people. Nice rooms with soft and comfy furnishings. She was so nice and encouraging, without necessarily talking with me (I can't remember). She was sweet, yet on point with the people she interacted with.

Then it was time to go. Again she was very nice. I was so happy for all the time I had spent with her. As she was walking towards the next room, she turned to say goodbye. My goodbye was effusive and adoring. She did not like that. She made a face.

I've never spent time with her. I've had her darshan several times, usually for a few moments.


In thinking about the dream, I think she was encouraging me, reassuring me, and caring for me, without words. She was showing her love, and her commitment to me by inviting me to spend a long time with her, hours of time.

She challenged my feelings of little self-worth. She recharged my hopes for my sadhana, which have been waning for the last few months.

She filled me with her shakti in a subtle way. No drama, no fireworks.


Except for some specific occasions of longing, I have always felt ambivalent towards my guru. I have issues about women, and much prefer the company of men.

Now at last, all of these years of sadhana, I have burned up my desire, my control, my intensity in searching for and trying to hold together my experience of a real and unchanging wholeness, feeling truly alive. Many people feel this. We are seekers.

Now spiritual experiences can happen without me doing a bunch of things with them. I don't think I have to hold onto them and make them stay. I have spent my every breath with doing that. Finally I have let this go. A few echoes here and there.

There is nothing to do in the moment except experience the gift that is given, the lesson which is given. Get out of the way. Let it be. Let it end or keep happening. Most of all do not think that it will be permanent, the holy grail of the seeker's desires.

Finally I understand. If something goes this way, it MUST eventually go that way. Whatever is happening is not permanent unless it "just is," and even then....


I love you (my Guru).

NOTES:  I think my assumption of affected emotions and worship get in the way of what is real, and my Guru doesn't like it, so it's not very useful in the world of the divine, LOL.

Dramatic, emotional, flowery. Not her thing. I think she's more down to earth. Over-wrought doesn't make her happy. She cringed. Making a face was a playful way of communicating her experience of my prayers.

And also, she is instructing me to experience worship and longing in a more straightforward way. This is an important direction from her.

I am keeping my recent, very important insight that worship and longing create a fire in me that is burning away the impurities. It goes with my realization that my path is to "go around", rather than interacting with my limitations and delusions through discipline and purposeful action.

A vision

I had a dream, a vision.

It happened in a split second from fully asleep to a silent, kinetic image, followed by being fully awake, though I did not open eyes for several moments.

I saw before me a golden bird cage covered with a mottled, purple silk scarf which was in motion, being pulled off in an instant. I could not see what was pulling the scarf upward.

During the instant, I saw a small creature jump or fall from the bottom of the cage, disappearing down out of view. It was the size of a small monkey, and seemed to be sort of like a monkey, though it was symbolic.

I immediately felt great hope for my sadhana, which has been so discouraging. "Thank you," I said to my Guru, over and over. "I needed this so much."

SYMBOLISM

It happened in between sleep and awake, when the mind is not conscious.

It happened so fast, there is no story. It just was.

It was instantaneous. There was no sadhana. No recipe of action.

I viewed it from outside of the cage. It was a communication via symbolism, rather than an experience.

INTERPRETATION

Recently, the freedom of my enlightenment seemed just in reach, then crumbled with the cycles of my wandering mind.

I just didn't know. Finally. Not even if there was anything to know.

Illusion will be removed all at once. I will see out of the cage. The ego will fall out of the cage.

What is next was not in the dream.


MORE

A couple of days ago I was wondering if it was difficult for my fish if I turned their lights off (put them to sleep) at completely different times every day.

Then I thought of the neighbor I once had who had a bird, and how birds go to sleep (become silent) when their cage is covered.

If my cage is uncovered, I will be awake.


I am so grateful. My sadhana is real. My enlightenment is real.

Quieting and disciplining my mind is a part of becoming steady and undistracted. I can shape my mind, forming it to see what I believe is to be real, liberation. But the mind is cyclable by nature. Whatever is, will eventually not be. It's a cycle.

My Guru has it well in hand. She has a plan.

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  

Someday it will happen to me

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

From War and Peace 1966

Yantra sun

When I woke up, before I opened my eyes, in an inner field of night I saw an exquisitely beautiful Sri Yantra shimmering in waves, and then a gold disc that was subtly two discs, one atop the other, or with a small circular place opening (or closing) on the right side.

Your sadhana is beautiful

Even Lord Shiva spends his time doing austerities such as meditation and japa mala (beads)

Sādhana (Sanskrit: साधन), literally "a means of accomplishing something," is the regular adherence to purifying, ego-transcending spiritual practices known as tapas, or austerities. Sādhana includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh and Sufi traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives. ~ Adapted from Wikipedia

I saw in my mind just now a summer blouse flying gently on a clothesline, the fabric playing upon itself in the sun.

A significant image that gives me pause. A clothesline figured prominently in a symbolic dream I had at age six about losing myself because of abuse.

I have arrived at the beginning, the circle of this lifetime closes, then opens... to all possibility.

What I have craved. Is now.

I had a gentle little rebellion. I was disappointed, and sad. 

Before... I had felt so clear and steady in my state, ready to go with equipoise established, with steadiness in everything large and small. I danced with the ripples of bliss that came up from within, that opened every place I touch with a familiar bliss...

Before... I felt I finally understood what life was, what it was to be finally reaching my potential as a spiritual being.

Then I felt I was back in the soup.

I don't want this, I thought. It's not worth it. Who thought up such an existence? To suffer delusions it has taken most of my life to throw off, then continue to seek this freedom which comes and goes as mere minutes between hours?

This is like having a tantrum because my billion dollar jackpot was a day late.

Listen... I have learned to stay steady inside. I've learned not to push, not to try to control. I am out of the way, a huge feat! And one with so many rewards.

Now, a moment of insight, of her strong shakti touching me inside...

This is it... she says gently inside. What a beautiful story, like one of your (written) stories. Complex, light and dark, joy and freedom from suffering done and karmas laid aside, fuel for the fire of a life of purification. It is all beautiful, and it all has meaning, the meaning you give it.

Your sadhana is beautiful. Your sadhana has the meaning you give to it.

I need you so badly

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

Wake up

I am asleep. I want to wake up.

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."

What gives?

What if I could turn my head slightly, and sink into your enveloping bliss? How many times per day would I seek You?

What if I could rest my thoughts on You, Lord, and know your warmth so immense, so close... approach with reverence your sacred fire burning (since forever) at the center? You tug at my heart, a surge of liquid fire. I turn to look, and see with Your eyes a never forsaken illumination of the vast expanse of majestic space.

Who could I write home to about that!? (Wait... here's my blog).

How would I tell You when I need You most, when my need for You is a cookie that never crumbles, the up that never comes down?

Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown. Some things are just inevitable.

Lord, I feel your love of my love of You, your love of my need for You. This synergy pulls me up, somehow changes my thoughts from an unruly torrent to this... an eddy in the swirl of ultimate mystery, the quiet ripple of Your steady will, bathed in unbroken silence.

Just try to think after that.

Then, my Lord, when I think I have caught You at last, You pluck me from my cage with a thimble full of your intelligence, then fall with me when I fall back in. Is that You I've been holding onto? Wait... You are the door too?

Moonlit yoga. In my dream I ran so fast I fell into You... and found You were dreaming of me.

So. Today, questions seem best.

So. What gives?

.

Enfold the divine

I dreamed of my guru. She was walking past me, and hesitated for just a moment, as though to stop and speak with me, but she wasn't really stopping. She was continuing by.

I said her name. She stopped and turned to me. Standing very close, her huge eyes were like dark, liquid pools, drawing me in.

"Talk to me," I said, yearning for her to stay close, to hear her voice. "Please talk to me."

Still she stood silent, answering with her eyes, her dark, liquid eyes.

She is teaching, always teaching,

here by her state, living inside

Garlands of blossoms for my beloved guru

All of the times when I was in her physical presence and she walked by without looking at me, when inside my ego was terrified and saying "don't look, don't look," when I thought I would die if she looked at me...

I had never seen someone call to her when she was walking by. It was a matter of being respectful, of cherishing and protecting the guru, priceless beyond measure.

But these years later I wish I would have spoken, even if only in a whisper her name... I wish she would have heard me, and turned to look at me. It would have been enough for her to just look into my eyes.

(Perhaps her gaze would have broken the egg called ego, an act of pure love...).

And so... in my dream, instead of letting her slip by, of feeling she was only just appearing to my ego as though she might turn towards me, burning that fear in me... I say her name. I say her name and she turns to me. But she doesn't talk to me, she doesn't answer that yearning. Instead she shows me the depth, the mystery, the everything there in her eyes, pulling me in.

I am bursting forth into fullness... as in, I rock

I am being taught by life, by grace, to accept without meaning, to not sew it all together, to choose another way than living in my head with these concepts of meaning, bargaining with life as though I am God, the root of all action. To choose instead to live in my heart with the mystical delight of pure discovery and adventure, as this happens all around me, for these many things are the affairs of the heart. They are the One at play.

To simply notice the divine moving within me, accepting it without rajas, without doing.





It is a delicate flowering of recognition of the divine, of accepting it already full and pure in my self. It is the answer to a lifetime of the delusion of grasping, pushing, pulling inside, pushing myself about as my own bully, hurling myself about like a carnival ride, betraying parts of myself, bargaining them away for tiny drops of illusion and the worthless rustling of moments.

No more. My guru, my guru... how I love 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

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

Old again

I remember parts of the dream, "post-apocalyptic," all the rules of life had changed. But it was the peculiar feeling tone of the dream, very strong, that hasn't left for days...

Actor James Cromwell

Then last night, a dream of the older friend, ("played by" actor James Cromwell), married, my storied affection for him confessed, he went somewhere I could not follow, from which he might not survive (right in his home, up through the water to the source, a lifelong metaphor in many of dreams).

I knew not to wait. My advice to those who still waited: "Ask next time he goes... how do I come for you if you don't return?"

Grace teaches me, taught me when I was holding onto the huge surge of ecstasy, trying to keep it going (control it), I started living in the past. As soon as I let go, and chose to follow grace.... right now...

I am burning, the shakti is purifying me, the highest flames make me shake inside, but I close my eyes, and breathe God's name. I offer myself to the fire... "take my karmas, take my belief in suffering."

I learn this again every day. Because of shaktipat, I stand in the fire, my karmas are being burned up. When I believe in suffering, that suffering and the resulting karma becomes fuel for the purifying fire. When I lift my head, and say "no, none of this happened to me... 'I' am only God, and decided to forget," I am no longer suffering. I am purifying, paying my spiritual debts. I stop making new karma. I begin to live in the truth, that all of this is God.

I have chosen God instead of my belief in suffering.

I am on fire. (What a lifestyle).

The swadhya (prolonged spiritual effort) of performing these two practices, of not believing in suffering, of surrendering to grace as it is right now, has brought me closer to guru and God. 

Another surge of shakti has followed, and I learn from this. Choose now, whatever is now. 

The GURU is GRACE is NOW... IS GOD.

This is sacred. Please tread here with reverence.

Late at night, knocked about by these tumbling feelings, I tumble into that dark space (I have been here before, the cave of the heart) where there is no light, no sound, no movement at all. Only an emanating presence...

A being so holy, so sacred, that just to be near is to be washed clean and old again, breathing out the eternal ohhh of recognition... I am kneeling in boundless reverence in the presence of my Creator, who has made me from Himself.

Shiva. My Lord's name... Shiva. So beautiful. Shiva. My Beloved.

Om namah shivaya.

Om.

A chap book of my life of darshans

A CHAP BOOK OF MY LIFE OF DARSHANS: Last night I was in a very peculiar mood. It was like a waking dream. I was drifting through the desires of my heart...

The dream about the goal posts in winter...

The strange hunger when I looked at the iridescent white shell face of my watch...

The steady hum of the engine and the tires of our car as we drifted through the night, as like a little bundle I curled on the floor in the darkness of the back seat where the humming sounds and vibrations and the heater's insistent warmth sent me INWARD in the most profound peacefulness (of OM...)

All the kitties...

Jennifer N____ and ______'s Earth Things. The little bookshop with a book called "Grapefruit" by Yoko Ono. The Cosmic ______, the Indian bedspreads, the books about the world I dreamed of, and still thought was outside me...

The Waterhouse print "Ladie of Shallot," half-sick of shadows and madly awaiting a glimpse of the real world... (ever ready to release the chain holding my little boat to the shore on my bedroom wall, and float away to it...)

Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings...

The wind in the treetops at night... The silent stag in the garden at midnight... The dark, eternally wild presence outside the light of the shrinking campfire.

Christmas magic, music and snow, and lights and lights (and the sweet chocolates stolen from the back corner of my parents' closet)...

(The ooooooooo feeling of darshan through the little gap in the doors of) ...the cold-tiled, rarified, completely still and silent world of the baptismal font...

_______ Grove Park, the paths and the wild trees, the stone bridge, the remembered fountain... all of this magic, at night mine...

A LIFETIME OF DARSHANS... The intense nostalgia... the perfect vantage of everything... All inside me now... all of this lifetime of longing. 

There is no outside, no separation from God... There is only One, the One without second.

There is only....

ONE.

My Beloved.

(The me that never forgets...)

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse