I will not pray unless I want to

“God does not require that we be successful 

only that we be faithful.” 

― Mother Teresa

I am not Catholic, but I have been praying the rosary and the Liturgy of the Hours for a few days now. I feel the need to pray.

Prayer for me is made of worship, and of self-sacrifice. I offer up my body and soul in prayer. I offer my time and my focus. I am focused on God; my love and longing for God, which has been so great all my life.

I remember when I was a girl, and standing in the street near my house, and asking myself: what do I want to be when I grow up? My answer was either a nun or a Playboy centerfold! I do not see these as being all that far apart. They both celebrate life and the source of that life.

Still, I thought. That must be why I have a huge scar on my stomach, God wants me to be a nun instead.

Later, when I found out Mormons do not have nuns, I was not devastated--but it was close.


As an adult, I have found Catholics to be pretty weird. But I am coming to understand them better by borrowing their prayers. They feel an unbroken line from, and are the keepers of the people and events of the Lord's time on earth. They think about these constantly, in rosary prayers to Mary and others, in the Stations of the Cross, in their Mass, and in their religious peoples' lives, their activities, the symbolism of their habits and the structure of their days.

I am trying prayer in a specific way. I do not pray unless I want to. A feeling of wanting to pray comes up naturally. No desire--no pray. Also, if I lose interest in the middle of praying, (which does happen occasionally), I choose to stop praying.

Today, I felt strongly that I didn't want to pray. I thought everything to do with praying was more than painful, a sort of jerking around in my collapsed, depressed state.

"I will not pray unless I want to. Even if I don't pray ever again."

The thought I might stop made me sad. I found myself clicking on "nun links" that now come up on my YouTube side bar. I began to feel the desire again, to pray.

Praying is a way to get around the part of me that wants to use control of my mind and feelings to "get somewhere," spiritually or otherwise. 

I have been seriously and continuously contemplating how to move forward in my sadhana--and to what end--for months now. I tried a lot of things, and mostly accomplished a bunch of trying. My life goes in a big circle. Everything I'm doing now will become the opposite eventually. When I try to do it, I get in the way of grace. I have to step back. 

Wrestling myself to the floor at 5am is not me, never will be. The life of a nun is not for me. Which is hard because I long so much for a completely spiritual life. I don't feel that my current life fulfils that purpose in me. I am still learning.

After I pray The Office and The Hours, and the Crown Rosary or daily rosary, my body has a serene feeling of energy all in-line and in a gentle, persistent flow. I feel lighter, my mind and ego at rest. 

"I feel that my karmas, my pain, my despair, all of it is dissolving in the sweet attitude and daily results of prayer."

In the question I have been asking over and over, should I go through or around my obstacles, I have always returned to this answer: go around. I'll never wrestle that mess to the ground. Or if I do, I'll only keep it down for two seconds. It's all an illusion. Why sacrifice everything to fighting an illusion?

I think I have found the answer. I offer my prayer, including the results. If I can desire to pray, and then pray, I create the shakti in my being that dissolves all that has burdened me, and chained me to the vagaries of the world around me.

And so, I desire very much to be freed, and also to be continuously apart from the world. God is what matters to me.

After I pray, I'm at a loss of what to do. Everything else seems course, and destined to pull my lovely state back into illusion and pain. I don't think I can pray all the time. Just as sure as the desire to pray will come along, the desire to stop praying will come as well. I'm not going to fight it out with this part of me. Making myself do something is sure to eradicate any possibility of doing it at all. I'm just that way.

Meanwhile, I do continue to repeat the mantra silently, and I am trying out experiencing this as worship, in addition to my main experience as identification and purification. It's interesting to me that this feels too intimate! When I think of God, I no longer think of God as "inside" or "outside" of me. I guess there's no way to worship God without worshiping myself. Which is the point of the mantra in any case.

"My discipline is to only do it when I want to!"

As Mother Teresa said, "God does not require that we be successful, only that we be faithful." The idea of being faithful thrills me. It frees me from the content. If I prayed, or not, if I felt like praying or not. These dark waters would suck me down right away. I go around them! If only I can be faithful, and pray when I desire to pray, today. Who knows about tomorrow.


So, today I did not feel like praying. I was sad. "It's all over," I thought. "Like it always is." I have been wrestling with this off and on my whole life.

As I say, I started clicking on "nun links" that were coming up in my YouTube sidebar, since I've been surfing around looking for prayers. And I found that watching just one of these videos brought up all of my desire to pray, and to live a life that is based upon what matters, which is God.

It's part and parcel of the thoughts of a young girl who found that the things that mattered to me were not reflected in the world around me.

Finding my place in the world has been the real struggle of my entire life. I wish that I could be a nun. Maybe I can be, after all. A convent of one.

At least for today.

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.

Pure gold

In this moment, the shakti wells up as bliss... and I remember the stories with sadhakas who sat and swayed in a state of bliss. I thought I was so far away from this state.

In this moment, this is my sadhana.

I have had a crisis for a few weeks. What is my sadhana? I thought it was to shape my consciousness with my will, to see and experience what is truth, and real.

But then I found that my mind crumbles and rebuilds itself. There will be no permanence there, no matter how strong my will.

Without the discipline, I have been thrashed around, undercut by fear, falling into whole caverns of dark confusion.

I threw out my goals. Becoming perfected in this moment doesn't work without a way to STAY perfected. And I am changing every moment. So confusing.

I need my guru's phone number!! No, she teaches me inside.

Well. What, what then? What is my path??


Today, I am swaying with the bliss that is bubbling up again.

In this moment, my path is bhakti. Bliss. I am being purified and transformed by bliss. It dissolves my mind. It dissolves my ego, the ever changing field of my being.

Slipping away...

This bliss, Mata Kundalini, is made of pure gold.

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.

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

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.

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.

Eyes that see in

You are behind the eyes of all of the teachers. An immense power. Drawing me. Dissolving me. 

A penetrating prick to my ego. Once broken, freedom is inevitable.
I've escaped, because of GRACE.
All that is left is karmas and samskaras--debts from action,
distortions and deluded habits,
burning up in the sacred fire.

Swami Lakshmanjoo

Look at their eyes. They all see "in," as well as "out."

You can tell he is inside ~ a beloved Brahmin priest in Varanasi

Shree Shree Ravi Shankar

Smiling or not. Open or closed. Eyes that see in. An ego pierced. The outer world does not touch them.

There is no "external" world to touch them.

H.H. 17th Gyalwang  Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje

H.H. 17th Gyalwang Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje

HH 16th Gyalwang Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje

The shakti of the senses has been withdrawn from the sense objects.

Rabindranath Tagore

Swami Chetananda

Shambhavi Chopra

Swami Vivekananda

Shree Ramana Maharshi

Om shanti shanti shanti

Om Guru Om

Always perched nearby

I don't have to let this upset me. I don't have to let it affect me.

I am the fullest feeling of my own true nature, this: a silent stillness that scintillates with bliss.

My mind is not involved, though it is always perched nearby, thinking it is everything.

I find it challenging to blog about my experience, for it is by default understood by most readers as a choice--things and my reaction to things that happens because I want them to. This is understood as reality, everything that becomes in each moment. But I am so much greater, infinitely greater.

What if it all comes, then floats by? If I do not fight or follow, it is no longer about me. I no longer store up debts of consequences.

For my limited mind is not involved with my true nature, though it is always nearby, perched within it... thinking it is everything.

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.

Fear her when

she 
has 
been through 
hell. 
so believe me when 
I say, 
fear her when she looks 
into a fire and smiles.

e.corona

The huge fear

The huge fear, soul sucking fear kept chasing me around. Fear that seems to have existed before I began.

I felt it arise, and turned. I surrendered to it. All of me, every part, willingly consumed by the fear.

I saw beyond it the freedom from it that was to be mine.

More fear, please.

More fear.

I want to be free.

Going large with Shree Kundalini

Om Namah Shivaya

There is nowhere to get to, only now. I chant forever, for what is established.

My mind feels betrayed. There's a jerking sensation. How can we be there already? I've got plans. And this is boring and stupid, by the way.

I am firm, yet gentle with my mind. Discipline feels good, and we soon settle down.

I chant and listen to the mantra hour after hour to soften my heart, to express and worship the forever divine, to be transformed. What could be better? (It's even easy! That's from her grace).

That One. Soham. I am that.

My ego dissolving dharana: Eyes open or closed, I concentrate on the light all around me, dancing completely free, frustrating my mind's obsession with engaging multiplicity. I remember how attempts to join with and direct this play of time and place is always fruitless, and worse than unkind. And I let go. Freedom. Freedom, bliss, and a profound contentment is where I go when multiplicity ends.

PS LOTS of things are freakin' HILARIOUS when multiplicity takes a hike. Like Shiva taking shape as an elaborate device and his communications called a "telephone." Ha ha, like Shiva needs help to talk to parts of himself. 

This is not intellectual. It's laughing while swooshing large with Shree Kundalini... amazing fun!! 

Bliss and equipoise

Radha Krishna ~ a divine love

Every moment, I feel my mind, my ego shirk as a little more of me is pulled away. Another tiny rent in my attachment to the play becomes another little in-rush of freedom, spinning stars and stardust on timeless breath. 

Kriyas and spontaneous meditation. Head falling forward.

So often the shakti of "Chidvilasananda" visiting me as the ashram. I hear the silence there, see the golden gleam of low light on the spotless floors, feel the close mantle of love and protection about me. 

I belong "there." "There" belongs to me.

I play the mantra always, very quietly when I'm asleep. I repeat the mantra until I am floating on the bliss.

I am undone from within. I feel limp, very tired. I shuffle backwards when something grabs my attention. I do not surge forward. The anxiety I usually keep under control is flowing around freely. It hurts but I experience it as consciousness being released.

I control nothing. I experience it all as coming to a single-pointedness of bliss and equipoise.

Radha Krishna ~ a spiritual love

How not to make story out of now

Everything stopped, it all went away. No more of my guru's shakti carrying me as I learn, helping me to hold my state.

I was overcome with old feelings I've learned to hold back with the practiced discipline of my mind. Anxiety. Fear.

I desperately wanted to figure out what went wrong, what I did wrong. I indulged in a certain amount of this, but then stopped because I could only make something up. I stopped each time before I started obsessing on it. Because that path always leads to my ego's indulgences: self-loathing and self-pity, which I do not do anymore.



Slowly it has all come back. The love, the bliss, my state. I am on a different footing with my sadhana. And I have learned something new: How to not make story out of now.

The habit of my mind is to figure out what is happening as part of a larger story, in relationship to what was and what might be.

Really. I mean really... I haven't a clue.

I wobble about in my mind, like riding a churning wave that is trying to slip me off my center, into the constant guesswork mistaken for reality, the fabrication that makes it all make sense.

I hold my mind still. I keep coming back to the place of stillness. My mind is unsettled, it keeps trying. This is not an intellectual exercise. It is equipoise.

I haven't a clue where it's all going. Ha!!

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"

Seek

Do you hear the silence? I do.

Do you see intelligence dancing around you? I do. Shiva is always here, hiding in plain sight as everything.

Once this point of view was a flash, no more, questioned.

Each time, I saw it a little longer. A flash, no more, still questioned.

I began to realize I could have this experience all of the time. My helpful ego thought this achievement meant all sorts of things about me.

I learned to let grace come in without handing it to my ego. This took a lot of discipline. This discipline is why I can post these secret things here, without thinking any of this is my attainment. Attainment is the consolation prize. I seek the true prize. I am vigilant, and keep these most precious things apart from my ego.

I am so lucky. I was so tired. I was tired of serving the illusion that I could obtain all that I craved and juggled and desperately sought each day without turning inward.

Grace was waiting, endless grace, waiting for me.

I find the source of endless refreshment, comfort and joy flowing up through me whenever I turn to my source. I receive all that I have ever wanted and more, the real desires of my heart, not worldly reflections. This is why the guru is called the Wish Fulfilling Tree.

I could not do any of this without grace. Grace is REQUIRED.

Grace comes from my guru. It flows to me when I draw it with auspicious acts of loving self-discipline, when I grow spiritually. It is always a gift. I cannot earn it. It is precious beyond all purchase or repayment.

I can only learn how to accept grace.   

Thank you... 

If God's grace is your heart's desire, then you are a seeker. Your grace might come from nature, Gaia, the universe, The Ancestors, Jesus, the Goddess, Krishna, Buddha, Allah, The Beloved, or simply a mystery that appears in your consciousness. Seek and keep most precious this grace and it will seek you. It will show you the way.

Because of grace, I hear the silence. I stop, I listen, and it is always there. What is real... immediate... forever.

I have turned my senses inward. This is my discipline.

Because of grace, I see that One who is beyond time and space, who creates time and space from Self. One who has always existed; One without second. I know my consciousness is this One.

There is a sacred, sacred place in the heart where this One is not veiled. Will you live and die this time without finding this place?

A part of me is established there. This is my heart's desire, always above everything else. Every day I choose this, a little more of me is established in God. It's a little easier. It lasts longer. My guru teaches me that I can become enlightened, can be established in God in this lifetime. This truth thrills me; I am returning home. It is the journey of journeys.

Do you want the source of endless refreshment, comfort and joy above all? If this is what you desire, seeker..... wait no longer. SEEK... God will answer the longings of your heart.

Seek.

Don't laugh. Star Wars touched the place of the heart that whispers in every heart, "come home."

Ow ow ow

Ow... ow... ow... ow... I'm on fire!

Anava mala and a whole lotta shakti. Conflagration. Incandescence. Luminosity.

Ow... ow... ow...