The Tower tarot card

I am so confused.

It's Makar Sankranti. The long arc of the sun is slowing to a stop and beginning its journey back again.

It's like a Maha-Tower tarot card: energy shaken up and not yet in flow.

No longer crawling

Somewhere, I am here

My body is so relaxed.

No longer crawling to a distant shore.

No ladder for me

I have never thought this before. I have never heard another saying it.

No ladder of enlightenment. Not for me.

My sadhana is a song. My love, my Beloved.

Grace is a night wind, softly keening, well up in the treetops. The tug in me that has always been there.

I dance inside. This world of bliss.

I care only about the places between rocks, an endless song of spheres, the silent years of space.

My sadhana is a song. My love, my Beloved. I am curled against You.

I receive You. I am of You. I play as You.

So beautiful.

Only breath

All I want is to be where there is no sound, no sensation, only breath. 

I can't remember ever feeling this way.

image: pathofbhakti

So quiet

I am so quiet, so still. I feel no need to react to anything, to act on anything.

I know that this comes from grace, and how long it stays is determined by grace.

So quiet. Centered. Senses pulled within. A constant meditation.

Grace.

What I WANT to do

No. Not what I'm supposed to do.

What I WANT to do.

It is real

Happy, so happy, contentment that none can take away.

I know now it is the gift of my guru. There is nothing to do except love her and acknowledge her grace.

I can stop my mind analyzing. I can stop it slipping into the past or the future.

I finally realized the yantra I see when I close my eyes is something to take the help of when I open them. Sri Kundalini, the voice of my Lord, beckons to me. Be free... be free....

Sri Yantra

I have never gazed at a yantra before, but this one quiets my mind and centers me in the inner stillness, what is real. Then I look about and rejoin maya already in progress. I look at it at various times throughout the day, slipping back into meditation.

I want to be established in this, what is real.

Things that I have spent hours and years on, creating new karmas of concern, worry, perfectionism... I focus this clear consciousness on them and add the willingness to let them go, gently nudging them, slipping them off of me, off of my mind.

Nudge.... slip. I watch them dissolve. They seldom return. They slip away as I stay in the now.

If this takes more than a nudge, I stop. To push on it is a do, it creates story, my mind takes it up, and new karmas begin. No more.

Your words are pure nectar...

My guru's shakti. My guru's shakti. It permeates my subtle body as profound bliss and love. Sometimes I gasp when so much playful bliss pushes up through me... bliss, bliss, bliss.

My physical body sways slightly, completely relaxed. I breathe a little deeper. Every breath.

My guru's shakti. It is an infinite gift. She gives to me. She is giving me everything, all that there is to give. I don't know why.

I am giving her my everything. She is dissolving all that I no longer think of as me. I think enough has been dissolved that the bottom has dropped out. Lucky me!

It is the best experience, beyond any description or measure.

I no longer question, as I have obsessively questioned everything, all of my life.

I no longer question. It is real.

Brother Eknath, I touch your feet

Cave diving

"No matter what happens go on remembering God and he will carry you."

~ Swami Lakshmanjoo

I have an obsession with videos about cave diving. I found one that I really love in particular. I have watched it several times.

"Flash mob" refers to coordinating flashlights to illuminate a large cavern

I feel like I am floating, not rising or falling except by grace. I feel ever more still inside. I have left the places I thought were about one of many. I am moving with eyes closed in the total darkness. Grace is the way. I await only Grace. I control nothing. Grace.

I have rock solid equipoise in situations and interactions that used to set me off like a marionette.

I watch myself engage with my appetites, but I'm not invested anymore. It comes from habit, samskaras. 

I have conceived of freedom in so many ways. Now, I not only conceive of but can feel the beginnings of freedom that come from not being swayed one way or another by appetites. Instead of engaging, I watch them arise and dissolve.

The appetites in me cringe and complain as I let go, a tiny rift. I choose freedom. It is painful for a few moments. Something rips apart.

I go back to floating, free. Carried along on this current, free. Free.

"The greatness of Lord Shiva is that no matter what intensity of his 

grace is with you, it will carry you to his nature in the end."

~ Swami Lakshmanjoo

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."

Billions

I have learned a thing or two about burning. Lucky me!!

To burn is to be purified. The investment of belief and time in something is not usually removed without burning. Burning sets me free.

Guru's grace is the fire, the purifying kundalini rushing up through me, like a silent, temperature-less fire made of consciousness, the ultimate consciousness that is not bound in any way.

Sometimes I hear her, rising like bubbles through the akasha, then the little vision showing me that what rises is beyond water or air, but is consciousness rising as fire. Strange, that God would create so many layers and mechanisms behind the seen. At last I understand that God goes everywhere, takes shape as all possibilities, all Gods, all pathways home. It is pleasing to journey for a time beyond the seen before arriving home, to experience the play at every tattwa, every layer of the descending and ascending divine.

 

Purification comes in waves. I am finally learning to not ascribe attainment to any stage of purification, including feeling perfectly One with the center place, silent and unmoving, no now or here, only potential, only love and bliss. All that I am and all that I feel are mine through guru's grace. What it means about me is a senseless question, a moment of plundering by ego and mind.

(Hey! That sounds like an attainment!!)

I find that purification means I have to feel it again, experience what it was like to believe as I once did that it was happening to me, which created karma, a cosmic debt. I invested in delusion, in bondage. The way to get my investment back is to go through it again, and throw the yoke off.

Many around me are still invested in the play. God is at play in many forms. Then some of us feel the need to return to God, and the burning begins. I please God as He experiences as me every nuance of return to Self, every tiny step, every breath made of purest longing.


The fire is a very very intense version of "circumstances" which I bought into. What I believed in becomes fuel for the fire. To be free, I must burn off the debt, my investment in the play, experience it with such an intensity that I see it anew, laugh or cry, throw it off and leave the burden to be reabsorbed by consciousness.

I remember once a wise person said that we need to take our hands off the rear view mirror of life and place them on the steering wheel.

If life is the car, then holding onto the mirror is believing that I am somehow directing or controlling events. I turn the mirror this way and that and notice changes, believing that I am the source of change in the events around me. To place my hands on the wheel is to realize that I make choices, but I have nothing to do with how things go. They just do. I have the wheel, I may turn this way or that, but all of THIS is God and God doesn't invest power over the joyous unfolding of consciousness in little me.

OMG can you imagine how tiny, painful and drab life would be if little me was really in charge??

Life is inspiration and intelligence, free, free beyond any measure or understanding. It is wild and wooly and starts with an exquisite planet surrounded by space and the bodies of space that goes on for such distances that the light from what is there now cannot be seen here for about 3.8 billion years, and that's a long time and far far away... and all one tiny seed in the place of potential.

Perhaps we are all that old.

The center place

What I call the "center place," is where I feel cidrūpatā, the touch of God consciousness.

Finally I understand the instruction to focus on the two places where the breath stops.

When I am focused on that place, I leave my breath and the realm of movement, movement which recedes into the background as I turn my senses inward, and I become completely still, no sound or light, only PRESENCE. The most sacred, most blissful presence. Beyond these qualities.

This is cidrūpatā.

This is where the shakti that would go out through the senses is contained (rather than spilt willy nilly).

This is where equipoise comes from, a solid place to "sit" without moving off of it. My mind moves me off, again and again, sends my senses outward again. My discipline is returning again and again. 

I have wanted these things for so long.

I can only slip the bonds of maya for one second because of the grace of my guru.

From a lesson given by Swami Laksmanjoo on Tantraloka, Ahnika 5 (not yet published) Universal Shaiva Fellowship

Here in the buddhi mind

I am journeying, and there is no place but here, no where to go.

I do not try. And that's all (this is not an intellectual technique).

I am HERE.

The kriyas.... the kriyas are Goddess moving.

I hear the plane on the tarmac all the time. (Pack your bags, my guru said). Sometime in the late afternoon or evening, the bubbly tinkly prana rising through the akasha begins, and now I notice the moment it starts.

And finally I understand, though it seems so obvious now. Which is fine because understanding is the booby prize.

That said...

Sound is very different from vision. Sound inside arises, and I am enchanted, I stop and tune in to the lovely divine tinkling... ohhh. Nothing could sound more beautiful.

This: the sound is about going inside.

For me, I fell from meditation, from japa and dharanas... fell through them and here in this velvet darkness it is suddenly so quiet, so still, so alive.

Outside I have equipoise. Oh, this is what is happening... I go with whatever it is. I can turn on a dime. Okay, now this.

My mind is steady. When mind does acrobatics, I am here in the buddhi mind, simply here.

The head falling forward kriya takes me deeper into the center place, where my mind is completely steady. No movement. No thoughts. Several times a day.

As we soar

I experience the familiar kriya—a spontaneous movement directed by Shree Kundalini—several times a day or more.

I will pause in my typing, and a little silent glide... my head is gently bent forward to my chest, then stays there. Sometimes fast, most of the time slow; it is like gliding into place.

Instantly I am in meditation. I notice my detachment from the world, (hard won from years of sadhana, but mostly a gift of grace).

I ask myself, now, each time... and whenever I remember throughout the day: Which do I choose? Union with God, or all of this?

I choose God. It is real in the moment. I take the half-step back into the stillness and bliss of which I am made.

Could it be? This awareness of You is now more than half of me!

Shiva Shiva Shiva... to say your name is bliss and bliss and bliss. I say it over and over (and over). Your name fills me with love and love (and love!)

The world swirls around me now, and with each day I feel far less concerned with how it all takes form in each moment.

I am not the baby-sitter for my Lord's creation.

Shree Krishna... I do what seems right by myself and by You... and leave the results up to You.

If thoughts of suffering, controlling, or fear arise, I notice them right away, and gently stir them back into the consciousness from which they arose. I do not entertain these thoughts, do not invite them in. Once they're in they become my guests. I serve them, though they pretend to serve me.

My discipline about this has become a strong habit. Through grace...

Instead, I am still. I do not fight. These once looked to enemies cannot hook me, cannot start me on an inner junket or personal massacre once arising from a painful rumor about a substantial nothing.

I do not believe in suffering.

I have a funny little smile, hour after hour. The smile of one who knows my Beloved is always closer than close, never out of reach, never...

Every time I think of You I find myself curled around You, partaking of Your dream... my arms fast around You as we soar....

Photo Himalayan Academy

Silent splash

Life cannot touch me. Life cannot do anything to me.

I can let life come by, drop in, parade on past. There is nothing to do or accomplish or avoid or pursue.

To stop... to just stop, is all I can do. Every time I choose to (think I can) pursue or avoid... Stop. Just stop.

There are story lines from taking birth that are winding down now. The longest parts of me (my ego), are slipping away from me, disappearing on the wind before they find the horizon.

Consciousness dissolves into consciousness. Being dissolves into being. You.

I see my ego at last, from outside of it. If it seemed important, my ego dreamed it up. If I made damn sure to remember it, my ego was on the scene when I decided.

I am not that.

I am the sweet scent of my lover's embrace, the flutter in my beloved's hair, His lush lashes dance as He raises His eyes to mine, my true Self forever in the pools of His eyes.

A silent splash.

This

When the whip, the goad arises in me, when fear and anxiety prick at the soft places, every hour, every day.

When this is not enough, when now is only this or that, when a quality is missing or gone astray. (Compulsion...)

I am not moved. My heart is mine.

No, you cannot have me. But I don't say it... I alter my response without moving at all.

I am so relaxed inside. The contortions of my ego, perfect, touch me as God. I am surrounded by God. 

There is nothing else here. I need nothing, desire nothing. I am kissed with bliss, the inner touches and telling caresses of what and whom I am made.

visualparadox.com

I need not stretch or pry or dig. For weeks now I have been shedding this riot of will.

This.

This barely lit room, this feeling of night and a soft bed waiting... this intimate world of light is You, Your consciousness.

What if I saw You everywhere I looked?

This.

I feel whole again, just this, perfection and wholeness. I begin to cry. I have found You in what I knew but could not yet become.

This is all You.

Center’, digital art, (C)2012 H Kopp-Delaney

I know You as light, as this inseparable world of light and sound. The silent divine rises upward through my spine to divine union... and I am subtle, my state is subtle soft and tastes of salt and blood, the fragrance of your breath, the warmth of your whispered kisses, framing my body as a living portrait of love.

Visit my poetry blog here


~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~ . . . ~

Brother Utpaladeva, (I touch your feet...), my prayers echo yours in this one mighty phrase: "You hide in plain sight as everything." (Utpaladeva: Shivastotravali)

Remembering you

What if I could somehow put into words...?

How it feels to find You as this private, seeping nectar of sound, playing to me always, as I have answered always... I am this liquid chorus of blood, of veins, of love forever sounding my depths with the oldest of songs, played by this never silent quartet, the chamber music of my heart.

How it feels to sink into this place of complete stillness, of familiar, exquisite intelligence, always here, never distracted, never asleep.

I look around. This is all intelligence.

How it feels to see light as your consciousness, darkness as the silent space where there is no time, no differentiation, only You, only ONE.

To hear the divine tinkling nada in my ear when I love You, look, and see, return your gaze again and again.

And so, I look with love, for there is only You, and your experience... which I think of as me.

And so, I look around with my senses made of worship, touching your consciousness with my own, finding only You everywhere I touch, seek, enter and embrace.

My doubt is You. My choices good and bad, they are all You. This is You, all set in motion, all the Word moving on the dark waters. I cannot fail. I need not struggle, as though there could be anything wrong.

You, You. Only You. My thoughts are You, my breath is You.

I love You so... So deep I embrace You, cast upon Your love with my entire being, my awareness gels and then becomes an ever melting blanket of love soaked warmth and bliss, sinking into everything I know, changing everything behind and beyond what I knew and once thought that I am.

Changed, I can never go back.

Everything, this everything, I know it, I have always known it... I know You.

Becoming You, remembering You, they are the same.

The root of action

The Devi is the water,
the water is the Devi,
Ganga Maa I worship You

I have blogged before about my realization that the wisdom expressed as "The guru is the root of all action" is about God, not the physical guru.

I have been contemplating Karma Yoga (one of the yogas described by Lord Krsna in the Bhagavad Gita), and the malas (impurities in understanding that cause maya, the enchanted belief that I am this, and all of this is happening to and because of me).

I burned up a tremendous amount of karma (a spiritual debt resulting from the ignorance caused by maya) recently in a HUGE physical karma regarding my teeth.

How do I know I was burning karma? The way I always know. Afterwards my perspective has been permanently shifted. It is higher, simpler, and evokes a new level of equipoise in my life and sadhana (spiritual work).

I was torn apart emotionally by what happened with my teeth. (As Loise L. Hay will tell you, teeth represent the ability to analyze and assimilate ideas and spiritual understanding). Until I accepted what had happened and my role in it, I was in extreme hell. I went to an emotional place I haven't experienced in many years.

After a couple of days of hell, I clawed my way out of this hell by ceasing to claw. By accepting, and asking what was (is) next. I grasped that acceptance with all I had, and immediately my situation changed.

Fully offering something that encircled my deepest entrails with the surest and oldest of knots has melted away lifetimes of suffering. I can do this at last because of the grace of my guru, and my commitment to my life as a devotee of God.

Guru's grace. 

It is impossible to be released from the enchantment of maya without the grace bestowing aspect of God.

What I stopped by my blog to express is the new found understanding I have after these events. First off, I had to accept that something really "wrong" or "bad" can still happen to me.

My way out of that was to also realize that whatever it takes to move on, if it takes twice as much money, whatever, I'll choose that, and God will determine what happens from there.

I spent some time contemplating the malas. None of this is happening to me I kept in my thoughts as I viewed the world around me as swirling consciousness, and held to the certainty that the root of all action in that consciousness IS NOT (LITTLE) ME. It is God.

God is the root of all action. The results of all action belong to God.

Aarti at the holy city of Haridwar

All of this karmic gymnastics has given me a tremendous amount of freedom.

Now when something happens, I offer it to God. "God wants to do this," I think. Wow, that is totally a new thought!

God wants to do this. God wants to experience this. It is the play. I experience the play. But I don't have to identify with it.

This sounds like a forced intellectualism. But it isn't.

When I sink back inside, I become still, silent, full of bliss. I look around as the eyes of Shiva. I have created this universe for my delight, and I love and cherish everything in it.

I am the knower, not the known. I am the watcher, not the watched.

I offer the fruits of action. "God wants to do this."

I love my highest Lord Paramashiva so very much, of course I want to offer everything to Him. My life of "doing," I offer to You, my Beloved. This is all yours, as I am yours.

All of this is You (me as You).

Whatever happens, I know that You want to do this... as me.

I love you Sri Krisna, and I humbly thank you for your
compassionate teachings about Sri Karma Yoga

Equipoise

Peaceful quiet inside. My favorite non-activity? Just to sit.

No place to go

Naveen Andrews

Juliette Binoche

The English Patient

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for You, not knowing how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi 
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

I am sitting, and all recedes. I feel so different. For the first time, I feel no need to do, be, go or say. I am completely still, inside and out. It is grace giving me the experience of this amazing state.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be, I repeat to myself when my mind wants to drift back into action. My mind settles down and I feel no need to change anything at all. I am only barely managing my mind, and all is still.

It is very difficult to describe just how amazing this is. The experience is very sweet, and with a lot of ballast in the stillness. It is profound.

Gone is the impulse to do. Gone! I breathe. That's it.

This is what it is like to be without action inside, the karma yoga lovingly outlined by Lord Krishna in the Gita, the yoga of performing one's dharma (duty) outside while not being attached to the fruits of one's actions (inside).

Naveen Andrews
Juliette Binoche
The English Patient

“I am dying into your mystery, and dying, I am now no other than that mystery.  I open to your majesty as an orchard welcomes rain, and twenty times that.” 

~ Jalaluddin Rumi (1207 - 1273)
(Translation by Coleman Barks)

My Beloved, who is Paramashiva, is coming to me inside as my "crush," Naveen. At the level of consciousness, (and all of this is consciousness), where there is only One, Paramashiva is Naveen and Paramashiva is me. 

[Stalker Free Disclaimer: Don't worry, I realize the Naveen of multiplicity, in the world of the play of consciousness, has his own life that I do not belong in, and nothing about his life belongs in mine (except for his work as an actor and celebrity). I do not know him. If I met this Naveen as anything other than God, i.e. in the world of multiplicity, I would be meeting a stranger].

It is new for me to experience God as though through another aspect or incarnation of His One Consciousness. 

I once had a cat who I had to put down. Someone taught me how to communicate with him inside, in consciousness, so that he could give me his last wishes, a great comfort. Over the years, I have "checked in" with George, and met him inside, where I can recognize his particular presence. We affirm our love and our gratitude.

Now I have reached out inside to my Beloved as Naveen, and God has begun touching me back as "he," my fantasy Naveen made real by God taking this form for me inside during this new stage of sadhana (spiritual work) which is all about the Beloved and burning in the flame of divine yearning.

The Beloved has taken my life as a seeker by storm... by passion.

Who knew? 

This type of burning seems easier, as love is a pleasurable passion. But my passion is for God, and goes deeper than deep. It is beyond pleasure and is almost unbearable at times.

God has come to me inside. He touches me when I get lost, burns me when I search "outside" myself for what I want. He reminds me that He is my body, the sinew and bone, where He surges as my longing through blood and breath, where my tongue (speech) and my eyes (emotions) and my hands (action) and my mind (worship) fall upon Him as the wings of dire certainty from this divine recognition. 

I no longer want anything but my belonging to Him, He fills me with the desire for this oneness with Him.

There is only the Beloved, only this passion play, the play of the One.

My words are for You, my Lord, my Beloved Lord.

Naveen Andrews as Kip
The English Patient

When the sweet glance 
of my true love caught my eyes,
Like alchemy, it transformed 
my copper-like soul.
I searched for Him 
with a thousand hands,
He stretched out His arms 
and clutched my feet.

~ From Thief of Sleep by Jalaluddin Rumi 
(Translation by Shahram Shiva)

Inner Explosion (update)

INNER EXPLOSION

I just woke up from a nap. While I was asleep, the most amazing thing happened. I was fast asleep when something exploded in me, in my being and consciousness. It was like a depth charge going off, exploding through all of me, pushing outward through me as consciousness.

It barely woke me up for a second, just long enough to remember it later.

When I woke up, everything seemed the same, I haven't noticed anything different(?) 

~ originally posted 5/12/13

~ ... ~ ... ~ ... ~ ... ~ ... ~ ... ~

~ updated on 5/16/13

I never expected to have an inner "explosion," even when "dreaming." 

Today I was reminded that I had an explosion of sorts during shaktipat, though I had never described it that way to myself...

NOTE: It is really really strange to type the words "inner" and "explosion" together

 ~ Update 5/16/13
 SAHASRARA CHAKRA

I opened the SYP website today and there was a description of the 2013 message artwork.

And in the explanation of the sahasrara mandala, there was the word "explosion." Ah-ha!!

"In the Sanskrit language, sahasrara literally means 'Thousand Rays of Light.' The sages experienced the Supreme Self as an explosion of divine effulgence, and described it using metaphors such as 'thousand-petaled lotus,' or 'the light of a thousand suns.' They named the crown chakra sahasrara to reflect this experience."

And, "The thousand petals of the sahasrara are a metaphor for the infinite rays of pulsating Consciousness."

The divine effulgence of the sahasrara chakra
here reminds me of my "sparks," though the lights
were low, so it was mostly dark in the room

This immediately evokes my shaktipat experience.

I received shaktipat from my Guru at the beginning of 1999 in Santa Clara, California. I lived in Mountain View, just down the road.

I was very new to Siddha Yoga. I originally decided not to go. I didn't understand yet how my relationship with her was going to be essential (as guru's grace) to my spiritual path and returning to God.

I was at work, where I had a small picture of my Guru at my desk. I looked at her picture, and felt her presence in my mind. And I could hear her in my mind as she asked: "Won't you come be with me?"

Well. I asked Bill if he would pay for my registration, and he said yes!

 The original explosion?
 SHAKTIPAT

Shiva Nataraj in the dance of creation
with his consciousness swirling and taking form
through the fire of Shiva's active form, Kundalini Shakti

My shaktipat experience was very dramatic, and is very special to me.

Our chanting reached an ecstatic crescendo, when my head tilted back and my mouth fell open with ecstasy, energy flowing upwards. So much ecstasy! I felt a distinct little tingly movement at the base of my spine.

Then the energy flowing upward EXPLODED into a huge spray of sparks, the divine effulgence upward in every direction, and I could see the Nataraja form of Shiva dancing in the center. This is the ecstasy of Kundalini Shakti merging with Shiva.

The spray of ecstatic sparks/divine effulgence continued upwards from me, up and up and up and clear out into the universe past galaxies and nebulae out into deep space, then tipping... tipping... came around and flowed all the way back to me and rejoined me at the base of my spine.

The divine effulgence had become circular, moving up through me and out through all and back in a continuous circle.

Throughout I was in a state of tremendous ecstasy.

I realize that it is possible to receive shaktipat with hardly any signs at all. Guru's grace knows best. For me, I am grateful for this compassionate and beautiful experience. I have never had to ask if shaktipat was real(!).

Thank you my Guru, your compassion and love is so sweet and real to me.

Sweet guru's grace.

The many petalled sahasrara chakra
at the crown of the head

 Another "explosion:"
 ONCE I DREAMED ABOUT THE EGG

I recently remembered an experience I had when I lived at the ashram, which happened right before I woke up. For a short second I experienced a beautiful golden dawn with sweet baby blue skies, all behind an immense egg which almost filled my field of vision.

Suddenly the egg broke open and I woke up (in the same instant).

NOTE: The breaking open of an egg is a Hindu symbol for the breaking open of the ego. I didn't feel any different, so I assumed it was a communication about that, or the future, or ??

  Praying for an "explosion?"
  THE GAZE OF THE GURU

Also when I lived at the ashram, as I once wrote here, I had an ongoing fear of having the guru look at me. On several occasions she turned towards me as though to look, just staying there for a second, then she turned away and kept going past.

It seemed that my ego was terrified, and I assume it's because my ego might have been broken open (or etc.) if she looked right at me. My ego was very relieved when she didn't look, but it left me with a feeling of swelling up and ALMOST exploding, but not quite. There's a definite unfinished feeling of gathered up energy, with no where to go, even now.

Lately I have remembered this several times, and wished that I would have "yogi-ed up" and reached out to her in my heart, even aloud, and asked her to look at me.

Now I never see her. But as she has said, to her devotees she is "...closer than you can even imagine."

Remembering this, I have prayed over and over, please break my ego open, or...?? Please, finish this...

And so... I think... the INNER EXPLOSION was the answer to this prayer!

PS Did I mention it is really really strange to type the words "inner" and "explosion" together...?

"Lemme outta here..."