Promise of a new world.

The world of the senses has run me ragged. The weariness tore me away.

One day, not so long ago, the world and I began to move at a different speed. Still close, right here. But I'm not very interested.

I've slowed, floating on an inner current, flowing, going nowhere.

Sinking, the gurgling sounds just above me, the sunlight a vector, an unchanging stillness, a direction becomes dance, the promise of a new world.

The oldest, essential, purpose, preserved... in the deep, dark, depths of my heart.

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.

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

My "go to" contemplation

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

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

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

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

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

Step well

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

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

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

I also use this skill as a writer of fiction.

Swami Lakshmanjoo:

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

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

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

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

The 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  

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

No longer crawling

Somewhere, I am here

My body is so relaxed.

No longer crawling to a distant shore.

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.

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.

Your gaze

I see You. I see You behind everything.

Only those who seek the dark and crave all that is wild can see You. Only the chaste bride of all that is without and beyond can feel Your gaze.

I see You. I know You.

Your hair a plasma of dark flames, your garland of ashy skulls, Your only attire a living kindred of deadly snakes.

Your eyes were hidden. But now they are wild upon me.

My Lord. My Lord. Kala Bhairava. Namo namo.

Om Kala Bhairavaya Namo

A soul must find its home

Nothing will stop me. Ego, delusion, fear, long frozen feelings, judgement, haughtiness, once mighty decisions (with or without a solemn oath).

I can wait. All this comes and goes. It will subside.

I love this.... more than my entire life, more than endless moments of constant identification and attachment. More than hope and good faith. More than story. My story. Many stories. Many lifetimes.

I love only this: my return. All of this will finally slip away, and I will be what I love. I will know myself well.

A soul must find its home.

Letting go of attachment

I find that I have greatly underestimated how much letting go of my attachments to the world would lead to breath-taking progress in my goal of enlightenment.

As always, it is grace.

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

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

Waves and waves

The waves of bliss, they bring me home. Nowhere to get to. Nowhere to go.

Nothing but this. Waves and waves of bliss.

Here we are. What can you see?

Jet lag for yoginis

I feel as though I was a big rubber band, always stretched and taut, pulling. All my life. All.

And now it has all been loosened.

I'm dreamy and soft, and can't think about anything complicated. I lose almost every board I play in my favorite game. I really can't talk very well. More like sputtering. Brain is moving slow. Like jet lag for yoginis.

I am indulging the feeling of letting go. It feels wonderful to lay in bed for hours (watching Justified season 2, ya!).

I know I cannot live the way I did before this gift from my guru. I have thrown off the old. My extreme habits made from "fixing a broken life" are falling away from me.

I have complete trust that my guru will show me a new way to live after I have rested up and let the old ways go.

Free

Evening aarati at Rishikesh

I was so attached to the story.

I pulled away from it, a little every day. For years. I wanted to be free of it, to only live in the inner world.

And now. To my great surprise.

This is who I am, where I am. I don't have to get somewhere here or away from here, now or later. God is me... as this.

Enjoy it! Be of service. I am free.

Free.

I worship You, I worship You

So great that You are everything and everywhere I go

Darshan

There is something of my own consciousness which I see in sadhu's eyes. The stuffing of life burned away, a pure consciousness is left, a lightness, a soul, a smile. Darshan of my Lord.

It is a spiritual attainment I have received as a gift from my guru and my own sadhana, the constant burning of years of believing that this story is happening to me.

Similarly, my life has always been outside of other's lives. I was mostly alone as a child. I developed an obsession with being with others. It was a happy day of freedom when I finally gave that up. Now I am like the sadhu (sadhini) who wanders, who belongs and lives inside, the inner world. 

I do not work, I am not married, I have no children. I have very little contact with my family. I have one true friend, and that is enough. It is a lot. There is no sangham here in Las Vegas. But there is an online sangham that I visit every day, one that is very active and so nourishing.

A sadhu in Nepal

Pashupatinath Temple

Photo poraschaudhary.com

Photo Pacific Press

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.