Steady

She came again... I felt her touch while I was reaching into my (tall) aquarium. I could not see her, but I felt her near, and the place where she touched me felt warm.

Again the message: "Steady."

Photo Randy Parkhurst

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.

Spiritual experiences

Nothing is ever new and permanent, and all the time. Except this: when I look within, there is no barrier or break between myself "inside" and "outside." It's a continuum.

The Flammerion Engraving (1888) 

So... What??

It seems like it's not much of a difference. But for me it is the difference between rattling around in my head, and feeling and dancing with the shakti: spiritual experiences, for me, are not about making progress towards having "them" in every moment as realization.

They are about now.

They don't mean anything, at least not to my mind, the mind that is always trying to figure everything out, including realization.

The swirl of love and light, mystery and passion, are now. They're just now. Experience them. Be changed by them. Be grateful and happy. Love the shakti, the guru. Everything is made of them. Because that is what happens when I tune into the shakti swirling in me, uplifting me. A divine purpose that is far, far beyond my mind.

Salt Lake City LDS Temple ~ I grew up in Salt Lake City Utah

I don't know what is happening(!) I don't do that. Look, I was raised a Mormon. Mormons are very thoughtful, and have a complete system of understanding and living in the world. Mormons continuously and somewhat suspiciously monitor their actions, thoughts and motivations. Mormons figure out everything. And everything is leading to something. God has big plans for my future. This is certain.

When I feel love and expansion fill me, I am hard put to keep my mind quiet, to stay with the feelings without thinking and drifting away. My busy mind!! I am lucky if I make it ten seconds! I don't want everyday feelings, I always thought. I want TRANSFORMATIONAL feelings that turn my life into something better. Always getting somewhere. Trying to hitch a ride to a new future on every spiritual experience.

No. Stop that. I am stopping. It has taken so many years of sadhana to see and challenge this thing. Why? Because it gets in the way.

The real deal is only now. It is so exquisite, playful, mysterious, delightful. This is what I have always wanted. This.

The Flammerion Engraving (1888) - color added

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

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.

No more

I'm in the wrong place.

No more.

Grace wakes me up

I am permeable. My habitual boundaries of self, the age old boundaries of my heart are softening. I can relax what I thought to be rigid in my nature. Consciousness, love and bliss flows into and through me like water.

Float on grace.

Grace keeps touching me, gently refocusing my attention, waking me up.

My dharana is larger than my mind. I am essential, with no qualities or dualities, seeing my limited consciousness from the outside, watching the play of seeing and moving without moving or being seen.

The bliss gushes up each time.

I want to live entirely in that higher consciousness.

Expansion

My guru keeps trying to give me moments.

I keep turning them into story.

Expansion is delicious, subversive, playful bliss. It's why Krishna shakes his curls.

Tapasya of the mind

I hold my mind when I am visited by shakti. Intelligence as warmth, as bliss. 

I notice it. I feel a warmth emanating through me, head to toes.

Going against a lifetime of seeking, I stop my mind.

I hold my mind the very second I notice it stirring, surging. I stop my mind when the action of thinking begins; tasting, then starting to talk about a surge of bliss. 

Stop. Hold.

I do not make up a story about my experience, or decide what it means. 

 Hardest of all, I do not to try to augment and shape the event through mental action.

All I know is that these actions have enchanted me, have enslaved me. And this moment of stopping, of self-control, becomes a sacrifice, an offering. The fire of tapasya burns without the outward appearance of sadhana.


My sadhana is the tapasya of the mind.

I am simply alive. I have no agenda. My spiritual apparatus has stopped, settled. It seeks nothing.

No process. No language. Only the immense freedom of holding my being, holding my mind.

My mind is mystified, concerned, skeptical.

My sadhana isn't about making me better at control, analysis, pushing ahead to the ultimate goal. I am over the spiritual tantrum I recently had about this. That is when all action stopped.

I no longer indulge in the sadhana of action. Now. One-pointedness. No wandering. I often forgo the mantra--silence is my mantra.

I challenge myself, and my fears. "This is a big risk," offers my mind, the expert I built up and leaned on all of my life. "Might we waste a human birth if we are passive about our sadhana?" 

I stop these thoughts.

I do not know. I do not know. Freedom.

I hold my mind.

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.

Get out of the way

 

 

Get out of the way. Get out of the way.

Each moment of transcendence and bliss, my true nature. Only my mind thinks that something is missing.

My mind thinks I am attaining something, and tries to control it, tries to learn how to keep it. My mind keeps leaping in to grasp and move and amplify.

Get out of the way. Get out of the way of grace, unfettered grace.

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.

Stepping out of multiplicity

When I step out of multiplicity, I see only one all around me, including "me," little me.

I am. There are no outer senses. I feel that I am. I feel bliss, and a great peace. Wonder, playfulness, joy. The burning desire to love and worship God, my source.

I do not see or hear. No taste, no touch or feeling sensation.

I am not heavy or light. Not cold or hot.

There is only my breathing. Only the bliss.

Then when I can, I step back again. I identify with the One, with Shiva. I have become Him; He looks out through my eyes.

I remember who I am. I remember.

I have no form, there is no space or time. I made all... to play.





Lord you are sweet bliss. The sighs of many contentments. I am on a journey to experiencing this truth: that we are One. You have called me home.

 Google FeedBurner

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.

Cosmic doorbell

All of this is a gift from my Guru.

Imagine my surprise when God has begun to be at play in everything. I experience the play as waves of bliss that I tune into at will, and which tickle me, ringing the universe's most profound doorbell.

But I thought...

Lord Shiva is the Lord of the Dance

I thought liberation would be intellectual, that I would "see" my liberation, mapping it with my mind. But I don't see it with (that part of) my mind.

My liberation dances as bliss.

Now I know why Shiva is the Lord of the Dance. All of creation is dancing. His dance. The dance.

(For the first time I really comprehend how the divine comes to each in their own way).

I feel my liberation like a bubbly plunge into liquid unknown, flowing with the constant certainty of unformed feelings of knowing recognition. With eyes closed I am cresting and sailing without moving, the arching waves of bliss, intelligence at play.

"Whoosh."

There are no rules or concepts to it. No "up" or "down," no "here" or "there," no "this must be ____."

No "inside" or "outside."

That thrill in the story when Sherlock Holmes said it, filling the reader with delight and anticipation that didn't exist in the previous paragraph: "The game is afoot!"

Perhaps I am sometimes outside of the realm of the senses. I have learned how to withdraw my senses for a time, and keep them in check. I have learned how to tamp down my mind, holding it tightly and gently as I am still in the center place. I experience what is outside of my contracted mind, that which contains it.

I recognize in the moment. I don't know what or how, simply a recognition of what is greatest, what is essential.

I am thrilled with bliss, with all that is right here.

Imagine my astonishment when this bliss keeps calling to me, a revelation of dancing both large and small that appears in my stream of consciousness, calling me to open to what is real, filling my heart, the dance.

I did not know. A swirling play of bliss has no blueprint, no rules, no expectations... just The One whirling with bliss that creates an entire universe, *creating and dissolving, all on the fly.

Ecstacy. The Lord of the Dance.

All of this is a gift from my Guru.

Whirling Dervishes in a State of Bliss by Lance-Daniel-Smith

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

*In Kashmir Shaivism, Shiva is the supreme creator and performs five functions: creator, sustainer, dissolver, concealer and revealer

My melting heart

My heart has been melting...

I thought of someone I had hurt badly when I was 19 years old. I had felt numb about it all these years, just not caring one way or another, although I knew intellectually I had done something so hurtful.

I tried to find him once in the past, but was unsuccessful.

And this time, when I thought of him, I felt my love for him. I still love him. This was a revelation.

I kept thinking of him. Thoughts of him would break through whatever had my attention, and I felt my caring for him.

Finally I tried again to find him. I found him in a few steps with an online search service. Wow.

Should I contact him? This will be worse than fruitless if I hurt him again. Contacting him is a big responsibility. Can we be friends, if he will talk to me? I will not hurt him again.

Karma. We still have karma.

I kept thinking of him, my feelings breaking through whatever I was focusing on. It felt urgent.

It started to be intense. Overwhelming feelings about him.

Then, I physically felt someone (my guru?) behind me in my desk chair, leaning over me, hugging me so that I felt their presence partly inside of me, a strong energy.

(The guru is outside. The guru in inside).

This is urgent. Don't wait.

Okay.

I sent him a letter. He called me. I called him back.

I think he is alone. He still has an alcohol problem, and I'm guessing also meth. He has cancer, and has been having chemo. They give him six months.

He has a son he recently reconciled with. He is living in his parent's home with his aging mother.

He talked my ear off at breakneck speed. Meth? Fear?

I'm committed. Whatever that means, for me. To be there for him. To be the contact for my Guru's shakti. A priceless gift.

Yes. I will not bear him, hold him up. My Guru's shakti will go from me into him. I am the conduit. What a delight.

UPDATE: I spoke with him again. He has a crushed hip from a bicycle accident, and must use crushes. We traded war stories, and discussed unfinished arguments. It feels we have taken up (with our karmas) right where we left off in 1978. 

UPDATE: Happy conversations. Karmas complete. So many *samskaras have melted away. As always, my Guru sets me free.

______

*Samskara (Hinduism, especially Karmic theory): the mental impression, recollection, and psychological imprint left by beliefs, intentions, and actions."

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

Bridge to the inner country

Me: Why do we chant and meditate?

Guruji: To see the greatness that lies within, a whole new world inside of yourself.




Me: What will happen?

Guruji: The bridge that you are building to the inner country will grow ever stronger.

"As you chant and meditate, you begin to see the greatness that lies within you; you begin to catch glimpses of a whole new world inside yourself.  

As the bridge that you are building to the inner country grows stronger and reaches further, you begin to feel the glory of the Supreme Self; you begin to see the divine light, the radiant Lord. Then you know the true worth of a human being."

~- (my Guru)