Attainment requires a strong mind

The pendulum swings.

When grace is overflowing... I can merge with You at will for several moments, seeking You many times a day with the delightful knowledge that only You are worth seeking, only your love is worth finding. I am not missing anything, not liking or disliking anything, because all of this is You.

The pendulum swings.

I dislike everything. I am full of self-hatred, I take hold every hour on the slippery edge of deep despair. Because of committed practice I notice the minute my spirit slumps over, desiring destruction and oblivion. The deepest darkness swims just below the cliff at my feet.

These are feelings I have not felt so deeply in years. I have kept a steady practice of noticing them, and not going with them.

But here they are and they are fierce in their attempts to conquer me, lay me out, lay me down with the small inner movement required to let go, to be consumed.

This is the easy way, a voice whispers. My ego will sacrifice everything to escape the fire of sacrifice, to emerge victorious.

I fight, I hold the line. I accept all of this, but I will not be pulled into self-hatred and fear.

I do not believe in suffering.

It's the pendulum. I am burning these feelings. But mostly, I am burning my attachment to the golden time of grace, when this was better than that. 

Karma..

Each time the pendulum swings, it is getting closer to stopping at the center. A place of sublime equipoise, where mayiya mala will not push and pull, towards and away.

This is as good as that. I know because that is how God's play is unfolding as my life. I understand at last. I am not steering this. If I am, why does it never go the way I choose?

To go with feelings of suffering, I must believe that these feelings are reality, that they are me. This creates karma. I invest in delusion, a debt which must be burned to return to freedom, the truth.

No one has ever expressed this understanding of karma to me. Nowhere have I ever heard the saying "I do not believe in suffering." It is my yoga, and my discipline, I grasp it to me as the waves of suffering rise... then flow out again on the gentle tide. The crisp air of morning breaks with sudden gold upon the sweet back and forth of elemental, formless water. Freedom.

My guru has said this, I remember her words. Attainment requires a strong mind. Every day that I have chosen to notice but not follow old feelings of fear and self-hatred my mind has become stronger. I have come to notice immediately any thought or feelings that begin to drag me down. I do not follow. I am not driven. I pray.

I take refuge in prayer. I choose steadiness instead.

I am not conquered, I am only troubled by this light-footed shadow of the dance of suffering, the movements of habit and the memories of choosing pain out of ignorance.

I turn and slip into the light. The feelings are... The suffering is but a hapless rumor. It is all perfect.

The presence of God

“Freedom from all our miseries, as Abhinavagupta boldly declares, can neither be obtained through the renunciation of the world, nor by hatred of this world, but by experiencing the presence of God everywhere.” 

~ Swami Lakshmanjoo, Universal Shaiva Fellowship

What gives?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just try to think after that.

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

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

So. Today, questions seem best.

So. What gives?

.

The true success

Kashi the city of light, never forsaken

All of my life I have wanted what is missing, wanted to find and hold onto an experience that was real, that didn't dissolve away..

Now... When I am weary... of chasing the sparkles, of serving my obsessions, of leaning into this human torment... (even tingling all over when I visit _________, bearing alone this unrequited love)...

I am so happy, so lucky. At last I crave what is real, seek nothing more than this: to turn inside and be with God. This is the real sustenance, the real intimacy.

Torment is another word for purification. The fire takes only this, when I am that... So'ham.

Kashi the city of light, never forsaken

God You are real, you are here for me every time I reach for You inside... every time without fail. Over and over through the day I take a moment to love and worship you inside.

Om namah shivaya. Shiva Shiva Shiva. I love your name...

My heart at last knows where to rest: God is the true success. There is no other God but You.

Kashi the city of light, never forsaken

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

Ready for take off

I have had one continuous nada (divine sound) all year. Others have come and go, including the exquisite tinkling sounds I love so much. The continuous nada is the plane warming up on the tarmac. It is quieter now. I only really hear it when I listen for it, always there, still there.

Clearly I am being invited to step onto a flight going who knows where, leaving all of this behind. Perhaps I can go whenever I am ready. Perhaps I will be picked up for boarding when it's time to depart.

Perhaps I'm already on board. This seems most likely.

Photo by Keep Your Eyes Wide Open on deviantart

Oh! The first time (except a brief trip in childhood) that I flew in a plane, I was quite scared. I was in my early twenties. We were sitting on the tarmac for almost an hour it seemed. There was some problem, they said. Finally I had the certain realization that the plane wasn't going to take off until I decided I wanted it to. At that exact moment, when I said inside, "okay, let's go...," the plane's engines began to wind up, and the plane began to roll towards the runway.

Now. I have to pause, to ask myself sincerely. If this is it, am I really ready? What does it mean to decide yes, to say yes? It's the biggest "yes" that there is!

I'm testing the waters here, about being okay with moving along to takeoff.

Yes, yes. It is what I want. No doubt. No regrets.

Okay, my Beloved. Let's go.

I am ready for take off.

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.

Walk away

Little visual and sense memories of moments from my life are coming to me throughout my day, day after day. The memories often have the suffocating, concentrated energy feeling that I have come to associate with life before shaktipat when I was fully invested in maya, in illusion.

I am burning little (large?) bits of karma, of memory, of life I "experienced" as happening to me, my story, my investment in it...

Then, after weeks of intense feelings about ______ (Paramashiva as _____), I had a brief moment where I realized I was thinking of him all the time, but he had a full life and most of the time wasn't thinking of me at all.

And I pushed my feelings away...! I pushed life away. I was disgusted, uh uh... not me. (The way I dealt with my father's rejection. Don't let him see the pain.. turn and walk away).

I have burnt away enough of my karmas and the illusions of maya, and of the malas that I can turn inside of a samskara (patterned illusion of thought made with pain), turn right in it and look through and past it, letting it slip from my grip, I breathe on it, breathe free of it, and choose to walk away.

This is freakin' huge. I am at a place where I can challenge the deepest, the worst, the most painful.

As for __________, I still love him. I just don't jump on the emotions, turning them into my favorite: an intense ride.

I love him. If I love him that is enough. There need be no story, no resolution of huge incompatibility. Nope. Not happening. That was an illusion.

I think?

Karma yoga

Saint Jnaneshwar

After my period of intense concentration and sweet, gentle purity of sattwa, I have looped back around to rajas, the quality of doing. To the extent that I seek and I am attached to the fun and pleasure of doing, (i.e. believe this and these feelings are happening to my "little" self), I will have to pay for as karma which must be burned, usually by the opposite feelings of emptiness and disillusionment with life.

Back and forth.

In the past, when I read Lord Krishna's compassionate teachings on karma yoga, I cringed at the part of not caring one way or another about where life went as it seemed to carry me along.

Now I see the pendulum clearly. I notice where I am and my attachment to this or revulsion of that. It is my nature to get very excited about things, and to love that level of feeling. This intense feeling is the opposite of flat and empty, which I hate.

It is the habit of many lifetimes to try to make permanent the tops of life's highs, and dispel the lows. This just makes my relationship to life all backwards. I am the tail that wags the dog. 

Wag the tail: watch the pendulum without pushing or grabbing.

Since I am not the root of action, I can choose to remain solidly centered inside as the pendulum swings back and forth. Life happens. It can carry me along into ecstatic and dramatic activities (such as my huge crush on _______), then back to the flat emptiness when those activities inevitably dwindle or lose their attraction.

Saint Jnaneshwar

If I can remain in equipoise, then any spot on the swing of my life's pendulum will be equal to me, absolutely still and observing of all of this around me.

Of course... my ego rebels! I sometimes decide that not chasing after feeling and intensity is unreasonable and severe. Why give up pursuing the joys of life? It seems, well, anti-life. It certainly isn't required. So, why?

Why would I? First I observe that my duty to myself is to enjoy what is pleasurable to me, within the ethics of that duty. So I'm not talking about rejecting pleasure, just not being attached to it, not believing I can control life to achieve pleasure.

THE TRUE GOAL: Compassionate Lord Krishna offers the highest goal, which is freedom and divine bliss. Freedom which leads to union with Him, with God.

It is fine to jump on the roller coaster of life. Almost everyone chooses this every day. But those of us who are coming back around in our long arc of incarnations and desire to return to God have a different perspective.

I want this freedom. I don't want to experience the suffering of paying my debts of karma any more.

Saint Jnaneshwar

There is the delicious, sensual delight of my beloved experience of life's intensity in remembering that I am not the doer, that life only seems to happen to me (when I believe it is so). The bliss of union with my true Self is the real pleasure and a past-time that incurs no debt of karma, no inevitable suffering as the pendulum swings back and forth.

How? I have cultivated an awareness and experience of the still center place inside, mostly through meditation (both sitting and during "activity" meditation), and with the essential divine grace of the guru. Through practice and grace, I can now by my will take one half of a step back into this very still place, where I am impassive about what happens around me, and delight in every moment as the highly creative and intelligent play of Paramashiva, my true Self.

As Lord Krishna has pointed the way, choosing to "do" will not incur karma if I choose to do my duty, to myself and others, and offer the fruits of my action to Him. This is called karma yoga and it is a mahayoga indeed, a great yoga. This yoga can by itself lead to realization.

Jnaneshwar's Gita

In my experience, the Siddha Yoga path teaches karma, jnana, bhakti and raja yoga, and I am naturally inclined to follow parts of all four. These are riches beyond compare. The first three margas are taught by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, (and raja yoga is taught by Patanjali). If you have not read the Gita, dear reader, and feel a draw in your heart to do so, I encourage you to at least read some of it.

Read the version with an English translation of the exquisite commentary written by the beloved saint Jnaneshwar, by Swami Kripananda.

Jnanadev will steal your heart. You will love him for it.

Be what you are

Be what you are... Go with what is.

Great intelligence

I am not in charge here. Everywhere I turn, the illusion that I am making things happen is dissolving away.

I think my hands are on the steering wheel (of life), even though my life never adjusts in the direction I intend.

I now see a great intelligence in everything I view and experience. This intelligence unfolds everywhere, inside of me and out.

This intelligence is God, my beloved Paramashiva. He doesn't just experience this vast play of His consciousness, he inhabits it as the intelligence that creates it, moves through it, arises and dissolves as everything in every moment.

Situations simply unfold. It is the great dance and bliss of my Lord's intelligence as Devi Shakti.

And I am not in charge.

PS My cat sleeps two-thirds or more of each day. He does this because of "instinct." I see intelligence. How do successive generations of monarchs know how to migrate? This is intelligence, (Your intelligence, Maheshwar...)