No explanation

My Lord's consciousness
and intelligence emanates
as endless universes

Only because I have this blog do I feel the need to explain.

Isn't it the pinnacle of self-indulgence to withdraw from the world, to live a solitary life INSIDE. And how can you say this is all God? If this is all God, doesn't that mean there is no evil?

Lord Krishna explains: Do your duty, your dharma. It's true that all of this is the great Lord, His play, the Lord at play. Take your hands off of His creation, trying to push and pull it, and simply follow your duty. This is the way to freedom. Profound, ultimate freedom.

This is all consciousness. And it is an intelligence so supreme it unfolds and emerges through everything around me... so that the earth knows how to fly and spin, the rain knows how and where to fall, the wind knows where to go... and every part of this great play is made by You, by your divine intelligence.

Only because I know that some of the people who read my blog are very active, good people, who dare to do good, to be something great... do I feel the need to explain.

I say to them: What a wonderful thing. Follow the bliss. Choose where you are, the only real choice. You get to merge back eventually. But the play would be over if everyone suddenly decided they were done and wanted out.

Sometimes a kriya gently, insistently bends my head forward and I have a minute of "head falling forward" meditation (the best). But my mediation now is eyes open, everywhere I go, everything I do. I want to feel bliss, so I turn my senses inward, watch as all of this... IS.

I know I am yours, that I am You when I am so still inside. My senses withdrawn, all is profoundly silent and still, even as the motion and noise of the play continues around me.

When I was new to sadhana, I didn't like the thought of merging with God. I thought it must be an Indian thing, one I would never really comprehend. Of course, my ego was very unhappy at the thought of dissolving into God.

Now merging with God is the very best, the sweetest, the most wonderful idea ever, and the deepest desire of my heart. I have become bigger and more than my ego, which thinks I am THIS.

I love Shiva, the auspicious one. What could be better than to merge back into Him, my Beloved? The wonder and delight of this ultimate journey is indescribable pleasure to my Lord and to me.

All because of grace. Guruji...

More to this

I have turned away from the world of the senses. It still swirls around me, as messy and perfectly cohesive as ever it was... It just doesn't mean near as much to me.

Some would say it is too self-centered, too self-indulgent to focus only on this immediate world of eloquent grace, nestled in and waking from naptime in the divine kindergarten of love.

This I will say, in the end the tale is a love story. That special place where lovers pool their sighs, gaze through abstract movement where the air is warm and close....

So, let me go away, go home at last. If you question, it means you have more to do. No worries.

"It only ends once, the rest is just progress." 

~Jacob on LOST

I will still write here; this is my seva (service). My posts are about my love for my Beloved, as my life is.

PS There is more to this than the world of the senses. If you long for a journey elsewhere, one way is to go down inside of yourself (meditation) and discover the world that is there.

Recognition

You were walking in the rain, just outside my open door, laughing.

I recognized Your voice.

You...

Home

Strange... My life is flashing before my eyes.

I am the river and I am the boat. I am the illusion of time (now, not now), and space (here, not here).

I keep floating past, floating through the many unrelated moments that arise from my memory, perfect yet impossibly small, made of shakti so still, almost stagnant, concentrated. I am suffocating in the feelings and thoughts that were "then."

The moments on the farm... the constant wind in the tall poplar trees, somehow a much larger dance, one that ever passes me as the songs of unseen birds and the lowing of distant cattle. The cut hay stubble of this fragrant field crunches with each step. Then the swirling flutter, the twinkle of light in the generous leaves of epic cottonwood trees. The sweet water falling as it swirls along the little creek. The "coo coo" of the morning doves float on the dense air, moist with twilight.

I float for a moment, the memory insistent fills me, and in that very distant, smallest spot of illusion, I remember the vision of solid land, and a moment that was. The pain is brief. My freedom is sweet. Each time I flow through, it is all swept away. I am released.

The memories are so far from truth that their perfect measure is the reach of karma. The karma is how far afield... how far to find my way back... I burn the karmas of these wagers, these investments in illusion, so small, (that I must emerge from them light and fresh), that the once is scraped off, leaving only NOW.

The final adventure... I keep my destination within sight. I do not control how or when I will arrive back where I started, only that it is certain.

There will be no side journeys. I am headed straight for home. I await myself there.

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.