Vivekananda

I am having this, I want only this.

Equipoise. The Crest Jewel of DISCRIMINATION. There is nothing better.

When I feel emptiness, I find the center place, and I am filled. I am so happy, there is nothing better than running to the spring that never stops, that is never replaced.

There is nothing better.

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

I receive Shree Vivekananda's darshan when I look at His photos.

At last

My beloved, You speak to me through everything. Everything. There is nothing that is not Your caress, Your stillness... Your breath and Your being. I worship You, I worship You.

You are this delicate puddle that smells of damp rocks.

Give me a push...

You are this surging ocean of invisible karmas that pulls and pushes, falls on me, (again...), then trickles away under my guru's feet.

I see, and I hear... (Is she humming?)

You are her grace, gathering me up, knocking the dust off, weaving my karmas over and over into this sheerest veil of sighs.

Oh! I see through it, past it, see all of this consciousness... and know at last that I am all and none of it.

I close my eyes. I want it all as You.

Here

The shakti washes over me, I know my guru is thinking of me, sending me her grace in a special way that says... "you can start RIGHT HERE..."

The part that says, "catch up... try harder... do something different... or you'll never make it..." (to becoming established in the Self), that part is not helpful, not the way, it is in the way.

Start right here... the shakti says. Nothing else is real, including what my mind tells me about all this.

I find the center, where it is silent, no motion. HERE.

Shree Kundalini

Focus on siddhis is for sissies.

That said.....

I am having spontaneous meditation on and off throughout the day.

Thank you guruji.

Shree Kundalini

I am leaving

I am so still. The energy I have expended has all come to a rest.

I ALWAYS remind myself. This is not my attainment, I do not do this, it is my guru's grace. My ego wants to take credit, steal my merit, crow in a brittle, tiring kind of way.

So much karma burned.

I am where I dreamed of at the beginning. The prayer I repeated over and over.

I am at the feet of my guru. She is giving me everything.

High hopes ~ Pink Floyd (excerpt)

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

At a higher altitude with flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river

Forever and ever

Space Oddity ~ David Bowie (excerpt)

This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating 
in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today

Though I've passed
one hundred thousand miles
I'm feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much 
she knows

Here am I floating 
round my tin can
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do.

"Pack your bags," she said. I heard
her voice clearly, though
I could not "see" her
Nothing left to do.
I am leaving.

Raja Yoga: Swami Vivekananda

I am still "doing nothing." Lord Krishna, of course, will say that is impossible. So yes, I do what I do, but I am still inside. My dharma is to take a long break from wrestling with life, constantly charging ahead to keep from falling. Now I just am.

I really feel done. This lifetime is over. If I'm staying, then a new lifetime will begin in this body. But not now, not yet.

The bubbling in my ears is so loud. I have read that it is the prana rising through the akasha. And so I did some reading.

Swami Vivekananda

In Raja-Yoga (1896) Swami Vivekananda wrote in the third chapter, which is entitled "Prana:"

...According to the philosophers of India, the whole universe is composed of two materials, one of which they call Âkâsha. It is the omnipresent, all-penetrating existence. Everything that has form, everything that is the result of combination, is evolved out of this Akasha. It is the Akasha that becomes the air, that becomes the liquids, that becomes the solids; it is the Akasha that becomes the sun, the earth, the moon, the stars, the comets; it is the Akasha that becomes the human body, the animal body, the plants, every form that we see, everything that can be sensed, everything that exists. It cannot be perceived; it is so subtle that it is beyond all ordinary perception; it can only be seen when it has become gross, has taken form. At the beginning of creation there is only this Akasha. At the end of the cycle the solids, the liquids, and the gases all melt into the Akasha again, and the next creation similarly proceeds out of this Akasha.

By what power is this Akasha manufactured into this universe? By the power of Prana. Just as Akasha is the infinite, omnipresent material of this universe, so is this Prana the infinite, omnipresent manifesting power of this universe. At the beginning and at the end of a cycle everything becomes Akasha, and all the forces that are in the universe resolve back into the Prana; in the next cycle, out of this Prana is evolved everything that we call energy. everything that we call force. It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion; it is the Prana that is manifesting as gravitation, as magnetism. It is the Prana that is manifesting as the actions of the body, as the nerve currents, as thought force. From thought down to the lowest force, everything is but the manifestation of Prana. The sum total of all forces in the universe, mental or physical, when resolved back to their original state, is called Prana. "When there was neither aught nor naught, when darkness was covering darkness, what existed then? That Akasha existed without motion." The physical motion of the Prana was stopped, but it existed all the same.

At the end of a cycle the energies now displayed in the universe quiet down and become potential. At the beginning of the next cycle they start up, strike upon the Akasha, and out of the Akasha evolve these various forms, and as the Akasha changes, this Prana changes also into all these manifestations of energy...

Swami Vivekananda Madras 1897

NOTE: Vivekananda is from the school of Advaita Vedanta. I am a devotee of Kashmir Shaivism, which is called paradvaita. But there is overlap for me. In my experience, in Siddha Yoga, we study both.

Both agree that God is real. Advaita Vedanta states that all of this is illusion, and only God is real. Paradvaita states that all of this is God, made by God from His divine consciousness.

To me, all of this is made by God from His consciousness, and I love and worship Him in everything. But also, it is contracted consciousness, and has become a habit of the mind. This is the illusion I seek to reject. I want to swim in His consciousness back to my place forever established in Him.

Shiva is my Lord, and I long for Him... long for Him...

One thing I have learned, see more clearly from reading Shree Vivekananda, is that my concepts about moving in a straight line towards realization is a misunderstanding. I am made not only of the consciousness of God, but also the matter and energy which God has become by descending through the tattvas. This energy is in me, and must be held back by the magic of maya.

I can become established in Shiva in many ways. For some reason this is not about discipline for me right now. The hard edges of action are being softened and loosed from me. I am still and soft. I breathe.

When I think of Swami Vivekananda I always think of "The Crest Jewel of Discrimination." Just this phrase is so powerful. If I had this, I would have everything. I have prayed for it, but had to think about it first. This prayer will invite a great deal of heat! I decided it was worth it.

Swami Vivekananda: A very great being

Om Muni Muni Mahamuni Soha

At last I know, at last I remember. I may still think of this bliss as attainment for a few minutes or more. But at last I have let that slip off, slip away and KNOW this every time: When the bliss surges up through me, bliss and bliss and bliss and bliss....

It is my guru's grace, her bliss. She can free my mind, my being, and her New Year's gift is waves and waves of her endless bliss, I am floating through the things I think I am doing, that I think are important...

This. Now. You.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh thank you...

Sadgurunath

I'm burning such ick, existential pain and goo. I don't remember ever burning this layer before.

Just to breathe is painful, sound and light are jarring, everything would push me off my center if I was anywhere near it.

I'm defenseless. And the worst is coming at me. I open my arms, breathe. The purifying fire....

I remember feeling these feelings as a girl, and wondering why life was so horrible.

Mantra mantra mantra.......

I hear the divine little tinkly nada often throughout the day, and it helps me to relax and be comforted.

I know I am surrounded by, permeated by guru's grace.

Sadgurunath...

There is no doing with God

I do not try. There is no doing with God. I have understood this, that only grace can set me free, and God is grace, grace is God.

There is no doing with God.

I do not push myself to be more focused on God, wanting Him, seeking Him inside.

I have pushed and pushed, then gave up and gone wildly astray many times over. Karma... is done.

I feel IMMEDIATELY if I do something on the inside to seek God, to enhance my feelings about and experience of God. And I IMMEDIATELY stop.

This consciousness of doing arises in me, and offers me a ride. I do not move or speak, there is no reply. Rajas has arisen, and then it is dissolved. 

It is a falsehood that I ever do.

Once my sadhana was many acts of doing. Something to do until I stopped thinking I was doing.

I will only watch and listen for God. For God lives and moves inside me.  This is my sadhana. I await God's grace in each moment, and accept it. No thinking, no doing, no goals.

Doing means I must add something to perfection!

I KNOW that God is alive inside of me, and that there is nothing to do. Nothing. God doesn't need my help, or even my understanding. If and when I am taken into God is perfect. There is nothing I need to do to augment my devotion and worship, which at last is free from the clutching of ego. My devotion is my tapasya, the purifying fire, the constant thrill of my love soaring and settling, so beautiful to my beloved Shiva, who draws close. 

My being is rooted here, and tended to only by guru's grace in the garden of grace.

I am so peaceful.

Follows an excerpt from the Shivastotravali by Utpaladeva, as illuminated by Swami Lakshmanjoo (Universal Shaiva Fellowship) To be published soon

भक्तानां भवदद्वैत सिद्धयै का नोपपत्तयः
तदसिद्ध्यै निकृष्तानां कानि नावरनाणि वा   ॥१५॥

bhaktānām bhavadadvaitasiddhayai kā nopapattayaḥ  /
tadasiddhyai nikṛiṛṣtānām kāni nāvaranāṇi vā  //15//

Those who are Thy devotees, for those, if they want to achieve the state of God consciousness, for them, which is not the way? Even going astray also will lead them to God consciousness.

For whom?

Those who are Thy devotees. Those who are Thy devotees, for them, in achieving You, what are not the ways, what are not the paths to achieve that God consciousness?

Home at last

I am the place that hungers, that aches and is empty. The story of why, and the fable of what.

I am the very quality of fullness. Where one seeks, there am I. A memory cannot exclude me. There, on the horizon!

Look behind, and know me again... then know me all along.

Those who love me, who love only me, find in my heart their own gently beating. To seek shelter there is the end of every journey, the end of journeying itself.

Be enfolded, little heart. Feel this pulse, this humming throb.

Know yourself. Be home at last.

I know you

God, I love you as everything, your beauty, your strength, 

your fire and your frailty, your word and your gaze, 

I know you. I know you.

Bliss bliss bliss... thought..... Bliss bliss bliss.....

Bliss... bliss................ thought...

Bliss bliss bliss... thought..... Bliss bliss bliss...

Dear God, please never stop pulling me into You with your bliss