Mahashivaratri 2014

I wish to all the sweet blessings of the great Lord on this His day!

Om nama shivaya

The center place

What I call the "center place," is where I feel cidrūpatā, the touch of God consciousness.

Finally I understand the instruction to focus on the two places where the breath stops.

When I am focused on that place, I leave my breath and the realm of movement, movement which recedes into the background as I turn my senses inward, and I become completely still, no sound or light, only PRESENCE. The most sacred, most blissful presence. Beyond these qualities.

This is cidrūpatā.

This is where the shakti that would go out through the senses is contained (rather than spilt willy nilly).

This is where equipoise comes from, a solid place to "sit" without moving off of it. My mind moves me off, again and again, sends my senses outward again. My discipline is returning again and again. 

I have wanted these things for so long.

I can only slip the bonds of maya for one second because of the grace of my guru.

From a lesson given by Swami Laksmanjoo on Tantraloka, Ahnika 5 (not yet published) Universal Shaiva Fellowship

Never to wander

How many times I passed this spot on the way.

The way to this, not this... what about this?

I felt bliss again, and this time I stopped... then at last I sat down.

Endless bliss... 

My guru has been here forever.

Did we ever move at all?

Here I am at my guru's feet.... never to wander away again.

Here in the buddhi mind

I am journeying, and there is no place but here, no where to go.

I do not try. And that's all (this is not an intellectual technique).

I am HERE.

The kriyas.... the kriyas are Goddess moving.

I hear the plane on the tarmac all the time. (Pack your bags, my guru said). Sometime in the late afternoon or evening, the bubbly tinkly prana rising through the akasha begins, and now I notice the moment it starts.

And finally I understand, though it seems so obvious now. Which is fine because understanding is the booby prize.

That said...

Sound is very different from vision. Sound inside arises, and I am enchanted, I stop and tune in to the lovely divine tinkling... ohhh. Nothing could sound more beautiful.

This: the sound is about going inside.

For me, I fell from meditation, from japa and dharanas... fell through them and here in this velvet darkness it is suddenly so quiet, so still, so alive.

Outside I have equipoise. Oh, this is what is happening... I go with whatever it is. I can turn on a dime. Okay, now this.

My mind is steady. When mind does acrobatics, I am here in the buddhi mind, simply here.

The head falling forward kriya takes me deeper into the center place, where my mind is completely steady. No movement. No thoughts. Several times a day.

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...