In admiring and perceiving the acts of other beings, I remember that I am I and they are they, as different as two grasshoppers munching away in a field. After a while I think that what I do is just as good as what they do, and vice versa.
I notice how, after many months of traveling, I do not appreciate the contrasts so much anymore. I don’t see the beauty or appreciate the novelty of clashing cultures as much as I did when I was fresh off the airplane.
I am so ready to leave this place. I am ready to be home, to see my family, to be normal again. To express myself fully, openly, for all to see, and not feel judged for it by people from another culture who don’t understand me. Maybe in having this experience, I can relate to other people who have spent a long time away from home, away from their native cultures. I am so fortunate to be able to return home. Some people cannot do that because their homes do not exist anymore, or it is not possible with life situations for them to return. For example, like immigrants or refugees.
There is something so palpable about missing your homeland. It really is the land, and the people, and the songs which wind through both.
The knowledge that I want to be the best person I can possibly be, to assist in the global transformation of Earth into a place of light and truth, requires me doing exactly what my heart wants. My heart really misses my family and wants to go home soon.
I remember how heart-opened and free I felt when I was first in Nepal, teaching English in Nakote village. My heart was carrying me. My love was carrying me. My heart is no longer carrying me in India, because it has already set its course for home. It has set its course on love, and is doing everything it can to draw love experiences to it because that is what it craves.
I deserve to be in love now. I deserve to see, feel, and express beauty, to enjoy myself. I am free to go and do what my heart desires, because God is at the center of my heart.
I wonder, too, if my heart is actually a higher-dimensional being than I am. It doesn’t always resonate with specific plans or actions, but rather with feelings, frequencies, and energetic vibrations. I think I am starting to live from here, from a purely energetic, higher-dimensional place. Maybe just getting tastes.
I love the feeling of self-acceptance and situational acceptance. I love being right here, right now. Inside the envelope of this moment are stories to be told, lives to be had, love to be felt. I am so grateful.
It is so strange to be in a place that feels so utterly foreign to me (India). The people and the society are so opposite to who I am. They are counter-intuitive. Because of this contrast, I can more quickly define myself and my boundaries. It is actually crucial to my sanity to do this; otherwise, if I wasn’t clear about only doing what I want, I would be torn apart by guilt, shame, fear, anger, and hatred in less than five minutes.
It is so easy to make the mistake of comparing myself to others. So easy to fall into the traps of the many misunderstandings I’ve had about the different paths of the many lives on this planet. Mostly, I am saying that it is dangerous to compare myself to other people. Doing this invites the judgments which might assert a whole host of viewpoints, like “I am better than he is,” or “She is better than I am,” or “He needs to stop doing that and be more this way so that I can feel more comfortable.”
Helambu is a beautiful land (where I volunteered last fall). Nepal, the Himalaya, astounding. But looking into my own eyes, I know the landscape of my own heart is also beautiful. Perhaps it is more beautiful than outer landscapes. It is a dreamscape, a soulscape, a lovescape. Planting myself there, in my heart, has been one of the most rewarding and difficult experiences of my life.
I desire to live from my heart with a sense of ease and grace. I am attracted to people who move through life easily and gracefully – I would like to find this in myself and make a habit of it.
Something had to get cleaned out of me by going to India. I had to make room for all the empty space to breathe in! I had to open up and let go before more love, joy, trust, and centered decision-making could happen.
I am realizing that a lot of this trip has been about learning what fear really is. I used to think that fear was just a nuisance; that it was usually an unfounded emotion just getting in the way of my true desires. I would push through fear and feel it out violently, as though it were some disease to be cleansed and purified out of my body.
Now my understanding of fear has shifted. I also see fear as a valuable sign, a tool which helps to guide me and lets me know what I am ready for and what I am not ready for. When the fear response is in balance and I am not working on clearing past fears, this fear response can actually be a guide to truth. The fear doesn’t show me the truth; it just points the direction, like a sign with an arrow. It points to the corner of my universe where beautiful things want to be happening, and if I allow my love and attention to go there, I can be surprised by the ease, breath, and grace I find.
Life, for me, does not have to be so hard. Clear discernment of the heart, connected with the body, and verified by trusted friends who have good intuitive sense, can guide me into clearer pathways of light. A different perception of time is also required here. I mean that grasping at the future is not a healthy way to get anywhere. Force and effort are exhausting. It is better to let my river flow in the direction it naturally wants to go.
It is entirely possible for good, healthy, enjoyable emotions to also be parts of myself which I have been denying. Maybe it has been a practice of mine to deny myself good things like comfort, ease, wealth, beauty, and simple pleasures. This practice is even more apparent in India, where the general environment is harsh, annoying, loud, unrefined, invasive, and obnoxious. My small acts of self-care really stand out in contrast to this environment. Maybe the environment here is a reflection of the way I have treated myself in the past, and in learning to do things in contrast to it, I am learning to distance myself from old patterns of self-criticism, forcing, and over-expending effort.
Perhaps I am creating my own meaning here, but I still think it is a useful metaphor for changing personal behavior patterns. Any new, life-supporting pattern is obviously going to feel totally different than an old, self-destructive pattern. The two energies are polar opposites. Perhaps I am in the middle of my own “Precession of the Equinoxes,” where my core operating system is drastically shifting poles from being life/self - destructive to life/self - supportive. I like this analogy a lot, even if it is mostly intellectual! Maybe I will watch my body and emotions to see if they can verify its truth also.
Ciao for now,
Melissa
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Friday, April 13, 2012
A Visit to Mahananda Siddha
Yesterday was New Year’s Eve in Tamil Nadu, the province in India where I have been staying for the past two weeks. I went with my friends Ganga, Tara, Sanjay, Lavania, and Swami to see a great Siddha (Aka “medicine person” in Shamanic language. You could also call him a saint or sage in other traditions). His name is Mahananda Siddha, and here is his story:
About ten years ago, he was a normal man in his seventies living in Bangalore. He had made his fortune by exporting turmeric, and then became the CEO of several software companies. Needless to say, he was a VERY wealthy man, even by American standards. He was also very spiritual, and donated large portions of his fortune to restoring and renovating temples and feeding hungry devotees and sadhus (wandering ascetic pilgrims).
Then, one night, Shiva appeared to him in his bedroom. Shiva told him to give up everything – all his companies, his wealth, his wife and kids, and go meditate on a specific mountain in Tamil Nadu, called Mahadeva Malai (Great Lord Mountain). So he followed Shiva’s request, giving up everything and going to this mountain. When he arrived there, Shiva gave him very specific instructions. He told him to never cut his hair again, to only take a bath once a year, and to only wear one piece of cloth all year and change it when he takes his bath. The catch is that Shiva also told him to never eat food or drink water again, that he should instead lie directly on a fire every morning and absorb his energy that way. These days, Mahananda Siddha calls the food we eat “dummy food.” He says “You get your energy 2nd or 3rd hand, from plants or animals; I get my energy 1st hand directly from the sun, the fire.” There is only one exception to this routine, which is that he doesn’t lie in the fire if it is raining because that stops the rain, and he says the farmers need the rain.
Yesterday was quite a blessing, to say the least. It is common for Hindu devotees to perform the ritual of abhishek, which involves pouring water or milk over a Shiva lingam (a phallic-shaped stone representing Shiva). All over India, Hindu priests have been performing this ceremony for thousands of years. Yesterday, we performed abhishek to Mahananda Siddha, pouring water and milk all over his head. He says this is energetically equivalent to doing abhishek on 30 million Shiva lingams simultaneously.
On our way home, our friend Swami showed us a holy place where a great yogi is entombed. They call these places “Samadhis”, where great yogis have since dropped the body, but their spirit continues to remain in that place and nourish the spiritual life of the people. It is very common in India. There are probably 50 Samadhis in Tamil Nadu alone. This yogi is known as the river yogi, because about 30 years ago, the local people found him buried in the mud under the river, deep in meditation, when they were digging up some mud for building their houses. Then he opened his eyes and looked at them. They instantly realized he was not dead, but in Samadhi (a state of deep meditation and absorption with the Divine), so they brought him to their village, called Poondi. He is now known as Poondi Mahan, the saint of Poondi, and people can come to visit him and feel his darshan (blessings). The energy of his Samadhi was blissful, loving, and pure. Wow, what a day!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu
Above are pictures of a recording session in Chennai after my friend Sanjay bought some speakers from this amazing artist/musician. I asked if I could record a song, and he said yes. It's a rough cut, but it's my song all the same! Wow, serendipity happens again.
Below those pics are some photos of the friends from Seattle I am staying with in Tiruvannamalai: Sanjay, my neighbor from Wallingford, Gonga (with the white beard), and his wife, Tara.
I have reached a place where I could stay for a long time. I can only stay for four days now, then I am going to do a week of volunteer work with victims from a fire in another state, but then I think I will return again afterwards to soak up some of the amazing vibes of this place. I am staying for free with friends from Seattle who live here semi-permanantly. My neighbor, Sanjay, from Wallingford, introduced me to his friends Gonga and Tara who have started a temple here called Universal Fellowship of Light: All Saints Temple. This temple consists of one large room with photographs of many saints from all over India, as well as a spare bedroom/bathroom in the back. I am staying in that bedroom.
It's funny, because I thought I was coming to India for spiritual reasons. I thought I would meet some amazing yogis or medicine people, maybe learn from them or work with them. But mostly my trip has been about endurance, acceptance, patience, and about my relationship with myself. India is a hard place to travel in. It's tiring. It accosts you from all sides with offers to buy things, with poverty, with loudly bleeping buses and rickshaws, with children asking for money and pens, and with stares from men and women who are not ashamed to zap you with their eyes for many minutes without breaking their gaze. It's been amazing and tiring at the same time.
In south India, since I flew here from Delhi on Feb 14, I have spent all my time in Kerela, at beaches, soaking up the sun and the waves, at Amma's ashram singing devotional songs, in the mountains where they grow tea and spices, and at fishing towns eating my fill of fresh fish and prawns. I have been missing home, even though my time has been full of fun touristic activities. There comes a time, in the traveler's circuit, when visiting tourist places becomes more exhausting than fulfilling. I think I have reached that point, at least in India.
Then I came to Tiruvannamalai. I don't know, but something about the energy of this place is what I have been searching for all this time in India. I feel like I am arriving here too late, like I should have come directly here and not wasted so much time on the beach, etc etc. And staying with a friend, an American, a neighbor, for God's sakes, from Seattle, is comforting to say the least. Walking into the "All Saints Temple," I felt intuitively that I AM meeting these saints, finally. After all of this exhausting travel, I am finally connecting with why I came to India: for spiritual knowledge and illumination.
The mountain and the land itself are filling me with the calmest energy I've felt in my whole time in India. The sense of calm is also making me realize how tired I feel. I am excited and warmed by the homecoming that I sense, connected to the mountain itself, the energy of this place, and to seeing my friends from Seattle. The mountain's name is "Arunachala." It is known to be the actual abode of Lord Shiva, and many say it is the most sacred mountain in all of India. Pilgrims flock here every full moon to circumnavigate it. Many saints and yogis have and continue to make their lives here, meditating in hidden caves in the mountain or giving teachings in the nearby town. A guru who is famous in the West, called Ramana Maharishi, lived here in caves for many years, and now his ashram is also here. A verse in the Arunachala Mahatmyam, (taken from Wikipedia) translated from Sanskrit into Tamil by Sri Ramana Maharshi says:
"Arunachala is truly the holy place. Of all holy places it is the most sacred! Know that it is the heart of the world. It is truly Siva himself! It is his heart-abode, a secret kshetra. In that place the Lord ever abides the hill of light named Arunachala."[5]
Ramana Maharishi used to walk every day around Arunachala as a meditation, and says that "If you go round this hill it will give you its grace even you don't want it." It may sound cheesy, but I really feel that this is a sacred place. I don't just believe what everybody else is saying, I can FEEL the sacredness in my bones and in my blood. It feels like connecting my umbilical cord again with the universal, undying, infinite source of light.
Tomorrow morning, I am going with Sanjay, Gonga, and Tara to walk around the mountain. We plan to leave at 5 am to avoid the heat, and take the "inner path," the path that goes through nature and follows closely to the mountain. We wil walk slowly, in silence, "like pregnant women," as they say around here.
I finish this post with a heart that is open and waiting for grace. I know that grace is there, love is there, it's just coming slowly and gently into my tired body, like a dove settling into its nest after a long flight.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Writings on Love from Ammachi's Ashram
Love. There's something about it that we yearn for. Our heart is a magnet or a drain pipe always drawing love towards us. We can never forget love, once we've experienced it. Love touches us where we are most tender and innocent, where we forget to delineate the difference between self and other.
There is not always a way to escape from love. Sometimes the feeling is simply unavoidable - a white dove exploding from our chest in a flurry of feathers and breath. We don't know how it works. Sometimes love fills us with the most incredible ecstasy; other times it drains us until we feel as empty as a bowl with no fruit inside. Either way, love is a journey and a destination. It is a story in itself, being told through a network of many lives and many bodies.
Would love exist were there not bodies to feel it? Would love exist were there not an object to adore? Feeling love is the simplest, most beautiful thing on Earth, yet it has the capacity to attract many complications. Love without judgement is rare. Oftentimes love comes with more questions than answers - how do I express this feeling? Does this have to do with the other person, or with me? Will my heart be received or rejected?
Maybe John Steinbeck was right when he said, in "East of Eden," that the thing all humans are most afraid of is rejection. I can easily take trains by myself across India while relying on my innate strength and courage, yet it is more difficult for me to tell a man honestly about my tender feelings for him than it is for me to walk down a street full of beggars. I can hide inside myself when walking down the street, but I can't do that when I stand up for my feelings.
I would like to think that external courage begets internal courage. Where does the word come from, anyway? It comes from the word coeur, which means heart in French. Angeles Arrien interprets this to mean that courage implies standing by your heart. Being courageous doesn't need to have anything to do with journeying outside and away from yourself. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. It can require more courage to journey into yourself and see what lives there because there is no escaping yourself. When you are traveling, there is always the option of packing up and leaving a place if it does not suit you. With yourself, you are stuck. There is no one else who is going to rescue you. You are there all alone on your one little raft, floating on the endless sea of your own feelings. You can cry for help, maybe from God or from a trusted friend, and you can be blessed by grace. But you alone are the antagonist and the protagonist, the hero and the demon, or your own story.
In many ways, a new feeling of love requires us to shift our realities. Are we aligning with our own truth? Do we accept our own authorship of our lives, or do we shirk this responsibility off onto others through blame and judgement? Is there a new action, a change that is needed to reflect the feelings that we have inside our hearts?
I am always seeking to have my actions mirror my feelings. In this way, I draw out of myself all these internal escapades into a place where I can actually see them and interact with them in the real world of people and relationships, journeys and destinations. We are all called to do things which ask us to define who we are. In a way, we can define ourselves by our actions, by what we do with our time. This is not meant to be a judgement, only an honest perception of reality. How does time feel for us? Are we able to direct our own flow of time, or are we constantly following a schedule that was set for us by someone else? Do we even know why we do the same things day after day, without shifting the pattern? These questions can guide us into a higher state of self-awareness, so that we ensure we are the conscious leaders of our own lives.
Conscious leadership means being aware of all the factors which influence our choices, and knowing through some intuitive process that we are following our own truth. We don't have to see or understand all or ourselves to know we are on the right track. A self is a very infinite thing, and best perceived in terms of orbits and gravitational pull, rather than microscopes and the glare of a spotlight. We are all orbiting around something, and it is our job to become increasingly aware of our relationship to that something. What does the pull feel like? How does it influence our direction? When do we slow down, and when do we charge forward? These are all things which have to do with our center of gravity in relation to the mass or density of what we are orbiting around.
As we explore the various spinoffs of our central orbit, we come to understand what we are made of. This is something we can never truly see. John O'Donohue speaks of the human soul as something which can never be seen in an objective way, only felt and sensed by the subtle energies of the heart. When we get a glimpse of what we are made of, we get very excited. Our ecstasy begins to increase, along with our great love of empty spaces, epic stories, heroes and heroines, and things which call us into life. We don't have to forget anymore. With one whiff, we are resurrected from the threat of a life lived outside ourselves, and we want to know more. Where does this power come from? Is it mine? Can I cherish is? Can I grow this garden which I so adore? Can I cultivate the garden of my own soul?
And so begins the journey of a thousand lifetimes. A gardener's work is never finished. There is always something more beautiful to plant, another garden party to organize. In the same way, we are never finished with the exploration of our own souls. Would we really ever want to be? There is a sheer magic about new light dawning, of untold stories emerging from the shadows, of inviting new friends over to share a plate of soul food. I think it is a great gift that we can never truly see ourselves, for it allows us to go on exploring our frontiers until the end of time.
You might think this a lonely enterprise, this never-ending search for truth. But you see, truth is there all along. It never leaves. It is always guiding you, helping and consoling you along life's slippery waterways. The fact that we can never fully see ourselves allows us to grow closer to other beings who can then reflect the light of our own truth back to us. We can then see, through their eyes, what we are made of and how we grow into more beautiful and magnificent forms.
The gift of life is the gift of relationship. Without multiplicity we could never live this story which is so tantalizingly unfolding. There is no need to rush. We can be here, fully present, fully aware of our own role and our journey. After all. love is a feeling, and feelings take time to explore. Love is something we keep communicating, day after day. We keep giving it, we keep receiving it. In doing so, we nourish the very roots upon which we stand. When we remember to communicate love, we remember why we are here. Let us keep remembering. In our own unique ways, let us keep approaching the blinding light of our souls to weave the fabric of time back together.
Aho! Namaste.
Melissa
There is not always a way to escape from love. Sometimes the feeling is simply unavoidable - a white dove exploding from our chest in a flurry of feathers and breath. We don't know how it works. Sometimes love fills us with the most incredible ecstasy; other times it drains us until we feel as empty as a bowl with no fruit inside. Either way, love is a journey and a destination. It is a story in itself, being told through a network of many lives and many bodies.
Would love exist were there not bodies to feel it? Would love exist were there not an object to adore? Feeling love is the simplest, most beautiful thing on Earth, yet it has the capacity to attract many complications. Love without judgement is rare. Oftentimes love comes with more questions than answers - how do I express this feeling? Does this have to do with the other person, or with me? Will my heart be received or rejected?
Maybe John Steinbeck was right when he said, in "East of Eden," that the thing all humans are most afraid of is rejection. I can easily take trains by myself across India while relying on my innate strength and courage, yet it is more difficult for me to tell a man honestly about my tender feelings for him than it is for me to walk down a street full of beggars. I can hide inside myself when walking down the street, but I can't do that when I stand up for my feelings.
I would like to think that external courage begets internal courage. Where does the word come from, anyway? It comes from the word coeur, which means heart in French. Angeles Arrien interprets this to mean that courage implies standing by your heart. Being courageous doesn't need to have anything to do with journeying outside and away from yourself. In fact, it can be quite the opposite. It can require more courage to journey into yourself and see what lives there because there is no escaping yourself. When you are traveling, there is always the option of packing up and leaving a place if it does not suit you. With yourself, you are stuck. There is no one else who is going to rescue you. You are there all alone on your one little raft, floating on the endless sea of your own feelings. You can cry for help, maybe from God or from a trusted friend, and you can be blessed by grace. But you alone are the antagonist and the protagonist, the hero and the demon, or your own story.
In many ways, a new feeling of love requires us to shift our realities. Are we aligning with our own truth? Do we accept our own authorship of our lives, or do we shirk this responsibility off onto others through blame and judgement? Is there a new action, a change that is needed to reflect the feelings that we have inside our hearts?
I am always seeking to have my actions mirror my feelings. In this way, I draw out of myself all these internal escapades into a place where I can actually see them and interact with them in the real world of people and relationships, journeys and destinations. We are all called to do things which ask us to define who we are. In a way, we can define ourselves by our actions, by what we do with our time. This is not meant to be a judgement, only an honest perception of reality. How does time feel for us? Are we able to direct our own flow of time, or are we constantly following a schedule that was set for us by someone else? Do we even know why we do the same things day after day, without shifting the pattern? These questions can guide us into a higher state of self-awareness, so that we ensure we are the conscious leaders of our own lives.
Conscious leadership means being aware of all the factors which influence our choices, and knowing through some intuitive process that we are following our own truth. We don't have to see or understand all or ourselves to know we are on the right track. A self is a very infinite thing, and best perceived in terms of orbits and gravitational pull, rather than microscopes and the glare of a spotlight. We are all orbiting around something, and it is our job to become increasingly aware of our relationship to that something. What does the pull feel like? How does it influence our direction? When do we slow down, and when do we charge forward? These are all things which have to do with our center of gravity in relation to the mass or density of what we are orbiting around.
As we explore the various spinoffs of our central orbit, we come to understand what we are made of. This is something we can never truly see. John O'Donohue speaks of the human soul as something which can never be seen in an objective way, only felt and sensed by the subtle energies of the heart. When we get a glimpse of what we are made of, we get very excited. Our ecstasy begins to increase, along with our great love of empty spaces, epic stories, heroes and heroines, and things which call us into life. We don't have to forget anymore. With one whiff, we are resurrected from the threat of a life lived outside ourselves, and we want to know more. Where does this power come from? Is it mine? Can I cherish is? Can I grow this garden which I so adore? Can I cultivate the garden of my own soul?
And so begins the journey of a thousand lifetimes. A gardener's work is never finished. There is always something more beautiful to plant, another garden party to organize. In the same way, we are never finished with the exploration of our own souls. Would we really ever want to be? There is a sheer magic about new light dawning, of untold stories emerging from the shadows, of inviting new friends over to share a plate of soul food. I think it is a great gift that we can never truly see ourselves, for it allows us to go on exploring our frontiers until the end of time.
You might think this a lonely enterprise, this never-ending search for truth. But you see, truth is there all along. It never leaves. It is always guiding you, helping and consoling you along life's slippery waterways. The fact that we can never fully see ourselves allows us to grow closer to other beings who can then reflect the light of our own truth back to us. We can then see, through their eyes, what we are made of and how we grow into more beautiful and magnificent forms.
The gift of life is the gift of relationship. Without multiplicity we could never live this story which is so tantalizingly unfolding. There is no need to rush. We can be here, fully present, fully aware of our own role and our journey. After all. love is a feeling, and feelings take time to explore. Love is something we keep communicating, day after day. We keep giving it, we keep receiving it. In doing so, we nourish the very roots upon which we stand. When we remember to communicate love, we remember why we are here. Let us keep remembering. In our own unique ways, let us keep approaching the blinding light of our souls to weave the fabric of time back together.
Aho! Namaste.
Melissa
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Varkala Beach
26 Feb 2012
Language shapes the unconscious. It calls forth what is unformed and gives shape to conscious energy. Sound does this also. What is language but a complicated pattern of sound utterings? When I name something you automatically see it in your mind. Thus, I have created something in your thought-stream. We don't have as much control over our own minds as we would like to think. Anyone armed with the power of language can shift and transform another's reality, especially if their words are full of clear intention and the other person is open to suggestion. Symbols and pictures are another form of language. What we perceive visually, and what we experience every day, changes us in our multi-layered, multidimensional lives.
We never know the full effect of any of our actions. We may see the initial splash of water and remember the weighty, solid quality of our thought-form pebbles as we drop them into a pool of being, yet we fail to recognize that these actions affect everyone around us and the cosmos itself.
For example, I just saw how consciously and intentionally a woman on the beach did a twist on her yoga mat. She fully embraced the space and the time she needed. As a watcher, I was positively affected by her awareness.
Poem:
The Indian Sea Eagle
Breathing open and free on currents of blue sky
Circling one, two, three times
White head and neck
Brown striped mottled body.
Eyes search with piercing eyes from above,
Trying to spot a fish.
I saw one catch a fish in its talons this morning.
Circling, opening, breathing up high
I spread my wings further than you can reach
My feathers adjust to the waves of air,
Tactile space pressurizing in different levels of intensity.
My tail is curved with an indentation inward,
A half moon slotted out like a bite from a cookie
My beak is yellow,
My eyes are open.
I never let you see me perch for too long.
Some people confuse me with vultures--
I know that's not who I am.
I tend to the sea and the sky.
I sleep with the stars and wake with the sun.
I am eagle, restless and free.
Is it possible that we live in multiple universes at once and just don’t know it? Sometimes I get a strange whiff of knowing on my breath, or hear a slight symphony reverberating from my heart. The birds talk when they sing, the ants feast on orange peels and pineapple heads lying strewn across wet, hardened sand.
Where does the mind go? It can go everywhere. Sometimes (okay, most of the time), I don’t understand what is going on, but the picture frame is getting wider. When we see into the formative worlds we see into ourselves. We take a picture, still or moving, of the many layers of our being.
Sometimes there is no reason to doubt that we are being taken care of. This is the same story, told again in a different time and place. Maybe God Himself is evolving. Actually, I quite believe this to be true. I don’t believe that we ARE God, that we should encompass all that God is, because God is everything, and I don’t want to be everything. There are some things, like murder and ill intentions, which I very clearly don’t want to incorporate into my being.
I really believe we have less to worry about than we think. If we are clear with our intentions, if we move in the direction of our inner heart whisperings, all things will be taken care of. The important thing is that we don’t give our power away, and that we take responsibility for everything in our lives.
I have many faults, and one of them is the habit of trying to be better than other people. When I don’t know anything about a person, I’ve never talked to them in my life (and even when I know them as well as I know my parents), I can easily stick one of my mental fabrications onto their face and deem myself better or worse than they are. But this is a dangerous sense of security, a false upliftment. I will never be better or worse than anyone else in creation, and I know it. All I will be is different, a different chord, color, or constellation of experiences.
All beings are given what they need for learning and growth. We may not always understand why (who ever knows why?), but it is clear that the being is changing or experiencing something that, in some way, evolves its ability to express itself. Even hardship is medicine for the soul. In the difficult periods of my life I know that something deeper was getting cooked. I can never say what it was, but it is like alchemy. The lead weights inside our multilayered bodies turn themselves into gold when we give them enough time, space, and attention. Otherwise they stay leaden and continue to direct and organize our lives from a subconscious level.
I believe that learning and growth are basically all about becoming conscious. I do not mean to describe consciousness as some amoeba-like substance or oozing ocean from which we all emerged and to which we are all going (Although who knows?! Maybe that’s the truth. Algae and swamp gas soup could be pretty interesting, although a bit smelly….) I think it’s important to know what we are becoming conscious of, because this is where creation resides. Where is the knower, the one who is seeing in you? What changes when you become aware of the one in you that sees? And what are you seeing? Where does that seer go in the process of seeing? What insights does it uncover? What does it feel, what does it know? These are all questions that don’t need answers, they need the honest process of living.
While sitting on the beach, I just watched how consciously a woman walked into the water after doing yoga. Her fine and supple body seemed in harmony with the waves, with the salt, the spray, and the air. Then I thought I saw a whale spout far in the distance. And I did! Yes, I did see a dolphin or a large fish jump out of the water and splash itself down in a flurry of white spume.
It’s amazing how much our internal mental-emotional states influence our experience of reality. Some mornings we wake up in such a fog that we hardly see the world at all. Other days we arise with clarity and intention, and find magic supporting us wherever we go. Like I said, I think growth is all about becoming conscious. And when we are conscious about what we are doing, then we can actually see ourselves enough to know what we want, and set forth with purpose. In his book, Here to Heal, Richard Feild says that when we are unconscious, we are acting upon past patterns or daydreaming into the future. He also says that try true healing only takes place in the present moment.
Maybe when we are consciously unconscious, or in some way we want to be unaware, we know that more awareness will bring attention to unpleasant or painful things in our world of experience. I think a lot of drugs and addictive patterns in general are there to distract people from their pain until they know they are ready to feel it and re-accept those denied parts back into the self. I like how one lady traveler from Galway, Ireland, described it to me yesterday. It’s like we have clouds of “poor little beasties” inside of us, and they won’t show us their jewels until we stroke them and soothe them like they need to be, like only we know how to do.
So many broken people! And so many conscious people. Maybe brokenness and consciousness are two polarities of one evolving singularity. We all have both of them and as we swing back and forth we widen our ability to perceive what is. I don’t think there is any end or perfection to this process.
Maybe now is the time when I don’t have to be so strong anymore, when I can let myself be soft. Maybe in being strong and in crushing so many of my barriers, I have discovered my weak points, my tender-bellied undersides which will never ever become calloused and hard because it is their nature to be soft. Maybe, like a little girl playing dress-up or picking flowers, that innocent part of me wants to create beauty wherever she goes. Maybe she wants other people to notice, and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe her dances are for the simple sweet joy of living.
It is now that I realize I didn’t come here to change anyone. I came here to change myself.
Language shapes the unconscious. It calls forth what is unformed and gives shape to conscious energy. Sound does this also. What is language but a complicated pattern of sound utterings? When I name something you automatically see it in your mind. Thus, I have created something in your thought-stream. We don't have as much control over our own minds as we would like to think. Anyone armed with the power of language can shift and transform another's reality, especially if their words are full of clear intention and the other person is open to suggestion. Symbols and pictures are another form of language. What we perceive visually, and what we experience every day, changes us in our multi-layered, multidimensional lives.
We never know the full effect of any of our actions. We may see the initial splash of water and remember the weighty, solid quality of our thought-form pebbles as we drop them into a pool of being, yet we fail to recognize that these actions affect everyone around us and the cosmos itself.
For example, I just saw how consciously and intentionally a woman on the beach did a twist on her yoga mat. She fully embraced the space and the time she needed. As a watcher, I was positively affected by her awareness.
Poem:
The Indian Sea Eagle
Breathing open and free on currents of blue sky
Circling one, two, three times
White head and neck
Brown striped mottled body.
Eyes search with piercing eyes from above,
Trying to spot a fish.
I saw one catch a fish in its talons this morning.
Circling, opening, breathing up high
I spread my wings further than you can reach
My feathers adjust to the waves of air,
Tactile space pressurizing in different levels of intensity.
My tail is curved with an indentation inward,
A half moon slotted out like a bite from a cookie
My beak is yellow,
My eyes are open.
I never let you see me perch for too long.
Some people confuse me with vultures--
I know that's not who I am.
I tend to the sea and the sky.
I sleep with the stars and wake with the sun.
I am eagle, restless and free.
Is it possible that we live in multiple universes at once and just don’t know it? Sometimes I get a strange whiff of knowing on my breath, or hear a slight symphony reverberating from my heart. The birds talk when they sing, the ants feast on orange peels and pineapple heads lying strewn across wet, hardened sand.
Where does the mind go? It can go everywhere. Sometimes (okay, most of the time), I don’t understand what is going on, but the picture frame is getting wider. When we see into the formative worlds we see into ourselves. We take a picture, still or moving, of the many layers of our being.
Sometimes there is no reason to doubt that we are being taken care of. This is the same story, told again in a different time and place. Maybe God Himself is evolving. Actually, I quite believe this to be true. I don’t believe that we ARE God, that we should encompass all that God is, because God is everything, and I don’t want to be everything. There are some things, like murder and ill intentions, which I very clearly don’t want to incorporate into my being.
I really believe we have less to worry about than we think. If we are clear with our intentions, if we move in the direction of our inner heart whisperings, all things will be taken care of. The important thing is that we don’t give our power away, and that we take responsibility for everything in our lives.
I have many faults, and one of them is the habit of trying to be better than other people. When I don’t know anything about a person, I’ve never talked to them in my life (and even when I know them as well as I know my parents), I can easily stick one of my mental fabrications onto their face and deem myself better or worse than they are. But this is a dangerous sense of security, a false upliftment. I will never be better or worse than anyone else in creation, and I know it. All I will be is different, a different chord, color, or constellation of experiences.
All beings are given what they need for learning and growth. We may not always understand why (who ever knows why?), but it is clear that the being is changing or experiencing something that, in some way, evolves its ability to express itself. Even hardship is medicine for the soul. In the difficult periods of my life I know that something deeper was getting cooked. I can never say what it was, but it is like alchemy. The lead weights inside our multilayered bodies turn themselves into gold when we give them enough time, space, and attention. Otherwise they stay leaden and continue to direct and organize our lives from a subconscious level.
I believe that learning and growth are basically all about becoming conscious. I do not mean to describe consciousness as some amoeba-like substance or oozing ocean from which we all emerged and to which we are all going (Although who knows?! Maybe that’s the truth. Algae and swamp gas soup could be pretty interesting, although a bit smelly….) I think it’s important to know what we are becoming conscious of, because this is where creation resides. Where is the knower, the one who is seeing in you? What changes when you become aware of the one in you that sees? And what are you seeing? Where does that seer go in the process of seeing? What insights does it uncover? What does it feel, what does it know? These are all questions that don’t need answers, they need the honest process of living.
While sitting on the beach, I just watched how consciously a woman walked into the water after doing yoga. Her fine and supple body seemed in harmony with the waves, with the salt, the spray, and the air. Then I thought I saw a whale spout far in the distance. And I did! Yes, I did see a dolphin or a large fish jump out of the water and splash itself down in a flurry of white spume.
It’s amazing how much our internal mental-emotional states influence our experience of reality. Some mornings we wake up in such a fog that we hardly see the world at all. Other days we arise with clarity and intention, and find magic supporting us wherever we go. Like I said, I think growth is all about becoming conscious. And when we are conscious about what we are doing, then we can actually see ourselves enough to know what we want, and set forth with purpose. In his book, Here to Heal, Richard Feild says that when we are unconscious, we are acting upon past patterns or daydreaming into the future. He also says that try true healing only takes place in the present moment.
Maybe when we are consciously unconscious, or in some way we want to be unaware, we know that more awareness will bring attention to unpleasant or painful things in our world of experience. I think a lot of drugs and addictive patterns in general are there to distract people from their pain until they know they are ready to feel it and re-accept those denied parts back into the self. I like how one lady traveler from Galway, Ireland, described it to me yesterday. It’s like we have clouds of “poor little beasties” inside of us, and they won’t show us their jewels until we stroke them and soothe them like they need to be, like only we know how to do.
So many broken people! And so many conscious people. Maybe brokenness and consciousness are two polarities of one evolving singularity. We all have both of them and as we swing back and forth we widen our ability to perceive what is. I don’t think there is any end or perfection to this process.
Maybe now is the time when I don’t have to be so strong anymore, when I can let myself be soft. Maybe in being strong and in crushing so many of my barriers, I have discovered my weak points, my tender-bellied undersides which will never ever become calloused and hard because it is their nature to be soft. Maybe, like a little girl playing dress-up or picking flowers, that innocent part of me wants to create beauty wherever she goes. Maybe she wants other people to notice, and maybe she doesn’t. Maybe her dances are for the simple sweet joy of living.
It is now that I realize I didn’t come here to change anyone. I came here to change myself.
Varkala Beach
Feb, 25, 2012
Today I am filled with anger. I don't know why. Maybe it's the orange sun beating down hot rays at noon, heating the sand to a crisp. The heat is vicious. It sneaks up on you and surprised you with some unfelt emotion you didn't know you had. I find myself heating up to the point of boiling whenever I am walking around at noon or 1:00. Today it was about the price of internet cafes. 50 rupees an hour. That's a whole dollar! I've been used to paying 20 or 30 rupees per hour. Who am I, some sort of cheapskate? Why do I keep searching like a mad dog under the heat of the midday sun, all for a measly 20 cents?
I suppose it's the principle. No matter what it is, I always look for the best bargain. I've never been an impulse buyer (though sometimes an impulse lover). Does this say something about who I am? Does it tarnish my view of myself as continually approaching, but never reaching, perfection?
I sure hope so. I hope my idiosyncrasies speak loud and clear about my damn story on this earth. What else is there anyway? We can't run around pretending to be angels. We can sure take offense and get our feelings hurt, but no one can blame us if that's what we came here to do.
I wonder, as I walk between internet cafes obsessively checking prices, if the heat forces unobserved anger to rise up in the body and shoot out through the skull. I suppose that's why both murders and ice cream sales go up in the summer months (or so they say in Psychology class).
Sometimes anger turns into hot, salty tears when you cannot find the space to let it out the way it wants to (in vocal growls, threatenings, violence, abuse). Or maybe that's just because I'm female and society trained me to be sad but not angry. (For boys, it's the opposite, you see. It is manly to show anger--it proves domination. But never tears, oh no. Tears and honest sadness would mean you were less of a man, that you were soft like a woman, and we all know it is better to be hard and rigid in this world. Gets a man better privileges, you know. Never let them know what you are thinking inside.)
Gee willakers! All this sarcasm is getting me a little screwed up inside! I can be quite cynical when I want to be. I surprise myself sometimes, but wouldn't you say that's a good thing? If we could predict everything about ourselves then life would be boring as hell. At least we've got a good drama going on, both inside and out. Ant thank God it's not a Soap Opera, but a real thriller this time. We don't really know if our species will make it or not, what with our track record, but at least the plot is exciting. It's got me riveted. Sometimes I can't keep myself from getting all choked up from all the war and calamity, and then I say, "What the hell?" and spin in circles on the starlit beach until I laugh and fall down dizzy.
Today I am filled with anger. I don't know why. Maybe it's the orange sun beating down hot rays at noon, heating the sand to a crisp. The heat is vicious. It sneaks up on you and surprised you with some unfelt emotion you didn't know you had. I find myself heating up to the point of boiling whenever I am walking around at noon or 1:00. Today it was about the price of internet cafes. 50 rupees an hour. That's a whole dollar! I've been used to paying 20 or 30 rupees per hour. Who am I, some sort of cheapskate? Why do I keep searching like a mad dog under the heat of the midday sun, all for a measly 20 cents?
I suppose it's the principle. No matter what it is, I always look for the best bargain. I've never been an impulse buyer (though sometimes an impulse lover). Does this say something about who I am? Does it tarnish my view of myself as continually approaching, but never reaching, perfection?
I sure hope so. I hope my idiosyncrasies speak loud and clear about my damn story on this earth. What else is there anyway? We can't run around pretending to be angels. We can sure take offense and get our feelings hurt, but no one can blame us if that's what we came here to do.
I wonder, as I walk between internet cafes obsessively checking prices, if the heat forces unobserved anger to rise up in the body and shoot out through the skull. I suppose that's why both murders and ice cream sales go up in the summer months (or so they say in Psychology class).
Sometimes anger turns into hot, salty tears when you cannot find the space to let it out the way it wants to (in vocal growls, threatenings, violence, abuse). Or maybe that's just because I'm female and society trained me to be sad but not angry. (For boys, it's the opposite, you see. It is manly to show anger--it proves domination. But never tears, oh no. Tears and honest sadness would mean you were less of a man, that you were soft like a woman, and we all know it is better to be hard and rigid in this world. Gets a man better privileges, you know. Never let them know what you are thinking inside.)
Gee willakers! All this sarcasm is getting me a little screwed up inside! I can be quite cynical when I want to be. I surprise myself sometimes, but wouldn't you say that's a good thing? If we could predict everything about ourselves then life would be boring as hell. At least we've got a good drama going on, both inside and out. Ant thank God it's not a Soap Opera, but a real thriller this time. We don't really know if our species will make it or not, what with our track record, but at least the plot is exciting. It's got me riveted. Sometimes I can't keep myself from getting all choked up from all the war and calamity, and then I say, "What the hell?" and spin in circles on the starlit beach until I laugh and fall down dizzy.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Kanyakumari
A few days ago, I went to Kanyakumari, the Southernmost tip of India, with my two friends from Chile. It was not totally amazing or anything, a bit touristy, but now I can say that I've been there. A funny story: when I reached the water's edge, I had my pinch of tobacco out and ready to make a prayer to the goddess of the sea, where the waters of three oceans meet. While I had my eyes closed, one man approached me and asked, "Where are you from?" I said, "I'm from the U.S. But I want to be left alone now. Could you please go away?" He continued talking to me, "Ah, you are from Obama!" "No, I'm not from Obama, I'm from the U.S., and I'M PRAYING, so please leave me ALONE!!!" "Okay, okay!" He said, and walked away. A couple seconds later another man approached me with one of the local, wild green parrots inside a small cage, its wings clipped. "Parrot, madam?" He said, with a slight head wobble. "NO!!! I don't want PARROT!" I snapped. "I'm praying! GO AWAY!" He slouched off, and I was left with a feeling of discomfort and annoyance that would not go away.
I no longer felt the sense of awe and majesty of staring at the waters of Kanyakumari, I felt pissed off. I wandered around the bend to a small beach where boys and girls were playing in the water, getting their matching uniforms all wet. I waded in up to my knees. Fortunately I had given my camera and wallet to my friends in case I wanted to go swimming, because I got into the biggest splashing fit of my life with the school girls. One of them playfully splashed me, and I splashed her back. When the group of them (probably around 30) saw what we were doing, many of them joined in. I found myself laughing and screaming under big splooshes of water with these girls, then holding hands with a few and dunking under the water to the count of three. It was great. The tension eased, laughter flowing, I was able to taste the real goddess of the sea, the playful nature of the feminine. I'm glad that I was not so serious as to abstain from a little good-hearted fun.
I no longer felt the sense of awe and majesty of staring at the waters of Kanyakumari, I felt pissed off. I wandered around the bend to a small beach where boys and girls were playing in the water, getting their matching uniforms all wet. I waded in up to my knees. Fortunately I had given my camera and wallet to my friends in case I wanted to go swimming, because I got into the biggest splashing fit of my life with the school girls. One of them playfully splashed me, and I splashed her back. When the group of them (probably around 30) saw what we were doing, many of them joined in. I found myself laughing and screaming under big splooshes of water with these girls, then holding hands with a few and dunking under the water to the count of three. It was great. The tension eased, laughter flowing, I was able to taste the real goddess of the sea, the playful nature of the feminine. I'm glad that I was not so serious as to abstain from a little good-hearted fun.
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