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Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

~ Recovery from PTSD & depression + yoga, silliness & poetry…

Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness

Tag Archives: Knowledge

History of a spiritual quest – part i

28 Tuesday Jul 2009

Posted by Svasti in Life, Spirituality

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Asana, ballet, Knowledge, Melbourne, spiritual quest, Spirituality, Suburbia-Urbia, Synchronised swimming, Yoga

Apparently I now do post topics by request.

Or I’ve been asked to provide more information anyways… actually a single post generated two different requests.

Anthroyogini asked to hear more about my experiences as a young heathen girl, trying out different flavours of paganism. There were a few!

And Catatonic Kid wanted to know more about “that moment you were talking about… when knowledge descends”.

Actually, these requests aren’t that far apart now I think about it! Anthroyogini’s question sorta leads right into CK’s. Just perhaps a little down the track.

So, on with the story, eh?

Actually, I can’t remember how old (or young) I was when I had my first thought about all things esoteric/spiritual. But I was young, and so this tale starts then.

As a child…

From a young age, I experienced things that aren’t supposed to be there – invisible beings, auras, disembodied voices delivering useful/accurate messages. Yeah, yeah, you believe it or not – I don’t give a rats umm… you know what.

Before I’d even graduated from reading my children’s bible, I was obsessed with the alternatives to traditional religion.

This obsession came from nowhere, growing up as I was in the culture-free vanilla world of deepest darkest Suburbia-Urbia (aka south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne).

My prevailing experience as a child was of feeling like a fish in a desert – being in the wrong place and surrounded by the wrong people.

There wasn’t anyone around with personal or intellectual knowledge in any of the topics that fuelled my interests and inner experiences. Not that it mattered.

Because regardless, and whilst still of primary school age, there was some things I knew about the world and how it worked. Not consciously, not logically. Just intuitively.

I didn’t feel like I had to know more, not just then anyway. But I was happy with my little nugget of knowledge, and felt no fear of the things I experienced. It was just how life was. No one told me stories to colour my perceptions and I didn’t talk about it either.

It’s funny how I remember very little of my childhood years, but this sense of what I knew to be real, above and beyond the physical world around me… that I recall very clearly.

What I remember from before the age of ten is limited. But most of the time I was off in my own magical world.

Life grew increasingly miserable the older I got, as I became the target of my brother’s anger more and more, and I was definitely far from popular at school.

But still, this kind-of-knowledge I possessed, it kept me going. I’d write in my diary about things I wanted to learn without knowing what they were called. There were no books to refer to in my school or local library and certainly no internetz (way back then!).

And while I didn’t know anything about yoga til my mid-20s, somehow I’d gotten into ballet and synchronised swimming, both requiring a lot of flexibility and stretching (very much yoga-like practices).

Plus, my best friend growing up was a gymnast and so for fun and as play; we’d practice the splits, handstands, backbends etc.

So I guess I had a head start with asana before I even knew what it was.

[Read part ii]

~ Svasti

-37.814251 144.963169

I Am Shiva

09 Monday Jun 2008

Posted by Svasti in Poetry, Spirituality

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Awakening, Knowledge, Mad beauty, Meditation, Poem, Shiva

Spreading in all directions
No beginning, no end
Or starting place
Located nowhere and everywhere
Present in each molecule
Sometimes I forget where I’ve been – a game of cosmic hide & seek
Until I laugh aloud and sense my Self
Ah!! Here I Am!!

But sometimes I forget a lot
My hiding place feels like home
Until the dream is over
Waking is such joy & plain, freedom & release, tears & laughter
Ofcourse! How could I have thought otherwise?
All along, I really knew

Indescribably falling, spreading, lifting, awake, open, thrilling, clear, sane
Calm erupts in the bindu
Energetically connecting
Like a flood – powerful, everywhere, nowhere
No here, but present

Why do I laugh & cry simultaneously?
I am free but how could I not have known?
I am Siva, as are all (don’t forget this)
The folly of this life is hilarity
How did I get to this place?
So imagined, so separated?

How is it I forget?
So ecstatic, amused, amazed and desperate (don’t forget this)
Tis but a visit this time (don’t forget this)
But how do I not?

Who is doing anything?
Where is that located?
Nowhere in this world, surely not
This is so

If I is not here, not there
Then I is inseparable
I is all that, all this
I can’t be NOT
I is spreading, flooding
Endlessly all places, changeable, mutable
The currents mistake themselves as I
And think themselves solid
Ha ha!

Find the beginning of an ocean, will you?
Ha ha!
Even trying will exhaust you, will confuse you
Just see the ocean
Not each droplet
And accept the flow
As it is

~Svasti
(from a MASSIVE night of meditation)

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