Spellbound turn-o-the-year musings

Tags

Asana, Divinity, Enlightenment, God, Guruji, Happy New Year, Love, Mantra, Musings, New Years Eve, Non-dual, Sanskrit, Yoga

Written after a good hour of book browsing and buying…
(thanks to my employers for the Borders gift voucher!)

It’s easy to love with abandon a child, our favourite sport, poetry, chocolate, alcohol, movies, nature, our lover…

But not our Self.

We are cynical about such things. We have trouble thinking we’re more than what we see in the mirror. Often, we think we’re even less than that.

Human beings are truly magnificent – if we can get over our own suffering, selfishness, self-importance and smallness. Greatness is inherent. Waiting for us.

Yet, often we don’t want to expand the boundaries of possibility too far – in case we can’t recover ‘when bad things happen‘. We don’t want to open our hearts too much to another for the same reason.

We have trouble with the concept of God, especially those who are not traditionally religious, like me (a pagan/yogi). Whether it’s the connection to our own divinity, the use of the ‘G’ word, wavering between direct knowledge, belief and doubt… what we can’t see, we question.

There’s a profound issue with our ability to see our Self as God, all beings as God… and to give ourselves over to that larger possibility of human life.

But to me, love of God/Self is actually, the same thing. And, also the same as loving anything else in our lives – our favourite TV show, popcorn, porn… whatever… it’s the same. Just… those things are a smaller version of that larger concept of love.

The obsession/small love for ‘objects’ can arise from the sub-conscious desire for union of self with Self. Unlimited, a sense of connection that when we get it – be that through orgasm, a sunset, realising one of our dreams, meditation – feels so incredibly wonderful. We project this experience on whatever object is around. We want that feeling to last forever. And when it doesn’t, we’re disgruntled.

Home base for human beings is that state of union as a permanent experience.

Trini Girl Blue wrote today that she feels people would shun her if they knew her inner secrets.

Perhaps. More fool them.

Perhaps not. Not everyone thinks that way, thankfully.

This is just fear and the sense of isolation talking. I’ve been in that space too – and continue to experience it off and on. But this state lacks any of the love we easily extend to another person/object.

Some of my most wonderful moments of opening have occured when I’ve told a friend something I was sure they’d think less of me for… only to receive love and support and a different viewpoint on what I thought were my ‘evils’.

Are we afraid of our own divinity so much, that we push aside any possibility of seeing ourselves that way? This is self-cruelty. Are we so afraid of our ability and capacity to be whole and real? To be connected to others – everyone and everything else?

Tonight I sit here alone, deciding if I should venture out and listen to some music – or stay in and meditate (what do I need most of all??)…

Right now my only company is the cat.

Or is it?

This room, if I choose to feel it, is alive with love. There’s… an inter-connectedness of all things…

When I perform yogasana, I clear my channels…

There’s not really a set of channels for each person you know.
Actually there’s only one set of channels for the whole lot of us!
~Guruji

And so I awaken myself through asana to the mass of swarming energy that is life.

I sit for contemplation or meditation, and I lose my sense of I-ness. As a separate being, alone, without other.

When I chant Sanskrit prayers and mantra, it’s the vibrations that tune my heart – allowing me to open wide and have that feeling for myself. To know that it’s true…

The paradox of me – my yogini Self and my suffering Self… I’ve learned and experienced a lot of very profound things in the last eight or so years since I met my Guru.

Whilst the wisdom is with me daily, those experiences of everything being one – they haven’t cemented yet. If they had, I’d be enlightened! 😉

So for now, I honour the duality whilst respecting the non-dual knowledge and experiences I’ve learned and earned.

And here I am, in all my imperfect glory… dealing imperfectly with what I have to deal with… knowing full well its not the entire picture.

I am human, I am flawed
I am human, I can grow
I am human, and love
Is my weakness
And my greatest victory!
~Svasti

Wishing everyone a good dose of peace and harmony on this eve of new tidings. May 2009 bring you insight, love, healing and happiness. May you achieve your heart’s desire.

~Svasti

Monday night conversations

Tags

Blowing in the wind, Boat, Brahmin priest, Disembodied voice, Friends, Ganesha, Hindu wedding, Metaphors, Non-dual, Presents, Relationships, Storm, Union, Vedic ceremony, Yoga

I rang one of my bestest friends – S – last night… she’s my spiritual (if not blood) sister. There in the mail box was a surprise present from her with a little orange Ganesha stamp on the front and instructions not to open it just yet…

Rambling on about myself… I asked and how’s things with you?

In response she starts telling me how just the other week, she almost broke up with her man – they’ve been together for years now. Like, almost as long as I’ve known her. A while. Longer than any of my relationships have ever lasted (there I go, embarrassing myself again).

This is on top of a very shitful year for her. In which her man had knee replacement surgery (on both knees)… she went from full-time employment to living-on-a-prayer-freelancing. And then she was in Thailand with the rest of us (not earning any money), then went back home (to the other side of the world) for four months… again not earning much money – to look after her mum/mom… who currently has cancer and its all touch and go.

So, she wasn’t feeling that great. And yet she still remembered to send me a present. I love her to bits!! And not just coz of the present.

When she was telling me all this stuff, all I could think of was this half-baked metaphor that’d occurred to me a few weeks back, when, falling to pieces and on the way to see my therapist, I felt very much adrift…

I started relating this goofy little story to her:

So yeah, feeling adrift and just… blowing in the wind (but not like the song). Wait, make that a storm. A really gnarly storm. One with lightning and rain, and then… actually, it was this epic storm of the ages. So there’s all these currents pulling and pushing and… now I wasn’t just adrift but being buffeted from side to side. Every movement could unbalance me… in my little boat…

Then that voice, that might not be my voice (sure doesn’t sound like mine and it always says much wiser things than I can ever think of) and yet, it’s a voice only I can hear (I think)… clearly pronounces a few punchy, pithy words:

You’re not just the boat. You’re the ocean too. The storm as well.

How very… non-dual of you… oh, disembodied voice!

The boat’s just on the surface. But it couldn’t be on the surface if it wasn’t for the ocean being there too. Think about that for a second…

Surface conditions are only one set of circumstances. And they don’t affect the depths of the ocean, not really. You’re on the ocean… you’re part of the ocean…

And the storm is, well… not always a storm. Its air and… life.

Expect life to be uneven (as a wise someone I know will say), and you’ll never be taken by surprise if the boat upends for a while.

This wind and storm are the same as that filling the boat’s sails and propelling it forward. Without the wind, the storms… the boat would lie there stagnantly.

Ha! Now, I just gotta figure out how to integrate this pretty little story into the day to day…

And my friend? Well, we talked about a bunch of other stuff too. Of course. There was a little conversation about the steps they’re taking, couples counselling etc… Then, remembering the gorgeous words used in a Hindu/Vedic wedding ceremony we attended a couple of years back.

On a very quick trip to Sydney, I’d suddenly found myself invited to our mutual friend’s wedding along with S. Held at the glorious abode of our favourite Brahmin priest in way out western Sydney.

There’s a whole bunch of stuff that’s fairly standard to a Vedic wedding – invoking Ganesha, the garlanding of bride and groom, the bride wearing red, seven steps taken together as a newly married couple… but I’m yet to find the words he used anywhere else online.

There was all this glorious stuff about… revering the god/goddess within each other, promising adoration, fealty and many other beautiful things for ‘a thousand summers’…

We both left that ceremony in a gooey state of bliss. So I gently reminded her of that time and… listened to her voice perk up.

It’s a practice after all… to remember each day the things we love about our significant other… just as important as yogasana. Well, its yoga too isn’t it? Given the word yoga actually means ‘union’?

~Svasti