I put a spell on you

I put a spell on you
’cause you’re mine
You better stop the things you do
I ain’t lyin’
No I ain’t lyin’
You know I can’t stand it
You’re runnin’ around
You know better daddy
I can’t stand it cause you put me down
I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine
You’re mine
I love ya
I love you
I love you
I love you anyhow
And I don’t care If you don’t want me
I’m yours right now
You hear me
I put a spell on you
Because you’re mine

--Best of Nina Simone

exhilarating both

I got God and Amma in a new way over the course of the retreat. I felt Amma take up residence in my heart where she lived for me as a concept before. I got how much thinking I do and how what I’ve been wanting and trying to articulate is speaking from my heart. All these things that I have said before, in many different ways, I guess they are heard in the context we are ready to hear. When I felt I was speaking from my heart in the past I would filter it all up through my head first. I learned this weekend that when I speak from my heart there is no brain involved. I already know how to talk so there is nothing to think about-I can just allow Amma’s grace to speak through me. It is very subtle though and my mind and ego are laying down banana peels in my path wanting to throw me off course.

Today at work I was so excited to return. I saw how there is no difference in anything from who I am. Amma is who I am, and when I surrender to her I get her through me. Woah. Then I can be an offering to the entire world and there is no ME to filter anything through.
Hanuman, the messenger of Ram, has always been with me, but I saw him in other people and I realized that I am Hanuman. All I want is to be open as a messenger a conduit for the wisdom and truth of God to flow through me, unique to each person and every being I interact with. Delivering what people most want to hear at their deepest core. Durga and Hanuman. As my self disintegrates there is no me left, but this is reason to celebrate because I always thought that would make me empty and in a way I am still saying the same thing, but when “I’m” not there love, authenticity, compassion and grace are there.

And I believe Amma wants me in the states ultimately. She wants me to come to India and get trained, purify myself more, clean the sludge so the stream of amrita will effortlessly flow. There is a long journey of churning and yielding ahead. India India India. I am unbelievably inspired. I felt in the back of my mind that I would initiate into sanyas some day and either live in an ashram or be very remote in the world somewhere. Maybe I still will. But I hear Amma saying that I have skills that are valuable IN the world, in this world of maya. I can help people, I don’t know how. On a regular basis I interact with people one on one and can feel that what I am saying or how I am being makes a difference, but still there feels like something more vast than daily incidental actions are the best use of me. How can I serve? Amma, teach me to serve the world in the way that you know is best. This discovery seems it will come next year. Right now there is still a lot of house to be cleaned. Staying on track, doing my sadhana, not getting nailed down by the dramas I sometimes put myself through. She wants me to explore my self by my self and that scares me deeply and is exhilarating both.

chance to reveal

"A spiritual aspirant is backed up by the whole spiritual world. All saints lend their invisible help and support to such a struggler. You are never really left alone. You will get help from saints and yogis internally. Their spiritual vibrations will elevate and inspire you."

Gosh, those were the exact words leaving an impression in me as well.
hearing this message over and over again so that maybe it will penetrate this ignorant dense mind and make its way to my heart is necessary.
I think i know something, think I've learned something, think I've figured something out and have a say in anything. My mind distracts and teases me wishing to fill itself with validation. when the words fall silently on my heart without passing through the sieve of this gross mind the process happens selflessly, through the Guru's Grace.
over and over and over and over. humilty, surrender, getting myself out of the way so that truth can have the smallest chance to reveal itself.
thank you.Om Namah Shivaya.

life and its constituent parts

Life is lifing at an extraordinarily beauitful pace and with brilliant color all around me. It is like I can see a finer point of subtlty than is on the surface. Having such an appreciation for Teresa and her love and devotion for her Mother. Interacting with the pigeons and really feeling our connection. It is so nice to know where my emotionality comes from. Having a cancer moon in vedic astrology makes so much sense.
appreciating the laugh styles that "my guys" at work have. Feeling such a fondness for Tonia with no direct experience or reason to feel so. I love the subtleties of life. and I love that i appreciate them. I just remembered that sweet exercise thatMike Robbins had us do when Karen and i went to his seminar: every morning when you do your journal writing spend some extra time writing about the things you apprciate about yourself. Typically this is harder for me to do about myself than it is others, but i got so savvy at giving it up to myself it was a fun exercise.
I fall in love with life and its constituent parts so easily. Now, if I can only serve God as the masculine, be guided by God's infinite direction and wisdom and attract a partner that wants to grow together long-term.
Even though I fall in love easily and often the partner I want to grow with is a different matter-I continue to establish my life in a particular shape and it is important to me that the integrity be honored.
as we shuffle off this mortal coil..
Happy Sade Sati to me! Venus giveth and Saturn he taketh away!
(usually I try to hold a context for this blog that is less journally/head-run-off and more blog/informative, but i realize here that I am blurring the line pretty disctinctly, and I am okay with that. I appreciate that I acknowledge the "small stuff."

changing lanes into the divine

well I'm still merging.. have my blinker on. wait, can you merge with a blinker..turn signal, whatever, or is merging distinctly without the blinker? when you signal and go that is called changing lanes.
Changing lanes with the divine. If I ever write a memoir that'll be the title. I was just thinking how I didn't have a title for the autofelatibiography that I will never write.

Where to begin? I guess to say that I have been thinking about what my life will be like when I come back from India would be an accurate account of the past week. When I started this blog and when I started knowing that India was on the horizon it was hatched from a place of total surrender to whatever God had in store for me, but I was putting in a request that that involve me staying in India living the life of a free spirit, spreading love and meditating singing "for a living." I thought that. that that is possible. that that that that.

And I don't doubt that. now. but I do think I will likely return to the states and assume my life as a Western thirty-something. Besides I'd/I'll have to get creative in the way I go about staying in India since they kick you out after six months if you're a regular ol tourist.

So I am seeing how there is this paradox. there is a balance. there is an east and there is a west. and i like the west. it has been good to me. when i read about swami sivananda radha and her time spent with Swamiji I am opened to much of the reality of what being at the ashram was, and ostensibly will, be like.

I haven't lost my cynicism. Oh, how sharp and dreadful it is.