(for "the Boy", the midwife of my death)
Beauty stalks the Lover
Beckoning into death
Sensate seduction
The Mirror
“Look at me!”
“Taste Me”
“Consume Me”
"Become Me"
Dissolve into disorientation
Ouroboros of Eros
Arising from Chaos
Primordial beat of the Death March
Beauty holds the pulsation
Her sword, the conductor’s baton
Objectless desire
Die here
Again
Many years ago the Beloved starting coming into my dreamtime. He would take the form of an old lover and beckon me into the consummation of earth, air, fire and water. Each time was an alchemy of the heart. I knew not to worry about the form or the vehicle in the dreamtime. Once it was Krishnamurti before I even knew who he was. The dreamscape was a modern American home. The young man was an Indian man in his twenties in a western style suit. I was beholden by my immense love for him. The most exquisite thing I have ever felt, awake or dreaming. Imagine a year later when I picked up a Krishnamurti book and discovered there a picture of him in his twenties in a western style suit.
Last night the beloved boy came again. Continually awakening I was, and then diving back in. How my heart was bursting like pomegranate seeds spilling forth. Layer after layer of seeds, hidden in caverns as the flesh is pulled away. Delightfully I bleed this ruby red juice and we swim in it. I die in this place with him and we shine like dolphins and there is no greater happiness.
These dreams are always about the boy. The beauty of the boy. I say boy, not man because boy captures something about the wildness. But not the immaturity. I have been in love with this boy for eons. I have never sought him in worldly relationship. He doesn’t live there except in glimpses or reflections. To analyze it as an integration of my “masculine” is a reduction of the immensity of the Love. It is a much larger mystery. One that feels thousands of years ripe.
The beauty of the boy. It’s a mantra in my heart.
photo: Padmakara
Mother
My heart wont cease it’s spinning
Like a web it weaves
Of your golden honey
And I want to taste every drop
Mother
My skin has become your drum
That the grandmothers spread upon the desert floor
And spread the medicine to tan my hide
Bom, bom, bom!
Mother
Does the wind carry my breath
Or simply merge with yours
As if it were ever mine?
A marriage of eternity
Mother
My blood carries you forth
But where is the world who will receive
The transmission of the clan?
Mother
I am this
And I am not this
Why does it matter?
This girl will not be here again
What is the echo of a life?
Mother
Why hide your self in these bodies
Where no one thinks to look?
I have pointed to you
And they are too busy
To become still with their own horror
Mother
I am drunk
And am feeling non-chalant
My stillness has opened the lunatics laugh
And every gesture is your praise
Mother
I fear that if I merge with you
I will lose the sweetness of loving you.
Always you point to the self-serving
Even here
Mother
It all fails
Falls short
Only the subtle whispers of the twilight
Are the scriptures I hear
Each month when I bleed the totality opens.I feel my skin become transparent and stretch. Opening to the hollow bone. The SHAKTI is BIG and the Mother awakes in me. She laughs and wants to challenge the status quo even in "spiritual" circles. Boredom with the false humility's. Take your place. Take your action. Allow the Mother to move within you and Mother all things. Take your Mother Fuckin' place ( as in She is a Baaaaad Mama Jaaaama! Jai Ma! Jai Ma!) and develop relationship with the seat of power. This is what will humble you.
Let go of the sentimental and let existence tear you open. The horrible gift of compassion. Compassion: to feel strongly. To feel the suffering strongly. Let the surge of passion arise and meet the injustice with the sword. How can this not be love? Only the awakening of the Mother can help one meet the suffering.
Pick up the sword and let down the armor. Will you let the blade cut your own defenses and touch the horror of the world? Do not look for the joy. It will find you in the bare naked, defenseless and exhausted place. Surging in the veins and rising into the laugh of the lunatic. This is the sweetness I taste.
Causeless joy.
Please stand for these women Gulabi Gang
Jessica MacGowan/Getty Images
I am sweeping vigorously. Mopping the spots and drips.
It’s always the movement.
In between the pushing and pulling of the mop the tears flow.
Troy Davis’s face flashes in my eyes.
Last night I heard the news. We executed this man.
7 of 9 recanted
A witness saying they were threatened by another not to come forward
No physical evidence
The night before Sept. 21, 2011
I was Dancing the mutuality of Love
Ecstatic embodiment
Wisdom
At the end of class I felt the whole world was healed
That there was enough for everyone
And no one had to resort to fear, violence or
“isms” of any kind.
My partner reacted to the news with disgust, anger, rallying against the powers that be.
His long time watching of the system, its flaws and the escalating of suffering.
I just wanted to stay with Troy.
The profound sadness that we failed this man.
I would rather be wounded by the suffering than hardened to it.
I will shout later.
Now, I feel the pain.
My traditions say that death is a celebration.
He is released from the samsara of suffering.
This I believe. But my sorrow remains.
It should remain. We have so far to go
and I am sad for all that we miss out on
by not reaching our potential
as Humans.
The Movement.
Rev. Al Sharpton writes this morning,
“to mourn without moving only compounds this most egregious injustice.”
This is the practice. How to move when hope is slayed. When failure has occurred.
May we all find this movement.
To turn within and heal.
To turn to the person next to us and extend our hand.
To keep Dancing the mutuality of Love
Especially while weeping.
The identities are the hardened layers of protection against the fragility of the shocking moment when realization hits that there is absolutely no control. This encounter is such a crushing touch, that one must surrender to it in that very moment. Even if it is just for the moment. Everything is constructed to brace against this moment of feeling so small and so insignificant. But there is an opening here- in this surrender that cannot come through invocation or demand. The realization that somehow you belong in this place. That in this small opening you must become immense. To step in and become. There is no step by step. No connect the dots. Only the opening to the utter fragileness as it reveals itself.
The fierce quality awakens. Is it merely a matter of waking up on the wrong side of the bed? Or have I awakened with the sword in hand? Fire is blazing. Come close. Join the bonfire. Surrender your head. Surrender your hope. Come rest on this burning bosom and I will rock you awake.
I stand sword in hand. A sly smile. I know you Mother. This pregnant space where all has already been done. Where the form has not manifested yet, but it is all dead by the time it has been born. The form merely a shadow, an echo, a reverberation that will manifest long after the fact. We dance in this charnal ground, stamping on the samsara of false goodness. We howl the stratum of time. We touch the causeless joy. Hopeless.
Come close, my precious.
(For part one, visit here)
painting: Kailash Raj
I've always had longing. Too much perhaps. There are times when it goes underground and I think I may have grown up. Moved past angst. Attributed it to fantasies. Felt relief at my sudden maturity. But something always happens. I wish I could name what that something is. I must be made of longing. I must be made of ache and desire. I am always yearning for Shiva's hand upon me. The feeling is so physical, so visceral that I can feel my fingernails growing and move towards my chest to tear apart the flesh and expose the bone beneath. Then the bones must turn to dust and lay bare the beating heart, the blood, and the rhythm. Then I would turn to the closest one and say, "See? See this? This is what is true."
How do you explain this to people when you are trying to compose a newsletter? When you are supposed to list for people "what they will get" if they come to your workshop? Do you tell them what they might actually "get"? The desire to tear themselves open and touch the primal howl? That this howl may be such a sonic vibration that it could tear away the remaining threads of what they think is precious? The things that we are trying to make secure by attending this workshop and that seminar? Eating these particular foods and trying to secure our place in the spiritually, politically correct?
That this howl will dissolve your ability to censor so as not to offend, so your classes can fill and you may have a full tank of gas for the week? See, my hand has frozen and I cannot press the delete button.
I am not a romantic anymore. This longing is simply the stuff of which I am made. I examine it from all sides. Try to take it apart and find its components. But the more I tear it down the more it reveals that it is empty and I am fascinated by how it disappears right through my hands-like grasping at a cloud.
This is what is here. What is now. Tomorrow I will be different. I always am. I will look at this and wonder who wrote it. I will probably be practical and do laundry. Clean the bathroom. Maybe I will move quietly in these tasks and hold the longing as a secret and invisible friend. This friend who moves me in certain directions and quest for certain experiences. The one who is always planning the next encounter with beauty and makes clucking noises, "tsk, tsk, tsk" at the mundane. The one who waits for me to complete the tasks, feed the cats, do the dishes, and finally pulls me by the hair in a frenzy that ecstasy cannot wait any longer. The one who turns reality on its head and says, "no, no, no no more tasks, no more practicalities. "Now sit. Now sway."
photo: Graciela Iturbide
inhale
exhale
repeat
this heart does not slow its beat
five tracks running
a human trifle
anguish, loneliness, laziness
each so delicately layered with union & bliss
What is all this?
your Divine Madness Ma?
Mistress of the multitudes
of wisdom movement
What have I done?
You have released the bow
perfect aim
body slamming into the self-deceiving
what is the ground if there is no reference of illusion
where do the ponies run
without the circus music
and the clowns
and the costumes?
how will they know where to go?
what to do without the cyclic wheel upon which they run?
Oh, this is mad!
what does the cloak matter?
why, just pick any one of them
put it on
and twirl
twirl under the illuminated night
twirl under the siege of fright
spin the gossamer robes of form
until the ribbons of bound existence torn
leaving threadbare the strands of time
Ma howling so sublime
photo: Rafael Aviles
I.
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
(Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
I go to lunch with the disciple and Bhairava. It is refreshing to have periods of silence that no one seems pressured to fill. I am utterly surprised at how comfortable I am with this. As casual as I try to be he must know that I am hyper sensitive to how I am being perceived. How I am trying to constantly give clues to what a good practitioner I am. Again, I am surprised how I do not make myself wrong for this. Eventually conversation arises. Pleasantries. Getting to know you speak.
“What do you do?”
“It sure is raining hard”
“How long have you lived here in Cupertino?”
and so on.
The conversation leads to India. The Bhairava speaking a bit on his last trip there. I mention how I want to go to Varanasi. The Bhairava says, “We will go. In the Fall.”
In a split second I finally dare to look him direct into his eyes since my first moment meeting him. He seems to know I will do this and meets my gaze.
He is serious.
I laugh.
It’s all I can do. I cover my mouth, as it almost seems too much to allow a giggle to escape. I knew I would go to India with him. I knew a month before I came here. Yet I am still shocked. To Varanasi. The one place I have always wanted to go. The one place that wets my eyes with tears when I see photos. The one place that I actualy know the smell of through my dreams. How quickly this grace emerged.
At this moment, I do not know if I will go.
II.
"Who are YOU?" said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."
(Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)
This night I attend the evening sitting with the orientation of “for everybody”. The Bhairava introduced this the evening before and it struck me profoundly. I do not understand why. Compassion, devotion and offering are not new to me. I also let go of self-cherishing which somehow in this particular sitting translated as letting go of “self-preserving.” I had been trying to do this the first 48 hours. Trying to keep myself intact. Trying to decide if it was safe.
When letting go of the self-preservation I felt the reality of sitting for everybody. Words emerged like a mantra buzzing to life within me.
“Sit with Shiva for eternity”
“Sit with Shiva for eternity”
“Sit with Shiva for eternity”
On and on. As this mantra was humming I received a powerful teaching (transmission?) Shiva would be the eternal ground for me. His tenacious love for Shakti (me). This understanding was no mere intellectual philosophizing. I touched it completely. I could fall apart, dance, rage, fragment, and bless. Shiva would be there. I understood in an instant that the Bhairava, the teacher, the guru transmitted and held this grace. It would be him that I would need to lean in to.
I wept.
I wept and could not stop.
I wept at the opportunity to put both feet in.
That I was not in control anymore.
I weep now writing this.
The sadhana came to a close. We all sat in silence for some time. Then in the purest gesture I have ever felt, Bhairava offered his hand to help me stand.
III.
The arousing (shock, thunder)
Shock bring success
Shock comes oh, oh!
Laughing words- ha ha!
The shock terrifies for a hundred miles,
And he does not let fall the sacrificial spoon and chalice
Hexagram 51. Chen, I-ching
The time with the Bhairava had many layers. When alone, my body had reactions like those of a shock. Elevated heart rate, some anxiety, major flight impulses, and some spaciness. In the sadhana I had none of these symptoms.
I have been home 3 days and I am still having flashes of shock. Life’s daily tasks are difficult.
I reflect on the last evening.
The laughter began right in the sadhana for Bhairava and one disciple. I inquired whether to join. I could go either way. I decided to stay focused and complete the sadhana. Afterwards, the mood hit again.
Non -stop.
On and on it went. Divine madness. Oh, the delight for me. Total intoxication. In waves it kept coming. Another gift from Ma. I felt like she was pleased with our efforts.
I will go to India.
Ma, please make me ready
