Here I am.  Stripped of all of my roles, anonymous and unclothed.  It is a strange freedom that is both terrifying to the marrow and as seductive as new love.  The canvas is stark and white and waiting.  I hesitate.  I listen.  The noise of my mind rushes in to fill the gap, to ease the silence.  But I am at home in not knowing, living with ambiguity has become a blessing. The doors are open and the dark beasts roam freely.  We dine in open air splendor without a care.  What was once hidden in the black of the abyss becomes seen in the light of day. How long I have waited for such a stripping of myself, of the holy layers of my human life?  This intimacy is succulent and ripe.  Surrender.  What will be left after the splay?  Oh so many deaths has this one life been.

The wheel is turning and I am still.  All of the attachments, identifications, and inflation are fed to the flames of the eternal pyre.  There is no knowing left, no fixed constellation of Self. I navigate by intuition, leaving behind all of the volumes of ‘ what to do now.’

My historical self as fictional as any notion of separation. The moment holds no then, or when, or even why.  This is the terror that the sleeping face and deny.  Swallowed by the embrace of mortality, of the fleeting truth of I.  Even the solid is on closer look a dance of space and molecules.

I wash the dishes and sweep the floor, make the beds, and wash the toilets.  Liberation has never been so sweet.  I am taken in and out like a long breath, like Sat Nam on a Sunday morning.  My current guru’s are new to the world and filled with wisdom and truth.  The two year old told me yesterday that my job was to “love them.”  She knows my work in the world, she knows why I came and why I stay.  To her, I am simply her Santima someone who mysteriously appears and disappears, just like we do.

This contentment fills my body until the last twelve months of my life disappears into the archives.  Without this faith that carries me across the water, I would have drowned before I ever spoke a thankful word.  My beloved how deep the well of my love, of my gratitude…

Santidevi

The purpose of all spiritual sadhana is to experience the truth, to realize our essential nature. Where there is ambition there is attachment, where there is attachment there is illusion, where there is illusion there is suffering.

All of our thoughts, words and actions should be in accordance with Dharma{ “that which holds.” } The authentic individual naturally expresses the highest human values, their innate goodness, and compassion. Our true purpose can never be known outside of our own divinity. This knowing is not inspired by effort but by surrender. The soul is already perfected, it cannot be increased or decreased, manipulated, corrupted or destroyed. It is the imperishable and immortal aspect of our Being. As we awaken, and our conditioning no longer binds us in limitation, we are able to access the higher dimensions of our consciousness.

The fast initiated a surrender to the Divine, and a relinquishing of personal will. This was purifying on the deepest levels. In the final weeks, a one pointedness of mind arose spontaneously. I was in a continuous meditative state of consciousness. In emptying my body, the boundaries that separate the inner and the outer world dissolved. All was One. The incessant noise of the mind was silenced. In this simplicity I experienced the joy of being alive. The breath became my mantra. The luminous, unconditional love of the Divine filled my being.  I have never felt so completely real, relaxed, whole and at peace. What ever filters had obscured my seeing things just as they are, had been removed.

The beauty was overwhelming.

What I truly valued became ever more apparent. Superficial needs were exposed and eradicated. Only what was essential remained. I prayed daily for the fulfilling of my Dharma, for union with my Beloved, for the ability to serve all beings.  As I prayed I felt the loving presence of the immortal bodhisattva, Quan Yin. Her compassion and mercy filled my heart. I felt the lineage of my soul, the thread that has woven me from the same weave, one incarnation after the other. Embodied for the singular purpose of alleviating suffering through the awakening of humanity. My illuminated mind experienced the timelessness of my existence. There was no before, there is no after.

My home is not bound to place or time. Where ever I Am, I am home. I will travel to Ireland to write, to breathe the sea air, to walk in the mist. I will go to celebrate life, and pay my respects to my mystic ancestry. But I will not live far from those I love. For it is love that has led me, that by grace has liberated my soul.  It is love that has given me the power to surrender, to fulfill my calling with strength, courage and humility. My very existence is an expression of the love that the Divine has for creation. I am Love.

I listen for the quiet voice of my beloved, and I watch the leaves form eddy’s in the air. Day turns to night and the lights of the city cast halos’ on the wet cement. The coal train winds its way through slumbering high rises and vacant lots. The chill of autumn makes its breath visible. I am alive, and I am awake.

I appreciate the loving support you have all have given me throughout my fast. I thank each and every one of you for your thoughts and prayers. Your company was a constant source of strength and nourishment. May your true Self be known to you, may you be at peace.

love,

santidevi

Day 21

The immortal Self has claimed me… I Am home. I need look no further for my belonging. I am an embryo in the womb of creation. Fed by spirit. The imbilius is connected to the very source of my being. I am incubating.

I am half way through my 40 day fast.  One day moves into the next in a nearly timeless motion. I am aware of it passing only by the light that leaves the day and the dark that becomes the night. The instinctual part of myself wanes like a tired moon.  Its predominance becomes extinct. The small in me is made to dust. Only what is intrinsic remains, Silence. All has been stilled. Even my mind has surrendered to the fire. My body sheds itself, snake like. I shake it loose. I am in awe at the intelligence and divinity of my human form that perpetually recreates itself.

My beloved Lucy nourishes me through her devotional practice at the gathering of the Dances for Universal Peace.  People from all spiritual and religious traditions joined together to dance and sing, in honor of the sacred Oneness of creation.  I am placed in the center of the circle with the musicians. I sit wrapped in my initiation shawl, I close my eyes in meditation. Their words are sung in aramaic, hebrew, sanskrit, and a host of other languages. Ancient and enduring, they speak of God. Their bodies move in unison, their voices harmonize, their hearts and souls unite.  I feel the presence of the Divine, the love of the Goddess, and I weep spontaneously.  The goodness, compassion and beauty of humanity is overwhelming. I bow in reverence to those who have come to share their faith, to be a reservoir of spiritual nourishment. I drink it in.

It is night now and the air is cold.  I prepare my water with salt from the dead sea, and the oils of rosemary, eucalyptus, cypress, and juniper. The smell of the earth. I will put my head under the water and pray to the Bathroom Guru God.  I will pray on behalf of the suffering, I will pray for peace, I will pray for you.

santidevi

It is Tuesday morning, the sky is azure blue and the air is crisp with autumn.  I fall into a slow, natural rhythm. My body adjusts to the pranic energy that now nourishes it. This subtle and refined sustenance is like nectar from the Gods. I sleep so soundly, so deeply. I am conscious of this body as never before, the thoughts as they arise and dissolve into the emptiness. I relax into the moment.

My ego is being shed, layer by layer, ever deeper. Emotions arise and dissipate like morning mist, but they have no place to settle. The internal workings of my being have become transparent, clearly distinct. I watch my mind, and observe how it functions, responds, distracts, and obsesses. The state of my mind determines my experience. I feel the correlation between my thinking and the corresponding reaction in my body, instantaneous. It is a revelation.

I have become the observer, my witnessing consciousness. It no longer feels like a separate phenomenon.  The elements within myself are in the process of unifying. I am being remade. I surrender myself completely to this evolution. Every moment I live the cycle of birth, death and resurrection. I am intimately aware of this never ending ritual. In the midst of the transitions I feel their shared bloodline, as old as time. Their energy infused with joy and sorrow, hope and despair. How fragile and fleeting our sojourn. I am not bound nor tethered, but free.

Time has ceased, the moment becomes seamless. I feel the spaciousness of my own interior. How peaceful to be emptied, to be scraped skin from bone. I belong to the nameless. My identity becomes membrane thin. My attachments grow pale in this Self that knows the truth. Nothing belongs to me, nothing ever has, and nothing ever will.

I serve, love, live and die, without attachment. This realization is liberating. Where ever I am, I am at peace.  Severed from the gravity of human longing and desire, I feel the stars descend. I am whole unto myself.  What ever I have is enough. I breathe into the heart of my beloved, gratitude. My dharma, my truth has laid my path, stone by stone…

I walk this walk in the company of those who have gone before, who have braved the unknown in search of the holy grail, Self-realization. I feel their presence, their compassion and grace. This journey of awakening continues to bring forth the fruits of this life.  I feast.

santidevi

It is day 14, and my belly rumbles. I feel the gravity of my own weight, and the stillness that suspends me. A paradox. My mind is nebulous. The solidity evaporates.

Not a moment escapes me. The world has gone adrift, continents away from the air I breathe. Strange how even the most familiar objects and places seem foreign. My perceptual lens shifts. The simple becomes ever more sublime. I see through the physical into the complexity of relationship that binds us one to the other, our mortal bodies not as separate entities but as a singular expression of unity. This is my experience, vision, and what I know to be true. We are all One. In this body, heaven, and earth, find their home.

I have always felt the briefness of my own life.  The transiency of my body on this earth. This awareness has compelled me, from birth, to discover the inherent meaning and purpose of being human. This quest was only furthered by the trauma and suffering I experienced as a child. I knew that those initiatory conditions, though painful, were awakening a great compassion, a fearlessness and strength. In enduring, I found that I was resilient, in surrendering I found grace. No matter what happened to me, there was an aspect of who I was, that was incorruptible. The innocence of my being could not be destroyed. The greatness of my soul was determined to rise, to take complete possession of my worldly life.

Suffering has been a portal to my destiny. It has distilled the truth from the marrow of my bones, extracted the finest of my human qualities, and resurrected a Self that could commit to serving human beings in their darkest hours. Had it not been for the losses I experienced so early on in my life I may never have become who I Am. The truth is that I am an immortal and divine being, embodied. I was a born a bodhisattva into a world of despair. I have but one purpose for my existence, and that is to be an accessible source of redeeming peace. The divine has carried me to the most unlikely of places to be a refuge, to protect the helpless, to heal the sick, to comfort the dying, to usher in new life. In these moments I feel the presence of the numinous, my own inextinguishable light.

Every soul longs to feel their noble birth, to ascend to the greatness of their nature. It is our sole purpose to do so. Through Self- realization we express the deepest aspects of our true nature. Our innate wisdom, goodness and compassion become the wellspring of our experience. These virtues are rooted in our humanity, and meant to be intrinsic to our lives.

I awaken each and every moment to what is real within myself, to the unconditional peace and happiness that illuminates my heart, and defies all circumstance… that leads me to the very Source of life.

santidevi

I find such grace in surrendering to life.  Listening to and trusting, without logic or reason, the dictates of my own soul-fed voice.  It leads me into the unknown, into an adventure filled and mythical life. Where fear would seal a staid fate, it has lured me beyond the objections of all fight and flight.  The power that lives within this someday carcass, humbles me speechless. I follow it like a shadow into the wilds of the less traveled.  My spirit is not bound. It is my will to surrender, to experience even for a moment the play of the divine, the union of my Self with my Beloved.

It is morning and I repeat my mantra… I am absorbed in it’s rhythm, in the hand strung wooden beads that glide through these practiced fingers. I see the eyes of Satyananda, ageless, staring back, the peace of Samadhi.  I am not here, nor there. Time, between this place and that, is perished by this consciousness that takes flight. I nourish myself in the truth of the sacred seed sounds that repeat themselves seamlessly.  The boundaries dissolve, I am in this body and not.  The naturalness of my being becomes ever more present.

I pray for those who are suffering, for those who are in the bardo of grief and loss.  All the human beings who are sick and diseased, who are hungry and homeless. I pray for those who are mentally ill and imprisoned, drug addicted, violent, and murderous. I ask in the name of all that is holy that my fasting will bring peace, love and compassion to this world. I bow to those enlightened beings, ever present, who have devoted their lives to the awakening of humanity. I dedicate any merit from this abstinence to the restoration of divine consciousness, that we may all realize the beauty and peace of our true and abiding nature.

santidevi

I am filled with a holy emptiness, fed by the unseen.  The hunger of my belly wanes. It is day 9, and I slept at last, all night.  In meditation the practice reveals itself. Inhaling the suffering and pain in the world, exhaling love and compassion.  Breathe in, breathe out. The observer, my sentinel is ever present. I am at One. I surrender fully to my Beloved, to the lotus feet of my sat guru, my true and essential nature. Communion.

My awareness becomes more subtle, my energy more enduring.  My mind giving way to gaps of nothingness.  I feel the natural world in every cell of my body.  As I walk the river with my Sara, the light on the water becomes the light in her eyes. The underlying patterns of relationship reveal themselves. I experience the composition of vibration that creates all worldly form. I am a child in wonder of existence.

I find my rhythm in this alchemical body.  I feel the elemental forces silently at work within me. Earth, wind, fire, water, and ether. Together they create this divine vessel.  In the midst of their transformative chemistry, I sit crossed legged, eyes closed, in the heart of my heart. I work with my medicines from the plant and mineral kingdoms, the animal totems, that have seen me through the most arduous of physical and emotional challenges.  They carry me.

There is a stillness within me that is unchanging, a peace that is ever present.  I hear, like a mantra, the beating of my own heart. I know that seeds are being planted in the darkness of my womb.  These seeds are a portal to a life that is awaiting.  I can see images faint and fleeting of traveling to distant lands… My vows are to serve all of humanity, to awaken divine consciousness, and create peace.  I know that this process is an initiation, an ever deeper distilling of my own Being.  I trust in this.

I walk with all of those who have gone before me, who have fasted, prayed, and meditated for the benefit of humanity.  I take refuge in these great souls who knew that nothing is a sacrifice when it is a holy decree.  I weep at the beauty and grace that has been my life.  I am eternally grateful for all of the experiences that have illuminated the truth of my indwelling divinity.  That have brought me to this moment of consecration.

My beloved,

Lead me from the unreal to the real,

from darkness to light, from death to

immortality.

Om, santi, santi, santihi

santidevi