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 View From My Tree House

I have come to realize that my feet are mysteriously linked to my heart, for,whatever my heart desires my feet are sure to follow.  I do believe they are equally responsible for my wanderlust and gypsy nature, for conjuring adventure against reason.

I leave Denver by way of a 17 ft. u-haul trailer, a wing and a prayer.  My daughter Adrienne once gave me a card that read, ‘when you have come to the end of all you know, there will either be ground beneath your feet or you will be given wings to fly.’

I have come to the end of all I know.

I reduce my belongings by two thirds and now live quite simply in 500 sq. ft, my version of monk’s quarters.  However being a bohemian means that it’s hardly austere.  My abode is a 1920′s tree house with a wood burning stove and a deep soaking tub. I am a half a mile from Lake Washington in Seattle, with a commanding view of Mt. Rainier.  The forest surrounding my house is thick and overgrown, the kind of place where small creatures and children like to hide.  This place is reminiscent of my beloved Ireland and all the things I love most about it, the water, the smell of the air, the winding roads and emerald paths…

There is something inside of me that has always been drawn to the unknown and foreign.  My senses and intuition are heightened in unfamiliar places.  I am challenged to let go of my prescribed sense of self, of all the places and people that give structure and meaning to my world. It lends a perspective that is humbling, stripped of  all personal identity save human.  In a city where I know less than a handful of people I have an anonymity I have never experienced before, and it is both unsettling and liberating.  Where I was once a chapter book, I am now a blank page.

Who is this woman who has left all she has ever known?

Who I have been feels remote, like a lover distanced by time and space. Yet I feel the faintest breath of my former self surface when I bathe, right before I awaken and sometimes when my mind gets still.  She is a chrysalis hanging mid-air.

I knew my heart would ache for my children, that I would miss my family and friends beyond the bearable. I knew that I would be challenged to the marrow to create a new world void of streets as mapped in my mind as the lines on my hands. How was I to know that simply knowing whether to turn right or left was so critical to my sense of confidence and comfort, or that I would feel so skinless?

My saving grace is my ability to surrender to the moment, to allow every thought and feeling to evaporate, to relax into my own vulnerability and emotional pain.  Sitting with uncertainty has become my practice.  Beginner’s mind, I allow myself to be the newly born. I am the ‘observer’ in this new life, the perpetual witness. I have the grace of continual connection to the subtleties of my inner experience, to the richness of solitude.  When I travel alone in foreign places I feel a quickening, a deeper level of expansion and a release from all the limitations of my conditioned mind.  Strangely enough I feel most at home when I am not.

The winged part of my nature loves the freedom of spontaneous movement, of the discovery that comes with the unknown.  It is not easy on my human psyche, on the part that needs to feel anchored.  Anchored to what?  My bold move has awakened the primordial fear of my mortal and impermanent existence, of the transiency of my life.  This is what has been lying deep with my unconscious mind and causing such a tsunami on the surface.  Nothing is permanent.  This is the lesson I learn once more.  But there is beauty in the brief, in the unrepeatable moments that come and go, that compose this delicate weave.  I drink my coffee, watch the morning light caress the surface of the lake, and bow to the mysterious forces that flow through my veins…

Get on the elevator, stand in awkward silence with others that seem to be bracing themselves for a day in a box.  It is a monochromatic landscape despite the fuschia colored orchids in the lobby, the kind of environment that one wants to scream in or do something entirely inappropriate just to see if anyone has pulse enough to respond.  Do other people have such thoughts?  The spirit in me feels blindfolded and abducted, and the rebel looks for every opportunity to enter into the revolving door that leads to my other world.  How did I land here?

I file leases into perfect numerical order, according to range and township.  My mind adjusts to a new environment to work repetitive and numbing.  The copy machine, a marvel of technological wonder creates one perfect duplicate after another that I staple and stack into manila folders.  Time seems to move in slow motion, nine to five.  Stacks of paper, each one a lesson in Latin look pale under fluorescent lighting. My mind tires, my body longs to move, I wrestle with boredom and tedium in equal measure.  The more I wish I were anywhere else the more misery I create for myself. While I am here pondering my new existence, earthquakes shake the planet, people die in a swift moment without warning, pain and suffering erupts globally.  Impermanence, it is the one certainty.

Admittedly my most recent employment has felt imposed not organic, foreign not familiar, contrary to my nature not nourishing. I  have struggled to find meaning and purpose in this twist of fate. Every imaginable emotion has surged through my body, anger, frustration, relief, failure, immeasurable gratitude, and even despair. Was I ‘selling out’, giving up on the most passionate work of my life, was accepting this position a sign of resignation and defeat, or simply an act of self preservation?  My mind in it’s ‘fight or flight mode’ was fatalistically preoccupied with trying to interpret my latest set of circumstances. Self inquiry.  Who is creating this suffering, who feels defeated and valueless?  EGO. I wake up, and all of the noise of my fretful chaotic mind dissolves.  Simple awareness.

For the past three decades I have served the world through a livelihood that is consistent with who I am and what I value; serving humanity by awakening consciousness.  My path has allowed me to express my innate skills and abilities and has nourished my heart and soul.  I have never seen work as a ‘means to an end,’ as something one does simply to get from one day to the next.  I think of work as vocation, a true calling.  This calling comes from deep within our being, from a ‘knowing’ and longing that seeks to fulfill itself. My commitment to this inner knowing has been absolute, my faith and dedication unwavering. There has been no greater singular priority in my life than to honor that internal truth and to integrate it into my life.

‘Knowing’ has not led me to my current position, necessity has.  Perhaps this is the real reason behind my rebellion, on some level I felt I had no other choice.  After months of trying to find work I was more financially desperate than I have ever been. Normally I would consider having work when I needed it grace, but given the nature of the work it has felt more like penance.  For years I have had the luxury of determining the choreography of my days, of  choosing how I would spend my time and focus my energy.  There was an organic and natural flow that was completely  influenced by my own internal rhythm and directive.  There was space for spontaneity, freedom and magic.  Is there now?

Making peace with where I am has proven to be a greater challenge than I could have ever imagined. Embracing my situation has taken conscious effort, time, and a willingness to suspend my perception of how things should be. Apparently my work isn’t limited to specific environments, to spiritual communities, yoga studio’s, satsang audiences, and private students. Experience tells me that nothing in life is without purpose, value or meaning. I am where I am for a reason and rejecting ‘what is,’ only deepens the chasm between myself and the truth that is emerging. When I wake up, settle into the present, into my body, it’s enough, more than enough to be exactly where I am.

As soon as I let go of my judgement, my resistance and rebellion a beautiful thing happened… I was able to help one of my co-worker’s with his fear of flying, lend an open heart to someone who needed to cry, and offer a ‘listening presence’ to someone in need. I may have the opportunity to offer meditation in my workplace as part of a well being initiative. I get out of the way, I let go. I free fall into surrender, to the magnetic pull of the compass that lies at the center of my Soul.  I let go of my critical mind, of my attachment, and I bow once again to the mystery that propels my life and keeps me ever on my toes.

still evolving,

Santidevi

 From the moment of your birth you have been acquiring an identity.  This identity is not who you are.  You are not your body, your mind, or your emotions.  You are pure consciousness.  Consciousness has given rise to all existent form.  It is immortal and eternal.  Your authentic Self knows this Truth. 

Identity is simply the data you refer to as yourself.   This is your persona, the part of yourself that you refer to as me, I, “who I am.” You determine who you are, based upon your collective but limited experiences and perceptions. All of which are subject to evolution or change.  You create yourself based upon your interpretation of your sensory awareness.  What you interpret,  becomes who you are.  What you think you become. 

You have been entrained, environmentally and culturally conditioned to assume an identity to become someThing, not someOne.  You develop an Ego, a set of personal associations, preferences, and identifications.  This becomes your agent for relating to your life’s experience.  You have departed from your authentic Self.  You see yourself as separate from the whole, and fully independent.  

This process of alienation is commonly referred to as ego development, your persona or personality, is a contrived sense of Self and therefore transient.

The ego’s purpose is to assure your survival.  Beyond that primary role, it seeks superiority, power and control.  The ego is insatiable in its quest to secure these socially valued human amenities.  Your choices have been shaped by your ego’s endless need for recognition and achievement.  You  compete with others as a means to measure your progress.  You depend on their failure in order to succeed. This is the path of destruction and illusion. 

 {The truth is, you are an expression of the infinite Source. This Source is pure consciousness.  It is the energy that gives rise to creation.  Creation is   consciousness. It is our true nature.  This is the Oneness of our conception…it is the non changing, and eternal.  All existence is an interplay of creative dependency and interconnection.  You are a reflection of the whole, a microcosm of the macrocosm.}

The ego is in constant need of renewing its authority, approval and supremacy.  Therefore it continually relies on external validation.  Judgement of self and others takes root and becomes your chief tool of measuring your relative position in the world.  You condemn and criticize others in order to elevate yourself.  Self righteousness and condemnation become tools of your own eminence .   Your concern is for your own welfare and well being. Any failure on your part to assert your supremacy is ultimately a threat to your inner stability.  You become completely self absorbed, ruled by your own ego’s obsessions, ambitions and desires.  You have given up all authority over your life.  This failed system is the root of all of your anxiety, fear and insecurity, because it lacks spiritual substance, the Truth.

The ego obscures the Truth and veils the nature of reality.  It prevents you from seeing and experiencing things as they are.  The ego lives in the past and projects itself into the future.  Its lifespan is determined by the process of thinking.  It literally thinks itself into existence.  The thing it fears most is death, {a thoughtless moment.}  because with the cessation of thinking it cannot place itself in space and time.  To be present is to create a lapse/gap in the ego’s functioning.  From the perspective of the moment, there is no past, no future…only now, only what Is.  Every moment is the same in that regard: timeless.  This is where creation occurs. The moment is threatening because it represents the unknown, so we manipulate our fear of the unknown by filling the moment with our internal dialogue, analysis,  and repetitive thinking.  You avoid the true reality by living in one you have self created. To maintain this illusion requires an inordinate amount of time and energy.  You are always having to strategize, manipulate, and control the world in order to preserve your semblance of truth.  The true reality is preexistent and  independent of your thinking, it is transcendent.  At any moment you can experience it by waking up, by bringing your awareness to “what Is”.

This only requires a shift in your attention, a willingness to be present, to relax into the moment.  Children do this naturally, spontaneously.  Their world unfolds before them and they engage authentically with whatever they encounter.  They are intimately connected to “sahaja” or the spontaneous inborn essence of their Being. ]]> http://santidevi.com/2009/02/identity/feed/ 2 http://santidevi.com/2009/02/who-am-i/ http://santidevi.com/2009/02/who-am-i/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:08:08 +0000 santidevi http://santidevi.com/?p=134 Ramana Maharshi was a living sage and enlightened Being. He advocated self inquiry as the means to Self Realization, “moksha,” or spiritual liberation. This state of pure consciousness is experienced as union with the One, the Absolute. It is a condition of absorption where the individual merges with the Infinite. This is the sole purpose of human life.

The essential question to contemplate is , “Who Am I?” The mind that asks the question cannot answer because it doesn’t know. The Truth of your Being lies beyond the thinking mind. The question is a tool, a key to the mystery, and like all good questions, it contains the answer within it.

“I Am.”

Self knowledge can only arise out of the spaciousness of our own intimate experience. By being present moment by moment we encounter the Infinite. The inhalation and exhalation that defines our lives. In the stillness of this ebb and flow we experience deep relaxation. In the absence of thought we experience peace. By abiding in what Is, we are at One.

“Who Am I.”? When I am not my repetitive mind, when my emotions cease to rule my conduct, when I shed the thinness of my identity, what is left, what is my own?

To be naked with ourselves is to discover the essence of our longing for Self Realization, union with the Divine. Deep within us we intuitively feel the pulse of our Divinity, our greatness, our creative potential. We know that we are more than the sum of our parts, that we’re not just flesh and bone, mortal and fleeting. In reality, we are an expression of the whole of existence. We feel a disparity between the inner Truth of our knowing and the outer reality of our experience. Reconciliation lies in acceptance of what Is, only then can we absolutely know the immortal nature of our true Being. When we are present, we are connected to the Source of our origin, to consciousness. We are pure consciousness embodied, the formless within form. The only way to know this Truth is through the experience of direct perception. Therefore the practice is to be in the moment, to be who and where you are. Experience what you’re experiencing , in a state of non-resistance to what Is. This is the seed of liberation.