It took eons for mini-me to put her baggage down
On this speeding Moksha Train Bound for Bliss;
Impossible to express this tidal wave of gratitude
Surging up from my Spiritual Heart now that I AM
In your fiery embrace, O Arunachala!
Namaste for teaching me how to burn this false notion of separation!
Oh yes, I am aware of how tenderly and carefully
You sent situations and humans to me
With orders to shoot a special message into my heart;
Only because I was porous with the pain,
Your celestial arrows lodged firmly in that sacred space.
You taught me gratitude for every little thing, “good” and “bad;”
As if I were your own precious child,
Most of all for the astonishing gift of life.
As shining beings freely shared with me their timeless wisdom,
I learned about a Blind Turtle who rests on
The bed of an ocean the size of this cosmos,
The poor creature being allowed to rise to the surface
Only once in a hundred years.
What chance of her wattled neck sliding up through
A wooden ring bobbing on the vast expanse of those choppy waters?
Slim, perhaps impossible; and yet, this great miracle has happened to all those committed
To freeing ourselves from Maya’s web of illusion.
You keep us moving bravely through
The often dense and terrifying darkness of samsara
By your divine assurance that once the fetters of the unreal fall off,
All that is left is the incandescent Self:
Blissful, immortal, loving, wise, fearless, connected to all beings.
How can I thank you for loving me so intensely, O Holy Hill,That you feel no compunction in shattering my final defenses,
Just so I can finally come to rest in the pure sunlight of Spirit?
*********
Also Check out – ARUNACHALA, NOT ABRACADABRA
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A middle-aged woman, who has been visiting Tiruvannamalai for longer than I have lived here, called to ask if she could visit me. She had some important questions on Advaita she thought I could answer, she said, and I grimaced, because she has done this before, and every time I make the effort to meet her (never thought early retirement could get this busy!!!) she asks me the most ridiculous questions that have little or nothing to do with Ramana Maharshi’s Direct Path, and also peppers me with infuriating personal questions.
At the millennium, I flew from Manhattan to live in Dharamsala, home of the exiled Tibetans in the foothills of the Himalayas. Months later, my precious Micron laptop (it was the rare person who owned a laptop in those days) was stolen right out of my apartment, along with the backup disks. In one fell swoop, I had lost over ten years of my writing and research. I was, as you can imagine, devastated. (I plan to explain the fascinating series of events that led to this theft in another article, but right now all I want to do is share with you what one high lama said to me in the aftermath of this mini disaster.)
Anna Mae Bullock was a country girl who escaped her quiet life for the big bad city in her teens and fell headlong in love with Ike Turner, a tall talented black musician with an eye for the girls—as well as an eye for pure talent. He heard Anna Mae sing and knew she was 24-carat gold. Dumping his current woman, he seduced the wide-eyed and laughing teenager, got her pregnant, gave her a new name, married her and made her a star. He also beat the hell out of her and abused her violently, for he’d started doing hard drugs and his rages were demonic and way out of control.
What is the answer to this age-old problem? For me, it lies in the great truths of Eastern philosophy, and particularly in the wisdom that claims that what unites us into one vast and mysterious being is the common substratum of our nature (pure awareness, existence and bliss). To the one who realizes this, all relative appearances dissolve and one no longer views the world in terms of gender, status or anything else. Advaita is Not Two, and this is a mystical fact.
Many enjoy delving into the highest teachings of the East but don’t realize that, minus an ethical foundation and a transparent relative life, they cannot progress even an inch. The first thing we must do if we are genuine seekers is to truly learn to honor, love and respect our own selves; when this awesome work is done, or being done, we will automatically treat everyone else in the same holy and beautiful way. As Ramana said, at some point in our ascension to pure spirit, we will realize that there are no others.
And then I awoke at dawn to the wondrous sight 
Amused, the Mountain whispers in my ear: 
Takshak is a handsome, sexy, intelligent, and charismatic monarch who rules a great ancient civilization patterned on the cities of the Indus Valley Civilization. In his early days, Takshak’s father, the powerful Maharaja Shaardul, was a conceited and churlish man; and yet he was wise enough to allow his arrogance to be tamed by the divine fire of the High Tantrika Inanna. Saved from a horrible end, he instead evolved into a superb leader who brought great prosperity and happiness into the lives of his people.
Time is only a human construct; if we study history with a discerning eye, we might see the same old insidious patterns emerging. The substratum of all beings is pure existence, awareness and bliss, but if we let the ego triumph over our Spirit, and feed it with denial and rage, the demons enter and take over; soon there is no human left, only a sad puppet, who, when he or she inevitably ages and dies, carries with him the bad seeds of terrible karmas into future lives. And this, in a nutshell, is the tedious saga of samsara or relative reality, an endless spinning wheel that perpetuates misery and delusion.
I wrote Whip because I was appalled by how many, in East and West, had misunderstood and distorted the ancient pure teachings on Tantra, which, in essence, simply means the transmutation of darkness into light. You might want to read it for yourself: 
Consider for a moment the many ways you have tried to escape suffering—both the gigantic miseries of loss, grief and death, as well as the wee pains, frustrations and irritations that are part of the menu of being born as a human on this planet. Gautama Buddha nailed it when he gave us his First Noble Truth: that mundane life is suffering. Thank heavens he also went on to tell us that our own fears, desires and expectations lie at the root of our wretchedness, and that he then went on to clearly and lovingly proceeded to show us a way out.
Alcohol, drugs, sex, violence, workaholism, greed—all these are destructive and bottomless addictions that temporarily delude ourselves into thinking we are sitting on top of the dung heap of samsara and having a right blast…yes, that’s how many of us hide from the naked truth that, as humans, we are fragile and limited, and that our mind, no matter how honed, cannot even begin to comprehend the great mysteries of life and death.
Which leads me to the critical Advaitic definition of the words “real” and “unreal”: real is that which is permanent and lasting, the unreal is that which comes and goes and is ephemeral in nature. But once we begin to truly discriminate between that which gives us genuine and lasting pleasure, and that which provides momentary flashes of happiness, but ends us only giving us pain, willy-nilly we are led to the treasure that is our inner being. In truth, and I swear by this for I have had personal experiences that have convinced me, higher beings are always hovering around, waiting for us to become ready for the greatest task of all—which is to merge the finite egoic self that we believe we are, with the grand and immortal Self.
Long decades ago, the Englishman Paul Brunton was consumed by a luminous quest: to locate the rishis or holy men that had once made India sparkle with their mystical teachings and pronouncements, and then to relate his discoveries to the West
The Enlishman’s genuine yearning for spiritual knowledge prevented him from being blown away by the range of incredible fakirs and gurus he met on his travels, many of whom revealed to him marvels of which no ordinary Westerner could dream. Instinctively (more likely from past lives spent in the sub-continent) he knew that there was more to the whole business of enlightenment then what are known as “siddhis” or extrasensory powers. Despite chronic insomnia, a variety of physical illnesses and a thousand other inconveniences, he kept resolutely on, until he met the Shining One who had fused his finite egoic self into his grand and immortal Self, and then stayed on to show us how to accomplish the same incredible goal.
Besides, especially for the seeker, all the terrible things that Gautama Buddha warned us are the lot of all human beings—old age, illness and death—are out in the open, and not carefully hidden behind closed doors as often happens in the West; and so it is much easier to digest the fact that, no matter how opulent our lifestyles are, nothing in relative reality can make us permanently happy or peaceful. For me, this is the great teaching of India and why so many foreigners imbued with a true longing for truth are hooked for life when they first come here, despite their initial revulsion for much they encounter.
You can’t let the old biddy intimidate you like that, my friend said firmly in his gravelly voice. You have to stand up to her and you’re strong enough to do it. You feel weak after all your recent upheavals, I know, but if you lose this battle, you’ll regret it.
I lay quiescent and allowed the ugly feelings to engulf me, determined to find out what was behind them. And sure enough, as the waves of fear did their weird thing, I sank below them and saw their source: ah, so the German woman represented the fear of authority that had been instilled in my right from childhood!
I don’t deny that I’ve come a long way from the crazy child I was, but there are still miles to go before I burn down that mountain range of karmic predilections that still keep me subject to pleasure and pain, to desire and to fear. My current tendency is to create a comfort zone and to hide in there for as long as possible—which is why the powers that be make sure to crack that zone and shove me willy-nilly back into the world; the idea is, I am convinced, to force me to grow beyond all borders and boundaries.
…my mother would say to me sternly whenever I misbehaved, which admittedly was often. I was a curious child and did not believe in the maxim of children should be seen but not heard (a friend turned that around jokingly and said: children should be obscene but not heard!) And so I butted into adult conversations and asked outrageous questions, simply because I wanted to know what made this strange world tick. I also had the “bad” habit of striking up conversations with anyone who took my fancy—total strangers, servants, the old, the young, the rich, the poor, beggars.
When I asked her what she wanted as a birthday gift, she’d murmur that she’d be happy if was “a good girl.” This would make me mad, because I knew that, by no stretch of the imagination, was I “good.” I lied (the only way we could explore the world was to deceive our strict parents so we could slip away from the house to partake of fresh adventures), stole money (although most of my friends had liberal parents who believed in giving them pocket money, mine did not) etcetera, but nevertheless her values still embedded themselves deep within me.
This post is inspired by my watching a certain wealthy family, who has recently entered the political scene in America, abuse their position by taking as much from over-taxed citizens as they can, while they can. I laugh softly to myself as the bizarre thought flashes that my mother (who has long since passed away) would have had no hesitation informing them that they have no shame.
mira prabhu 