As many of you know I am living in an ashram for a few months to experience life in the energy field of an Incarnation, an enlightened Master and Avatar. Now those words may not mean anything to you but lets say its an experience that has to be 'lived' to understand. During this time I am volunteering in the kitchen. Basically I make salads for the Inner Awakening program that is 21 days running. I also volunteer in between creating salads and other western foods, at the IA hall during the meal times for the participants. Dinner is not always in the hall so my experience from my early catering days has been a big help as we pack up and transport equipment to other sites on the campus.
The main purpose of taking up this lifestyle has to do with dropping patterns and habits that have had us by the tail most of our lives. Doing lots of completion work, mirror work to see what past person, place, event or memory is still impacting me in the present IS the point for my time here. It will show up in the work I do, the people I interact with, something will get triggered, set me off, and then by doing the swapoornatva kriya we are taught and the grace of God, literally it will be cleared from me leaving me free and in a more joyful place.
Bliss is our foundation. Not suffering, not moodiness, not roller coaster emotional psychological hangovers. Really our foundation and essence is Love experienced as Bliss and Joy. But blocking our ability to experience this state at all times is all the negative limiting patterns habits and memories replaying that we filter our present moments through.
One day I was extremely moody, tired, body aches and so I did not come for the afternoon shift and decided what I needed was to sit with the mirror and see what was churning in the mind that was not so visible to me but causing this emotional and physical turmoil. I picked up my mirror and sat with the person in the mirror which represents the "me" that is incomplete, or carrying something from the past. The part of me that is tired with pain. A vision came up in the mirror of me as a youth about 10 years old. I saw myself back at my childhood home in Kentucky walking from the driveway on the Valley Rd side of the house to the front side yard and I stopped on one of the square stone blocks that had such thin grass in between them and spikes sticking up. From there I looked up at the breakfast room and saw that the balcony door was open. Everything was silent, like a still movie. I was in such awe at this magnificent house, the green grass everywhere and the smell of summer. I noticed the bumpy driveway with random pot holes and remembered just how to drive the white chevrolet up the curvey drive and where to turn to avoid hitting the wall and the pot hole. A 'Dad' technique!! I looked up to the evergreens on the front lawn, the stone patio in the front of the house, the unique windows from the dining room up and over towards the living room. Then I looked back and scanned the driveway and garage and saw the name "Moore" written in the cement on the garage floor just as you walk in from the Valley Rd side. I saw the old white freezer sitting up against the garage wall, the crummy old sink holding paint rags, the rakes along the side of the garage, a few hanging instruments on the walls and what nots hanging above where Dad had tied ropes to hold his equipment. There was an old brown box cut open laying flat on the garage floor so the oil from the cars would not eat through the concrete. The smell "garage" was still there.
I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the family that once lived there, grew together, ate together; shared chaos with loud voices, yelling, crying, at times obnoxious, sometimes fun and running and hiding, thumping up the backstairs on all fours. What an active action packed life the house contained. I re-membered so many things as the memories poured into the mirror for me to experience, "life as it really was" back then.
What do I mean life as it really was- IS?
The only place to experience life as it is, Is from our being! BEING. The SELF. Not once did I witness my childhood or teen years through suffering, through anxiety, through nail biting - Me. I witnessed from a place of pure acceptance and grace. There were no problems; there was just a heck of a lot happening. The tears came hard and fast. How could I have missed this? The life happening at breakneck speed with such spontaneity and 9 people going in every direction was not a mad house. It really was just life happening largely in a grand way. I realized for the first time that as human beings we all experience life through root patterns, they create the filter that translates into emotional suffering, bondage. We don't see the truth. We see through our meaning we place upon everything and everyone, not as reality happens and IS for no reason. Our suffering happens because we add meaning and judgment to everything and everyone and then our life shrinks, we reduce our hearts, our understanding becomes a limited experience; and then we try and change it, people and situations to what we feel they should be. But inside is where we are hurting, aching, experiencing anger or self hatred for our self or another.
On this day, doing mirror work, I experienced my life back then through the stillness, through silence, through no thing and there was 'nothing'. There was love and gratitude for experiencing pure joy. Re-membering a childhood memory from wholeness. For this alone I cried in my dorm room as silently as I could wanting to go back and do it again and not miss it this time. I wanted my childhood back, my parents and my sisters and my brother. I felt I really missed the whole point of my young life.
The next morning sitting in Satsang, I still had more tears. I told the woman I work with in the food department I needed to go to the Banyon tree and let it all out. The Banyon tree is massive and goes on forever and knows what to do with tears. But I never made it there. I had to go to the kitchen and get ready for lunch. SO there I was, one of many at a long table chopping. We each had our separate work to do when I heard this loud hissing noise and then the biggest explosion I have ever heard in a kitchen with a tin roof and cement floors! I looked toward the gas cooker and saw nothing but "flame" and a woman as if in slow motion turning and walking away somewhat concerned for the steam that was spewing out towards her chasing her out of the kitchen. I turned and followed the boys out the door of the kitchen and all I could think of was, "oh dear God this place is going to explode, get out, the gas is going to rip any minute now." Looking back it felt like slow motion and pushy. I am pushing the guys ahead of me, I can't figure out why they are not running faster. My mind conjured up that the entire campus was going to blow sky high with the amount of gas cookers they have. When we got out of the building and saw others must have heard the big bang as a group of men had come out of the accounting department. I said to them fear oozing from my limbs, "GAS theres a GAS leak"!! They looked at me and said, "No ma, there is no gas here, only pressure cooker"!!! I was so confused, I could not think? What? Pressure cooker?? It was then all the boys looked at me and I looked at them, and one of them had such a grin in his eyes as if he knew but I was pushing him to keep moving forward so he went along with it!! Oh dear God we were running from a pressure cooker that blew it's lid? That was it! What in Gods name did I see in my mind then? This is the illusion we create in life. What we think we see and what really there is to see. Lord a mighty they were all laughing, the boys laughing and I was shaking so badly I had not found the funny in anything yet. We walked back into the kitchen and apparently we were the only ones who ran at my insistence and pushing. SO heres the moral of the story. Sometimes we think we know exactly what we need in life and how to go about it. I was prepared to let the Banyon tree hold my tears but Existence saw it another way. I was like a pressure cooker inside with all these past memories and tears that I needed to release but my ways are not always "his" ways. We are reminded not to go into powerlessness in life for anything. SO instead of my running to a place to cry more tears as if that would solve anything, the pressure cooker scared the pants off me and left me in the end laughing hysterically with the boys and many others who heard the story and have not let a few of us forget it.
Suffice it to say, I have not revisited my childhood home with any more with tears. It is with joy that I was able to experience it consciously from just being with it and reliving the peace and freedom by the witnessing of long ago happenings from a complete perspective where my child's mind was not influencing the cognitions nor were any emotional hangovers.
