She Seeks That

The Mother, The Father,
Is always there.
Just needs to hear your call

Just as the earth
Always supports your weight
And the heavens
Descend to your voice

I am blessed to touch solitude.
Finally, for a month, after 3 frenzied communal years.
I get to be here, at Amritapuri, this ashram
The home of Mahadevi Herself, here, for us all.

And I can introspect
Undisturbed, Unbidden
Holding tenderly each day
The quiet waves of being.

Make some tender friendships
(remain open to their happening, anyway)
And read, read, read.
The bliss of the Word
Not with a goal, just for fun.

Finally, for the Self
There's only patience,
Waiting, praying,
Tender awakening comes.

I prostrate myself as an internal art.
It is a posture of mind,
To practice without seeking
External validation.

How can I be truly humble?
Not a false pretense
Adopted to appear Holy
But truly knowing
That all of You
Is That, and
As such, has keys
To the universal teaching.

I don't know.
I can only behave as if it were
True in the hope
That someday I will find
Vanity & Pride
Have gone, and I forgot
To miss them in their quiet absence.

I have gained and lost nothing.
Born, named, educated.
And yet, beyond it all
I Am That.

The advantage of being out in the world
(a freelancer)
Is that I can take risks
Take the time to explore
I don't want to Do
Only to Be
With tremendous force
To allow Being
Which decimates all false motives
Leaving only dharma in its wake
For that is all I Am
Is Force
I Am That

The twin oars which propel the boat are Faith and Self-Effort.
I found a prayer in a book, and allowed it to become my mantra:
Please help me
Please show me the way
Please open my heart to thy way
Please teach me infinite love
Years later, it became clear
She had heard my call
Had always heard the calls.

One morning, I found myself singing
It dawns upon me that I am helped
And I do not know by whom or what
And still, I pray to you
My girlfriend knew, but she had learned
Years ago, that we each make our own way home

I spent years worshipping idols--
Names of the goddess that came across my path
Each time, each utterance, brought Her
Presence into direct experience
I saw faces change into Hers
I met Her in dream
I ran into her on the street.

I was so intellectual.
I found I could apply my thinking to the study of Religion,
and every other problem of philosophy fell away.
I tested every spiritual technology I got my hands on.
I thought magic would point the way to healing.

I do not accept help easily.
It's ingrained that I must do everything myself.
I was taught that I live inside a war zone.
A body fighting itself.
Decades later, I learned that only peace cures war.
No amount of bombing will bring peace.

I was very ill for many years.
At age 5, allopaths diagnosed me
with a rare auto-immune condition.
This chemical imbalance left me at high risk of bleeding.
That illness was the defining factor of my life for the following 20+ years.
At the same time, in 2001, I injured my right eye, playing
Alone with a toy. The eye filled with blood,
Eventually I lost all functional sight.
But, this injury put us in the context to discover the bleeding,
Which could have been fatal if left unchecked, or if I had
Instead injured some internal organs.
The accident which cost me an eye
May have been grace, preventing
A much worse outcome.

As a result of the injury+illness, I spent my life
Transiting in and out of hospitals for treatment.
I had multiple surgeries, and was given a laundry list
Of medications, so went childhood.

I was blessed with a loving and supportive mother.
Her courage and steadfastness,
Her unwavering love, got me through it all.

13 years passed. I was anxious, depressed.
At age 18, I started drinking.
I was culturally normal. That's what Canadian teenagers do.
Drink alcohol, do drugs, smoke cigarettes.
I got on the bandwagon, but perhaps
My medical history kept my cautious,
Stopped me going in too deep, even at the worst of times.

During my university years, I exhausted myself.
Got to the point of burnout, multiple times. I did not know how to listen to my body's needs.
So I ended up back in the hospital.

Then, in 2019, a series of fortunate meetings brought me to a dance studio.
I fell in love with a strange social dance form known as contact improvisation.
It changed everything.
Suddenly, the body was not to be despised. It became a source of joy.
Eventually, of connection to myself and others.
The process was underway.
Then, covid happened.

When the pandemic began, I was grounded.
My meditation practice was steady.
I was basically a stable, decently happy student.
I had been moderate in my consumption for 2 years.
But I felt that something was missing.

It took a week of isolation for me to realize two things:
I have faith in God
I am not afraid to die.
Pandemic sat me down and made me look at the big questions.
I have since then been reckoning with the consequences.
I have made the search for direct religious experience a top priority.

I understand now that my faith did not cure me.
It gave me a reason to live.
A reason to find my own way to health.
I asked for help, and it took many forms.
But never could anyone change my mind for me.

It took complete and total re-evaluation of who I am
of What I am,
of what it means to live a good life.
That is what healed me.

Not medicine.
Not embodiment.
Not nutrition.
Not anything but the willingness to accept
That being alive is worth the effort.

In its folly the mind
With its shackles of habit
Thinks such and such is possible
Or not.

A human birth is a tremendous occasion
For knowledge, for truth.
Consciousness drives everything.
Having given up everything for God
All things are then possible.

The mind spins, caught in a furious drumroll.
Please, release those thoughts
Which are any less than true
Honest seeking for It, in You.

There isn't, there is
I am That. I Am perfect
Year after year, I am learning to learn
I am fascinated with that process within myself.