Happy New Year

When your future looks stormy with dark , angry skies,

Be calm – there is nothing to fear.

It’s just a growth opportunity in disguise

An evolutionary changing of gear.

So lift up your head and open your eyes,

Let your heart sing a song of good cheer.

Be strong in your center, in the Self in the heart,

The magic is right now and right here.

Each new day that dawns is a gift from the Gods,

Be still and the truth will be clear:

You are divine, no matter what the odds,

So I wish you a Wondrous New Year!

The Longest Journey

The longest journey is from the head to the heart.

The head is chaos and confusion: the heart is love and joy and peace.

When the mind seeks its source, it will find the Divine.

Wisdom is turning within: seeking the source of Being in the depths of oneself.

Who am I? Where does this “I” arise?

Here in this very lifetime is the secret path to perfection: the end of all suffering.

The perfect silence is deep sleep, where everything disappears.

Where does the “I” rest in the nothingness of deep sleep?

Still the mind. Dive deep into the silence.

Invert the focus of your attention. Perceive the perceiver.

Discover who you really are, in the lotus of the Heart.

Know the bliss of waking sleep, the living emptiness, the fecund void.

Be the boundless space that holds all in its gentle embrace: the Self in the Heart.

This is your true nature: eternal and infinite being-consciousness-bliss.

Return to it and find true and lasting peace.
Right here, right now.
Just Be

Ode to Mother Kundalini

Divine, ferocious beauty so radiant with grace,

O Mother, show me your kindest face,

Fill me with your shakthi, your love, your light,

Behead me so that I may discover my soul’s delight.

Giving birth to Gods, you destroy the Demons of pride,

Spinning all forms into being in your great mystery;

Dancing on the breast of the Lord of the Universe,

O great Devi, all-powerful Uma , Mother Kundalini!

You are the Source and the Substance of all,

The other half of Shiva, the dynamic force of infinity.

Your powerful love weaves all that is  into Being,

From a grain of sand to  the greatest galaxy.

Chiti Shakti, serpent fire, alchemical grace divine,

You are the dancer and the dance , you are space and time.

You are consciousness awakened, eternal and true:

All that is begins, exists and ends in you.

Hold me like a babe in your embrace so sweet

Or trample me into the dust beneath your perfect feet;

Only let me feel your divine touch of transformation

That turns poor human clay into infinite , ecstatic jubilation!

Om Shree Durge, Ma Shakti, Amba Bhavani,Jagadamba Bhavani

Om Shree Tripura Sundari, Mahalakshmi,  Kali Mata ki jai!

Treasure Within

“ To know the unity of all life leads to deathlessness; to know not leads to death.

Both are hidden in the infinity of Brahman, who is beyond both”

Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

“ All that is required to realise the Self is to be still. What could be easier than that ? “

Sri Ramana Maharishi

The human condition is both poignant and mysterious, filled with pleasure and pain, with great promise and deep anguish, with peaks of triumph and valleys of failure, with despair and delight.

 It is the dance of the opposites amidst the inevitability of endings.

Buddha called it dukkha or suffering, meaning the ultimately unsatisfactory nature of all temporary states and things. All things are perishable. This, too, shall pass.

Thus, every human being yearns for true, abiding happiness and peace.

In the Upanishads, the ultimate reality is referred to as Akshara, the Imperishable. This is the Self, the formless, indescribable perfection that is infinite, eternal, being-consciousness-bliss. This is Brahman, the source and the substance of all that exists. The seers tell us that it simultaneously exists as the tiny invisible core of every living being, while yet remaining the absolute whole, containing all that exists.

The truly miraculous gift of being human is that, in this very form and lifetime, it is possible to discover and become one with the Imperishable. This is the moksha or enlightenment of Hinduism , the  nirvana of Buddhism,  or ,as the Buddha very simply put it ,”the end of suffering.” This is the secret of secrets, the answer to all questions, the end of all doubts and fears: this is the aware, blissful and true Life.

 It is freely available to every human being. The one who sincerely pursues it and finally merges into it becomes the Jeevan-muktha  …the enlightened one. This is the best possible state of human evolution, the ultimate perfection, the state of unshakable , eternal peace and joy. It is the birth-right of every human being: all that is asked is total dedication of effort towards knowing one’s true Self. It is beyond the intellect and can only be known by being it.

All other discussions, intellectual exercises or debates -  about creation and reality, about rebirth and karma, about levels and degrees of realisation, about ignorance and enlightenment, about seekers and the sought -  are mere mind- froth on the surface of the ocean of silent being that is Brahman.

Drop the intellect. Just be: thoughtless, desireless, still.

Dive deep into the silence in your Heart.

Inner energies awaken and take over: let yourself go, surrender and dissolve in the Self.
Blissful, perfect peace!

Celebrating Light

"What a mystery is Light!

Awareness in form,

Burning fog and mist and darkness away,

Transforming all it touches

Into radiance.

Find the Light within.

Let it shine into all the dark, hidden corners

Of your being.

This is enough.

Observation,

 without judgment,

is transformation."

From Lightsongs: the book

At core, we are all immortal beings of Light,

sparks of the One true flame of blissful consciousness

that is the source and the substance of all that exists.

We are infinite, boundless, joyous and perfect by our very nature.

This Diwali, may everyone discover and celebrate Light!

Who will bear witness?

Who will bear witness to the truth of the Self

 when only the Self exists?

Who will speak of that ecstatic love where no trace of lover remains?

Can drop know  the feelings of ocean?

Where do we truly belong?

Light leaves no room for shadow

as the singer becomes the song.

The mystics reveal the secret:

at the edge of the horizon

between duality and unity,

There is a sunrise sliver of joy:

the incandescent delight in the instant before moth becomes flame;

Brief heartbeat: then only  perfect Silence

And the infinite bliss of the One.

The Way to Paradise

                                      ( Paradise, by Meenakshi..acrylic on canvas)   
               

           “Attention! Here and Now!Attention! Here and Now! “Mynah Birds in "Island " by Aldous Huxley

"I became aware of a silent, resistless change taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I had prepared in the train with such meticulous accuracy dropped away. For, it does not now seem to matter whether I solve the problems which have hitherto troubled me. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me; that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being and that my thought tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest." Paul Brunton , describing his first meeting with Sri Ramana Maharishi

Did you remember to BE today?

Did you experience the NOW, true presence and being…or were you lost in past and future, in fantasies and dreams and fears and desires?

Did you LIVE today?

Or did the ticker-tape mind keep running non-stop so that you  just stumbled unconsciously through the day ,like a zombie?

Does the bird struggle with intellectual exercises to fly?

Does the fish need complex mental projections to plot its path in the ocean or does it just swim, without any doubts?

Why is it so difficult for human beings to just live naturally?

Because the human mind runs amok…out of control, twisting and churning in unnecessary agonies of thought, garbage spewing non-stop.

Can you turn it off? Can you use the mind wisely and only when required?

Can you stop the insanity ? Can you stay in the thought-free state of pure being?

The way to Paradise is within you…..in the stillness of your being, in the perfect grandeur of that Silence.

Years later, Paul Brunton writes: „I remain perfectly calm and fully aware of who I am and what is occurring. The Self still exists but it is a changed radiant Self. Something that is far superior to my unimportant personality rises into consciousness and becomes me. I am in the midst of an ocean of blazing light. I sit in the lap of holy bliss.

Divine grace descends and acts only when it is invoked by total surrender. It acts from within because God resides in the heart of all beings. Its whispers can be heard only in a mind purified by self surrender and prayer. Rationalists laugh at it and atheists scorn it but it exists. It is a descent of God into the soul‟s zone of awareness. It is visitation of a force unexpected and unpredictable. It is voice spoken out of cosmic silence. It is cosmic will which can perform authentic miracles under its own law.‟

Just Be!

                               

" Nothing to do: just be.Nothing to think: just be. Nothing to dream:just be.  Nothing to hope for:just be.Nothing to want or need or desire: just BE HERE NOW! "                                  from Lightsongs - the book.

O mind, turn inwards!

Dive deep into the Heart, into Self.

Be still…body, breath, mind…quiet, at rest in the lap of Being.

Experience the nameless, formless perfection at the now-here point beyond time and space.

Here your source fills you with the Divine, with grace and gladness and peace.

Here all fears, all thoughts, all doubts, all desires …everything disappears!

Here there is perfect rest, perfect equanimity…all is always magic, all is always well.

Here mind dissolves in pure being ; infinity tastes of nectar indescribable.

Delicious never-ending bliss….

Stay here forever.

What else is there to do?

Waking Sleep

Fast asleep: no dream , no thought, no world, no one;

Just the blissful peace of perfect emptiness.

Deep, deep ocean of calm.

A bubble rises:” I am” is born.it floats up to the surface, wakes up..and explodes into creation:

I am this, I am that, I am late, I am busy, I am hungry, I am this body-mind.
So he is and she is and it is and they are and the sounds, the smells , the sights of this world exploding all around…and this is me and that is mine and joy-sorrow pain-pleasure desire-fear worry-hope all them tangles and troubles and memories and fantasies….where did that blissful peace go???

It’s still right there: perfect, eternal, unchanged, shining like the sun of suns in the lotus of the Heart.

You just covered it up with your movie; you lost yourself in the world.

Now is it possible to wake up and NOT lose your connection to that perfect peace and bliss?

Sure it is: it just takes practice.

And intense concentration, unshakable faith, absolute devotion and total surrender.

Welcome to atma-vichara, self inquiry.

Where you trace the ’I’ thought back to its nest.

Away from all the other thoughts.

Back, back, back ..away from all the projections, back to the source.

No quitting..like a bloodhound on the scent, trace the path to the source.

Until once more there is just ‘I am’

Like a diver after the pearl, dive deep, deep.

Feel the pulse, the beat, the true I-I.

Something …. Light…rises from the depths, grabs you, swallows you up.

No more I : this is how you die before your body dies.

Once more there is only the blissful peace of perfect emptiness.

Only, this time, it's waking sleep: awareness shines silently and perfectly.

Nothing else exists.

The Heart Lotus

There is a place inside me where I am always at home,

Where I am always happy and loved and at peace.

Nothing and no one can take this away from me.

This is the throne of Being, the seat of “I am”.

Here I am never alone: I am One with all of creation.

Here I am infinite and perfect, invulnerable and invincible.

There is no past or future here, only an eternal present.

There is no thought here, no emotion, no drama, no excitement.

This is where the mind runs out of words, falls silent, disappears.

This is where my spirit rests and recharges itself in dreamless sleep.

From this centre, I draw infinite strength and wisdom and joy.

This is my anchor, my shelter, my sustenance and my support.

Smaller than an atom, yet greater than the greatest,

This is the pregnant emptiness of boundless space.

This is the true reality that underlies everything, the source and the substance of all things.

This is the unchanging divine awareness that shines eternally.

This is who I really am.

A Prayer

In the depths of  being I glimpsed   a Jewel,

 the luminous splendour of the colourless Light of Emptiness.

My heart cried out this prayer:

Oh Lord without  name or form,

Oh perfect mirror who reflects all creation,

Thou secret in-dweller living embedded in all things ,

Let  your radiance embrace me that I may dissolve in you!

Thou mighty Infinity that contains and permeates all creation,

thou shining love and bliss that cannot be measured or described or contained-

swallow me whole and let me be One with You.

Oh Sun of suns, bless us all with your infinite grace!

O Father  who is the Source,

O great and tender Mother who cares for and sustains all ,

accept our total surrender , open your arms,

embrace these prodigal  drops returning at last

 to your ocean of eternal peace.

Om Shanti , Shanti, Shanti, Hee.

Lyrics for a tune:

Thoughts and dreams and fantasies drifting by
Nothing to grab or hold onto, empty sky.
I fall like a stone into myself, so deep inside
Deep down, down into silence, nowhere to hide.

I hear the sound of emptiness like a distant bell
Where the Light begins, beyond the beyond.
Somewhere sweet notes trickle down,no one to tell
Who is there to be the doer and what is done.
Here no time or space, no heaven or hell,
Only the One true Being singing an infinite song.
This is the border of the mystery, where I disappear;
This is my home, where I truly belong.

The Gap.

“ Do you know how it is to stand

Astride the gap between the worlds?

One who has been there remembers:

The thought-free moment that is the door,

The one true sound that is the key,

The delicate perfection underlying and pervading everything in a fragile lattice-work of light,

The exquisite and blissful peace in that silence.” Mickey

There is a chink in the shutters through which the wind whistles.

 A crack in the curtains lets sunlight stream through like molten gold.

There is always a gap, a hidden doorway, a pause, a secret break in the space-time continuum.

Listen carefully, all ye prisoners of the mind: this is your escape route, your path to freedom, your gateway to  infinity.

In the mind, it is the space between two thoughts.

 In the sky , it is the gap in the clouds that lets you get a glimpse of  heaven.

In music, it is the silence between the notes.

In you, it is the Heart , the still center of Being.

This is the Here, the Now, the Self , the Tao that is the source and the substance of all things.

This is who you really are.

 Mind the Gap. Find the Gap.

Slip through  and be free.

The Hourglass

"So you run and you run to try to catch up with the sun, but its sinking,

Racing around to come up behind you again.

The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older;

Shorter of breath, one day closer to death."

Time, Pink Floyd - the Dark Side of the Moon

In the deepest level of  being, a yearning is felt for  the real, the true.

In the highest sky of  inner consciousness, shines radiant  a divine star.

Your true nature sings of infinite bliss and unending peace; can you hear its song?

Will you finally claim your inheritance, O child of man, and know who you truly are?

This hidden treasure lies in your Heart-centre, your very soul.

You cannot measure it with the senses  or know it with the mind.

Seek the source of your own existence in the depths of being;

When the seeker dissolves in that silence, the sought is defined.

Life falls like sand in an hourglass, disappears like rain in the desert of Time.

A trillion worlds dissolve in a cosmic sea.

Are you a brief butterfly wave that rises and falls- or are you the infinite Ocean?

Ponder this, my friend : which would you rather be?

Morning Raga

Listen! In the first faint light of  dawn, silence begets the origin of all song.

Soft gurgle of water flowing downriver, the first whispers of wind in the trees;

Cuckoos cry to the world to awaken, splash of a fish leaping and falling,
the slither of oars and the soft hiss of the boat against the stream.

The first women washing clothes on the bank swish, thud ! swish, thud!

 like souls being cleansed in the river of Grace in a rhythm as old as the earth.

Far away a herd-boy calls to his sleepy cows to cross at the ford while the water is low.

Bird-songs begin and resonate in chorus, do you hear the clouds drift secretly across the sky?

It seems everything is singing in harmony…where does that deep underlying chord of Om arise?

See! The vast dark sky  blushes so delicately as Space reveals hidden beauty at the fading edge of night.

A still-bright sliver of moon slides down the horizon, as day triumphant drifts up all orange and gold.

And oh look! The magnificent splendour of a rising sun!

No thoughts, no words, no stories: only this effortless, blissful perfection of every new dawn.

If this is illusion, what artist created such glory?

If morning does not open your heart to the sacred,

nothing will!

Who Am I ?

                                

“Chidananda rupa Shivoham Shivoham”

(I am consciousness and bliss, Shiva am I, Shiva am I)

Atma Shatakam, Jagadguru Shankaracharya

(Talk about bungee jumping! Self inquiry is diving off the cliff with no parachute!)

Who am I?

I am not body or mind or thought or feeling; I am not air or water or fire or earth.

I am so fine I penetrate all matter; indeed, everything is made of me!

My inbreath begins in the farthest heaven and my outbreath reaches the deepest hell.

I have no boundaries or limits.

I am infinite space and the eternal now.

All the universes are contained in me.

I have no names or forms, yet all names and forms are like foam on the surface of the ocean that I am.

I am no one and everyone, nothing and everything.

Without beginning or end, unchanging, perfect, eternal, unending peace and joy am I!

Hiding in the tiniest heart of the atom, I am the swallower of worlds!

I am the lowest of the low, the least and the humblest; thus am I greater than all that exists!

Infinitely aware and eternally awake, I am that living consciousness that is the source and the substance of all things.
Subtler than the subtlest, you cannot know me- you can only Be me.

Every living being contains Me in its Heart of hearts; I am the life-force and the grace and the loving intelligence that creates and sustains and destroys.
There is only Me

                          Dancing so blissfully across eternity.

Throw it all away!

“When you haven’t understood yourself, what is the point of understanding other things?

When you have understood yourself, what else is there to understand? “

Atma Vidya - Bhagawan Ramana Maharishi.

"Not till your thoughts cease all branching here and there.Not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something.Not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone ,will you be on the right road to the Gate."  Huang Po.

We are so proud of our so-called knowledge. 

We are inflated by our academic prowess, our degrees and doctorates, our mental libraries and museums.

We read obscure books and ancient tomes and learn all kinds of rubbish by-heart.

We collect facts and figures and paragraphs and pages  and long arguments like we were collecting some great treasure. 

We are nothing but crazy, insecure rag-pickers with a huge sack of garbage weighing us down!

Throw it all away!

Sink into silence and stillness…find the root of thought….find the source of ” I”.

Inner energies awaken and divinity takes over.

There is nothing else you ever need to do.

Oh Lord of Hearts!

O sweet Gurudev, how can I begin to sing your praise?

There are no words to thank you for your mercy, your blessings,

your compassionate and infinite grace.

In trying to sing of you, I have lost my tongue and forgotten my name;

I am dumb and silent and still; some call me insane.

Tears flow like rivers down my cheeks, O King of my Heart- what can I say?

No matter how many times I fall, you pick me up again and again

with greater love and patience than any mother .

No matter how stubborn and stupid I am, you teach me again and again

With greater love and patience than any father.

No matter how fearful and needy and desperate I am, you never refuse me-

Answering every prayer.

You who are ultimate tenderness, infinitely forgiving, ocean of love and light,

You who are father, mother, God, Goddess, teacher, beloved and joyous delight.

You who make me fearless with your total protection, who grants my every need.

You who are the Emperor of emperors, the Light of the Universe

Who deigns to shine like a warm soft jewel in my Heart through all the lifetimes ,

Who never lets me go!

You who welcomes me like a fire in the forest, like an oasis in the desert, like an island in the sea

You who teach me how to truly BE;

You who loves me without limit and kills me with oneness and bliss!

Who, dear Lord of Hearts, can begin to describe this?

Fading Story

“If I should die tomorrow, dearly beloved, pray do not grieve for me;

Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice! At last, I am free!

I have cut the knots that bind me, split my chains asunder, leapt joyously into the freedom of the sky

No more imprisoned in the body, I am everything; no more I !

Know that I have been blessed with endless grace

And watched over by gods and angels all through my days.

Your presence and your love have blessed me a thousand fold-

You have supported and cherished me in so many different ways.”Mickey

How long will this story last?

When I am dead, will anyone still visit my blog or  Facebook page or read my  Tweets?

We come and go like passing clouds; all that is left of our bodily existence is a few memories like the faded photographs of ancestors unremembered after a generation or two.

Is this the story we so desperately cling to? Why do we forget, again and again, our roots in the Self and wander like hungry ghosts in the world of the senses, tormented by fear and desire?

The Master’s words fall on deaf ears; no matter how much he exhorts us to remember who we really are, to awaken to our own eternal perfection, our inherent divinity. Why are we so stupid that we repeatedly leave the cool bliss of his protective shade and suffer in the blazing desert of the dream that is the world?

Why do we fall again and again into the traps of intellect and conceptual thought and pride?
 How can we be so blind , when we are blessed to be His devotees, surrounded by grace and love beyond compare? 

Oh sweet Lord of mountains, Arunachala Shiva, why do you not burn up these vasanas that poison us lifetime after lifetime ?  

Again and again we lose our way: will you not bind us firmly to yourself with the silken thread of your love?

I am tired of all the blunders, of  the mistakes of ignorance, of the forgetfulness and the ego-trips and the banal alternating rhythms of pleasure and pain.

O gracious Guru of Gurus, launch your thunderbolt at me!

Destroy me once and for all and let me merge with the dust beneath your feet.

Being Love

“Love is a deep mystery. It is the blossoming lotus and the bee drunk with nectar. It is a vast ocean that contains all creation. It is that state of total unity where no trace of duality remains. It is infinite compassion, unshakable peace, ecstatic harmony. Once you have tasted it, nothing else will satisfy you. “

Lightsongs – the book.

What is love? 
Throughout human history, philosophers, poets and sages have attempted to define this term. Is it an emotion, a feeling, a quality of personality? Or is it more – a force, a power, a divine emanation?

Are there different kinds of love? The absolute infatuation of the lover and the beloved, the unconditional bonding between mother and child, the selfless devotion of the compassionate care-giver, the heartfelt surrender of the devotee – are these all different versions of love? Or are they but pale shadows, reflections of the sun in a puddle, just a glimpse of the real Love?

The sages and mystics tell us that love is the very form of the Divine, the source and the substance of all things. 
This love is the greatest power in the universe, containing within itself all good, all joy , all peace, all consciousness and all creative energy. It is infinite, eternal perfection, shining without effort and without volition.It is in you, the very centre of your being.

You cannot know or understand or feel this love with your intellect or any of your senses. You can only BE it.

All sadhana, all the spiritual paths, eventually lead to this same centre of being. Once you touch it, you will never let go…until you drown in it like salt in the sea.

When there is no separate ‘you’ left, there is only love.

( Picture Courtesy Karin Murad)