Ma's Blog

Last week I did panchakarma, a week of Ayurvedic cleansing and seclusion. During this sacred time I received the following dream.

I am by the side door of the ashram talking to a man when I realize I am completely naked. Although neither of us is embarrassed it seems odd so I go to my room and dress. Two men appear at the door of my room. One of them wears a red t-shirt and is naked from the waist down. I shout at him to go away. Then I look at the dresser in the room and see that there is  a large parcel there from my sister. At once I realize the men were angels, because the parcel appeared mysteriously. Now I dream that I wake up. I am playing the radio loudly in the early morning and it wakes Sadananda up. I realize that I turned it on in my sleep. I look at the dresser, the parcel isn't there and I realize I dreamed the angels. Sadananda comes in from outside with five stray children he found outside. One is a boy and the rest are girls and they are half Indian with dark complexions. They are hungry so we go to Matam Fez to eat. Sadananda drives us all there. I am in the restaurant but to find Sadananda and the children I have to climb some rickety stairs and haul myself on to a loft with no hand rail. I am scared of heights and get stuck. A man on the stairway behind me says "What's the problem?" and then he agrees it’s a dangerous climb. I make it to the table with Sadananda and the sleeping children. Sadananda orders granola with yoghurtfor all of us; it is full of bright green chopped chilies and I can't eat it because I am on my panchakarma.  So we leave Matam Fez and go to Himalayas. As I enter the restaurant an old lady holds out her hand, wanting me to help her to her seat, so I help her but this annoys the hostess. We go to our table and two men in flowered shirts come and scold me for helping the old lady. I think this is pretty silly. I can't eat the food there either. We go home but now it is more like my parents house with an upper storey. The children's mother is sitting on the sidewalk. She tells Sadananda that the children are fine on their own and 'need their freedom'; she is a neglectful mother to the extreme and we are still taking care of the children.  I wake up.
 
As I awoke I realized that the two restaurants represented Sufism and Hinduism.  I can’t be nourished by the old paradigm version of either one.

Interpretation by Sufi teacher Habiba Ashki.
 This is an amazing dream:
There is a gift waiting for you that is from your ancestral lineage.  You will receive it when you are willing to stand totally naked before your angels or inner guides.  Nothing can be held back.  This gift will nourish you, your relationship with Sadananda, who will also receive a new level of awakening, and will nourish your spiritual children.  For now it is important to let go of reliance on any spiritual tradition and to totally trust your own inner wisdom.  Let your open heart be your guide.

During this journey I have been on with Sadananda and his love for another woman, I have had to delve deeply into the essence of trust. What is the relationship between trust, love and vulnerability?

There is the naïveté of trust, the childlike belief that this specific person will never harm us, never cause us pain.  A trust like this ignores the basic reality of anitya, anatta and dukha—every compounded entity is impermanent, inherently empty of true existence, and will eventually give rise to pain simply by changing.  If in no other way, the ones will love will one day die and leave us bereft.

Then there is the trust we place in our dream or fantasy of happily ever after. This fantasy is a powerful imagination that our needs for love, safety, connection, security, stability, and so on can and will be met only in this specific way, with this specific person. We narrow our sense of true vision into the tunnel-vision of this fantasy and are devastated when our dream turns out to be an illusion. In my work as an Ayurvedic practitioner and spiritual guide, I have seen the immense disappointment people suffer when their dream of family falls apart.

Once our naïveté of trust is shipwrecked on the rocks of emptiness and impermanence, once the dream of happily ever after reveals itself as a nightmare, we can easily swing into distrust and self-protection. We decide to trust only ourselves and seek ways to close the chinks in our armour to make ourselves invulnerable. Yet at this point we become our own worst enemies because we deny our need for connection. We are so determined not to let others cause us misery that we become the authors of our own misery and isolation.  Simon and Garfunkel sum this one up:

“If I never loved I never would have cried…
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.”

In the depth of my own experience of pain, loss and immense disappointment, a light of what is fundamentally trustworthy and true shines in the darkness. That light is bodhichitta—awakened heart. Bodhichitta shows me that true love is not a contract, not a deal and not a bargain. It is not about, “I love you so you have to love me,”or “I do these things for you, you have to keep your side of the bargain.”  True love is not a peace treaty, and does not depend upon our loved one’s ability not to cause us pain. True love is absolutely unconditional and is not involved in any way with treaties or contracts. Trust arises in me today as trust in my own basis goodness and trust in the basic goodness of those I love. Although their actions may give rise to a transitory experience of pain, basic goodness resides within them as an urge for my welfare and the welfare of all beings. Placing my trust in this deeper level, the Buddha nature level, I remain open and vulnerable. I am not a rock or an island; I am a tender, fully alive human heart. To love is to be vulnerable. Choosing tenderness, choosing vulnerability, I choose to live and to love. The beauty of this love which has shed naïveté and illusions is incomparable. Instead of saying, “I love you, so you aren’t allowed to hurt me,”   I can truly say, “Having been hurt by your actions, I finally know what it is to love you unconditionally. Thank you for this gift I would never have received without your actions and the sorrow they generated.” 

Here’s a doha I wrote that catches some of this flavour.

On the thin ice of concepts

 I walked the shining lake of knowledge.

Summer came, melting the ice.

I drowned

And walk on water.

One of the names of Divine Mother in Lalita Sahasranama is “om nirvikaryai namaha: salutations to Her who is the unchanging basis of all change.” It appears that at this time in life I am being called upon to actualise this aspect of Ma’s potency.

The more profound the inner stillness in which I reside, the more rapidly seem to fly the changes all around. In terms of the major life changes, the features of this transition are ever shifting and changing in themselves. And change is in the air at the ashram too. Yesterday alone, a resident who was due to move in on the first of this month suddenly decided not to move in after all…a resident who was slated to move out decided he couldn’t bear to leave… and the ever supportive Rivkah, ashram manager and personal assistant to Ma, handed in her resignation in order to focus on her massage practice. The illusion of permanence has, it seems, no breathing space here at Alandi Ashram.

Last week in Ayurvedic Fundamentals class we were studying Shad Darshan (Philosopy). As I read from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali to the students, I came to sutra 16 in the first chapter. “Supreme freedom is that complete liberation from the world of change which comes from knowing the unbounded Self.”  Words read before, intellectually known before, pondered before suddenly took the form of a thunderbolt launching from the page and striking me in the heart. “O my God,” I gasped, “this is it! This is the truth! I am actually going through this right now…but I didn’t have the words.”

 Indeed, this is the true, absolute brahmacharya, this is the genuine sannyas, to renounce the world of change effortlessly and spontaneously, through knowing the unbounded One without a second. I feel and know the human woman within my being and give voice to her feelings, concerns and vulnerabilities, yet she is no longer I, because the focus of being has shifted to paramatman, the Supreme Self.  And, yes, it is bewildering at times to be on the journey to changeless being, because from one perspective this can appear to be a massive change. I am no longer the one I thought I was. om nirvikaryai namaha!

January 14^th is an auspicious day on the Vedic calendar since it marks the solar transition to Sidereal Capricorn. Although the sun enters Tropical Capricorn on the winter solstice, this is not actually aligned with the constellation of Capricorn, due to a phenomenon known as the Procession of the Equinoxes, which relates to the sun’s twenty four thousand year journey around galactic centre. For the Vedic calendar, it is the sun’s entry into Makara, or Sidereal Capricorn, which marks the beginning of the sun’s northern journey, the path of light. On this auspicious day, vows and initiations will be especially effective. Hence ‘Makara Sankranti’ or January 14^th is the traditional initiation day at Alandi Ashram.

I have performed initiations for students and devotees every Makara Sankranti for many years, never imagining that one day I would carry out a self-initiation on that date. Preparations for this event arose spontaneously in my psyche and were carried out meticulously yet effortlessly. So I came down the stairs to the temple at dawn dressed in a brand new pure white $10 sari created from a bolt of muslin at the fabric shop.

 I could not help but recall the occasion twenty eighty years previously when I made brahmachari vows on the banks of the Kaveri River with Bede Griffiths. It was 4^th April 1980 and I met Sadananda for the first time later that day. Almost twenty years later, here I was again making vows.

Sadananda, Matrupriya, Alandi Board president Jane Bunin, Hilary Moshman, Alandi Mandali musician Seva, Ashram administrator Rivkah and her son Toviah, as well as Amanda, a friend from Omaha, were present to witness the vows. After sunrise agnihotra we did a homa fire ceremony, offering 108 Healing Mantras and then making offerings to all the gurus in the Alandi lineage. At the end of the fire ceremony I read my vows in the presence of the assembled witnesses and of the lineage gurus –invoked through fire— and Agni, Fire himself. As we always do in our initiation ceremonies, I walked three times around the fire to confirm the vows.

Then I received an ochre shawl and a tulsi mala from Raghudas’ Seat, as tokens and reminders of eth vows taken.

My new life had begun.

Soon I realized that the ochre shawl is a constant reminder of the fires of Shiva that burn away all secondary things leaving only the One. I am never alone because I am clothed in that Fire.  And I saw too that the true brahmacharya is to abstain completely from identification with the limited self.

“In my end is my beginning” as Heraclitus said. At this time in life I experience both a death and a birth. My married woman self is undergoing a death experience as the new self comes to birth.

The anguish of the death experience is the birth pangs of a new level of being, one on which I belong more completely than ever to my children, all sentient beings.   May this broken heart be a fountain of healing for all suffering beings!

On 30^th December I set off on a road trip with two of my closest friends and one-time ashram residents—our pancha karma faculty, Ameya (Satya Duprey), and former board member Hilary Moshman. Ameya was accompanied by her partner, who had been newly christened Nagesh in the Amethyst Heart ceremony. On the way out of Boulder we chanced to meet Alandi Ashram’s board secretary, Jeph Cowan, along with his wife Linda. They enquired where I was going and why. “Is it a vacation?”  I knew it was not really a vacation, but it wasn’t until we were heading down Highway 285 that I realized the guru’s purpose for the trip. “This,” I announced, “is my pre-vows pilgrimage. I am going to gather blessings.”

Pilgrimage always involves hardship and an arduous journey and this one was no exception. As we crossed Kenosha Pass at an elevation of 10,000 feet and dropped into South Park, we met high winds, blowing snow, fog and icy roads. At times visibility was almost non-existent. Suddenly, we encountered a car which had come to a dead stop in a white-out. Swerving to avoid the stationary vehicle, we skidded and veered off the road. “At first it was hard to get control of the car,” Ameya said. “But when Hilary started saying om namah shivayah and you started chanting ram, ram, ram, everything flowed effortlessly.” Safely back on the road, and fortified by vegan marshmallows, we continued to negotiate fog and blowing snow all the way to Fairplay.

By the time we had crossed Poncha Pass and entered the San Luis Valley, late afternoon sun was touching the snow-clad peaks of the Sangre de Christo Mountains and the valley brush glowed golden in the falling light. Turning off the highway, we headed to Baca Grande, until we saw the dome of the Divine Mother Temple. At Haidakhandi Universal Ashram we were welcomed by ashram mother Ramloti. It was twenty years since my first visit to HUA during the Harmonic Convergence and now here I was, gathering blessings for sannyas. We passed a peaceful night and morning meditating in the temple and singing kirtan, as I sought Divine Mother’s blessings for my new life.

After lunch prasadam, we continued up the road to where the white stupa of Karmapa shone out above the snowy valley. Circumambulating the stupa with chants of karmapa chenno, I begged for the blessings of Karmapa and of the Karma Kargu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism to support me in monastic vows.

We continued on our way, through Alamosa and Antonito, across the Rio Grande Gorge and into Taos. It was also twenty years since my first visit to Neem Karoli Baba Ashram and Hanuman Temple—and my first visit as a single person and aspiring sannyasini, a fact that evoked some sobs as I laid my head on Maharaji’s tucket. Here, we saw the New Year in with chants to Hanuman. There was time for my favourite activities, early morning meditation in the auxiliary shrine room, known as ‘Maharaji’s office’ and Sanskrit chanting with Hilary, my long-time chant partner. This time Hilary supported my new-found interest in Lalita Sahasranama, a powerful chant to Divine Mother.  We also braved the ferocious loose dogs of Taos to walk to the Rio Pueblo and enjoy views of Taos Mountain. 

Blessed by Divine Mother, Karmapa, Maharaji, Hanumanji, Taos Mountain and the Rio Pueblo, I was fortified in seeing all things in the Self and the Self in all things. I saw that the unconditional steadfast love I have for Sadananda is a manifestation of God’s love for humanity and that I do indeed cherish this same divine love for everyone in my Family—all living beings. 

    Typically, after making a pilgrimage, the aspirant will receive a spiritual dream which confirms that the pilgrimage has been accepted. Instead, today I experienced a bizarre waking dream. As I walked along Alpine towards the bakery, a woman called me into her house to ‘help’ her pick up an eighty-eight year old man who had fallen and was unable to get up. However, I was expected to do the whole job myself as the woman was afraid of hurting her back. Now as many readers know, I am only five feet tall. I don’t think that it is physically possible for a five foot tall, far from athletic woman to pick up a five foot ten inch, hundred and forty pound man. However, I prayed for supernatural strength and helped him up and into his chair. The message was clear. “Your pilgrimage has been accepted and you are here to uplift the fallen.”

Dear Ones,

Greetings to each and every one! May your New Year be filled with light and peace!  As   Jupiter and Pluto conjoin, setting off a new twelve year cycle in social trends, and as, concurrently with this astrological event, the social structure of Alandi Ashram re-aligns itself, my thoughts turn to family and community. How do we define family? Does our family operate by expansion and inclusion or by rejection and constriction? What are the qualities of family?

    With the development of the nuclear family in the second half of the twentieth century, we began to see a dwindling social network with increasing alienation  and isolation .More recently, the nuclear family itself—perhaps because it is unsustainably small—has fragmented into the single parent family, with still more isolation. In India, I experienced a very expansive and inclusive attitude towards family—one in which your brother’s wife’s aunt’s sister-in-law is a family member and someone who will help you and seek your help. And among the Chagga people of East Africa I saw an even wider concept of family. Each child had over a hundred women she called mother, and if there was tension at home, she simply walked over to the next hut. 

     To counteract the prevalent climate of alienation requires care and intentionality. As partnerships shift and change in our postmodern reality, an Indian-like attitude of expansive affiliation can help us maintain ties with those who have been important in our own and our children’s lives. Through such open -hearted and inclusive acts as maintaining a positive connexion with an ex-partner’s relatives and welcoming a former spouse’s new dear ones into our lives, we can forge an expansive family based upon welcome and inclusion rather than resentment and distance.  We can also develop our family of the heart, creating a supportive network among those who share our values and devotion.

     Three groups of people are especially vulnerable to the effects of fragmented families—children, elders and spiritual leaders. Children need to grow up in a network of long term relationships. They need grandparents, aunts and cousins whose consistent presence they can count on. Our efforts both to sustain inclusive and expansive family and to develop our intentional family of the heart support our children’s need to belong, to matter and to be embraced. Ironically, my work on this letter was interrupted by an unexpected visit from two adorable honorary grandchildren.  I spent three hours playing with the girls while the mother of one of them helped Sadananda with a project. We played a game in which they named all their family members. Hot on the heels of biological family came, “You and Matrupriya and Gabby.” Postmodern extended family in a nutshell!

Elders also are vulnerable to isolation. Appointing elders in your community and neighbourhood as honorary grandparents can meet the elder’s need to matter as well as satisfying your children’s need for long term connection with elders. And as I move toward taking renunciate vows, I see clearly how vital extended families are to spiritual leaders. In the Orient, the monastic community is held in the arms of the extended family. Family provides the essential horizontal dimension to support the vertical direction of spiritual leaders.  After seventeen years of effort to build community here at Alandi ashram, I still haven’t experienced the flowering of spiritual community as I had envisioned it, yet in its place I am feeling the power of extended family, a community of the heart whose long term bonds and connectivity creates the foundation for the flowering of intense spiritual community.

     Family values are often presented as adherence to conventional morality. The true family values are caring, sharing, connecting and including. In this New Year, let us look at all the ways in which we can increase our experience of inclusion and sharing to create wider circles of open-hearted family with real values.

     On a personal note, I will be taking first vows as a celibate renunciate at sunrise on January 14^th.  You can see the text of the vows elsewhere on this blog . After first vows I will be an aspiring sannyasini (technically, a brahmacharini). Because the vows are so radical, it is traditional to wait a few years before taking solemn vows that cannot be revoked. Please hold me in your prayers on this special day when I become more fully yours than ever.

With my love and blessings always

Alakananda Ma

Some months ago, when the realization that I would soon be taking sannyas first dawned upon me, I received an important dream. Someone presented me with a Swiss army knife, saying,  “This is what sannyas is, to cut off all attachments.” I replied, “That is not the kind of sannyas I will take. My vision of sannyas looks like this.”  And at this, I saw myself with an inexhaustible basket of seeds of bodhichitta (awakened heart). I was walking across the entire world sowing seeds of bodhichitta without ever looking back to see what had become of them.

In my vision of sannyas, there is room for family and the relational aspect of life. Sannyas as I see it is ultimate relatedness, ultimate compassion, because the true sannyasi is intimately related to all beings. Sannyas for me is not the renunciation of relationship but the creation of unlimited and unconditional relationship which sees all beings in equal vision.  Vasudev kutumbakum—the whole world is my family.

Then last night, after writing the sannyas vows and linking them up on the blog page, I dreamed that I was about to die. I had contracted a serious condition which had started from a flower-like structure at the base of my spine and had now spread to the crown of my head. As a result I would die shortly and many friends were coming to receive blessings from me. This extremely auspicious dream speaks of the radical transformation indicated in the sannyas vows, which are being integrated into my being. May these dreams and visions shed light on the path of fellow seekers!

Alakananda Ma’s Vows of Renunciation

 Major Vows

Sannyasa: Renunciation and Holy Poverty

 I vow to walk in the way of Lady Poverty, owning neither money, property nor possessions. Any items made available for my use, even up to the clothes I wear, shall be the property of Alandi Ashram and I shall not regard any item as my own.

Bramacharya: Celibacy 

I vow to observe absolute brahmacharya in thought, word and deed, through the guru’s grace, and to hold my mind in the undistracted and one-pointed condition. Regarding all beings as a mother does her children, I shall relate to each with uncontrived intimacy.

Varivasya: Obedience

I vow to obey the true nature of things and to be attentive and obedient to the words of the Sadguru speaking in my heart.   I offer all actions in prayer to the will and grace of the Sadguru.

Mahamaitri:  The Great Loving-kindness

I vow to regard all beings as my nearest and dearest friends and relatives. As a mother strives for the welfare of her children, I dedicate myself to bring about the happiness of all beings.

Mahakaruna: The Great Compassion

Experiencing the pain of all beings as if a part of my own body were in pain, I dedicate myself to free all beings from suffering.

Mudita: Joy

Seeing all experiences as the gift of the Sadguru, I vow to rejoice in all circumstances without making distinctions of good or bad. As a mother rejoices in her child I rejoice in the happiness of all beings.

 Upeksha: Equanimity

I vow to remain sthitha (established in the Self) in all circumstances, seeing everything that arises with even-mindedness and One Taste.  Fully contented in the Self I see all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings.

Mahatyaga: The Great Generosity

I place my life, without reservation, at the disposal of all beings, relinquishing any claim to ‘private time’ or a ‘personal life.’ When anyone thinks of me or needs my presence or support, I vow, through the grace of the Sadguru, to be present to them, whether in physical or in subtle form.

Paramshanti: Supreme peace

I vow to remain free from wishing or hoping for outcomes. Not fearing the future, not regretting the past, not resisting the present, I abide in peace beyond the three times, as a child of the moment.

Abhaya: The proclamation of Fearlesness

Now I fear no-one and let none fear me!

Minor Vows or Observances

To sleep on the ground

To wear and utilize white or ochre cloth

Not cutting the hair

To avoid saying ‘my’ or ‘mine.

A few people who read our email about the changes have asked to hear more about the human process involved. So here is a brief summary of the last five months of my journey.

Some time in Spring I had a dream with Ammachi (Amritanandamayi). Amma told me “You are brahma murti…you are a form of God in the world.” Then she showed me a statue representing myself as brahma murti. It was an image of Shiva and Parvati. Shiva was in the background holding and supporting Parvati, who sat with arms flung wide and head tilted back in joyous ecstasy and abandon. Amma then said to me, “Now you must be trained to take up your work as a divine form in the world. I will send teachers to train you.” Little did I guess at the time that the teachers were to be the beloved ones, Sadananda and Matrupriya.

At the end of June these two divinely appointed teachers set off for Albuquerque to see Amma and I was left behind for reasons  I didn’t quite understand…except that I could see that I had already received Amma’s darshan  in the dream.

When Sadananda returned and told me of the love that had developed between Matrupriya and himself and of his strong pull to be with her, naturally I was utterly devastated and shocked. I entered a two month journey of descent and dismemberment as I fathomed the depths of ancient fears of loss and abandonment. The little incubator baby part of me is utterly terrified of abandonment because I was taken away from my mother at birth and placed in an incubator. Although Sadananda’s conduct was not in reality abandoning, for he was there for the process of reconciliation and resolution, I was having the experience I was having and it was quite overwhelming. At times I cried so loudly in the night that neighbours were awakened. 

Then Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year arrived and with it a change of energy .A few days after Rosh Hashanah I was sitting on my bed talking to Sadananda when in ten seconds my entire reality shifted. Suddenly I saw clearly that everything was just a watermoon. And the phenomenon of wishing fell away. Everything became a boundless space permeated with the Four Immeasurables—loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. For the next two months I was completely unaffected by things that would normally be extremely distressing.

When the November New Moon arrived, and the Festival of Divali,   I was drawn to include the personal dimension as well as the transpersonal. It was time to return, in deeper way than before, to living in the union of personal and transpersonal.  I began including my small and young parts, which I pictured as a baby bunny rabbit and a little girl in a pink dress. But now I am working with the child parts in a new way—holding them in the heart as a presence of tenderness, vulnerability and spontaneity.  Everything has become unobstructed and I begin to understand the meaning of Shri Ramakrishna’s words, “the paramahansa is like a five year old child.” Just like a child, I have been experiencing a state that is emotionally transparent and spontaneous. I burst into tears one minute and laugh the next, because there is no obstruction.

Another New Moon rolled around and with it came a weekend of processing in Omaha with Matrupriya. It was really vulnerable at first for me to hear that Sadananda and Matrupriya were clear in their choice to be together. Perhaps you, dear reader, can understand that I felt “unchosen,” discarded and like a lone wolf.  Yet from those depths of heartbreak arose our new clarity of vision. I stepped out of the shower, stamped my foot and told the guru, “Look, if you want me to take sannyas, why don’t you just tell me so, instead of putting me through this torture.”  And I clearly heard Raghudas respond, “Take sannyas!” I would never have initiated these changes because I love Sadananda so much and I loved our life together in the ashram. Yet the divinely appointed teachers have come and the causes and conditions have been set in motion for me to embark on the journey of vasudev kutumbakum, “The whole world is my family.”

Is my heart broken—of course! A broken heart is the Holy Grail. It is the pinnacle of human experience to hold the broken heart tenderly in the expanse of boundlessness, without resistance or obstruction. Do I break down in tears during the tender process of recreating ‘our’ room as ‘my’ room, with all that entails?  Of course I do. Yet amid it all I experience that true happiness is within and can never be altered by circumstances. We are walking this journey together and in love and care. We have a sense of our direction and yet we are stepping out into the unknown and do not indeed know where we will be led. I pray that our path may illumine that of others.

Yesterday was an unusual birthday for several reasons. To begin with, it was a Saturday, and I was born on a Saturday. Also, this birthday occurred at a time of major life changes, so I had a feeling of being reborn on my birthday. Along with the sense of birth came the vulnerable feelings of the baby I once was, a tiny premature infant in an incubator.

And this rebirth was midwifed by so many wonderful beings! Over thirty of my closest friends gathered to feast and celebrate together. We began with the havdalah ceremony of separating from the Sabbath, in itself a marking of transition.  I was in fact born at six o’clock on Saturday evening, so at the time of my birth, havdalah was being celebrated.

Adults of all ages and walks of life attended the ceremony, as well as four children and two babies, giving a deep sense of family. We concluded with the Amethyst Heart ceremony, in which new students were initiated into the Healing Order of the Amethyst Heart, a mystic order which came into beings through dreams that both I and later my students received. Baby Elena became the youngest person ever to be initiated into this energy, receiving the name Suprasanna—one who is ever cheerful and beaming.

This divine feast of love and friendship came as a profound reminder of the truth that all beings are my own and I belong to each one.