Gangaji speaks about the call that comes from deep within – the aching longing to know again what has been ever known, purely and absolutely, to be the truth of who one is. 2.07 minutes.
Tag Archives: Gangaji
I watch me appear; I watch me disappear
I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear
I am unaffected, I have no preference
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear
Forget ‘Big Brother’ and CCTV:
there’s an eye there is no hiding from
and it’s known as “I” to me.
It prowls this world of dream and drama
ceaselessly scoping the cosmos and all creation:
macroscopic, microscopic and myopic too,
the outer worlds and inner…
Eyes wide open, eyes shut tight
I can never escape its unlit light.
I am unmoved, I am all movement
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear
I am never absent, I cannot be escaped
I watch me appear, I watch me disappear
– miriam louisa
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Gangaji expresses this warts-and-all totality to perfection:
At a certain point, a couple of years after [the disappearance of the ‘me’ as separate entity], I was aware of a sense of myself as a person starting to slowly return. And I thought, “Oh, no, what does this mean?” because at that point I had been counseling people not to reconstruct themselves after this kind of experience. There was a moment of wondering if this sense of myself meant I had lost anything, but by then I knew enough to check and see. When I did, I saw clearly that the truth that needs no scaffolding was not bothered by any sense or perception of myself as being this human animal, this body-mind configuration. Silent conscious awareness was not bothered by any disappearance of the sense of this form and not bothered by its reappearance.
The fact that the sense of me as form reappeared was actually a teaching for me because it threw me into profound inquiry. And in that inquiry I saw that this sense of being a separate entity appears and disappears all the time, even in a day—for everyone. It’s just that until we have an experience of it disappearing, and then discovering the true “I” to still be present, only then do we have the possibility of recognizing that the disappearance or the reappearance doesn’t really touch the unmoving truth.
It was at this point I felt myself reincarnating as an ordinary human being. I didn’t fight the ordinariness coming back, because I was always aware that whatever came back—an emotion, a sense of me, a negative thought, etc.—it didn’t touch what had been revealed…
To this day, I can say that from that moment there has been no lack of resolution and fulfillment. There have been negative states as well as positive. There has been grief as well as joy. There have been trials and there have been defeats, but nothing has dislodged the certainty that who I am includes all.
© Gangaji, 2012
[My emphasis.]
Source: http://www.onethemagazine.com/blog/2012/10/12/answer-to-a-prayer/
Image source: Rumi Facebook page
“I am taken. I have given myself to love”
If you give yourself to love one hundred percent you cannot know what the outcome will be.
Giving yourself to love is laying yourself bare without knowing how you will be used, knowing that however you are used, you are given to love, in service to love.
Whatever your mistakes may be, however you fumble, however you stumble, if it is in service to love it teaches you something.
You pick up and you serve love even more strongly.
You marry love, and you say, “I am yours.”
Then whatever beautiful temptations go by, you say, “I am taken. I have given myself to love.”
There are moments of extreme difficulty in all lives.
When you really give yourself to love then you are not concerned with difficulty or ease.
You may not like difficulty but it is here.
How is it serving love?
Where is love in this, where is silence?
Where is truth?
Then life is the teacher of love.
~ Gangaji
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Gratitude to beloved Gangaji. For those living in the Downunderlands, do visit her website for news about her upcoming visits to New Zealand and Australia.
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to surrender to the truth of yourself, is to surrender to love
My title is stolen from Gangaji, with respectful thanks.
I’ve had an interesting few days since the last post. Interesting as in wondrous, as in OMG, and as in “what am I gonna do with this?”
(The last post. Crikey – isn’t that what they play at funerals?)
In this case it was a poem by Mary Oliver about Buddha’s last instruction imploring his friends and followers to “Make of yourself a light.”
Make of yourself a light. My beloved teacher Krishnamurti issued the same urgent invitation – “Be a Light unto yourself!” – and if anyone was a stand-up example of a being who put everything – even godhood – behind him to be his own Light, it was K.
Make of yourself a light. Be a Light unto yourself. I’ve been sitting with this and I confess it no longer makes sense to me. How can I be a Light unto ‘myself’ when what I am cannot be separated from the Light of Beingness? Clearly both K and the Buddha were speaking to the individual. But this Light that ‘I’ is, has no experienced beginning or end and is indivisible and changeless and inescapable. It’s meaningless to imagine that I am separate from it and need to make myself one with it. No disrespect to my teachers, but … why didn’t they come upfront and say something like “Be the changeless Light that you are?”
A Light. A Light that knows all other light as its shadow. This is the truth of what I am and I cannot argue with it. I can only dive deeper and deeper into it, to “surrender to it” as Gangaji writes.
And what a strange synchronicity: at the same time I have been becoming acutely, painfully aware that the bottom line for me now is Love. It’s the only thing that really, truly, interests me – Divine Love. Paradoxically, it seems to be most intimately known by its absence.
In the mix of moving and settling and re-establishing relationships I have been neglecting the Beloved. The zafu has been waiting, the Gap has been beckoning. To the extent that I have procrastinated I have felt the subtle ache of estrangement. Finally it could no longer be tolerated and I pinched my nose, held my breath and dropped into Point Zero – Zafuland.
Beloved Lover was there; lovingness and lightness and laughter were there.
No buts, no maybe’s. Love lies awaiting when ‘I’ make the turn – when Unlit Light makes the turn. There were tears. There was contrition. Lover simply laughs: “No big deal babe!”
Love is like good bread – it must be baked fresh every day.
Krishnamurti used to say “Enlightenment is a Light that is continually lighting itself.”
Yes. I go forth with a massive box of matches …
~ miriam louisa
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this unlit light 