Anadi (my husband who lives round the corner from me) spent last week in Los Angeles – well virtually – but it still meant his days didn’t end til the conference ended in LA – and so we didn’t see much of each other… Especially as his calf is sore and so I also temporarily have lost my running partner!
But on one of the days we met for a coffee for half an hour, and on Friday he came to chant the Gayatri mantra with me for the Bodhisattva group
We loved it – we both felt we could have chanted for ever…
I often introduce the chanting meditation by saying how wonderful chanting is – that is helps us to still our body and our mind – that it allows us to connect to the silence within us; our true nature…
It helps us to clear our energetic system and reminds us that we are all born of pure love, pure consciousness and through our unique vibration it is possible to experience ourselves in the world…
Everything is but an experience and the more we become aware of this and stop believing the vagaries of the mind – we can over time let go of the pain, the darkness, the patterns that play out and block the memory of who we are .
The Gayatri mantra reminds us of the unity of everything, and the multiplicity; and through chanting of it our energy field illuminates and we can shine our own light bright from within.
If we look around us and feel despair at what we see in the world, and we have no idea how to contribute to change, to transformation and healing in society – we must first look within.
The real difference we make in the world is through shining our own light – experiencing who we truly are – living our ordinary lives in this extraordinary way…
Clearing the way towards liberation has been a lifetime’s practise for me.
Lifetimes and lifetimes – of karma
I understood about ‘clearing’ at a very young age, perhaps just seven years.
I can review the scene and see the child now…
She is sitting in the wooden slippy pew – vast to her then – with the soft robust hassock under her feet, worn into a nice kneeling bed with much use… It served as a perfect foot rest for the little girl.
She is sitting half listening to the preacher. The church has a musty smell, wafts of the scent from the greenery in generous vases of flowers arranged by the wives of the churchwardens, mingle in.
As his voice rises and falls, she is watching the dust float up in the sunlight that is beaming through stained glass on this particularly sunny Sunday morning…
He has been speaking for a long time; she is letting many of the words float beyond her absorption, over her head and away, when suddenly something he is saying starts to speak to her; deep within her being, her belly, her very soul… He is explaining the circle of birth, life, death and rebirth, and the symbolism of the serpent with the tail in its mouth. He is talking of cleansing from our sins, of eternal life…
Suddenly she becomes aware of this cycle, in a visceral way – round and round and round… Lifetimes and lifetimes of karma and she understands… How to return to the place of pure love, freedom, the godly state within…
And she understands she has work to do.
The preacher is saying that we must clear our own darkness from within to remember who we truly are.
The young girl understands
Nearly fifty five years the words of TS Eliot speak for me
“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.”
