Take Less Be Second

Live from the Ashram

I just passed my 47th spin around the Sun.  I have been living in an ashram in Kerala, India for months with a Mahatma (a fully realized being)- Amma, which means Mother and my Guru. Who knew?!  The ashram, when coupled with a living vessel of light such as she is, is a washing machine to clean the ignorance that veils the awareness of our true nature.  

I am inside out. It is so hot that my bare skin is too heavy a layer.  It’s the only place I have ever been where I am surrounded by sun and water and I can’t go in either, which is torture for this one.  I love the toilet paper free toilets and the crotch of my pants is always wet. There is no medium spice, it’s either diarrhea or constipation spice. Rice is a God. I still think that everyone is saying no to me when they wag their head which results in a lot of confusion and twinkly eyed laughter. I have seen 6 dead bodies.

I have never felt more at home. Yet, the majority of my time is spent clinging to the ledge with my wings spread as they are being battered by the wind.  I curse it as a feather snaps in half, fluffy tufts of old flesh disappearing into the ether, gone forever. The wind is simply doing its job -trying to get me to let go.  The resistance to the thing is always worse than the thing.

There is a sign on the cafeteria door of the boy’s dormitory:

Do not waste food.  Take as much as you need.  If you waste food you will be fined. 

(If only that was the billboard along every highway.)

This is not to be cruel.  It is to teach and help our youth become bearers of the sacred laws that restore goodness for all.  To help the human meander back to living with Love at the center.   Also, I am in India- up close and personal with a country where resource takes on a meaning that hardly anyone in the west can grok.

The ashram is a magnifying glass.  I watch myself closely here.  What fun!

I take too much.

Mostly in the way of food due to that old painful place of the past. I throw it away.  I waste it.  And it hurts me every time.  

In the last few weeks I was moved to a beautiful new room right next to a cafe that I was previously unaware of as it is open during the evening service when all else is pointed at Amma. It serves the best dhosas.

My days quickly became absorbed in planning my meals around this cafe and feeling all sorts shame about skipping some of the evening service.  Inevitably I was taking more than I needed to soothe an old wound, eating when I wasn’t hungry, not present. It took me 2 weeks to catch onto the divine play and why my teacher placed me here.

I am thankful for this black belt move. It is painfully humbling to still see how self absorbed my days were/are and where my precious life goes.  I was able to release it.  Love snapped me to.  The dhosas do not compare to standing in love and awareness.  

~When we take more, even a little more, we cannot digest properly.  This action is not just relegated to the alimentary system.  The mind  body is a vessel for constant incoming stimuli, it never stops. This is physical matter like food, water, air, people and energetic matter like collective narratives, planetary and universal shifts, people.  

When we consume without conscsious awareness, we cannot process the material and it embeds within us as an imprint long term.  In yogic philosophy these are called samskaras. In quantum healing it is epigenetics. Psychological terms, stored trauma. In layman’s terms it’s called being full of sh*t. This indigestion is a main source of all chronic disease and repeat wounding.  This backup of information is the driving force behind the majority of our actions and choices.

We attach a lot of thought and emotion to what we ingest. We are hardly ourSelves.  We are an accumulation of clogged sensory channels and memory banks gone haywire.  

I literally shat out a meal from 1995 during pancha karma a couple of months ago.  

Digestive issues from food specifically, are largely due to the fact that we eat with our minds.  The body mind needs less, not more for true happiness and equilibrium. Not another popular super food, pill or positivity podcast.  Stick with one pill, one podcast.  Digest it fully then ask yourself why you need more when the impulse to ingest more arises.  Sit with the discomfort of that empty space.  This is the only place where true hunger, and therefore divine satiation, are born again within you.  

Digestion is the pathway for letting go.  Letting go leads the way for new life.  It is the essential ingredient on the path of awakening. It requires diligent, soulful effort and a core belief in Love. It is the only work worth doing that births all other work worth doing, and thus restores primordial abundance for self and others.

However, as arduous as it is, it is much less work than carrying all that junk around with you, accumulating more, shoving it under the bed, into corners, keeping it down as it tries to gurgle up.  It’s wrong use of energy and the senses which will only lead to depletion or eruption, often both.

When the majority of our actions are driven by undigested objects, and past and future fears colliding in the moment, we create an inescapable “me first” complex. Our scope of reality is narrowed and the ability to rest in seat of our Soul is elusive. Harm is inevitable.

This creates a deep existential suffering as each of us, even the most veiled and destructive of us, contain a seed for the flower that helps keep Life on this planet the paradise it is.  To serve from a place of true Love and Unity consciousness is freedom.  Our soul longs for this.  It is why it touched down onto this fertile ground.  But we are self absorbed and thus even our ways of serving eventually drain us.  

When we do the work to clean out the gunk, we create space for Universal wisdom to expand within us again. Slowly our actions become driven by that intelligence and a new feedback loop is created and the memory of Truth is restored. This is a great service.

We must have compassion and tenderness for our blessed inner mess as it’s a psychological complex based in a mother wound we all carry. Few of us had the teachings that set our butts down in the seat of our Soul.  And it is time to be brave and honest. Not to be passive or to placate. Say what needs be said. Do what needs be done.

I am a being of love clouded by a mind that is wired with a strong, selfish, me-first nature that rears its head when I am in survival and fear.  (Aries, and first born child) Again, it was amplified here in another divine play so that it could be seen.

At night (every night for over 40 years) Amma, gives hugs and blessings until 1am after the 4 hour meditation program.  You have to line up and you can only come once a week or so.  I have a thing about staying up late so I like to be close to the front of the line.   What I mean is that I need to be first. So does everyone else it seems as all of our lower tendencies are activated here.  The scarcity wounding flies through the air despite being surrounded by an abundance that Amma has graciously provided her children.  Sound familiar?

I got into position by sitting close to where the line begins and as the program ended I rushed over to stand first in line.  There was another woman, a ways off, not really in line, but I knew that she thought she might be.   One woman.   As the line of close to 100 formed she looked over very sweetly and asked if this was the line.  She was Russian, didn’t speak great English and it was her first time. I could see she didn’t know the system.  There was a man next to me in line that I was chatting with who also noticed she had been standing there before everyone else arrived. His placement was important.  

Instead of my loving nature coming  forward and saying “yes this is, stand right here in front of me”, I said “you have to get in line back there”.   As this unfolded I could immediately feel what was happening to my heart.  As soon as the selfish words left my mouth the man next to me and I both reached for her and said “wait, no stay right here”. 

I was so embarrassed. It hurt. I did it to myself. She is another me.  It’s not like me to do such a thing.  And it is, deep deep down.   This tendency, the scarcity, the fear is old and connected to deeper pain. It needed to be seen, to digest, to be let go.

I heard a voice say “be second daughter”.  When living in the grace and trust of being second, Love is always my first response.   My true nature rises and becomes my healer.  

Taking less and being second does not mean a renunciation of pleasures.  True renunciation is an inside job I have learned. Even in the ancient Tantric texts they emphasize the importance of the material realm as part of the spiritual path to be in better relationship with the world of matter- which is everything that is not the Self. The material realm with its contradictions and dual nature is our training ground for awakening and necessary for the growth of our soul. Why?..

As we enter Earth school each one of us, sans a very small few who arrive with full awareness, are handed blindfolds which veil the memory of the contract we just signed for our soul’s mission here and the truth of our beingness. 

This blindfold itches and irritates the soul complex.   We learn to ignore this and distract ourselves in a world of illusion. The act of unveiling oneself from ignorance and removing the blindfold  is a massive, quantum force of nature that amplifies new life aligned with Natural law.  An illuminated awakening happens that expands out from that individual soul accelerating an awakening of God consciousness for others.  This happens Universally and we accelerate our advancement into new dimensions of reality.  

It is the crucible. The supreme Mystery school.  The “know thySelf”. The laws of duality rubbing and rubbing until there is a relief, a cosmic orgasm, by way of reunion when the separating factor falls away.  Humans are powerful amplifiers, our capacity and role in the Universal story of Life is beyond our understanding. This is why we are unimaginably supported to walk our unique healing path with every single thing we need to be here, no more and no less.

Imagine living under  a constant cloud  your entire life (not too hard) and hearing  tales of a light and warmth that your soul  somehow knew existed and then one day the Sun peaks out for a minute.  Big Whoa. One glimpse is enough.  It rarely happens like one might imagine.  That is love.  The orgasm is often a subtle sustainable Shakti, a committed, long term lover.  

But that relationship requires that we go to the roots of our actions, understand what drives them, let the coagulated fear come up and begin to trust in another force to guide our lives

Every action that takes us away from our true nature is a “sin”.   Simply meaning you missed the mark Love is trying to leave upon you in lieu of bowing to fears for so many years.  Yet, the scriptures say “take one step towards God and God will take a thousand steps towards you”.  There is a grace incomprehensible ready to help you digest your burdens, like a mother bird, so her children can fly light.  

To walk through these times is a great undertaking and without a tether to the teachings we will remain lost under the weight of our mind’s undigested posessions.  

So today- where can you take less and be second and thus take one step closer to your Self? 

Hari OM, Shira

P.S thank you for subscribing. Upgrade to paid and buy me two cups of tea per month, preferably iced at this moment, even though no one drinks cold bevs here.