The Tea Room

Today is Guru Purnima.
Thank You for leading me here on this day.
I wanted my first post on this forum to be this.
My surrender is imperfect. But You have led me here for a reason.
I don't know what else to say except - Thank You!

Namaste!

I have been asked to host the Hindu festival of Navratri at my home this year. In light of this, I wanted to read about and share the significance of this festival. So, I created a blog today. The first post gives a little bit of background on Shaktism.

http://devimahatmya.wordpress.com/2013/09/28/shaktism-an-introduction/

This is the first time I am posting in the Temple. I hope I have not violated any rules. If I have, kindly let me know.

Regards,
Gopi

Namaste!
About a few hours ago, I logged in here and read Mystress' blog post titled 'So Simple Eh?'
http://fire-serpent.com/tearoom/index.php/topic,1425.0.html
After this, I went and took a hot shower.
I felt physical knots under my shoulder blades.
"[4:23:56 AM] Mystress: surrender them"
So I did.
Closed my eyes.

"Two balls of spinning metal.
One silver and one copper.
Water cleanses all."

I humbly surrender this to the Goddess and am ever grateful for Her presence.
Love and Light,
Gopi

I drew after a very long time today. It felt good. Thank you Goddess!

“If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you, I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul. If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door, I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more. If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice, I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again. If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you, and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.”
~ Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

Tonight's work!

Tonight's work - The Seated Goddess
Inspiration: Coin from the period of King Raja Raja Chozhan
More info on that here:
http://www.chennaimuseum.org/draft/gallery/04/01/coin5.htm

Dear Goddess,
Happy Mother's day! :)
On this day, I would like to place the following at your feet.

~ I feel guilty for not fighting against my dad when he hit my mom in front of me. I was angry. But I did not do anything. And she cried and cried. And I did not do anything. I don't know why. But I did not do anything. I surrender these feelings of guilt to You. I do not want to feel this way anymore. Please take it away from me and transmute it into something that you see fit for me. This I surrender to You!

~ I feel remorse for leaving my mom behind when I decided to move out of India. It became too much to bear. To constantly live in a state of terror. The very first taste of freedom and I ran like crazy towards it. I did not allow myself to look back. For a very long time, I did not allow myself to process all this. The last few years have slowly unfolded certain barriers that now I can finally admit to myself that I do have feelings of remorse for leaving my mom behind. Where she has to face the patriarchal crap. Things that happen on a day-to-day basis that it undermines one's own self-worth. Things that made me run as soon as I could and as far as away from it as I can. But I am now tried of running away. I want my life to be about running towards something. I want love, beauty, poetry, laughter, and abundance in my life. I want to let go of this remorse. I want to refocus my awareness towards building a more loving relationship with my mom. This I surrender to You!

~ I do not want any part of my being to identify as a victim. I surrender all ideas, beliefs, identities, thought, and/or conscious awareness that believes itself to be a victim. I do this not because I want to get rid of them but because I know what they've been through and I truly believe that it is time for them join You in Light and dance with You. They so deserve a drink and jolly good dance party. I want my life to be filled with Your divine music. Please be my DJ! Let me never take anything for granted but always be respectful and grateful for the bounty at Our Mother's Home! This I surrender to You!

~ Gopi
PS: Please help me stay grounded.

Everything I have written in this forum so far has had made immediate and profound changes in my life. I still remain impatient though. And this is something that I would like to change in my own life. By writing in this forum, I am setting an intention to let go of my own impatience towards my own growth. Based on my own personal experiences so far, I am comfortable admitting to myself that this online portal is a temple of Goddess. Therefore expressing and exploring my intentions here in this temple is also a prayer for me. My intention is not to convince anyone about the 'power' of this forum.
There are patterns of habits that still linger around like the shadow of a dead dog. Not sure why but the obvious fact that dead things still have a shadow suddenly seems very interesting and relevant to me.
One thing that I cannot pretend to understand is death. Yet I understand that the death of this physical form of embodied consciousness that 'I' as a free-will identify as my bodily existence in this very earth is inevitable. I will not live forever as this physical body. I don't know what happens after or if there's an after. And am ok with that.

In 2010, I was so depressed to the point suicidal thoughts were so common and intense. I was just waiting to find the right way 'to go'. I spoke with a friend and she said 'Choose life!'. And I started crying and responded 'I don't know how!'. The message resonated with me. Even though I really had no clue what that meant. I want to explicitly point out that I am not making claims to have understood 'what life is?' I don't know. All I am saying is that I couldn't ignore the way that message resonated with me.

"Yet the call is heard, as somewhere in our being the promise is remembered." ~ Osho

I struggled a lot with learning to trust my 'gut' because I had been taught that 'gut feeling' is not reason and that that was a bad thing. Ecofeminists have helped me a lot in coming into terms with this. Ecofeminists have argued for decades now, there are severe problems in our conceptions of what 'reason' is. These are not arm-chair philosophical arguments but ideas that have profound implications for the way we engage and interact with our day-to-day world: political, spiritual, ecological, ethical, and sexual to name a few. Here's a specific quote:

"Feminist thinker Elizabeth Gross puts her finger on the basic denial mechanism involved in the irrationality of rationalist forms of reason when she writes that the crisis of reason ‘is a consequence of the historical privileging of the purely conceptual or mental over the corporeal; that is, it is a consequence of the inability of western knowledges to conceive their own processes of (material) production, processes that simultaneously rely on and disavow the role of the body’. The ecological crisis can be thought of as involving a centric and self-enclosed form of reason that simultaneously relies on and disavows its material base, as ‘externality’, and a similar failure of the rationalised world it has made to acknowledge and to adapt itself adequately to its larger ‘body’, the material and ecological support base it draws on in the long-denied counter-sphere of ‘nature’."
~ Val Plumwood (Environmental Culture, p4)

I find this VERY resonant with Mystress' spiritual teaching of the body and its discernment. I can't say I understand what the message is. Yet it is hard for me to not be drawn to it. I don't know how the planet is going to survive the cataclysmic ecological shit-storm that we, humans as a species, have created for ourselves. I will be lying if I said that I still don't worry about the whole-fucking-planet. Somedays I am indifferent. Many days I am caught up in my own silly dramas. And somedays I feel so angry. And here's where Mystress' insightful teachings have helped me. Her no-nonsense simple spiritual guidance such as 'Goddess has it handled' has made a profound difference in my life. I once shared two lines from the lyric of a song that I used to use as a prayer.

"Sab ko dua dena Ma... (Bless everyone Mother)
Dil mein sada rehna Ma... (Always Be in my heart Mother)"

And this is what Mystress wrote back:
"... Well, there are some negative assumptions in these. Asking Goddess to bless everyone suggests She hasn't already, or that She won't unless you ask Her? Seems kind of high handed and a bit short sighted. Goddess is All that Is, so She *is everyone* already, and who is supposed to be blessing who, what? They ARE Goddess already. Stop projecting that they are not and that they need you to bless them."

Her response shook me up. She made me see what I was giving my conscious energy and attention towards. And the arrogance wrapped around as 'good intentions' towards others. Mystress snapped me out of it, in a manner of speaking. While I still don't know where our ecological mess is going to take us, Mystress' lesson to focus on 'Goddess has it handled' has brought immense relief to my own existential angst about the pain and suffering we have created for ourselves. It was also an incredibly humbling perspective. 'Poked some holes to let Light in' as Mystress put it. Mystress has called me out on some of my own ego BS before. It hurt a lot when she did. But I couldn't answer back not simply because I was afraid of her. But because I couldn't ignore the truth in her words.

As much as I see 'spirituality' in ecofeminist academic literature, I find Mystress' spiritual teaching emphasizing the Divine Feminine, the body, and respecting Nature to be distinctly ecofeminist. I am not attempting to label FST or Mystress as ecofeminist. I simply want to point to this strange melding of 'different' aspects of my life - what I do for work, what I am seeking as a spiritual seeker, and my existential needs and wants for staying alive here and now. It's like the fragmented pieces are coming together and the Divine Feminine seems to be the holding glue for me right now in my life. And strictly from a personal opinion point of view, not much has resonated with me so deeply and profoundly like Mystress' teachings. I really don't believe for a second that Mystress needs me to praise her. The OCD academic in me wants to cite my sources. And the student in me simply wishes to express my gratitude for my teacher and her work.

My impatience with my own growth is still many times tied to patriarchal ideas of linear and hierarchical progress. Something like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vUBsTJYK28
I still catch myself getting trapped into the 'Are we there yet?'. Which makes me ask questions like 'Where is all this going?' thus slipping out of surrender. Or to frame it differently showing me new opportunities to surrender to Goddess.

So here Goddess. Take this impatience. It is a gift for You. And fill the holes of that place in my being with Your Light. Thank you very much!

Hello everyone,
Mystress asked me to have all my posts under one thread. So here goes the first post in this thread.

Tonight's work! Thank you Goddess!!

<3
Gopi

I recently took Santa Claus’ shamanic medicine ☺

I have had two prior experiences, both very pleasant and helpful in gaining a lot of insight into my own journey. This third experience was intense. I blessed the medicine invoking Goddess Guadalupe. I went in with a specific intent ‘Show me the face of Love’. I really wanted to feel the presence of my ‘Divine Beloved’. This is the prayer intention I set forth and smudged my apartment with Sage for protection.

It was a lovely sunny summer day late afternoon. So I went out for a walk in the nearby woods. I watched the grass grow and lazed in the afternoon soon nearby a brook. Then I started to feel tired. I became very aware that my body would very soon be nearing exhaustion. So I slowly started to walk back home. Even in that exhausted state, it was so much fun to look back at the leaves looking back at me drenched in the golden sunset.

I got home. I thought eating something might help me gain some physical energy. So I made some chai but couldn’t drink it. I fell flat on my bed. Everything was slowly becoming alive and it was both amusing and unnerving. I kept telling myself ‘It’s ok. Breathe.’ I did. And then all hell broke lose. I feel like I cannot do justice to describing the experience. It felt like intense desire, intense pleasure, and intense fear of death all wrapped in one. The next morning while trying to make sense of the experience, I came across these quotes while researching on the subject. I present these quotes here to provide some sort of narrative to my experience so that I can write it as a reflective exercise for myself and to share with a select few. Since I am trained as an academician, I write like one too alas. So please ignore my OCD academic traits.

Psychological anthropologist Barbara Tedlock explores the intersection of feminism, religion, and medicine through her analysis of shamanic practices in her book [Tedlock 2009] and distinguishes the terms ‘trance’ and ‘ecstasy’ as follows.

“Trance is a hyperlucid state of sensory overstimulation triggered by music, noises, and odors. The images, auditions, and experiences of trance are generally forgotten afterward. Ecstasy is a sense of sensory deprivation and withdrawal. Think of fasting, silence, and darkness. Experiences during ecstasy are not only remembered later but can be revisited again and again. Dreaming, the monitoring of vital energy in the body, and the state produced by psychedelic drugs are ecstatic rather than trance experiences.” [Tedlock 2009]

My body was so exhausted to a point that I started feeling that whatever it is that I am holding onto â€" my consciousness, my awareness, my experience of being alive â€" I was holding onto a very thin straw of it. I did not know what was going on. I did not know how I was feeling. I did not know how to respond. This feeling of being barely tethered on the precipice of that-which-I-do-not-understand was terrifying, exhilarating, and exhaustingly intense. I distinctly remember starting to beg for mercy. I felt being torn apart. A part of me wanted to keep experiencing this intense pleasure of just being alive and being so tender. A part of me wanted to get out of this experience since everything about it felt unknown and unknowable and that loss of control terrified me. And a part of me just begged for mercy because the body couldn’t take it whatever it was feeling. Body, mind, and soul intensely and ecstatically suffocated. I want to expand on how I use the term suffocation here.

Tantric practitioners of Hinduism are not only permissive of but often incorporate practices that are otherwise tabooed as against socio-cultural norms. One such practice is where tantric practitioners meditate on cremation grounds the underlying spiritual logic being that in the face of death, life comes into sharper focus. Just as coming into darkness our vision slowly adapts to seeing things in new light frequencies. Just as experiencing hunger not just as an unpleasant state of emptiness but as the state in which the smells from the kitchen are most alluring. Deprivation can be experienced not just as a ‘lack of’ something but also as a state of heightened awareness â€" towards low light, smells, and life itself. I want to be explicitly clear here that I am in no way stating that having such experiences and practices are necessary or beneficial for everyone.

Feeling existentially suffocated however was not fun for me. It was confusing because my heart rate was stable, no perspiration, no palpitations, and no shortness of breath. Yet I couldn’t ignore the feeling of being slowly suffocated out of existence. And I started begging for mercy. Only this time it was different. A few years ago when my depression was out of control, I used to pray for mercy. And that prayer came from a place of seeing myself as broken and damaged and in need of external Divine intervention. This time when I was begging for mercy, there was no ‘I am damaged’. This felt more like the begging cries of a lover scratching his partner’s back during play. I felt like everything around me was teasing and tantalizing me. Seducing me but yet refusing to fuck me. I thought I should masturbate since I was by myself at this point. Only to realize that I was not physically aroused at all. Yet my whole being and its experience felt extremely erotic, sexual, and sensual.

Renown transpersonal psychologist Dr. Stanislav Grof has written extensively on the use of shamanic practices for healing and development of one’s own inner psyche. In his interview, Dr. Grof points out:

“...there seems to be a built-in mechanism in the human organism that translates extreme suffering, extreme pain, and particularly suffering that’s associated with suffocation -- that would translate it or transform it into a powerful sexual type of arousal...  it's very interesting because this experience can become ecstatic, but it's a very peculiar kind of ecstasy, which I call volcanic. It's a Dionysian kind of ecstasy.” [Grof]

Depending on personal belief systems, this kind of ecstasy is either flat-out condemned, cautioned against, outlawed, revered, and/or reserved for specific purposes under specific conditions. The only thing I can clearly register feeling was being existentially horny and being afraid of dying at the same time. I started panicking at this point and kept telling myself that I did not want to die today. I called friends whom I felt safe with. Feeling suffocated out of existence made me want to reach out to the people with whom I share a bond of love. In the ecstatic throes of experiencing what made me feel like I was definitely dying somehow, the need to reach out to what I sensed as ‘love’ became a survival instinct. I need to let love in this instance or I WILL die today. This much became profoundly clear as an insight.

I asked to see the face of Love. Now I felt like Goddess had me in a headlock. Only way out is to let Love in. No more ‘I am damaged and undeserving of Love’ shit. Throughout the five years of my depression, I have had moments when I felt so sure that if I were ever so close to death, I would not put up a fight and simply go. This instance blew all of that right out of the water. I wanted to fight tooth and nail to make sure I did not die that day. This gnawing fear of death and the pain of undergoing an intense experience along with the distinct realization of loss of all control over the self and the world I’m in, also made my instinct and intent to survive sharper and stronger.

I had an instant feeling of kinship when I first came across the writings of Georges Bataille. Anyway...

“...Bataille claims that “discontinuity” is the modern problem addressed by erotically losing oneself in another to the point of death. By confronting death erotically, human beings create continuity with others: la petite mort, the little death, is the French phrase for orgasm. Ecstatic loss of control thus works against modern individualistic discontinuity, thereby forging a connectedness or communication that is altogether outside oneself.” [Goldhammer 2007]

Four of my friends came over to my apartment to keep me company and convince me that I was not going to die that day. The only way I can describe what it felt like to have their presence was like having my prayers answered. It was still very intense. But atleast I felt a little more safe. All four of my friends have had similar experiences at one point or another. So I felt like I could trust them and their words. I felt immense love and strength in holding my friend’s hand and being comforted by her. This acceptance of the moment as is and embracing the perfection in it was not a choice but felt as intuitive and instinctive as breathing. The body simply responded to acts of love and kindness before the mind could make any sense of it. And then came what I call the ‘Palace of mirrors’ experience.

In certain South Indian temples, they have a special room called the ‘Palace of Illusions’ or ‘Palace of mirrors’. It’s basically as small room with ornate pillars and chandeliers and every single surface of the room covered by small mirrors. Walking into this room one is provided time and space to marvel at the endless reflections in silent contemplation. My experience at this point became somewhat similar to that. What I projected at another, got reflected back at myself only multiplied. When I approached my friend as a being of love who offered her love and trusted her acts such as rubbing my back to ease my stress as acts of love, then I felt immensely good. But when I instead projected my own judgments, the judgments got reflected back multiplied. I felt like if I smiled the whole world smiled back at me. And if I frowned the whole world frowned back at me too.

I could disengage and walk away from other people’s projections. But I could not escape my own projections on other people. How I saw in the world is how the world saw me. What freaked me out is the realization that I have this power within me to make this choice. To let go of what does not serve my growth anymore. To learn to love myself unconditionally. The first three lines from Tracy Chapman’s song ‘Change’ kept coming back to me.

“If you knew that you would die today...
If you saw the face of God and Love...
Would you change?”
- Tracy Chapman (Change)

When I prayed to Guadalupe, I asked her to show me ‘the roses of love’. Not sure why but this is how the words came out of me. At the end of the evening, I felt like I experienced both the rose and its thorns. The thorns though scary and painful made me feel more alive than ever and thus making me more aware and attentive towards the rose. Thank you Unconscious! Thank you DB! Thank you Goddess!

PS: Thank you Mystress. The bracelet helped a lot ☺

References:
o Goldhammer, Jesse. 2007. Dare to Know, Dare to Sacrifice. In Reading Bataille Now. WINNBUST, SHANNON (Ed.). Indiana University Press.
o Grof, Stanislav. The Adventure of Self-Discovery. In THINKING  ALLOWED: Conversations On The Leading Edge Of Knowledge and Discovery With Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove. Source: http://www.intuition.org/txt/grof.htm - Accessed on June 3, 2014.
o Tedlock, Barbara. 2009. The Mystical Union: Eroticism, Ecstasy, and Trance. In The Woman in the Shaman's Body: Reclaiming the Feminine in Religion and Medicine. Bantam Publishers.

I joined FST on July 22, 2013. So it has been roughly a year. And I would like to share my reflections here.

It is hard to explain what the program means to me. What I can tell you is it has changed my life for better, for sure. When I joined FST a year ago, I was *very* excited and wanted to learn everything in one day. I constantly felt like I did not want to wait to become enlightened.

Mystress and others in this place have helped me understand and realize that it is a journey. And that I need to learn to trust that 'Goddess has it handled'. What that means for me is that I do not have to worry about how and when I will become enlightened or open my chakras or whatever. All I have to do is simply learn to surrender to Goddess more and more. The rest is all Hers. Not mine. That helped me calm down a lot. I still have anxiety issues. But it is not as bad as it was a year ago. I belong to Goddess and my spiritual path is to learn to surrender to Her more and more. That is all I needed to do.

Also, based on my own personal experience, doing the grounding meditation regularly for 45 days changed my life. I severely underestimated the power of grounding exercise. I wanted more complex and elaborate rituals to feed my own ego. And the grounding exercise was too simple. So I resisted practicing grounding a lot. I kept making up excuses for why I can't ground right now.
~ I am doing my PhD and I have a very busy life. So I can't ground 8 times a day.
~ May be grounding is not for me.
~ I have so much judgments, karma, sin, and doubts. I should *first* learn to remove all of this and then do grounding.
~ May be I am not doing it right. Because I don't feel any change after I ground. It is only a small feet tingling. How can I know for sure I am grounded? What is the point in grounding if I don't know for sure if I am doing it right?

You get the picture. I constantly kept coming up with excuses and explanations about why I can't ground right now. Then one day, after the monthly FST SL chat, I approached Mystress and asked her 'I know it says I can't have an appointment till I finish 45 days grounding. But I have motivation issues. So I can't do 45 days. May be you can help me sort my motivation issues and then it will be easier for me to do my 45 days.'
She responded: 'I do not have a magic wand to wave that will make you see that you're worth the effort!'

That just shook me up from inside out. My ego couldn't come up with an answer/excuse for what Mystress said. Obviously, at that time, I did not like what she said. It hurt my ego. Mystress made me see my own bullshit. But I also couldn't ignore the truth in it.

I started grounding and dumping overload regularly for 45 days. Some days it was very easy. Some days were a struggle. There was a *LOT* of emotional baggage being cleared. Some very deep wounds. But all I had to do was ground and surrender the issue to Goddess. 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'
~ I did not know if I would finish the '45 day'  timeline or 'slip' again. 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'
~ I did not know how and where I was going to ground while I was at a conference, locked in with people for 13 hours. 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'
~ I went to the toilet stalls and grounded. A part of me kept saying 'You're connecting to the Divine sitting on a bowl of someone else's shit and piss?' 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'
~ I have a Macbook. The real videos don't play. So I was unable to watch the videos by Mystress. Am I grounding correctly? 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'
~ What am I going to do after 45 days?  'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'

And She took care of everything. And more. In ways that I could have never imagined in a million years. She is very clever. And tricked me into things so that I can let them go. She has a wicked sense of humor. *chuckle* She is my source of infinite love, joy, beauty, and inspiration. She is my guru - the fountain head of all ecstatic wisdom.

After one year, this is the *gist* of the spiritual lesson that Goddess has taught me by leading me here to FST, to Mystress, and to the other wonderful people - 'Here. This is Yours. Thank you Goddess.'

Thank you Goddess!
Thank you Mystress!

Much love,
Gopi

I did not realize that I had actually written a post during last Mother's day. Goddess has Her ways.
Here's what I wrote last year during Mother's day -
http://fire-serpent.com/tearoom/index.php/topic,1418.msg6362.html#msg6362

Here's what I have to say this year during Mother's day:
Today I walked out of my parents home. I did not intend to leave. When I woke up today, I did not plan on doing this. But by the end of the day, I came to the decision that I did not want to step foot in that home again. There are just too many bad memories. I feel emotionally battered when I am there. And battered is an intentional choice of adjective. All I remember are tears, manipulation, guilt, shame, and fear. I have no recollection of any happy memories of my life in that home. For the first 25 years of my life, it did not occur to me that families could actually be loving and happy despite their differences. It has taken me 30 years to learn to honestly say that I love myself. I still have lots of work to do. But I can look at the mirror and say that I like myself.

For someone who grows in an environment where love is emphasized as ‘unconditional’, it might be easier to bounce back from the trauma’s that life at times seems to throw at us â€" death in some form being a very common one. I grew up in a home where the ‘father’s love’ was equated to ‘being provided for’ and the ‘mother’s love’ was equated with ‘something one needs to do please another’ i.e. self’s needs, desires, values, beliefs, ideals, hopes, dreams, frustrations, choices, politics, identities, practices, and body must take secondary priority in relation to another and therefore rightly professed as ‘self-less’ love. Guilt and shame are embodied experiences within places and spaces. So I left it all behind.

When one is not materially successful (e.g. getting good grades, jobs, finances, and more generally about securing one’s place in the world) according to the terms and expectations of one’s own father and his hopes, dreams, and desires which are invariably thrust on to the child as heredity and legacy, the child pretty early on learns to doubt its own capabilities, which is often manifested as the impostor. On the other hand, the much preached, professed, and repeatedly deified ‘unconditional’ aspect of maternal love is always already anything but unconditional. It has one clause and one clause only â€" love means doing something in order to please another. In my limited personal experience, when I act against my own personal integrity in order to please another, it invariably ends up in a much more messier situation than it was to begin with. It comes out as a combination of me being bitter, feeling cheap about myself, passive aggressive, sad, numb, cynical, fearful, and if I am not careful, the strong urge to identify as a victim. As a child, both of these are deeply traumatic and set forth very complex developmental coping mechanisms. For example, the conditioning set forth by the father’s love internalizes early on and manifests as some sort of OCD â€" workaholism and perfectionism being the most common. When I am most stressed out, my house sparkles. It is comforting to know that I can be effective, efficient, and have ‘control over’ something in my life. That is one my coping mechanisms. Conditioning set forth by the mother’s love internalizes all acts of self-pleasure and self-love as inherently less in priority and in several instances, as outright bad, dangerous, amoral, and ‘self-ish’. Martyrdom, sacrifice of the self in the name of an-Other, is repeatedly preached as the golden standard of love and spiritual piety. The child whose sense of self is ‘still under construction’ must learn to deal with this immense amount of guilt and shame early on in its life. It has taken me 33 years to finally accept that everyone is responsible for their own happiness.

There are several who have helped me on my journey towards my own self-healing and self-love. Here are a few that I wish to thank at this juncture.

~ My school bandmaster Mr. K taught me that it is absolutely ok and very much necessary to question authority. He was a bitter old sexist man but he challenged me to stand up and fight for myself.
~ My cousin B introduced me to the world of books.
~ My language teachers Mr. G (English) and Mr. M (Tamil) made me experience the beauty and magic of literature and poetry.
~ Osho taught me the importance of having personal integrity.
~ Mystress taught me how to connect to my own inner source of unconditional acceptance. She taught me how to love myself.
~ My friends continue to teach me how to trust, open up, and be vulnerable with another.

For this, I am grateful.
Thank you Goddess!

A few days ago, I felt urged to write a list of 'Things I want for myself'. I surrender this to Goddess to do as She sees fit.
1. When the going gets tough, I will remind myself why I love being alive!
2. I will learn to be patient, kind, generous, caring, compassionate, and unconditionally love myself.
3. I will learn to trust others, accept their love with gratitude, and share mine with joy and honesty.
4. I will learn to be less judgmental of myself and others.
5. I will learn to find perfection in the moment and gratitude for being alive here and now!
6. I will learn to laugh more uncaringly. Dance more to my own grooves, Create more daringly. Kiss more passionately. Touch more caringly. Express myself more gracefully. Listen more actively. Learn with more humility. Speak more lovingly. Eat more mindfully.
7. I will learn to take time to play, waste time, and not always be productive!
8. I will learn to embrace my bliss!
Goddess, please take this from me and do as You see fit!
Namaste!

Have been having a lot of anxiety lately. So I have been surrendering it and got back this insight today. Wanted to share it here.

Early childhood experiences convinces us that if we somehow become perfect that our parents will not have reason to withhold love. Sort of a defense strategy to avoid the pain of feeling rejected. Living in a society that incessantly links productivity and self-worth reinforces this very strongly. It is not that productivity is bad. It is necessary for me to stay productive to stay sane. And to stay alive and pay my bills.

However, linking self-worth (Do I accept myself as worthy of being always already unconditionally loved?) and productivity (What am I able to do and achieve?) can become problematic , I think. For one, we will all become old one day and not be so productive (even if we want to be). Learning to love myself then is going to be even harder if I have invested all my previous years conditioning myself to 'reward' myself ONLY when I am being productive. But more than that, my Guide points out, it feeds into the limiting belief that me loving myself has got to do with something/someone external.

What has this got to do with anxiety? My Guide pointed out that anxiety is sort of the body's alarm mechanism notifying me that I am paying too much attention to what other's think of me. LOL... Leave it to Goddess to make you say 'Damn... Thank you for giving me anxiety attacks!' *grin*

~ Early trauma convinces that we need to be 'perfect' or 'better' to be loved.
~ Perfectionism as learned behavioral response - beat them to the punch - if I am already perfect, they can't refuse me love! Also, avoidance of vulnerability which is usually manifests as fear of emotional intimacy and trust issues.
~ Here's the dialog I had with my Guide.
"Me: I don't want to cry in front of him.
Guide: Why not?
Me: If I let him see how messed up I REALLY AM, why the hell would he still want to stick around? I am not sure if I would!
Guide: BINGO!"
Insight: No one can give you the love that you deny yourself.

~ Personal lesson for me: Anxiety is Goddess' gift to me so that I can unlearn paying attention to others' expectations (which is basically my projections) and learn to focus on being grounded in the moment, finding the perfection here and now, and doing what needs to be done next for Her will to be done! Thank you Goddess!

This pop music video resonated a lot with me in terms of integrating inner child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0BWlvnBmIE

It never ceases to amaze me how profound things are all around us all the time.

Drawing after a very long time.
This is the first one in 2016. Happy New Year!

“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and whatever abysses nature leads, or you will learn nothing.“ ~ Thomas H. Huxley

A few thoughts based on recent experiences:

1) To lead is to serve. To serve is to learn how to love better. We economize service. I think it is useful to do so. But in the process, we somehow forget that people give out of their generosity. It is very sad that we live in a world where it is easier for us to accept that people do service for visibility, perks, and ‘to climb up the ladder’ than it is to come face-to-face with the reality of their kindness. The cynic in me still manages to creep in and cloud my worldview at times. I want to learn to trust that people give out of kindness.

Quote“…you will not serve anyone as a duty. Then service will spontaneously flow out of you. And when service becomes spontaneous, with no concept of duty in it, when service becomes love â€" when you cannot do anything else but serve; when there is no question of making others happy; when really the contrary has happened: you are so happy that now happiness overflows in you and reaches others” ~ Osho

2) Passion hurts. And that’s a good thing. It reminds me I am alive, not numb, not indifferent, and have things to look forward to. I can laugh till my belly hurts and cry when my heart feels broken. I am not apathetic to the world around me. Passion shows me where it hurts; where there is more work to be done. Passion demands that I get over myself and try again with sincerity. That I truly give a damn. That I remain vulnerable and open to life to the best of my abilities despite the history of hurt. That I throw caution to wind, be not afraid to make a fool of myself, and dream big. That I step beyond the confines of my own ego boo-boo’s and answer when life comes knocking at my door. That I leave behind what might appear comfortable and comforting to my worldview right now. That I remind myself again and again that I have the power to break free of the shackles of distrust and to soar gleefully with another. That I follow my bliss. Passion teaches me that life becomes more precious in the presence of death.

Quote“It lies in all of us. Sleeping… Waiting… And though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir… Open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us… Guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love… The clarity of hatred… The ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we’d know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we’d be truly dead.” â€" Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3) It takes real strength to learn to laugh at oneself. I am starting to understand that showing vulnerability is not an admittance of weakness but an act of bravery, hope, and the precious trust we place in another. This is especially hard to come to terms with since patriarchal worldviews exaggerate and emphasize invincibility and ‘keeping it together’ over the ability to bounce back to life when shit hits the ceiling.

4) Perfection is inhumane; decorum isn’t. It is good to be safe. It is very important to not do/say things that can hurt another. However, despite our best intentions, we end up hurting each other. Sometimes people need to be told what is not ok. How we do it carries immense implications for all of us. It’s shitty to bite the hand of those who reach out to help us. Nothing reeks more of insecurity, self-centered arrogance, and desperation for validation like ‘Do you know who I am?’.

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/72/70/37/727037a5ab9a0a1b8d2b8552d307a435.jpg)

It takes more to give a fuck than to say fuck off. It is devastatingly painful and absolutely vital to come to terms with reality of having hurt another. This is why I believe it is important that we treat each other with a little more respect and compassion instead of relying on our titles, regalia, and clout to get our way. Juvenile attitude is always self serving. And growth hurts. Sometimes it is important to go beyond establishing safety, to take risks about what needs to said, and to be careful and compassionate about how we get our point across.

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/36/20/03/362003835d14436a3e533c1d8b1dd75f.jpg)

Crone medicine: Thank you Goddess!
*bows*

Found this quote very beautiful and resonant. Wanted to share it here.

“… at this point there is no need to elaborate; as my rapture escapes me, I immediately reenter the night of a lost child, anguished in his desire to prolong his ravishment, with no other end than exhaustion, no way of stopping short of fainting. It is such excruciating bliss.” ~ Georges Bataille

Namaste!

Re-started FST lessons from the beginning. Since my Tummo initiation last summer, there has been a LOT of 're-cycle and re-build' - both in my external and internal relationships. Old injuries bubble up for deeper surrender and release. I took a break from the lessons. Grounding and Hatha yoga helped me stay sane and not get entangled in further karma loops.

Grounding is breathing now. I feel sustained and stable in myself. Goddess and God are my parents and I am their love child. There is nothing to take offense to. Nothing to fix. Nothing to save. Nothing to judge. Nothing to fear. Like all the wonderfully enlightened things around me, I too blossom, sing, and join in the dance and laughter. I have become more patient with myself and with others. I empty myself at Her feet and He guides me. I have nothing more to ask. I have nothing more to say.

Thank you Goddess!

Reflections on lessons:
I have been revisiting the lessons. Goddess shows me new stuff to learn every time and the lessons continue to deepen. I wanted to record a few details in this forum.

0) FST Course Format Instructions

• "Take time to integrate insights and let insights come forth from your own consciousness."
  When I started the course, I thought I will complete this course with a specific pace, determination, and schedule - all set by me. I had to be away from the lessons for several months. I have restarted the lessons from beginning several times now. The only lesson I have consistently and sincerely practiced during all the time is grounding and I cannot do justice in describing how much that has been a 'life-saver'. The proof is in the pudding. And when I am grounded, insights come forth from within and guidance and support are all around me.
• "Having a sense of community of shared experience is important for spiritual growth"
  I live in a beautiful small liberal arts college town. The town is flooded with yoga studios offering various chakra clearing/opening stuff ranging from Kundalini yoga, aromatherapy, and Gong sessions. I tend to shy away and hide from them because (1) I have enough on my plate, and (2) some of them tend to type-cast me in weird ways (just because I am from India, somehow my body is more prone to being flexible to do yoga or that opening chakras was a routine Indian activity that I knew all about). Also, in several of these communities, there seems to be more emphasis on spreading information (the latest, oldest, most scientific, easiest, and fastest techniques) than practicing insights. However, Goddess brought wonderful people into my life when I stopped looking for a special spiritual community and started to practice loving everyone who came my way.

1) Introduction to Kundalini

• "...it is common for old injuries to reappear, only to be healed more completely."
  I have found this to be true based on my experience with this course so far. I am dumbfounded and baffled at my own experiences of healing myself physically. There is nothing that Love cannot heal. The only limitations come from my own beliefs about what is possible. Healing happens like peeling an onion. Every time a new layer of karmic hurt is peeled and cast off, I cry a little and then feel a little more lighter.
• "...trying to force the process is really a way of resisting the process"
  This was hard to practice initially since the perfectionist ego self would take over.
  Now I surrender my frustration to Goddess and ask Her to show me what I am not seeing - Here and Now. I try to force something to happen when I feel stuck. If I am feeling stuck, that means I am going against the flow and not in Surrender. So I have found that the most effective thing for me to do is to Surrender and request Her to guide me.
• "Goddess sees you as infinite and perfect, and in that realm, there is nothing but Now."
  Any time I have an anxiety attack that is induced by my own perfectionist ego self, coming back to this particular phrase and meditating upon in has been extremely helpful and immediately grounding.

8. The Holy Trinity

• "Where the dark and the light come together is where the shadows define the form that the light is shining on and we have the perception of our physical reality."
  I have been revisiting this particular line for a while now. It feels elusive to understand as an explanation but there is a familiarity ('gut feel?!') that makes me want to agree with the insight. It 'feels' right. Any thoughts/comments/insights from the community would be much appreciated. Thank you!
  

Hi Gopi,
Yes the idea of polarity and its meaning are the primary mysteries of spirituality.
As in our casual approach in life we like to elevate the light and suppress the shadow and thus we as civilization or internally as being we by doing that enter into a crazy state of mind.
So there is a pointer to that in that statement too, that in order for life to exist both polarities have to exist. That is life arises when polarities arise. And if polarities cease the life ceases.
But how to live with that knowledge is the difficult task. But it is the only way out of our primary craziness of the mind. It is also the duality between the known and the unknown.
Some tradition describe it as the union of the sun and the moon or union of the heaven and the earth or salt and sulfur (via mercury). Or in image of the side channels of “energy body”. And unifying that polarized flow into a central one etc. Which are all the classic yogic - mystical imagery.

Now many systems more aimed at public consumption had to present more publicly appealing image to make money. That the good guy wins. And that you get to heaven after. A dimension of pure one polarity. And as that was the romantic notion appealed to people, it made them feel safe, then some streams of ideas continued in the direction given by this presentation and in time then spoke then of killing your ego or shadow or removing duality etc. Usually by self violent ways as ones body or nature as observed has a ways of show us very well that our ideas are bullshit.  Therefore obviously the body had to be the evil one and mind or spirit the pure thing. And we hoped to elevate the pure thing by torturing the evil shit. While presenting it as removing the darkness so that only light remains. But in that sentence you mentioned it is clear that such is a very immature idea and silly to attempt.
As the end of “our problems with duality” is not solved by removing it.

So the metaphor in FST is the union of body and spirit. Which just kicks this immature peasant notion right in the balls. And it is unavoidable. Many people freak out when they see that coming. So I marvel myself at the surprise to realize how much the Mystress BDSM instructions are so essential. Marvelous thing indeed.
Way of the divine are indeed mysterious.

Love.
Duu

@ Duu - Thank you for your insights. That was helpful.

Also, Goddess points out lessons to me through everyday life when I learn to listen to Her. Here's a recent one that made me LOL. I am still working on integrating this one.

Quote
Apu: I have come to make amends, sir. At first, I blamed you for squealing, but then I realized, it was I who wronged you. So I have come to work off my debt. I am at your service.
Homer: You're... selling what, now?
Apu: I am selling only the concept of karmic realignment.
Homer: You can't sell that! Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos.
[Slams the door]
Apu: He's got me there.
- The Simpsons, Season 5, Episode 13

Happy 2017 everyone!

My 2016 resolution was to become a better listener.
I think I am slowly starting to learn how to be become a better and active listener.

I got to spend Dec 2016 with Mystress in her lovely home.
Yoga + puppy + massage + cookies + sleep = bliss
Thank you for making me feel at home and for pampering me with candies, cookies, cakes, pies, pastries, chocolates, and gifts, Mystress. *bows*

Miss Chiquita Thunderfluff aka puppy - Thank you for showing me how to give attention to another without projecting. For the trust, the forgiveness, and the cuddles.  :-*

QuoteOn Dec 4, 2016, I wrote to Mystress:
GK: Met a lot of elders. Some of them I did not expect to see. But it was really nice to feel their presence. I had nothing to ask to most of them. Just gratitude and love.
I was a lil stunned to see David Bowie show up. Because I have never related to him as a spiritual master. In fact, I did not know of him till 2010. I don’t know much Western cultural context in terms of music. Anyway, I told him ‘Thank you for inspiring some of my favorite people on earth.’ He asked me thank you personally for easing his pain during the last few days. I was a little skeptical about if this was really Bowie. He said tell her ‘red handkerchief’ and she’ll know what that means.

Mystress: Bowie is a spiritual master

GK: I told him I have no clue what ‘red handkerchief’ means. He just sat there. But his presence was very radiant and peaceful.

A few days later, I was in Mystress' home helping her around the house. I came across a picture of her where she was wearing a red bandana around her neck. When I showed it to Mystress, she told me that this was her punk style. Fast forward another week, I find the same bandana somewhere in a pile of laundry. Mystress and I burst out laughing stunned. I told her "I did ask him for evidence.."  ;D

For millions around the world, their first introduction to Bowie is through his music. For me, I got to know him as an inspirational figure. And I am very much enjoying getting to know him more.

For 2017, I would like to be more responsible with my anger and be more forgiving towards myself and others.
Thank you Goddess. *namaste*

I requested Mystress to do a Tarot card reading for funsies... She used a beautiful deck. And the card I got was Ordinariness.
Today, I was cleaning my bedroom.
Guide stopped me and made me look at this.
Burst out laughing....  ;D
Thank you Goddess.

Made a sketch today after a very long time :)
(//)

  I took Bowie's death really hard. I had not known he was ill and beat myself up a bit for not guessing... knew he had a stroke. Regretting that I had not had the opportunity to reach out and offer some help to one who gave me so much, even though he does not know me.  Caught at that stage of grief... couldn't listen to his music, read all the tributes and condolences, lots of old interviews on Youtube.  Fans dissecting and interpreting the content of his final album, "Blackstar" are realizing its talking about his ascension.   

  I set aside my first impression of where I had last seen a red handkerchief, puzzled he would reference another artist, especially *that* one lol  so I sat with it a few days but nothing else came up so I mentally went back to re-examine the moment. I had not expected the signal to be so precise, it referred to a sequence of  my *thoughts* from the week previous. A handkerchief, that specific size and red cotton with the black paisley ink pattern Gopi was shown, is called a bandanna. A traditional cowboy handkerchief. 

  Sometimes when I find a song I like I decide to learn all the words, and "Copperhead Road" by Steve Earle is pretty badass. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvaEJzoaYZk)

  In the video he ties a red bandanna around his wrist, with fingers and teeth because that is the only way to tie a bandanna around your wrist and I know because I used to wear one in my teenage punk days... wrist or neck. I had been watching and remembering, how it was right around that time that a friend lent me "Changes one" and listening to "Space Oddity" on the headphones I fell helplessly in love, with the man and the music and that never changed. John Lennon was murdered months later, I didn't take it quite as hard as some of my friends because my allegiance had shifted. That is the sequence of thoughts Bowie was referencing.

  I don't know how the bandanna ended up in the laundry, clean and still neatly folded from decades of being archived in the scarf drawer.   The photo was sent by my sister, going through stuff after mom's death.

(http://fire-serpent.com/tantra/personal/bandanna.png)  My high school class photo, punk fashion plate. Black wool sweater, small cluster of button sized band pins, (how we marked our alliegances) and the red bandanna. http://www.wreckingpit.com/gif/straycats-promo1.jpg (http://www.wreckingpit.com/gif/straycats-promo1.jpg)

  So I called him up, ascended master to ascended master and he showed up and I was so astonished and star struck I did not know what to say! He seemed amused, for sure hes seen that reaction before... while alive.

  I don't talk about it, cannot create expectations. Surrender has to be complete, we let go of everything. Sometimes, the reward for service is dreams and wishes too deep and heartfelt to even be spoken of, coming true in ways the ego never could have imagined.

  This amazing man whom I have loved, admired and been inspired by for most of my life, without any hope of having any sort of personal connection with him... (millions of people are in love with David Bowie, we all want that...) is my new spirit friend, as close as thought.   

I am very happy to read this Mystress.
I don't have the same kind of intense life-long connection that you have had with Bowie.
I still don't know anything about him. Love his style and his ability to reinvent himself. He has inspired a few of my teachers who were inspirations to me. That's my primary relation to him.
He just showed up. I did not recognize and refused to believe.  :o
But he sat there in silence as if saying 'Stare all you want. I am here.'   8)
And still does at times with specific guidance.
After reading your post, I kind of feel like I am a kid who has stumbled upon something that he has no idea about how valuable it is or why he found it. LOL. Who am I to question what She wills?  ;D
He's always so sweet with me. I have never felt that I am in the presence of a world famous artist (and will come to know later as an 'ascended spiritual master' as Mystress puts it). I never ask anything of him. Not out of restraint but I never feel like doing so. I am just happy to hang out with him. When I write my research work, sometimes he just shows up and sits there near me. It's a very calming and playful presence. He gives me tips about how to talk to people. I simply say Thank you.
Attaching a pic of me with Miss Chiquita taken in front of Bowie poster at Mystress' living room.
Namaste!

Woke up sad. Today is the 5th year death anniversary of a person who made me laugh a lot when I needed that most in my life.

When I moved to UK for work, I got very bored in the evenings and took dance classes to pass time. I met a wonderful girl who readily embraced me with all my quirks and warts of self-doubt. She was my friend when I needed one. She became my sister when I did not know I needed one. She invited me into her home and her family became my family. My friend's mom accepted and loved me as her own. Jill was the first mother figure to accept aspects of my personality that I have been taught to hate and feel ashamed about - being an effeminate gay man.

To me, I was me. Others convinced me that I can and need to change. I remember one of my friend trying to correct my 'limp wrist' gestures because she truly wanted to help me to become, what she thought was a more socially appropriate, a 'nice gay man'. Jill never wanted to change anything in me. She always asked me 'Are you happy my darling boy?'. She laughed a lot and made us all laugh about every silly thing under the sun.
During her final years, she fought cancer with so much courage and compassion. When her treatment options failed, she marveled at her own cancer cells as 'Clever lil buggers!' and then laughed. She made fart jokes in her death bed to make us all laugh.

I miss laughing with you momalina! I miss eating cake with you and making vulgar jokes about men. Gratitude for having met you and for your loving presence in my life. And yes, I am happy! :)

Thank you Goddess!!

Currently reading 'Ecstasy Through Tantra' by Dr. John Mumford. A lot of insightful information. Wanted to share this passage on 'black magic' and 'sexual energy' here. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Quote"In fact, sexuality is a specific antidote, as well as antithesis, to "black magic." The deliberate trying (and "try" is a word with built-in failure) to injure another person, mentally or physically, through psychic channels is only resorted to by those who are psychologically ill and feel themselves to be impotent in negotiating life. Paranoid personalities, riddled with feelings of envy, hostility, auspiciousness and oversensitivity, characterize those prone to practice "black magic," and these very traits trip them up because they are susceptible to the idea that their own spells will rebound upon them. "Black magic" is a type of mental judo in which an attempt is made to surface the victim's innate, and normally unconscious, negativity and fear, turning it against him while simultaneously convincing him that force is external to himself...
Sex magic is not an appropriate vehicle for "black magic" because the psychic projectile of charged hate and anger is the antithesis of the emotional states generating an orgasm. In fact, sexual sorcery is an excellent expedient for strengthening a shattered psyche or pulling together a sick ego. Esoteric psychology teaches that the powerful force shields created by mutual orgasm repair lesions in the auric shields of the male and female by virtue of the intensity of "re-pairing."
Tantric sexuality is the dimension of sex employed for consciousness expansion. One possible translation of the Sanskrit prefix tan is "expand," while tra means "liberate"; so Tantra becomes that which first "expands" and then "liberates" the mind. A colloquial translation of Tantra would be "mind-blowing.""
- John Mumford (Ecstasy Through Tantra, 1994)

Hi Gopi,
well neo tantra sees tantras as primarily sexual path in that literal sense. And that is not true for traditional texts even if they, some of them, contain that too as a part of whole.
In symbolic way any act of life can be seen as a sexual act. 


If you observe something you are already one with it in your mind. As if it entered you or joined you in a sexual way and you are now having intercourse with it purely by the adventure of seeing it. You don't know where it ends and you begin. Its a much more real thing then just a poetic metaphor.


Now one can get a “mind blowing” orgasm that way for sure.
 Few people here got there.

Love,
Duu

Quote from: Gopi on Jun 21, 2017, 07:12:07 AM
Currently reading 'Ecstasy Through Tantra' by Dr. John Mumford. A lot of insightful information. Wanted to share this passage on 'black magic' and 'sexual energy' here. Please feel free to share your thoughts.

Quote"Sex magic is not an appropriate vehicle for "black magic" because the psychic projectile of charged hate and anger is the antithesis of the emotional states generating an orgasm. In fact, sexual sorcery is an excellent expedient for strengthening a shattered psyche or pulling together a sick ego. "
- John Mumford (Ecstasy Through Tantra, 1994)

  Bullshit, and you know it's bullshit. What sort of fantasy world does he live in, where sex is always consensual and loving? Does he think all rapists are automatically impotent? Sex can and has been used as a weapon of force and intimidation, humiliation and violence, especially towards women, for millennia, and its still happening.  Fantasizing about sex with someone, without their consent, is a form of black magic and the result has proven fatal to more than one sex symbol celebrity.  People like Marilyn, shell shocked and unable to deal with the incoming energies of thousands of men wanking at her, and do you think their fantasies were always sweet and gentle? No, lots of men get off on violence and rape fantasies, they release their anger and frustrations at the unattainable object of their desires. Abusive sexuality has been a component of black magic, forever, and is still a component of some religions. Sharia law anyone? Rape the infidel? 

  How many cases of spiritual teachers being accused of rape by their female devotees?

  I came across one old, Chinese patriarchal tantra text that recommended a man *buy* a beautiful pubescent girl, rape or seduce her to steal her womens power, and then you may as well dispose of her with murder because shes only a husk now... and it warned she has to be younger than 16 or she turns into a demon after. (yeah because older women got confidence to say how they feel about being abused!)  What "tantra" looked like, at the place and time when girls could be bought, raped and murdered with impunity.

  Statements like this are not only naive, they are extremely irresponsible, they foster a situation where abuse can ripen because whatever happens is good right?

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/i-was-a-tantric-sex-slave-1069859.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/i-was-a-tantric-sex-slave-1069859.html)

  Gopi, I do not think you believe what he has to say is true either, especially as I know you are aware of some of the horrible sex magic practices in India like men thinking sex with a virgin child will cure them of AIDs.  It is certainly not in line with my teachings, so why did you post it?

  Yes, sexual tantra magic can be powerfully healing, but to say it cannot ever be damaging, is ridiculously naive and opens the door to abuses. Safe, sane, consensual always has to come first, and if that all works out then see if there is room and trust enough for intimate magic. Cannot just assume, because its magic it must be pure. That is an excuse that ego can grab onto and run with, and often has.  On a par with "everybody does it" and "no-one will know." Predatory sexual behavior is an embedded part of human nature, for both genders. For women it is more likely to appear as using sexuality to manipulate. Someone insisting they have none, is lying to themselves and what they have pushed into shadow is pulling their strings and likely to rise up stronger to bite their ass. More news headlines, a priest, a preacher, a guru, a yogi in a sex scandal, charged with rape. Shadow won.

  The kind of arrogant guy who thinks the sex is always good, because it is always good, for him...  got to wonder if his lovers feel the same way.

  There is a reason why Dr. John Mumford is not mentioned anywhere in FST, and that is because he teaches patriarchal tantra, its all about control eh? Control the breath, control the mind, control the body, control the energies... and where is the surrender? Where is the intimate relationship with your Divine Self? There is nothing of a moment to moment, intimate connection, just learn to turn turtle, switch off all your senses, and use earplugs, put a spandex bag over your head and try to be nothing. It is all about the powers you can gain, rah rah, and nothing of the Goddess. 

  I don't like commenting on other spiritual teachers, and would prefer they not be brought here. This is for Fire Serpent Tantra ok? Thanks.

   

http://tantrismuskritik.blogspot.ca/2011/07/sexual-assault-is-old-tradition-among.html (http://tantrismuskritik.blogspot.ca/2011/07/sexual-assault-is-old-tradition-among.html)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/when-tantric-is-code-for-rape (http://www.thedailybeast.com/when-tantric-is-code-for-rape)

Thank you for the clarification Mystress.
You are right. Mumford's version of Tantra is patriarchal and does not account for sexual violence towards women.
I will be more mindful about what I post here moving forward.
Namaste!

My 2017 resolution was to become more mindful of my anger. I have learned things about myself by paying attention to what makes me angry and how I handle it.

• I am learning to communicate my anger with others in an honest and productive manner instead of being mean or shutting down. I really like that I have become more patient with myself.
• It is easier for me to handle situations where I am angry with someone else. Situations where I am angry with myself is still a tricky beast. It is difficult to not go into 'punish and shame' mode when I am angry with myself.
• Paying attention to my anger has helped me to identify the expectations I have for myself and others. I realized that at times I have very cruel, impractical, and perfectionist expectations for myself.
• When I feel personally offended/hurt by another person's actions and behaviors, there is usually some sort of 'old wound' that is getting triggered. Surrendering triggered karma and processing insights helps me gain healthy distance and a more compassionate perspective about the situation.
• The energy excess triggered by anger is fantastic fuel for me to get stuff done. I feel like I can move mountains when I channel my rage.

I think I still have lots to learn about handling anger (esp. about not punishing myself) but am happy with the growth that 2017 has brought. For 2018, I would like to be less cynical.

• I want to overcome my fear of failure by trying new things and pursuing opportunities.
• I want to approach people with more trust and less expectations.
• I want to accept love from others with humility and gratitude.

Happy new year to everyone.
Namaste!

I am currently reading 'The Cinderella Syndrome: Discovering God's Plan When Your Dreams Don't Come True' by Lee Ezell. Mystress mentioned this book in another post. I am reading it slowly and sitting down with what resonates. It's a very Christian scripture based book that has insights from real life experiences. I wanted to share a few paragraphs that I have been mulling over about 'Thy will be done.'

QuoteThis is the same God who placed the universe in order and implanted deep emotions in the soul of man and woman. Can He handle our need for love?
This is the same God who set the boundaries of the ocean and designed the magnificent structure of every snowflake. Can He take care of our kids?
This is the same God who feeds the sparrows and who hid treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones in the heart of the earth. Can He cope with our needs for financial security?
Can God really satisfy the longings of our hearts? Can He deal with our dreams? Can He concern Himself with the wild hopes we hide so carefully in our silent thoughts?
The answer obviously is yes. But a bigger question remains. Are we willing to let Him do things His way? Can we bring ourselves to cast our cares upon Him and leave them there? Can we really count on Him to make the best of the future and to give us what we need for the present?
Can we learn to believe that the past, with all its intricately woven triumphs and tragedies, belongs to Him now, and that He really is able to work all those tangled threads into the picture for good?

Um sorry, wrong book.
https://www.amazon.ca/Cinderella-Complex-Womens-Hidden-Independence/dp/0671733346 (https://www.amazon.ca/Cinderella-Complex-Womens-Hidden-Independence/dp/0671733346)

  My penance,lol. Converting Man's Search for Meaning into a web page
http://fire-serpent.com/tantra/manssearchformeaning.html (http://fire-serpent.com/tantra/manssearchformeaning.html)

Graduated FST today  ;D
Much love and gratitude to Mystress.
Special thanks to Duu for always being kind.
Also want to thank Hillary, Sigmund, and Gustaf for your generosity and love.
Namaste!
~ Gopi

Congratulations on graduating, Gopi! It'l be interesting to have a new alum around. :)

I had an urge to write down TEN things that I have learned in the past TEN years. Some of this is work related but relatable to all creative professions. I am sharing the list here because FST has helped me a lot (joined FST on 22 July 2013 and graduated on 06 April 2018). I have learned these from teachers around me and practice them in my life to the best of my abilities (it's a work-in-progress).

1) Don't compare.
As an academic researcher, I am surrounded by very smart people. It can get very competitive. Thankfully, I learned early that comparing myself with another person is the quickest route to misery. It is not a zero sum game - another person's success is not your failure.

2) Criticism is about the work and not about you.
When someone provides criticism, learn to look past how they're saying it and focus on what they're saying. You don't have to please everyone. When you get helpful criticism, thank the other person.

3) Prepare like your life depends on it and play like you don't care.
May be this is just my personal trait/preference? Being too invested in the outcome can become a burdensome hurdle.

4) Rejection is unavoidable.
I would like to share this quote about rejection here.

Quote"When we take rejection as proof of our inadequacies, it's hard to allow ourselves to risk being truly seen again... The problem arises when shame kicks in and we aren't able to view our flaws, limitations, and vulnerabilities in a patient, self-loving way. The fear of rejection becomes understandably intense when it taps into our own belief that we are lesser than others - or lesser than the image we feel compelled to project...
None of us is immune to the pain of rejection, but the more we grow in maturity and self-worth, the less likely we are to take it quite personally. When we acknowledge that rejection is not an indictment of our being, but an experience we must all face again and again if we put ourselves out there, rejection becomes easier to bear. The only sure way to avoid rejection is to sit mute in a corner and take no risks. If we choose to live courageously, we will experience rejection-and survive to show up for more."
~ Harriet Lerner (The Dance of Fear)

5) Build discipline; motivation will follow.
Waiting for motivation is like waiting for good weather. Invest in yourself come rain or shine.

6) You know what happens if you give-up; you don't know what might happen if you stick it out.
Practice saying 'Enough for today!' and show up for work tomorrow early.

7) Perfectionism is self-persecution.

• "At its root, perfectionism isn’t really about a deep love of being meticulous. It’s about fear. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of disappointing others. Fear of failure. Fear of success." ~ Michael Law
• "Healthy striving is self-focused: "How can I improve?" Perfectionism is other-focused: "What will they think?"" ~ Brené Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)

8 ) Same actions will not yield different results; if you can see the pattern, you can also break the pattern.
Humans are creatures of habit; you cannot eliminate a habit but can replace it. We are what we do repeatedly.

9) Reward yourself not just when you succeed but more importantly when you handle failure graciously.
Learn to 'let go' with gratitude for the experience and growth. Grieve without rushing but do not wallow in self-pity.

10) Step out of your comfort zone.
Thrill seeking is not the same as stepping out of your comfort zone. Vulnerability is not the same as weakness.

I am currently on lesson 3 of new FST - The Sacredness of Sexuality
It has been personally challenging to unlearn my past fear based habits.
I still catch myself self-abandoning/disassociating at times and then feel inadequate.
I found myself feeling jealous about someone else's youth and then felt bad about being vain.
Learning to accept that my body and sexual libido has changed is not always easy.
I am trying to be more kind towards myself and refocus on what I have in the present.
I find it very frustrating that not only do we live in a youth-obsessed hyper-sexual culture but also that there is not much healthy portrayal of ageing and sexuality.
By hyper-sexual, I mean there is a pressure to be sexually available all the time.

Through sex education, we are mostly taught mechanics and given warnings about STDs/pregnancy - very important but woefully inadequate.
We assume people know how to flirt, ask for intimacy, deal with heartbreaks, open up to others with trust after being hurt, and negotiate sexual needs with their partner.
We have successfully made 'ageing' a problem to be solved through consumer products and services.
We have made it possible to find the nearest sexually available person (anytime/anywhere) through apps and websites.
But also simultaneously have ended up with many people feeling alienated, disenchanted, and lonely.
In the past, I have used sex as a way to numb myself and escape facing my own real needs/desires (which is often emotional connection and intimacy).
One of my past lovers said something to me that shook me: it's like you are raping yourself by making yourself have sex when what you really want is to be close to another.
It has been a slow, bumpy, and on-going process to learn to listen, discern, and respect my own needs/desires.

I believe men and women suffer differently because of sexist/ageist ideas, although not equally.
Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once asked a male friend why men feel threatened by women. He replied, "They are afraid women will laugh at them." She then asked a group of women why they feel threatened by men. They answered, "We're afraid of being killed."
There is intense shame around men talking about changes in their libido and bodily abilities as they age.
I am not interested in tips for feeling more horny or having prolonged sex (so many books available on this).
I am interested in cultivating a mindful, compassionate, and pleasurable relation to my own body as it ages and changes (yet to find a good book written for men).
I am learning that it is ok to grieve (not wallow) for loss but also balance it with gratitude for what I have in the present.

At one point, I was taking anti-anxiety medication which completely killed my sex drive (my doctor did warn me about this).
One day, I just felt so sad for the loss of my own libido and cried.
It felt silly for me as a grown man to cry about not having boners liked I used to as a teen.
After crying, I also felt like I learned to appreciate my own sexuality in a more human way.
I guess we only grieve for what we value.
At the same time, I also remember praying for taking away my libido because it got so crazy intense at several points during my initial  K awakening.
Now it comes and goes like the moon waxes and wanes...
I am slowly learning to listen and appreciate my own body with a little more gratitude and grace.
I keep reminding myself that not everyone is lucky enough to become old.
If any of you feel like sharing personal experiences/insights about ageing gracefully and changing sexual needs, please feel free to comment - I am very much interested to learn from others.

Namaste!
Gopi

PS: I am currently reading a book edited by Georg Feuerstein titled 'Enlightened Sexuality: Essays on Body-Positive Spirituality'.
I want to share a few quotes that resonated with me here from one of the articles in that book.

Quote
"In gestalt therapy, we notice that when an experience is unfulfilling, it is because we are, in some way, out of contact with the experience.
The experience is not complete; thus we don't feel completed by it. Something is missing in the contact.
Genuine contact, which means "with touch," helps us to grow and realize ourselves. Incomplete contact diminishes us because it leaves something untouched.
Human beings are faced with a variety of presences, manifested in other people, ideas, histories, events, emotions, religions, philosophies, languages, hopes, dreams, and memories. Human beings are fed by much more than food and drink. But just like the plants and animals, they grow only by contact with that which is truly nourishing to their total being.
While there is nothing so disappointing as the emptiness we can feel after "having sex," there is nothing quite so fulfilling as the ecstasy we experience in truly meeting and joining with another person in the spirit of reverence for the total being of that person. It is in such encounters that we can know and love the God who is love."
~ From Having to Being: Toward Sexual Enlightenment by Jean Lanier

I made my first post to Tearoom on July 22, 2013 (a full moon day that is celebrated in India as Guru Purnima) -

http://fire-serpent.com/tearoom/index.php/topic,1418.msg6235.html#msg6235

Today is July 21, 2024 and it is Guru Purnima.

"Guru Purnima is a religious festival dedicated to offering respect to all the spiritual and academic gurus. It is celebrated as a festival in India, Nepal and Bhutan by Hindus, Jains and Buddhists. This festival is traditionally observed to honour one's chosen spiritual teachers or leaders. It is observed on the full moon day (Purnima) in the month of Ashadha (Juneâ€"July) according to the Hindu Calendar."
Source: Wikipedia

That's 11 years of FST! What a ride!!

It feels appropriate to write a testimonial about my relationship with my spiritual teacher, Mystress Angelique Serpent.

---

I have experienced severe depressive episodes since I was a small child.
I have repeatedly experienced suicidal thoughts and was self-harming by starving myself.
I started experiencing intense Kundalini awakening symptoms when I was around 30 years old.
I did not understand what was going on. I felt lonely, confused, scared, and desolate.
At one point, my body was sending me alarming signals that I was falling apart rapidly - I either had to do something soon or I will die.
That's how I came to FST.

Since I was born and raised in India, I came to FST expecting a guru (in the traditional Indian sense).
Mystress continually refused to play guru for me and insisted that I learn to walk my path using my own legs.
That said, I have received a lot of mentoring and support from Mystress over the years.
I kept trying to 'figure out' Mystress and it always threw me in a loop.
Soon I learned that it did not matter what I thought/understood.
What mattered was whether I was willing to try things with an open mind and heart.
As I progressed through FST lessons, I noticed profound changes in my life.
My Tearoom posts over the years bear testimony to my journey with FST.
It is not an exaggeration when I say - because of FST, I have not had suicidal thoughts in past 7+ years.

When I graduated FST, Mystress offered me the opportunity to become FST lineage.
I have benefited a lot from the guidance and support from other FST members.
I feel good when I am able to assist and support other FST students.
So I agreed to be FST lineage because it felt right for me.
As lineage, I have a more personal relationship with and get a lot more one-on-one training from Mystress.
When I first met Mystress in person, I was too anxious about meeting my spiritual teacher and did not know what to expect.
Over the years, Mystress and I have become good friends.

Mystress is the wisest person I have personally known till date.
I have not yet met someone who has such profound understanding of the human psyche and spirituality.
I do not always immediately understand everything she says but based on my past experiences, I have enough trust to remain open and try things.
Mystress has been generous, kind, persistent, and patient with training me.
I have lost count of how many times I have been stumped and left speechless while learning things from her.
She is also a no-nonsense person who knows when to crack the whip.

Several years ago, I realized that I was deeply alienated from myself.
I had erased, silenced, and abandoned myself in order to please others.
The result of that self-erasure was that I had no idea who I was and what I wanted.
It made me very sad that I was a stranger to myself and stranger among others.
My journey with Mystress and FST so far has helped me to rediscover my authentic self and live true to myself.
There are lots of spiritual and mystical experiences I have had in these past 11 years.
Too many synchronicities... too many surreal moments that defy logical explanations... to write down and count.

Looking back, what I treasure the most is this: I am true to myself and I love myself.
I have come a long way from 'abandoning myself and self-harming' to genuinely loving myself.
Because I love myself, my relationship with others has vastly improved - my cup overflows.
I am a work in progress and growth is never done with Kundalini.
Mystress inspires me to be kind, generous, playful, and disciplined.
For this, I am grateful.
Thank you for being my teacher and friend, Mystress.
Looking forward to more exciting things in the future.

Namaste!
Gopi