Gopi's posts

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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

[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

[Gopi]

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

[Gopi]

“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

[Gopi]

Tonight's work!

[Gopi]

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

[Gopi]

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.

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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

[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.

[Gopi]

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

[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!

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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.

[Gopi]

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

[Gopi]

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.

“…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.

“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?’.



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.

[Gopi]

Crone medicine: Thank you Goddess!
*bows*

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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!

[Gopi]

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.

[Gopi]

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!
  

[Duu]

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

[Gopi]

@ 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.

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