Fall Into Your Mother's Arms

When I am unhappy, it is easier to dissolve the I than the unhappiness.

When I dissolve, the cloud of the world has nothing to cling to. I evaporate into clear space. In this sky, who cares if clouds come and go? Who cares if whole lifetimes, whole worlds come and go?

Ashtavakra says, "Layam vraja: dissolve now!" How then do I dissolve?

Begin by accepting that these clouds of unhappiness aren't really mine. They belong to the world. So often I imagine that my unhappiness is a private angst: but it is the world's sorrow that I feel, a great darkness around me that is not truly my own property.

When anxiety brings me to my knees, it is a moment of grace. Why? Because mind gives up and sinks into the heart. There, in that deep well, I drop all my worries, because I drop the I. Then there is surrender to a Presence that is always right here, in the midst of doubt or fear. This depth, this very space of nothing at all, becomes alive with sparkling consciousness. At such a moment, trust the Presence, and know it is the womb of Mother Divine.

"Amma, Mother, I am powerless! You are the only power. I am falling, but I am falling into the abyss of your grace. My very hopelessness is the infinite depth of your heart. Not I, Mother, but you. You are All around, above and below, deeper inside me than my own being."

To surrender like this, one must be brought low, with no one and nothing to depend on, neither money nor status, neither name nor intelligence nor degree. Only then can a humbling grace burn the me away. This is what Jesus meant by being poor: "Blessed are the poor in spirit." The word he used did not just refer to an economic poverty, but to an inward state of destitution, total surrender.

As I dissolve into this mothering space, my surrender not only lightens my burden, it lightens the burden for others. The cloud of world-suffering lifts from their hearts too. It is the greatest mystery, how our own interior cloud produces the world-cloud, and how our own interior surrender heals the whole planet.

Persons are not separate particles, but inter-penetrating waves in one ocean of forgiveness. When my tiny wave rises or falls, the ocean rises and falls in you. We contain one another.