"God leads every soul by a separate path." ~John of the Cross
I cannot possibly know what is most important: that which will
transform me. If I already know what it is I will never be free, because
I have packaged "liberation" as knowledge, in the tight wrapper of a
concept. This means that spiritual transformation can never become a
program, a technique, or a course that I take.
The moments that liberate me are wild portals of unknowing, when the blue sky of wonder outshines
any cloud it contains; vast emptiness shifts into the foreground;
techniques, traditions, concepts cultivated in the past, dissolve. Thus
the sage Ashtavakra taught the first and last spiritual practice :
"Layam vraja - dissolve now."
The best meditation evaporates into amazement. The best mantra melts
into silence. The best guru dances in mist at the edge of the meadow,
and disappears into your longing heart, where true path has no
beginning.*
No, I cannot possibly tell what is most important -
how a blue moth disguises herself in a petal of lupine, why cascade
lilies frolic in a rainy mountain meadow, what the hermit thrush means
to silence. I cannot know when the golden sun will burst my chest wide
open, turning the small dark chamber of self-doubt into a boundless
empyrean.
________
*Not a metaphor. I actually saw this
happen one Guru Purnima, my Guru dancing, disappearing and reappearing
in a meadow lit with fireflies as we chanted and drummed. In this
playful lila, he did something quite profound, though we didn't realize
it at the time: he was erasing the difference between bija and nirbija,
form and formlessness. It was the moment when my outer Guru gracefully
became Guru-tattva, the Guru within. This is a true Guru's only goal.
Took this photo on a hike during Guru Purnima, the full moon of the Guru.
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