Mystic devotion!

If I asked you what it was your heart truly desired, what would you say?

I beg you to ask, and keep asking until you know for sure what it is that the most integral and fundamental aspect of who you are is really craving.

As we understand ourselves more and more through observing our choices, our motivations, our hopes, dreams, and our fears, we can hopefully answer this question in this very lifetime in such a way that we die completely satisfied.

I asked myself this question...Again and again I asked. I asked sober. I asked in meditation. I asked while driving, while standing, while even dreaming. I asked high. I asked when I was low. I asked when I was hurt and confused.

I began to recognise that I had assumed I knew what 'I' was in the first place.  I realised later I really didn't have a clue. How could I ask what I wanted truly and deeply, If the very I asking the question was a mystery? So my question had to change, It had to grow. It had to become twofold. Who am I, and what do I want?

Meditating deeply, day after day, nothing came, no breakthrough, no insight, no meaning. 

Well then, there are other ways to ask questions. Ways to send yourself deep down into the abyss of your being, where all distinctions and concepts are dissolved, the ego slain, and the matrix dimmed. In order for me to know for sure I had to venture there.

Shamans for millennia have understood the power of combining intent, mantras, prayer, and various substances native to them which have the power to expand the mind, open the heart, and reveal layers of reality which lay kindly beyond everyday perception. In the culture of the Vedas, the shamans were called Brahmans, knowers of the supreme reality, the holders of truth, and the head of society. They carefully guarded the mysterious substance called 'Soma'. Prepared according to the vedic rituals and ancient herbal knowledge. They drank this substance and communed with the gods, asked their questions, and revealed their knowledge.

Later, this substance was hidden, and yogis learned to churn this from their own brains via mystical sound patters, mudras, and secret meditation practices... 

I on the other had learned of the efficacy of the simple, psilocybin rich mushroom, for the very same purpose. 

Some may shrink at the thought of psychedelic induced spiritual insight as being valid or somehow good. I don't know what to say other than, these plants saved my life in many ways, and I don't really care about opinions which don't effect me personally...I encourage people to live their lives according to guidance of their own internal guide, their conscience. I followed mine. I have no regrets.

Back to the story. I asked.

It was a journey beyond description, but I can relay the key insights and what took me there. Many journeys were failures, scary, painful, or simply fun and mundane. This one on the other hand was none of those things. It was as pure and clear as crystal. Profound and simple yet rewarding beyond compare. 

Previous journeys I attempted to force my way by trying to focus on some philosophical idea or notion based on all my years training in yoga, vaishnavism, and tantra. All of those things helped in their own way but trying to employ them deep in a shamanic journey usually proved very very challenging and even painful.

This time I prayed, I said simply "I will not force anything, I surrender to whatever you want to show me, you know who I am, you know what I truly want." I then heard a voice say simply "Look into space!" intuitively I looked at the black space before me, my eyes crossed heavily and the space opened up into a deeper space. They crossed again almost painfully so, and then... bam!. 

There it was, a truth so simple and clear flooding through me a million miles an hour yet motionless. The self, like space, supporting all. It was simply me... no more no less.

Me, beyond body and mind, beyond concept, beyond clinging, beyond substance. Empty, pure, perfectly clear. Eternal and timeless. The "I".

I laughed, I cried, I laughed some more. The experience overwhelmed me, humbled me, astounded me. I was in a complete state of awe! 

Experiences like this are both seen, felt, heard, tasted, and smelt all at the same time, they are beyond our capacity to express because they do not fit the usual constructs of everyday experience.

As I was being immersed in this level of reality, something else was becoming evidently clear...

There must be reason why I play this game of forgetting.

Since remembering feels this sublime, I must be concealing myself for a reason.

I must like it! 

It seemed as if this emptiness of my intrinsic being was fully in love with the duality of separation contained in the forgetting and play of life. As if the two of them were always together, always in union, always in play. 

What a beautiful contradiction, yet so effortlessly known to be true in that sweet moment of witnessing.

In that recognition of meaning, I felt a love for myself swell in me so deep, so profound, it caused waves of joy and pain beyond all comprehension, tears poured from my eyes ceaselessly. I laughed and cried at the same time completely overcome with this sense of love, mercy, and meaning.

I then experienced a third. The little me, the me that is neither total duality, nor total emptiness, the me that is so small, and so minute, it can properly see everything, as it doesn't get in the way! like the smallest divisible point in space, pure like the sky, yet single and fixed. The me that is simple, capable of forgetting and remembering, fixed in neither. Something in between.

I felt my memories returning, the Maya coming back, the ego, the usual mundane me, the story of Nilamani. 

Much time had elapsed, nearly 4 hours had passed in an eternity and a flash. 

I now felt a knowing, a knowing of me, I knew myself, I knew my need, my desire, my hope. 

I want to facilitate the union of those two forever. I want to be me, and witness them, serve them, and hold them to be my very life and soul, nay, my super souls. That is what the mystics describe as divine devotion. That is what is conveyed through all the stories, all the practices, all the mantras.

Many will not understand what I saw, what I felt, and even what I really mean.  Some will assume I was just under the influence of delusion, a beautiful delusion, but a delusion all the same.

I would have probably said the same thing ten years ago, the younger me, so stuck in the institutional systems of religion and orthodoxy, had no clue experiences like that were even possible. This experience does not belong to me nor to anyone. It was merely a snapshot or clue  hinting at the answer to my question. Who am I, and what do I want? It satisfied me. That is all the proof I need.

Words fail miserably to describe this experience, and so I caution everyone to understand, when higher states of consciousness are put into words, the words cannot capture the experience at all, they can only hint. At best. 

Thanks for reading my bullshit!

Sincerely!

#Jainitai