Ok breath I can do this, it’s been a long time coming, many nights tossing and turning afraid to speak this story. I want to believe it is only a story and that by writing it I can be free from the way it has kept me from this moment. I want to pray that this is so and yet it is because of this very story that I am no longer able to really pray. So may the story itself be my prayer of release. Just as the river behind my house right now is going through changes that seem drastic, horrific and hard to imagine that anything good will come from all those trucks trampling on her, may I too except the change I must go through. Rivers have always been changing creatures. And because this Santa Fe River has been neglected, denied, moved in on, now she must except help so that she may survive. And so may I too accept help and open to the love that is around me so that I may live. Breath….
How do I enter the river after being at the ocean?
I’m going to start with the rocks.
Is it even really a river? It’s dry right now. And it stinks in some places like someone’s septic tank is overflowing, and there are mounds of garbage everywhere.
How did I ever see beauty here?
It keeps coming back to the rocks, they’re the soft dust covered stones of this mostly dry riverbed that meanders behind the house I live in now. Moved here from the hilltops that look down over Santa Fe where my ex and I had created a home. It had been a refuge to hide away from the chaos of the hoards of people on the world tours with our guru the hugging saint, Amma; a place to recover and hide out from others being able to see our pain and hear our arguing, a cloister away from potential worldly risks, such as my own forgotten dreams of being a dancer, artist, lover…
I want to lie in the sand now, feel my back rest in the curved riverbed wall, but I’m distracted by the thought of some biting desert insect so I don’t follow my impulse to rest in her. I walk home anxiously. I then cry, wondering if I’ll ever feel the soul of the Santa Fe River again?
That riverbed that runs behind my new home, she took me into her and gave me inspiration last summer as I left my old home in the mountains.
My ex left to live in India and five years later I was finally strong enough to leave that home on the hills we had created together. I wanted to be in town amongst the people - not separate.
Separate – the way I felt on the tours with Amma. The spiritual ego of the group that developed from being close to our guru was one of us verses them, “those worldly people who aren’t enlightened with the love of Amma.” I once got in an argument with Amma about this, I told her, “I’m feeling called to leave touring with you. I want to work for the peace movement.” This was in 2002, the war on Iraq was declared. “Even the idea of enlightenment has no more meaning for me Amma. I’m only feeling more separate from humanity, I don’t understand how standing behind a table selling incense is helpful in any way?”
I still don’t know what a “true” guru is, I just know it wasn’t true for me anymore to be with a guru. For about eight years already, my partner and I had been doing all of Amma’s tours through India, Europe, America, Australia, home for a month or two to recover and then back on tour again. A bit like a life of a rock and roller but with out sex and the only drug was the spiritual high that came through self sacrifice; for the most part we had no control over what we ate where we slept or if we slept at all.
I’ve heard that a sign of a false guru is one that brags about them selves. The whole time Amma was responding to me I was a bit in shock because there she was raving about All of Her accomplishments in her rapid fire malayalam language. Never sure what Amma’s true words are since it was always translated by a swami, but she said something like, “Don’t you know how radical it is what I’m doing as an Indian woman hugging all these people and running all of these programs in India! Haven’t you heard about the way Amma is giving girls sewing machines and also teaching them how to sew, and Amma even has female punjari’s!” She was going through and listing all her projects on her fingers. Amma smiled as she spoke but her eyes flashed anger. I had seen her angry before but I had never been the cause of it. All she was saying was true how could I argue with her, Amma was accomplishing radical things, but not with my own heart and life. I wasn’t able to have that thought back then. It was unimaginable for me to think my own heart and desires were a worthy cause compared to the great accomplishments of this amazing woman. Amma went on to explain that it takes so much money to run these programs and of course me standing there selling the incense was helpful, and then she softened and looked at me with those enchanting eyes and said, “darling daughter, Amma needs her children in the bookstore, you are helping, Amma knows how hard you’re working.” And once again all my worries and desires melted away into her soft belly, to be forgotten for another three years.
It was this river that rescued me and surcharged me with her energy force.
Now I have recently come home from dancing on a California beach with other willing bodies. I missed the fall equinox; I didn’t get to go through that transition with my New Mexico earth here. So now I feel separate from her, fall feelings; the vibrant moistness of my heart has turned dry and brittle and could easily fall to the ground and be forgotten. I am afraid of this feeling of forgetting myself because it is only recently that I arouse from the tomb of my own dead life. I don’t understand coming home to this after feeling so alive and connected to ocean through my dance with Her. I remember telling ocean, sunset, rock, wind, sand, “you are here” as I touched my heart and belly tears trickling down my cheeks, “you come with me, I’m not separate from you.” And I thought it would be so.
…Everything I have written above…(some part of me is frightened to say this)… I could replace the words…
river for partner, ocean for guru/god
I remember how painful it was when it was time to separate from Amma after being with her for months at a time. The large crowd that is always around her disappeared and one moment became timeless as I kneeled before Amma sitting in her chair with legs tucked under herself and her white sari. Touching gently Amma’s heart and my own at the same time, crying and with a demanding tone to my voice I would say, “you come home with me here!” And I thought it would be so.
How do I enter intimate love after being with Universal love?
How do I love my partner after knowing divine love with my guru?
How do I come home to this body after knowing home in Spirit?
And again I ask,
How do I enter this dry river after being at the ocean?
I want to know!
I have failed at this before, these transitions…
I remember coming home after months of being absorbed in Amma’s Shakti Love Vibration, a vibration that could take away all fears or concerns for my body so that swimming in Indian feces filled lakes with her became a joy. A love that filled me with endless energy so that I could work all night for Amma then climb on a bus, travel for twelve hours and then work again all night. In all my life I had never experienced this kind of motivation.
I need to know the source of my own internal motivation?
My partner and I, we didn’t know how to do it, how to come home to our “house holder” existence. I would go numb and feel agitated by her humanness and mine, and all I could do was watch tv. Believing I was separated from the one I thought was the Source of my existence, and instead of looking in my own self for Her that is me, I let myself wither.
This went on for over ten years.
It’s because of this past failure that I feel so stubborn now about knowing the ocean in the river, knowing beauty where it’s hard to find, knowing god in my self and in all those that I see, and yet not able to use that word god anymore, it feels spoiled and misunderstood. But I can understand knowing Ocean in river or River in body.
I feel stubborn about yelling at angels I know longer trust, “let me land, release your claws from my shoulders, I know longer want to be carried. Release me here on this earth, let me love as humans love and in that, and in that I become divine. I am not looking for angel’s wings, I am looking for my feet, and my feet dancing with other feet.”
This is my practice, and right now the only way I know how to practice this is through some creative expression, my art keeps me connected to my heart, my heart is my ocean of love.
I have experienced beauty & love in this river before; that’s the truth I need to hold on to that.
- Now, river means my own self -
There is a saying that being in the guru’s presence and with all the disciples is like being in a rock tumbler, the guru uses the personalities and egos of her disciples to polish us till we shine.
You can imagine how this allows for a lot of bad behavior of disciples to be diluted with the happy thought of, “oh good Amma is polishing my rough stone.” And that is how I felt for a long time thriving in martyrdom or the other extreme of righteousness. One of the turning points for me was a last night on a tour in the wee hours frantically preparing flower bouquets, garlands and fruit bowls for the dozen weddings Amma was about to perform and it all had to be done just right and perfectly beautiful for Devi when I saw a little girl making a bouquet the wrong way! I violently pulled the bouquet out of her hands to rescue it and yelled to her frozen self “That’s wrong! Don’t do it like that! Just go away!” I was mortified; in all my life I had never been such a cold bitch! I’m not a bitch! At least not a bitch like that. That poor girl will probably fear her own creative impulses for a long time. That seems like the worse kind of harm one can cause another human, oh but it was for the sake of Our Guru, so alls fine. What!
Slowly I started to peak out from the zombie out of bodied sleep and protein deprived bliss trance I was in long enough to see, that actually almost anyone who spent a great deal of time with Amma is stone dry inside, or ground to dust. There’s nothing left to shine or luster, no life vitality. Some would be happy for this, to be the dust at the gurus feet is one of the greatest accomplishment. I remember crying with longing for this myself as Amma sat in her royal chair dressed in the finest sari with gold chains and blackest black hair. She was Devi the great goddess, of course being dust at her feet should have been enough.
“Something’s not right” started to gnaw at me. I new I didn’t want to become what I was seeing in the others and was already happening to me; unable to smile at another, afraid that my focus on the goal will be distracted by another’s eyes, taught to deny and mistrust my own intuitions and longings and afraid to feel human feelings, feelings that actually are the lubrication for my soul.
It’s been almost a month since I was at the ocean dancing, and for some reason it’s a ripe time for me to find my way back to feeling that connection again to source.
Last night was very red feelings on a club dance floor with a beautiful woman. And earlier today I went to dance class where I was able to connect to breath again like I had at the ocean with the waves. It has also been a very emotional day, meaning lots of crying and confessions and feeling exposed. By the afternoon the words echoed in me, “I NEED TO CONNECT TO BLUE.” Standing in front of the bathroom mirror painting my body, my mind and emotions start to cool and relax as if blue was penetrating through my skin to lubricate dry places. And outside clouds magically gather, as if nature herself is egging me on to come play; it was a perfectly sunny day before that.
My red friend asked me later, “what is blue to you?”
“Blue for me is the ocean and waters of the earth and sky. I know oneness in blue, some would call that god.” I have been longing to connect to that again and today was the day.
I drove to a more secluded place in the Santa Fe River bed and it started to drizzle as I have only ever experienced in Santa Fe; the kind of rain that brings out rainbows, as if angels are crying soft tears to heal our open wounds. If you blink you might miss it or think it was your own tear. Sky of extreme colors; dark Shiva blue clouds next to the whitest white that one only encounters with god and then Virgin Mary blue sky filling it all in. Nature was responding to my longing or was I responding to her movements?
Without a lover’s body or stones weighing me down, I’m likely to float away, and maybe that’s why I am here now under these rocks searching for that sensation of connection to someone/thing/other than myself.
No that’s not true and some how true, I am here to indulge in the memory of all that has weighed me down, I want to remember how uncomfortable and trapped, how limited my movements and expressions became during those years of caring other peoples rocks, my lovers wounds, my guru’s spiritual ideals, my mother’s unhappiness and my father’s guilt. I want to remember so I wont forget this is not what I want; their rocks are not my rocks. I will not know connection by carrying other people’s rocks. I will know connection through lying here now and breathing with these very real rocks. Feeling the oblong shape of its heaviness sink perfectly deep into my belly, the force necessary to inhale it up again, not only expands my belly but requires the full effort of my rib cage as well. Requires all of me. I like that, when nature requires all of me. I like how I can show up completely for her. Not all the time, but often. And if I forget to show up she can so easily remind me by enveloping me in a phenomenal black silence on new moon nights, or my dog barking at a hawk sitting still in a tree.
I’m standing next to the wall of this dry river bed now watching sand. One pebble touched by wind, it shifts, and then another, and then a whole group tumbling after it, as if they did not want to be separated and yet not clinging. As I watch this movement of nature my body can’t help but to also move. Sand tumbling inside my body, small twitching jerks, and with each exhale I can then hear the ocean waves crashing again.
All of a sudden I am Her, Ocean, Sky, Sand in this body Self.
To feel this River, I must enter her with my whole self, even when she is dry.
My mouth found a stone protruding from the side of the river wall I’m leaning on, and I can’t help but to suck on it as if it is my lovers nipple. Today I sucked on rock till I found water in that river.
That river is me.
These rocks, these rocks are special to me, even in this mostly dusty river bed, because they’ve tumbled and become soft on their journey from the mountains to the city. Here they’ll lie still now inconspicuous next to a plastic bottle or pieces of broken diner coffee cups. And yet in the spring rains I know another side of these stones will be exposed, their unique colors revealed with each drop. And then with the rush of the floods even the heavy ones will be moved and lay still this time in a pile of craggily pinion roots with orange twine, barbed wire, and pine needles, as if this particular collection of misfits planed this encounter, and there they will remain until the next heavy rain and on to a new gathering of souls. The rush of water moves these rocks. They know movement and long periods of stillness. These stones have traveled great distances and met strange others. They are heading somewhere and yet seem to be still as they meander on their way.
I love these rocks and this winding riverbed as I’m learning to love my self and the journey I have traveled.
