Jai Ma Sri Ma Jai Jai Ma!
(Source: maieli)
“Everything is infinite; infinity and finiteness are indeed the same. In a garland the thread is one, but there are gaps between the flowers. It is the gaps that cause want and sorrow. To fill them is to be free from want.”
Sri Ananda Mayi Ma - Painting by Samuel Edelstein
I have had many mystical experiences with Sri Anandamayi Ma who lived from 1896 to 1985. I never knew her physical presence, yet it has been made clear to me that she is one of my guiding lights. This morning I opened my facebook page and found this beautiful painting of her by Samuel Edelstein, who has given me permission to share it with you. The subject of how a seed contains the past, present and future has been one of my meditations for some time. It seems to be both a reality and a metaphor, yet one that we do not acknowledge in everyday life. The following passage offers Ma’s perspective.
Ananda Mayi Ma was asked: “I have heard you say that one individual may have many bodies. If this be so, a man may simultaneously practise yoga with one body and experience the pleasures and pains of life with another. For a yogi this may be practicable; but how can this happen in the case of an ordinary person, who is still in ignorance?”
Mataji: Yes, quite so. This can be done for means of yogic power; for the ordinary person it seems impossible.
Look! When you see the bud of a flower, you perceive the bud only; whereas actually the full blown flower, the fruit, the seed, and the whole plant, are contained in that little bud. Manifestation is universal and unlimited, but your vision of it is partial, from one angle, dependent upon what, at a certain time, appears before your eyes. Look with an allround, comprehensive vision and try to find out who a particular yogi, a particular individual, in reality is!
Your body was first a child’s body, then became a young man’s, and later will grow aged. Childhood, youth, and old age are contained within you. If it were otherwise, from where could they arise? You hear people say that as a child your face was such and such. This proves that your face as a child is present at this moment as well; otherwise, how could it be described? In a similar manner, our body in every one of its phases is always present: as it was in the past, is now, and will be in the future. This is so where past, present and future are experienced as being ever-present.
Time devours ceaselessly. No sooner is childhood over than youth takes it place. No sooner is childhood over than youth takes its place; the one swallows up the other. This cannot be grasped by ordinary perception. Change is observed only to a very slight degree. Actually, appearance, continuance, and disappearance occur simultaneously in one place. Everything is infinite; infinity and finiteness are indeed the same. In a garland the thread is one, but there are gaps between the flowers. It is the gaps that cause want and sorrow. To fill them is to be free from want.”
from Words of Sri Anandamayi Ma, Translated and Compiled by Atmananda, Shree Shree Anandamayee Sangha, Varnasi, 1971
Jai Ma!
"God is without form, without quality as well as with form and quality. Watch and see with what endless variety of beautiful forms He plays the play of his maya with Himself alone. The lila of the all pervading One goes on and on in this way in infinite diversity. He is without beginning and without end. He is the whole and also the part. The whole and part together make up real Perfection."
—
Anandamayi Ma (via daytripped)
Jai Ma!
“Can I ever abandon that one who desperately calls ‘Mother where are you, where are you?’ The one who remembers (Me) in his heart and fills his life with the Name sees nothing in the universe excepting the form of My Image.
One who does not speak of any other and is pained to see the sorrows of others,
One who remains tranquil in his own sorrow and joy and does not hearken to calumny of others,
When a child cries for his Mother and his tears flow, can I then stay away?
—- Immediately I give him the shelter of My arms.”
- One of the songs sung very often by Sri Ma’s father Bipan Bihari, which Sri Ma used to sing with him (via Chapter 16 of Life and Teachings of Sri Ma Anandamayi)
I seriously cannot believe the outpouring of Love and support I have received since announcing my new theworldpulse.com website! THANK YOU EVERYONE. Having just moved across the country in May and then losing my job up here on the mountain two months later, your support truly means so much to me. I want more than I’ve ever wanted anything to go on this pilgrimage to India with my guru and be transformed as we walk “In the Footsteps of Ma”. I honestly cannot do this without your help. Please visit the world pulse to learn more or to make a donation; even a simple reblog helps so much. Thank you again for all of your Love and generosity! I can’t wait to bring all of you along with me to the India of Anandamayi Ma!
Love,
Nandi
“Do not be cowed down. You are real, pure, enlightened, free, eternal. In order to advance in that direction, it is your duty to gather your own strength and proceed with the momentum gained by a new attitude towards life. Truly, God dwells within you also as knowledge and discrimination. Therefore, you must use this expedient on your pilgrimage toward the revelation of Reality. Time glides away. The Supreme Father, Mother, Friend, Beloved, Lord – all are He in one person. His lotus feet alone are worthy of contemplation.”
-Sri Anandamayi Ma
Here’s to taking responsibility for your own life. Jai Ma!
“Look, in order to pluck a rose one has to put one’s hand into the midst of thorns. But if the rose is a person’s aim and he has a keen desire to pluck it, he will not refrain from doing so for fear of being pricked. Moreover, the Great Mother arranges whatever is necessary for each one. She certainly knows the real need of every individual. If one has at least this much faith, there is no reason at all to feel distressed.”
-Sri Anandamayi Ma
God is without form, without quality as well as with form and quality. Watch and see with what an endless variety of beautiful forms He plays the play of His maya with Himself alone. The lila of the all-pervading One goes on in this way in infinite diversity. He is without beginning and without end. He is the whole and also the part. The whole and the part together make up real Perfection. Try to remember the aforesaid at all times. If you like you may read it over once every day. Just as a child has to exert himself in the beginning to learn the alphabets so, if you labour hard for it, you will come to understand the meaning of all this. Questions do arise and their solution will also come.
-Sri Anandamayi Ma
"You are an explorer, and you represent our species, and the greatest good you can do is to bring a new idea, because our world is endangered by the absence of good ideas. Our world is in crisis because of the absence of consciousness. "
—
Terence McKenna (via fiendingforeverything)
It’s interesting to notice my response to this McKenna quote I once felt great resonance with now feels quite different when I try to really take it in. What do you mean by absence, Terence? And what do you mean by consciousness? Speak to me from within your volcano.
The idea that there is a nameable cause for the undeniable crisis I perceive in the world (both out there and in here) is appealing, as is the further idea that this cause is an absence of consciousness. My fractured mind is immersed in this seemingly ceaseless experience of wave after wave of dualistic thoughts forever foaming up at the shore. If I identify the problem as an absence of consciousness I can identify myself as some great shining lighthouse beacon of consciousness penetrating the dark dark night, right? So then I am to be a bringer of light unto darkness, a match to set the world afire, as a memory of something real once put it. Puts it still. And what is it that is to fuel this torch-that-is-me? Lightning licked ideas, flashing, gone? The next thundering crisis looms close, booms loud, shakes the walls (crumble down). Lightning bloom of the next idea consumes, spider-legged, yet nowhere goes.
Caught in my own web, how do I bring these fleeting flashes to the pain-soaked lashes of the suffering masses? How do I bring real light unto the darkness of my Self? Smoke a bowl and I might know. Smoke a bowl and I might know. Smoke a bowl and I might know. But it’s been ten months just breathing in this air, this air that reaches every single one of us every moment, this air whose very nature is connectivity, selflessly giving of itself, as I take my Teacher’s word as gold that I may learn, s l o w l y, to be really, truly receptive to the continuity that is our real condition here. I think I am beginning to see… says the parrot on the parrot’s shoulder. I can’t see, so I see that I am in darkness. In the midnight of my confusion I reach for Your feet, for You are guru, dispeller of darkness, and You are THERE. HERE. Om Matri Gurave Namaha!
Eyes open, I am looking and trying to find some object, some circumstance, some action, anything that is devoid of consciousness. I am trying to discover that absence. Where is it? Where am I to find it when even the most trembling naked void is completely filled with Shiva? Shiva, infinite, all-auspicious consciousness, You are the light that, encompassing and penetrating everything, reveals everything to be as it is. There is nowhere, nowhen, nowhat, nowhy, nohow that is not You, the unfathomably perfect play of consciousness and energy. OM NAMAH SHIVAYA!
The light, the darkness, the boundless joy and love, the tremendous suffering I really don’t want to see or feel, the causes, crises and solutions - Honestly, I can’t comprehend even a speck of a speck of a speck of it. I have no real spiritual knowledge. There is no quick fix. Every day I struggle. Every day I do my sadhana. My ideas aren’t fearless, my ideas aren’t compassionate, they appear, they are here, they are gone. They are only smoke. Rising with the breath, they disappear, molecules merging into this One air we’re all desparately sucking at the breast of. Ma, Ma, Ma make me fearless in the face of the unyielding crises of today. Fill me with compassion and grant me the presence to clearly see each crisis as the play of That One All-Permeating Consciousness. Grant me the courage to act with clarity and honesty and experience, together with all beings, the full spectrum of this blessed continuity of life. May heartfelt devotion be the fuel. Every breath may I remember You who are my very Self. Show me the way to be of loving service in this world. Jai Ma, Jai Ma, Sri Sri Anandamayi Ma!
(Source: slychedelic, via fiendingforeverything-deactivat)
So I love what is “real”. How awkwardly we name it:
the “actual”, the “real”, the “authentic” —What Is.
I have come to it as if I could have been “away”,
flooded thru by the sorrow of the unlived, the unanswerd,
tho I knew not and had not the courage of asking
the question that calld for it,
the real I did see. The real so toucht me
I could not speak before it.
-the last section of ”In The South” from Ground Work II: In The Dark by Robert Duncan
today when i woke i
couldn’t recall the words you spoke
from the bed, wrapped in Light in the dark of my mother’s room
but on my knees, my body bowed forward
the longest hairs on my head could just begin to touch
the soles of Your Lotus Feet
there, palms as prayers pressed together, i cried without tears
as Your song spilled through dream into the wake of earliest morning:
Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Maaa, Jai Jai Ma
Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Maaa, Jai Jai Ma
Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Ma, Jai Jai Maaa, Jai Jai Ma
You are my Mother, You are my Guru, You are my All
Bestower of Bliss, live forever enthroned in the lotus of my heart
every moment may I remember You, that i may remember my very Self
Jai Ma, Jai Ma, Om Matri Gurave Namaha!
in Your Love,
Nandikesha
