I woke up in my hotel room one
morning, and tried to find me. For real. For the
first time. There was nothing there. Where there
should be an I, an entity, there was only open
space, absolutely at peace, always and eternally
free. I burst out laughing there in the hotel
room, and did not stop for twenty minutes.
That was the end of seeking. It has never come
back.
I stayed with Poonjaji for about a year, and then
he sent me back to the West, to “share the
secret with my friends.” One thing grew into
another, and here I was, sitting on a throne,
with a whole bunch of new friends.
“Arjuna, please teach us how we may trust.”
She was in her mid sixties, with short grey hair,
and eyes like a small bird. I looked into those
eyes, and felt the purity and commitment of her
heart, that would settle for nothing less than
the real deal. I looked around at the others
there. Some children were sitting at the front,
some elderly people in chairs at the back.
Between them were baby-boom hippies, smartly
dressed executives, artists, healers, computer
wizzes, all gathered here for the same reason,
out of their love of something mysterious, which
the mind could not name, but which the heart
would not give up on. The enormity of innocence,
of sincerity, of longing filled the room like a
heavy sweet perfume. Every pair of eyes was
turned to me, they were all waiting for a wise
response. I checked back, to find one. Suddenly I
knew that something was not right about the
theatre of the place. I knew beyond doubt that
the old lady knew just as much about trust as I
did. Wisdom was swirling everywhere in the room
like smoke, only the gestalt of the room
suggested a hierarchy of knowing, provoked people
to ask for answers from outside.
That moment marked the beginning of the end of my
life as a guru.
Most of the people who attended satsang had an
awakening in the first meeting or two, no
different than I had in Lucknow. They came back
again and again because it was not sustained in
their day-to-day life, and they assumed I could
help. Work, family, busy schedule, relationship,
all of it seemed to sabotage the awakening. They
longed to embody their realization more deeply.
But if I was really honest, the longing for more
tangible embodiment was just as strong in me as
in them. I had the chair out of an accident, a
divine joke, a randomly bestowed gift of
eloquence. Both the realization and the longing
to live it, for real, were everywhere in the
room.
This moment initiated a process, sometimes
painful and sometimes illuminating, that went on
for many years. I kept teaching, and I could not
avoid also looking at my life: my relationship
with my children, with my wife at that time, with
my friends and with the earth. Just like those
who turned to me as a teacher, I also felt a
schism between the depth of realization, and the
quality of my life. The realization was of
oneness, but habits were still loyal to
separation. The realization was of limitlessness,
but mental habits were still loyal to fear and
not enough. Divorce from my sonsī mother only
quickened the process.
I was fortunate to have many deep friendships
with other teachers, and we were able to
investigate our condition in dialog. Isaac
Shapiro, for example, is clearly a very deep and
awakened man. Thousands of people look to him as
a teacher. He too has gone through not one
divorce during his teaching career, but two, and
was also looking with breathtaking honestly at
the old habits that create separation. I found
many others who were clearly awake and also
willing to get down from the pedestal of guru
long enough and to be honest about their
humanness in this way: Catherine Ingram, Satyam
Nadeen, Sandford Perrett, to name just a few. In
each of us we were faced with the ideas about
enlightenment we had inherited from the orient,
and the actuality of this life as it is.
Over the years, enlightenment has become
irrelevant to me. Some goal of absolute freedom
from the mortal realm seems now to be a fetishism
of escape, usually the preoccupation of men who
desperately need good sex. It has become much
more important how much this life, today and now,
is reflecting the realization that is already
here. Is the love that is already awake in the
heart being lived and expressed in a way that
really makes a difference to other people, to
those I am close to? The embodiment of
realization has become a thousand times more
important than the degree of realization itself.
My intimate relationships have always been the
pivotal barometer of this embodiment. In loving,
being loved, making love, we all taste the most
vivid ways that this personal life can be a dance
of divinity, or the most painful and opaque
distraction from it. In our openness to intimacy
we find out just how real our spirituality has
become.
I entered a transformed relationship to
relationship itself, a phase of being very much
alone. Besides the essential duties of
fatherhood, I stayed with myself. I did many
hours a day of silent sitting, and physical
practices. I was willing to stay alone and
celibate for the rest of my life, but if I were
to enter intimate relationship again, it would
only be as an expression and embodiment of the
love I found in my innermost core. I knew that
there was a mountain of habits that needed to be
faced with honesty for love to be real and clean.
I did not know what that would look like. I did
not know if I would be able to find someone
interested to meet in that way, but I knew I
would stay alone until I could trust myself to
love with all of me.
SHE:
The morning was crisp, a warm wind was
coming up the valley. The river of Ganga was
overflowing with aquamarine colored water. The
contour of the mountains was crystal clear after
the night rain had cleansed the air.
I was sitting with my teacher Shantimayi and
about twenty others in a small temple, big
windows to the vista of big nature. The air was
filled with the smell of incense and with the
sound of the Gayatri mantra, a prayer for
everybody to wake up to their nature beyond the
personal self.
Dissolving completely into this song, this
chanting, this prayer for all of us, for the
first time I truly had no sense of a separate me.
It was absolutely completely gone; I became the
prayer, a total prayer for everybody. There was
nothing missing.
I had been traveling to India and to other places
around the world for many years, following
different teachers and schools and techniques.
All of them had been created by men. I was
seeking for enlightenment. I had numerous
spiritual experiences, openings, but since I
strongly believed in concepts of what
enlightenment should look like, I would every
time throw myself back onto the “path.”
I had been fully occupied with seeking the
ultimate void, a place where all human expression
should stop. This search had led me to be very
fulltime occupied with my own process with my own
development, with my own enlightenment.
Simply sitting here, singing for the awakening of
all, at the foothills of the Himalayas, this cool
winter morning, was freedom. There was no more
concern to get rid of anything or to reach some
kind of end.
It was a pure expression of love, which made me
disappear completely.
From then on it was clear as the morning air,
that this love was and is who I am at all times,
and that there was nothing more important to me
in the whole of existence than to make my life an
expression of this love.
When I returned to Europe, I saw this would mean
that a lot needed to change in my life in order
for the outer expression to be in alignment with
the deep love inside.
Life itself pushed or supported these changes to
happen, very fluidly, falling off like dead
leaves in autumn. Some changes were more painful
and frightening. But the more my life became an
expression of the realization, I felt a
profoundly deep satisfaction, different than the
fleeting feelings when I get what I want. It was
the deeper satisfaction of actually living
aligned with my true heart. Even though this is
an ongoing process where I often stumble and fall
I have since than had a strong sense of purpose
and co-creation with the whole of the existence.
One of the areas where I saw most incoherence
with the realization of being love was ironically
in my intimate relationship at the time, and very
soon it came to an end. That arena we assume to
be the naturally ground for love, was the area I
found myself most often caught in power
struggles, preoccupied with my own personal
agenda, in conflicts, and getting distracted from
what was truly important.
The whole world situation brought forth urgency
in me, a responsibility to not let another minute
go by without being a vehicle for this great
love. It was clear that my commitment was to love
itself, a love so much bigger than our small
personal dramas, so if I should enter a
relationship again it had to be supporting this
commitment, not distracting me from it. And if I
should not meet somebody with the same commitment
I was willing to live alone, but no more
compromise.
Very shortly after this I met Arjuna, who was to
become my husband. He happened to be in a similar
state of decision and commitment as myself and we
started a thorough investigation of how to create
an union, a relationship that would support this
gifting of love to emanate through each of us and
out to the rest of the world.
We experimented intensely to find out in a
practical way what it takes for the undercurrent
of love in this moment to have space to breath
and become stronger than the habits that we have
inherited from ancestors and family and our past
experiences.
There is a strong vision in my heart of fully
embodying this love, of being a true gift to the
planet in a down to earth tangible way. Not as a
concept but as a love people can feel for real.
Not to escape life but to enter life fully,
allowing love to be expressed through this body
and through these feelings in all the mundane day
to day activities.
And here I truly see the need for practice. To
practice in a way that makes me recognize the
habits that sabotages love and that allows the
body to reflect and radiate more and more of this
presence, of this divine love.
The practice needed is different than all my
eastern male teachers had taught me. Although I
still sit silently and watch the breath for a
period each day, the main focus of my practice I
do now is on expression, in prayer, and in
interaction with my husband. I don’t
practice for any future reward; I practice to
open up into more and more and more love, right
here, right now.
The feminine quality in all of us is fully in the
moment, relishing the full spectre of life with
all its colors and all its smells and feelings,
and birthing and dying. The feminine laughs at a
future state of enlightenment and sees it as
nothing but a concept of the mind, and she asks;
do we really have the time to postpone living the
love in our hearts?
WE:
We began an inquiry into what would allow us to
live as awakened love instead of the habits. It
began as a purely personal investigation; we
explored many exceptional teachers and developed
many tools ourselves. After some time we
discovered that the way we were practicing was
working. Habitual tendencies would arise, but
most of the time we could find ways to play with
them creatively, humorously so they became fuel
to the fire of love instead of a wet blanket to
extinguish it.
As we began to marvel at what was happening for
us, our friends also joined in. A dinner here, a
walk there, people began to ask us; “what is
it you are doing?” We found we could share
many of our discoveries with others, that they
could use the same tools with the same effect.
After a time we began to give talks in public and
to offer weekends for people whether they are
single or in a couple.
We support single people by helping them to feel
deeper than loneliness into their true heart, and
to feel into the true longing, to not compromise,
to stay true to that vision rather than settle
for just anything, to avoid loneliness.
We support couples to allow the depth of their
spiritual realization and their intimate
relationship to become the same. Instead of
meditating or going to retreat or satsang, and
then bring the fruits of that to relationship, to
allow relationship itself to become a form of
spiritual practice. Our relationship is without
doubt the arena where our greatest deepening
happens. It is our meeting that now is the guru,
is the force that dispels darkness, that pushes
us to expand into awakened love.
The gift that we offer people is more of an art
form than a science. Its not a step by step,
one-two-three do this technique and live happy
ever after. It’s much more of a soft
responding to situations as they arise and
transforming them through awareness, compassion
and humor. Some artists go to the recycling yard,
they find broken machines, and they take the
parts and make them into art. We take the broken
old habits of personality, and reuse them as
sacred art.
There are some very general principles to this
art form, which guide our work with people in
sessions and weekend gatherings:
1- Vision
In every arena of life it’s easy to forget
why we came, to forget original intention and
vision. In a business, for example, it is easy to
forget the noble vision you started with, how to
make a contribution, how to stay in integrity,
and to just get lost in profit. We also forget
why we entered relationship, the deeper
commitment already in the heart to love, to be
honest, to be open, to give. We support people to
find ways to rediscover natural vision, why you
are alive.
This is a very private personal and solitary
process, something better done alone than
together with your partner.
2- Commitment
Out of this general sense of vision we connect
with the place in us where we can take a stand.
Where we can step up and say; okay I am committed
to bring forth these qualities in my life. You
can only take a stand once you have a feeling of
core vision. Then it is possible to say; I am
committed to staying open no matter what; I am
committed to deepening in meditation; I am
committed to generosity of spirit. As we discover
our commitment, so we can also be honest about
the obstacles, our old habits. So we can say;
“I am committed to honesty, but I have a
habit of withdraw and hiding; I am committed to
living with humor but I have a habit to take my
self seriously and become self-righteous.”
3-Agreements
Now we can begin to make real and reliable
agreements with our partner. We make agreements
in order to support our deeper commitment and
practice our way through the habitual obstacles.
If you are in a couple, you can make agreements
with your partner. If you are single, you can
make agreements with your friends, or even with
yourself.
Within the crucible of our marriage, we have
agreements about honesty, about physical and
meditation practice, about how we give and
receive feedback. We have agreements about
specific ways to practice our way through the old
habits of separation, and to return to the Big
Love. And we regularly review these habits to see
if they are doing their job as we intended.
Committed intimate relationship will bring to the
surface all your hidden wounds. It is a universal
treatment for the psyche: every tiny contraction
that you hold about reality, will reliably come
to the surface in the ocean of intimacy. So
before the heat is on, you need very clearly
defined agreements of how you are going to work
through things as they arise. How you are going
to transform old habits into the current of love.
4-Honesty
We view honesty not so much as a moral virtue,
but as a powerful transformational tool to let go
of separation and melt into something bigger than
the personal. Dishonesty, whether it’s lying
or distorting or simply just withholding, keeps
the personal identity and agenda intact. It keeps
“my truth” distinct from “the
truth”.
By disclosing everything to our partner, even if
it is humiliating or embarrassing, even if we are
afraid of hurting the other, we die to the old,
and stay in the Now. This doesn’t
necessarily make relationship more comfortable or
harmonious, but the personality becomes more
transparent and fluid.
We do not mean that we constantly are going to
blurt out anything that is on our mind at all
times. This would create chaos. We practice
honesty in structured way. In our workshops and
individual consultation we teach short structures
that helps people to communicate in a clean and
disentangled way. It takes less than five
minutes.
5- Humor and Art
We have both spend many years involved in deep
psychotherapeutic possessing. We have tried most
of what’s on offer in the advertisements in
Connection magazine.
The practice of real love is not therapy in its
conventional sense. Our practice is not to
improve or mend or heal the personality, but to
make it loose and transparent. The pivotal
difference between relationship as a therapeutic
process and a relationship as a spiritual
practice is humor. So if Chameli notices that
Arjuna is contracted in control she is not going
to try to change it, or to analyze if it has to
do with his mother. She will just playfully ask
him to march around the room imitating a British
sergeant Major in the army. We transform old
habits into a humorous flowing art form.
6- Gifting
We live together in a contract of deepening.
Something like practicing martial art or any
other discipline, our practice is to continuously
open into and become a stream of generosity of
spirit, through which love can flow to everything
in the universe. We use intimate relationship as
the most effective immediate available tool for
this.
For us, that starts with noticing the difference
between being in a relationship to get something,
whether its security, comfort, sex, or
alleviation of loneliness, or whether we are in a
relationship to gift our partner way beyond their
habitual limits.
When you drive your partner to an ecstasy beyond
where they can go on their own, you are
practicing the Big Love, you are practicing a new
relationship with all of life.
We all of us get caught trying to get something
from the outside. We think we long to get love,
to get security, to get respect. In our work with
people we have discovered again and again that
deeper down, everyone is longing to give, to be a
true gift to the world in a unique way. It would
be a tragedy to die without that gift being given
totally.
7- Presence
One important exercise we teach people is how to
open the current of love through the body in such
a way that other people can feel it.
In all our relating, what we say and do is much
less important than where we say and do from.
When you show up completely present in the body,
so your whole body is open, vibrating with
conscious presence, more or less anything you say
or do will become a channel for that presence to
be received and will be experienced as love.
8- Appreciations
Probably the most overlooked and underused muscle
in our personal relationships is the art and
practice of appreciation. If we could give people
one thing to do each day, that would make the
most difference, it would be to express five
appreciations with your partner, or with your
friends and family, every day.
We teach couples a practice we call Couples
–Puja. Before you start the day, bow to your
partner, and shower them with thanks and
appreciation. Start the relationship fresh each
day and recommit yourself to go as deep as you
can together in honesty and love.
From the reports we get from the couples who do
this practice, and our own experience, we would
say that this practice is one of the most
transformative gifts to an intimate relationship.
9-Relationship as Guru
The word “guru” comes from the Sanskrit
roots; Gu and Ru, witch literally means “that
which dispellers ignorance and darkness.” It
has come to mean a person (most often oriental
and male) who can tell you how to live your life,
what to eat, and where to mail your donation.
We both have had our share of the traditional
concepts of a Guru and we are both tremendously
grateful for the gifts that we have received. But
the greatest opportunity for Guru in your life,
for the force that can continuously pull you back
to yourself, that can continuously remind you of
your deeper commitment, and can bring your
contractions again and again to transparency and
art, is the person sleeping on the other side of
the bed.
Underneath the forgetfulness that often colors
our relationship, your partner loves you totally;
otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen to be
with you. Your partner also can see your blind
spots immensely much better than you can see them
yourself. If you are willing to give your partner
the benefit of the doubt, they can guide you out
of the swamp of separation better than you could
ever do so yourself, and most probably better
than someone with a long white beard and a fleet
of expensive cars.
10-Welcoming everything
The greatest work we had to do, as couple, was to
let go of all our images of what love should look
like. We’ve come to realize that many of the
values that we instinctively assumed, like
harmony, not hurting someone’s feelings,
being nice and sweet, letting people do their own
thing, are only a very narrow band of what is
available as an expression of real love. We’ve
learned, often painfully, that what is actually
happening between us is imbued with a much richer
love and depth than any model that we could
arrive at in our mind of what should be
happening. Many of the practices we live and
teach are designed to dispelled notions of how
relationship should be, to free up our energy to
be absolutely present, welcoming and playful with
what is actually occurring.
Seeking may have an end in time. But love is
endless. Who can say, “Now I know all about
love, I have taken it to its outer limits.”
There is always much more waiting on the horizon.
If you have tired of chasing the carrot of
absolute enlightenment, as a goal in time, its
time to relax from the path into the long grass,
and live today as love. We know of no better way
to practice the Big Love than in the white-hot
fire of intimate relationship
|
