www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984163409

My dear sister Shambhavi's book is available from Amazon. Do check it out please! "Pilgrims to Openness: Direct Realization Tantra in Everyday Life" by Shambhavi Sarasvati.

Having problems is not a problem

A student from Oregon asks:

"You always say everything is fine. There are no problems. Then why do we try so hard to transform ourselves? Isn’t this a contradiction?"

Well, it turns out that there are no contradictions, either!

Imagine ant theologians trying to explain the “contradiction” that God provides enormous feasts, but so many ant kind die trying to enjoy the bounty. (e.g. so many ants get sprayed when they invade someone’s food cabinet or get smashed at human picnics!)

Contradictions only seem to arise when you try to understand a different mode of experiencing from your limited perspective.

At one level of experiencing, we are subject to karmic tensions. We are having an experience of limitation, and we suffer. We do spiritual practice to transform our experience.

Some of us are very aware of our limitations, so we work very hard at releasing them. From this level of awareness, the experience of tension exists, and we work with it.

We always have to work honestly from the base of our actual experience, not from where we wish we were. Otherwise, our practice has no authenticity and will not bear fruit.

At the level of awareness unconditioned by karma, the idea that there could be a problem or a contradiction makes no sense. Everything that arises, everything that happens or doesn’t happen, is the free expression of Shiva nature.

Every free expression of Shiva nature, including the experience of having problems, is equal and fine. So the experience of having problems is also no problem!

Another way of saying this is that the essence of every aspect of life is freely upsurging consciousness and energy. How could anything be wrong when even tensions are just that?

In the direct realization traditions, the job of the teacher is to work with the student to make a nadi, a river of connection between the student’s experience of limitation and unconditioned life. This is called transmission.

The student does sadhana and works with her tensions. At the same time, through transmission, she is cultivating a real connection to a more expanded level of experiencing awareness. Even in times of extreme limitation, she tries to remember and connect with the river.

If you are lost in the wilderness, the instruction is always to follow a river. That way you will eventually get home.

So all practices, even the most beginning practices, are done like this.

In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi

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