Dark night of the soul

Fear, and all fears are based on fear of death, is often accompanied by a sense of meaningless for life. What you believe to be is a person and as the sense of being a separate individual dies also all the "reasons" that were keeping the idea of being a person going will dissolve one after the other.

This means that we might experience it as a sense of vacuity in ourselve, a void that is not perceived positivly as silence and peace but as a black hole that is sucking us back and destroying all things we were living for. This state that you could describe as depression is actually a very spiritual state that needs to be addressed as such: YOU ARE DYING, not the body, but the "ME".

This death of the ego can be so strongly refused that even suicide can be on the cards as an option to avoid to feel that extreme suffering: it is not actually an option as -even if the body dies- that suffering will be at last felt completly anyway, so really suicide is not a way to stop the suffering. If we could have a choice about it, it is of course far better to experience the pain and go over it and live afterwards a free life. The message is correct: dying, but is a message for the me and not for the body itself.

This deep crisis of the ego brings desperation, depression and a sense of meaningless in living life: see clearly that these feelings are a sign of a spiritual crisis, the darkest moments before the dawn, the crossing of the core of the sense of feeling separated from Life. They dont last forever, they seem not to go away because there is an avoidance about them.

Be clear that no emotion is too big to be observed as whataver is the feeling - frustration, anger, fear, or even desperation - you are what is seeing it coming up in consciousness and not the subject of it. In other terms the feeling is present, but you dont HAVE it, it is simply there. Recognizing this allows you see that there is a distance in sense between you, Consciousness, and the psycological suffering, it reduces the drama that the mind builds up about the suffering. For istance, the fear of not having money or being lonely might be present and needs to be felt fully for it to go away complety, but all the drama about YOU being poor and lonely is something fictious that entertain the "poor me" and self-pity image.

As long as your attention is on the story, on the drama, you will not be able to rest in the feeling itself because you will go in the mental story of it. Often we are thrown to avoid to sit with the feeling present and we run into strategies that temporarely less the pain. Becoming conscious of these strategies, (you will know with a bit of honesty which one you are playing) it is already a big step. What has to be clearly understood is that as long as you go into the strategies of avoidance the feeling will keep on being present on the background and when all the strategies will stop functioning ( they all do), when the sense of desperation is reaching a point of unbearability then the only possibiliy left is sitting with our pain without trying to fix it, hide it, or send it away.

There is no other way around, that burning sensation has to be felt fully and when this is done, it will disappear completly from your life to the point that you have been able to face it.

Shakti

Openess

More in our lives we can face the fear without any stepping back without attempting to cancel it or diminish it and the greater will be our capacity to feel passion in life. The concept of the "me", the concept of being separate individuals from the rest of the universe, is what generates fear. Only if we conceive the world and the surrounding reality as separate from us, we feel fear: fear or terror of not getting what one wants or that what one loves can be taken away from us. That's why we build defenses and strategies to protect ourselve from fear, we believe that those barriers could protect us from feeling the fear.
When one is able to sit with this fear, an inner fire begins to burn, a flame that consumes the sense of separation that we feel respect the whole world. That fire, which is Love itself, will burn all those defenses, leaving us naked and open to life.
Only then Life can touch us and really only in that moment we can feel a genuine passion for life. Until then indeed we will not be so open to let passion come through us completly, we will try to be careful and not letting ourselve to be burnt by that flame that is Love itself.
When we are at that point so open to Life that there is nobody or anything which is open, there is only openess. And in that boundless openess Life can dance at any time any type of dance, with the sole purpose of our delight.

shakti

Flame of Love

What you are is always alone as you are One, as there is just Oneness, and that Oneness is your own true Being. When your Being is shared in the company of other people that live from the same recognition that all is One and this is One is oneself, you are already and always alone, even if the same room or even the same bed is shared.

Like a flame of a candle dancing by itself whoever is passing by will feel your warmth and light, but nothing will be given intentionally and nothing taken to them or from them. When two people or more can stay near to each other and burn by their own flame then even more warmth and light will be there in the surrounding, but each candle nevertheless will be burnt by the same fire, and its heat and splendour at core will be the same independently by how many are present.

Love is that fire, Love cannot be given or taken, can only be shared. The light and clarity of Truth can only be shared. Maybe one is hit by one of those glourious flame dancing by themselve and think that when that light is not near to them, something will be missing, some of that warmth and radiosity will be taken away. this is just because we are so used to seek that flame outside of us, begging for it, trading for it, compromising for it.

A master is that flame itself, but it is so easy to think that he or she is the candle... he or she is the fire, the same one that is burning in you when you feel lonely! the fire of the master is just burning the candle and it is not bigger or smaller in its warmth or light by that Love that you are and is burning your sense of separation.

When is possible to sit in your loneliness and let that fire grow, then it will be just aloneness. You will not be seeking anymore someone that lights you up in those dark moments, because even alone, that light and warmth will be enlightening whoever or whatever is present. If your husband or girlfriend are not with you, you will be in love with the flower pot. The flower pot will be the beloved, and your light and warmth will be reflected in the beauty of those flowers or that unique way in which the sunbeams are making shine the vase. Then it can happen that a wonderful man or a beautiful woman enters in the room and all your radiance will be reflected there. For five minutes maybe, or even 10 years, or 50 years. Then again maybe alone, again all One.

A master points you to your own fire, your own Love. He or she invites you to sit with it, despite whatever is happening in any moment in your life. He or she invites you to get completly burnt in that flame of Love, until any sense of separation is dissolved. Only the ego get burnt, fire does not get burnt. That flame of Love that you are will will be what will only remain, and its magnificence reflected and multiplied in any part of the manifestation.

with love and gratitude,
Shakti

Wind

Blowing, whistling and hissing
A strong wind is now hitting
The structures of the me
Already in brittles are flickering.
Crumbles of I all on the floor
Crackling away the idea that there is more
Beyond this appearance of the here and the now
Nothing there lies, just an empty background.
So wind please do blow and destroy more and more
The falseness of ego, its shallow galore
As tired n’ worn out the mind is asking
To end its agony and in peace finally resting.
One day it will be seen that all this was necessary
The pains, the joys were both part of the setting
That allowed this Truth to shine once again
And the empty blue sky enjoying in its fullest frame.

shakti

The last flare

We exist and yet we are not
human form appears like a flicker of light in the empty screen
one moment we are here
shining as gold as the scene appears
and then again nothing
beyond darkness and light the world disappears.
Who are you, who am I, what is this all about?
Empty questions as shells in the mind floating by
fleeting around like a smoke whisp in the room
where no-one has ever stepped out,
as nobody is asking and nobody is listening,
just words appearing and the again deliqueshing.
No answers will ever satisfy a mind that always will buy
in the idea that truth somewhere must abide
where instead the pain comes from the questioning itself
what causes the suffering is the search of this Self
that never was far, or away, or elsewhere
it is just what always IS
when all the rest dissolves in the mind's last flare.

shakti

Let's be merry

Let it enter, beloved,
Love knocks at the door asking you to,
Just open your heart,
melting it fully in this that I am and that you are too.
Let it spill, beloved,
the water of Life is filling my cup overflowing with lush
the joy to know a Dream this is just
and like leaves we are danced here to have fun.
No need of protections by what springs from within
This Love is not coming from an object in the dream
It is here, already, asking you to
turn your attention from the scene to the one that looks
outside at the play of colours and forms
untainted by all
and yet mingled in the whole.
This Radiance is shining from the breakings of the wall
of the ego, that you that is actually false,
its veil is now thin and is made out of what
it is currently appearing in Life’s comedy plot.
Its substance is illusion as therefore not real
no ego to kill, you are free now my dear!
No need of salvation, you are already out
The leela is there consistent as clouds.
So let’s be merry beloved, be happy and gay
Enjoying fully what brings every day.

Shakti

Paradox

Between existence and non existence
Human life unfolds.
A moment fully engaged
In what seems to be a multicolour pool
Of shapes and shades and tones
That take the form of people
And places and loves and hates
A moment totally dragged away by the scene
And then again observing from what cannot be seen.
I’m all, I’m nothing
Which one you decide
Something will be missing
As in this whole paradox
I do abide.

Shakti