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Blog 2
Dear Friends,
As I sit here in my sunny room,
doors and windows open, looking outside at the grass greening,
the blooms beginning to open and a few clouds scudding across
the sky, a nice breeze on my cheek, I find myself drifting back
to an old desire. I guess no matter how good we may have it
on any given day, there’s always another desire waiting
in the wings. And I am very skilled at having both conditions
present in the same moment, perhaps because they’re related.
I am content, but there’s that other thing I want that
would make even a day like this seem better (“seem”
being the operative word).
As a yoga practitioner, this would
be an excellent opening for a discussion on how desires keep
us bound in ignorance. But I’m not going to do that. You
see, I am of the opinion that suppressed desires have a way
of becoming the most powerfully domineering desires of all.
The biggest problem with desires is that they have a way of
upstaging everything else, and getting us to feed them. Everyone
has desires, but having them doesn't mean we have to run ourselves
ragged trying to satisfy them.
Things that are suppressed are
things that are hidden from us, and because they are hidden,
they become very powerful. This includes thoughts and feelings,
too, but hidden desires have a foot in both worlds — our
minds and our feelings — and they drive us to try to force
life, even though we may not realize it.
Hidden desires relentlessly drive
us to get them satisfied. They hide out behind other desires
that we are conscious of. They dominate our lives. We adjust
things to meet their demands. We turn into raving fast-laners
or couch potatoes. Some of us wonder why we’re so stressed
and/or depressed and what we’re doing wrong. Some of us
blame someone else for our dissatisfaction, preferring to try
to control the people and things around us to practicing a little
self-honesty and looking inside. But inside is where the solution
is.
I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t
have what you want. What I am addressing here, is the problem
of unrequited desires and what we can do (or not do) about them.
You know the ones I’m talking about: the ones you’ve
tried everything possible to get to come to fruition and it’s
just not happening no matter how hard you try, no matter how
many affirmations you do, no matter how much you try to stay
positive.
Incidentally, it is at this point
that you must watch out for an insidious type of suppression:
“Oh well, I really didn’t want that anyway,”
or “I know it’s coming my way; after all, look at
that parking spot I just manifested!” And so on. These
tactics just push the very thing you’ve been wanting,
away from you.
The key is self-honesty. Self-honesty
is one of the most difficult things we can ever undertake to
do (next to raising children). It can be down right humiliating,
even scary. But if we want to make progress in our lives, we
really must do this. Self-honesty has a way of creating profound
shifts of a very rewarding nature.
While you’re waiting on The
Big Shift, here’s something else you can try: Enjoy the
desire for itself. That’s what I was doing this morning
before I started writing this to you. I was content, but when
the desire I spoke of surfaced, I just enjoyed the desire itself.
I didn’t try to do anything about it (though I was tempted)
because I knew that trying to do something about it would ruin
the contentment I already had. And after a while, I decided
to share this with you.
I’ll close now, and wish
you happiness and the fulfillment of all your desires —
automatically, without any effort on your part.
With love and deepest respect,
Namaste
(I bow to the Divine One that You
Really are),
Durga Ma
Blog 1
Dear Friends,
I am writing this blog as a response
to requests from friends, but only after a long period of reluctance.
I have never been a letter writer, and writing a blog always
seemed to border being the same as writing a letter to people
that I don’t even know. So I hesitated, and kept on hesitating.
But then I got to thinking . . . I know every one of you. I
may not know your name or your face, your personality or what
you do in your life, but I do know YOU. And you know me, as
well. So in Reality, we indeed do know each other.
When I sat down, I didn’t
have anything in mind to say, but as I write I realize that
I have already begun to share a small piece of my personal philosophy
with you by stating that I know you, even if we’ve never
met. This is a conviction that is very close to my heart, so
I will expand a little on this subject as I blog along. But
first I should probably tell you something about who you’re
listening to, something about myself and maybe a little history.
I am called Durga Ma. I left my
birth name behind decades ago in favor of a spiritual name.
Durga is the feminine face of God in the aspect of 'remover
of obstacles' and 'Ma' means what it says, Mother (it also means
'to measure,' but an explanation of that would just get me sidetracked).
I have been a devotee of Truth
for over 30 years. Most of that time I spent living as a hermit,
and most of that time I lived in solitude. I meditated 18 hours
a day (If you ever have any doubts that meditation is rewarding,
remember . . . 18 hours! Who in their right mind would ever
do such a thing if something truly amazing and fulfilling wasn’t
happening?), and learned Sanskrit so that I could translate
ancient mystical writings for myself. I wanted to see where
what I learned from oral teachings, written teachings and my
own experience tallied; when it did, I assumed I was on to something.
My meditation was my lab. And I was on to something. Big time.
I lived on very little, and had
only pennies for gas and supplies. The forest was my tromping
ground. In the earlier years, I beat my laundry on a rock, ate
a lot of vegetables, and hoped for good weather. I dug my first
garden with an abalone shell. Over those years, I lived in my
car, a pup tent, graduated to a larger tent, then to a 6’x12’
trailer, from there to a vacant house, a larger trailer and
then to a small hut, a bigger hut, and then to something more
like a cabin. (Well, it’s progress!) Somewhere in there
I went to India, with a backpack and wandered around for 7 months.
I was 45 when I returned.
I left behind a four bedroom home
in Marin County, California, for all this. You may be thinking,
“Maybe she isn’t in her right mind!” But just
the other day I saw an article in a magazine on living green
in which the subject of this article was propounding that living
in tiny spaces be considered for living “green.”
So I am vindicated! I guess I know about living green.
So was it worth it? Indeed it was.
If I could do it all over again, I would. But at 67, my body
may have something else to say about it.
I will leave you for now, but not
without what I promised earlier: to share a small piece of my
personal philosophy with you, the experience of which is a part
of the fruits of the life I have led. Here it is in a nutshell:
All that is, is God, the Divine,
or whatever your word is for That, manifest as the world and
unmanifest as pure potential. Because the Divine is without
limitation, the world is without limitation. Anything is possible.
There is more than enough for everyone. Competition is irrelevant
— you can have what you need or want without anything
being taken away from anyone else.
Because all that is is Divine,
you are divine: You are without limitations. Your power is inherent.
Through your power of conscious choice (free will) in alignment
with the Divine, you can achieve anything. Anything you can
imagine — prosperity, happiness, freedom and fulfillment
— you can achieve.
So now you can see why I can say
with conviction, that we already know each other — because,
even though we are each unique as individuals, we are all the
same in what it is that we really are. Our commonality in this
regard connects us with each other and makes us one family.
So, I believe we know each other.
With love and deepest respect,
Namaste
(I bow to the Divine One that You Really are),
Durga Ma
