I am in love with my Guru

Guru-disciple relationship

This is a highly charged topic. Many people believe it is sacriligious or just plain superstitious to have a guru. I think it is an inner experience which is difficult to share let alone justify. there are many moon-eyed guru followers who look to their gurus for salvation instead of being spiritual grown ups. On the other hand, there are many people whose egos are too big to surrender to the intimacy of this kind of relationship and so they cannot understand why others would do it.
I could go into a lot of intellectual explanation about the psycholigical advantages of this relationship built on archetypes, but I don't feel like it. Finding a guru is like falling in love.

Who can explain it? Love is often sillyand blind. Yet it calls us to give more of ourselves, it is a high enticement to stretch ourselves and to grow and change. Love itself is an altered, trance-like state. When someone is first falling in love, they have that secret smile, all knowing and shpinx-like. They are forgetful but they do not care. The are enraptured in their inner experience.

Altered States

Altered states are very useful in healing the psyche from traumas which often limit our development. that is why Frued used hypnosis in psychotherapy. altared states tap into the subconscious and if navigated skillfully, this can bring about awareness and harmony between the conscious and subconscious. It is the separation and lack of syncing between these two consciousnesses that cause a great deal of human psychological suffering. So potentially, the love between a guru and sisya (discipile) can be an incredibly powerful and transcendental tool for self-exploration and spiritual awakening.

Magical thinking

i do not expect my guru to magically fix my suffering and problems and enlighten me. I feel his compassion, his unconditional acceptance of me, and that has created a bridge that allows me to find healing in myself. Traditionally, a guru becomes your mother and father. My own mother and father had their own struggles. There was abuse and this was painful to me. It made me protect myself and be in survival mode. at around 25, i realized i wanted more to my life. i wanted to stop surving and to feel more and grow. Still, i carried the hurts of myself as a child into all my adult relationships, an inherant mistrust and fear of being hurt again. When i met my guru i felt so loved. i felt him as my ideal parent. at first i hid in that comfort, but over time it has forced me to grow. if i had not felt loved, i do not know how i would have begun that process of opening myself, of exposing my shadows.

"How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise we all remain
too frightened."
-Hafiz, sufi poet

Healing the Inner Child

Over the years i have spent with my guru, i have been gently nudged out of my nest and pushed to grow. to take responsability for my choices on my path, to become more aware of myself and my motivations. to see how the places i felt unloved or abused by my parents had driven me to extremities, be it drugs, sex or spiritual practices. and that ultimately the healing and acceptance i seek i will have to find by holding that hurt child myself.

Love Heals
It is often the intimacy with another that spurs our growth, inspires us to risk and grow. There is a love we can only get from God and there is a love we can only get from human relationships. In the past I used my spiritual practice as a way to hide from human intimacy and vulnerability. My burning longing for god was in part because I did not trust the love of other people. I hope my love for God opens me to people and my love for people opens me to God. My love for guru walks both those worlds.

Can a Guru give you samadhi (enlightenment)?

When I arrived in India a week ago, I sat with my teacher. we were in a room full of people laughing and visiting. I sat on the floor as is the custom in india. after a few minutes I felt a waterfall of blissful energy running through my whole body. No, that not quite right. I felt more life running through my body, I felt more ALIVE. If i said i felt bliss it would convey only one emotion. I felt every emotion and yet complete stillness.

Why does my energy activate when i am near my teacher?

There are mystical explanations that would require some faith, like saying that my guru can activate and switch my levels of consciousness through the power of his own awakening and through the connection of our guru-sisya relationship. if that is too far out for you, it seems that we can all agree that we affect each other, that there is a sympathetic response to another person's energy. In the most obvious example of this, if you walk in the room and there is a very sad or very angry person, it immediately affects your own energy even if no words are exchanged. Some kind of emotional osmosis. Perhaps it is because of the nature of our relationship, the closeness, surrender and intimacy that i feel with my teacher that allows the energy to pass or resonate so easily between us.

Personal Practice and Initiation

Of course, there are also the personal practices of yoga, meditation, prayam and bandhas that charge the system and stimulate the brain. i am sure the many years of pranayam have changed the wiring of my brain and the amount of energy i am charged with. from my own experience though, it is invaluable to personal understanding and deepening of yoga to have a close relationship with a living teacher, especially if your practices involve initiation.

Sleepless nights and Spiritual Insomnia

"ïn this state there is no Siva (sun),
nor any holy union..
only a somewhat something moving
dreamlike on a fading road."
-lalla, female kashmiri mystic

and so it is...i woke up this morning early. my two travelling companions still asleep on the matresses that were laid out on the marble floor. it was nice to sleep last night. i hadn't slept for 3 days before that. not because of insomnia...but because when i come to india, it's like sticking my finger in a light socket of electricity...shakti. the land is very strong with this energy, and i feel it running through the soles of my bare feet , up my legs and electrifying my whole system. also, this happens when i am near my teacher. the last 3 nights i have laid down exaughsted from long days and found myself lying in the dark completely alert. i could feel the different energy centers whirring with energy, especially my heart. there was no self-doubt or anxiety that makes sleeplessness painful for the mind. a deep sense of peace, expansion and weightlessness as if i were floating in an ocean. i was aware of thoughts drifting by in the stream of consciousness. there was not much emotional weight connected with the thoughts, and so they floated past me easily. i would use the time to chant my guru mantra, over and over, folding time into circles of syllables like rolling haybales in a great field. even though i was not sleeping, i felt timeless.

No sleep for the saints?
there are many stories of saints and gurus who never sleep, or need very little sleep. a contemporary guru, Amma, performs the super-human feat of staying up for days, without eating or using the bathroom, hugging all the people who come to see her for blessings. my own guruji goes to bed around 10:30pm, gets up at 2am and works on returning emails or writing until around 5am, then lays down again to get up for morning chai between 6-7am. I have heard him snoring, so I do know he sleeps sometimes!

Kundalini affects your sleep
Since I began practicing tantra, which awakens kundalini, I have gone through periods of not sleeping, and being very creative and active. I have also gone through periods of sleeping many hours, the sleep descending on me like a heavy syrup that doesn't allow me to keep my eyes open. I always consider this a "re-booting"of my computer, after installing a new software program.

My body, my slave?

Though my spirits are good my eyes are still burning from no sleep. My poor body! It reminds me of one of my teachers I met on my first trip to India. He was a tiny, very intense swamy who came from the Sivananda and Bihar lineages of yoga. I loved to watch his excitement as he demonstated asanas and bandhas, his small, lithe body like a live wire. He would wrap his orange swamy sheath around and around, tucking it here and there, until he could flip upside down on his shaved head without exposing anything immodest. One day, after demonstrating a particularly difficult asana, he said, "I use my body like a slave", and he grinned from ear to ear. I don't use my body like a slave. I am very grateful for her and I listen attentively to her inner tunings and the ocean of intelligence moving constantly just under my skin.

Kundalini and insomnia:
"It is also likely that the practioner will experience insominia. However, yogis do not call it insomnia. They say, "Why should I sleep?" If you love a person very much and he stays with you and does not allow you to sleep, will you call that insomnia? There are yogis who do not sleep and are happy about it because yogis have an entirely different attitude. They say 1/3 of the life is wasted in sleeping. So when kundalini awakens in a yogi and consciousness is constant and consistent, and there is no waking, sleeping and dreaming, they are happy about it. Therefore, insomnia does not usually bother a person who has awakened kundalini. Just accept your sleeplessness and enjoy it. You can do japa meditation or just do some spiritual reflection. If this is not possible, just lie down and let it happen as it will."
-Kundalini Tantra, Swami satyananda Saraswati

freedom, fornication and the bondage of love

i was talking to a woman yesterday, she came to see guruji because she is married and had a lover outside her marriage. life is complicated. who is free of sin? what is sin? a state of mind we are living in or the karmic ripples of our choices? i live in a glass house. i relax my hand and set down my stone. no broken windows today.

I was reminded of a parable from the New Testament Bible:

As Jesus approached the temple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of the Sanhedrin who were dragging a woman along with them. As they came near, the spokesman said: "Master, this woman was taken in adultery -- in the very act. Now, the law of Moses commands that we should stone such a woman. What do you say should be done with her?"
Jesus knew the men who had brought her, they were politicians and he knew it was a trap set for him. He also knew her husband was an unkind man who cheated many people. He took a stick and silently wrote something in the dirt before her husband. He quickly left. He wrote something in the dirt in front of her accusers, and they too left.
Jesus said: "Woman, where are your accusers? did no man remain to stone you?" And the woman, lifting up her eyes, answered, "No man, Lord." And then said Jesus: "I know about you; neither do I condemn you. Go your way in peace."




this woman who came yesterday is a good woman who wanted to taste more in life. this is hard on her husband. I admire them for trying to find a solution beyond name calling. They have two children. It would be an extroardinary relationship that could hold so much.

She had been practicing tantra.
many people say tantra is dangerous because it opens up the shadow of our sexuality.
most of us hide our shadows. what to do when they are loosed, illuminated? most of us keep a tight reign on our desires...many "moral" people satisfy sensual desires through food and drink or other means. what to do when directly confronted by it? what to do when it is not true that you only want to know one person carnally?
what to do when your tantra practice begins to unravel you?
you could hide behind the "spiritual" aspect of your practice to defend yourself. you could say you only did it for spiritual awakening. but is that true? isn't there a human part that was lustful? is it wrong to follow desire and passion? must we always make more light and shadow in our spiritual practices too?
there is a truth of nature that does not take into account man's morals...like a volcano that kills men, woman, children, good and evil alike. the sun shines on saint and sinner equally.
there is a deep, primal desire to rub bodies together to create friction and fire that is in itself a song in worship of life. of course there are consequences...there is pregnancy, disease and there is betrayal in relationships.

do we practice for the sake of practice? or do we practice to change ourselves?
what happens if we begin to change and that threatens to change our whole lives?
we are responsible for our own free will, there is no escaping this.
we must find the balance between freedom and discipline.
they hoped guruji could give them answers. he did not, how could he?
he said that since he married them, they are both his children and he does not want to see his children breaking apart. he told them to find the balance and figure it out. strong medicine.
he told them to focus on their friendship. maybe marriage creates too much rigidity, think of a living friendship that is flexible.
what does it mean to be married? to be a family? can we extend these definitions?
find the balance. no one can give the answers, the answers must be found by living, making mistakes, trying a again. maybe we know ourselves a little better each time we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off.