#56. The ashram diaries: standing still on uneven ground

Caught up in motion
Swirling around
Sometimes you're standing still
On uneven ground 
[Cornelia and Jane, by Yo La Tengo]

The celestial utopia, a spa for my all-over-the-place mind, a laundromat for the soul (wash it at a 100 degrees Celsius and you'll get rid of every stain). I took off to Finca La Luz, in Spain, hoping to enlarge that glimpse of peace I had learned to identify and managed to keep inside after my bike trip was over. Being in the presence of Saraswathi Ma, living in an ashram - that would be free peace; those would be overwhelming winds of love coming to cure me from every disease, past and future. Yes: let's go back to 1969 Woodstock, lots of music, everybody dancing and being crazy and walking and having flower-power fun.
Of course all of it was romantic Mariana swimming in the waters of caramel ignorance. No, awareness is not an item to be purchased. And just like psychotherapy yet a bit differently, the way into exorcizing ghosts out is never cheap. Not because they insist to stay -  not at all.  In the very end, I came into the learning that... yes, we all love our ghosts way too much to let them go that easily.

* * *

Ok, so here I am, at Finca la Luz. So let's start this meditation.
Sitting in the cushion, I quickly come to learn that to sit in silence, to live in the present means to be always fresh. Wow. To be fully aware and immersed in the here and now requires a level of abstraction of my prosaic life so radical that it almost feels impossible.
For this one who sits in silence is not staying there to contemplate the past, to surf into the waters of memory, to make plans, to imagine life, to think about my beloved ones. This one who sits in silence Now is almost like a space where the now happens by itself. This Now-Mariana does nothing but this: she sits to observe from the point of view of the unchanging/everchanging present the madness of being out of it all the time - and isn't it what everyday life's all about? Well, it is all easily seen, but it often feels a bit schizophrenic: am I getting nuts? Isn't it way too psychologically dangerous to divide yourself in two - the observer and the object who is observed? Am I imagining this all?
Experience answers, and I start to feel angry. I am angry with being here, angry because it is not fun as I imagined and everybody is silent all the time, and angry with ex-boyfriend who broke my heart and decided to follow me into coming to this ashram, angry with all other ex-boyfriends of my entire life and angry with myself for no being able to let it go. And specially I am angry because anger is such an ugly, horrible feeling that should not come here in my spiritual spa! Wasn't it supposed to be a cozy, sweet, painless sort of vacation from my busy everyday life?

***

In our bicycle days together, Judi once told me that in a long bike tour there's always a breakthrough moment. It's that decisive instant when your old settled "I" disappears completely and you become one with the tour itself in its ever present transience, and when you start to function by the day, no planning, and acts basically through intuition. Hers happened when she cycled Bolivia. Mine was in the desert of Aragón, and when it came it was so sharp that I remember thinking: "shit - she was right!".
I could say the same about ashram life and silent meditation.
So it happened that somehow one day I stopped being angry with anger, so anger was now not reacted to with more anger - it started to be observed. It was felt, too, and it was painful - but it was also observed.
And the shock was: Jesus Christ, there is so much anger here. I didn't imagine a little body like mine could store so much of it.
Not without feeling it, then a journey to the very heart of anger started. In sitting in meditation I observed that much of my actions in everyday life were actually reactions, and most of them structured through this very feeling of anger - sometimes hidden in some camouflage pretty smiley skirt, but usually there. As memory danced in front of me, I paid a visit to ancient events. I was not identified with then now: I was the observer. I could see the structure of anger down there. I felt ashamed and sad. The present anger with ex-boyfriend came many times, and I was then able to watch actual anger as it unfolded in the present. By watching it, I also watched my body reacting, the heartbeat going crazy, the thoughts and conclusions popping out, the shoulders contracting, my cheeks getting warm.
Well, my friends... A journey into the depths of those cupboard feelings are much more like a week on living hell than a fairytale spa.

***

I came then to the very obvious and simple realization that the anger feeling was there because it was my own created way to face situations I didn't like. I was not forced to adopt it - it was a part of me, of the way this Mariana had lived in the world so far. There was nobody else to be blamed for it. This anger was (somehow) Me. But it was not real by itself. It was an expression and a part of my identity at once, and when I saw it in depth, and when I experienced it... Then I could see a little bit who Mariana was, but with distance. The anger was acknowledged, so it lost its mysterious, unknown power.
Do this experience: picture yourself in your mind. Now strip yourself from your most potent feelings - pick two or three. Strip yourself from anger, from kindness, from your dreams of future, from your desire to be/have this or that, from some particular resentment. What would be left, then?

As for me, I got to understand that no feeling is one-sided, no sharp marks are written in our perception of the world. And now? Should I let this anger go? Wouldn't that create a passive, submissive Mariana instead of the fierce, proud, strong one? I was afraid of letting anger goes, because that letting go would mean abandoning identity. And I am in love with that sense of identity which is anchored in this lifelong experienced sense of anger against that which I don't like. It gives me the identity "Mariana, the warrior".

When I started to let go, sometimes I felt I was falling from a cliff. Sometimes I felt I was being absorbed into a dark hole. Sometimes I feared I was going crazy and losing my mind.  One day I realized anger was gone and I understood I had surrendered.

I felt spacious. I felt light. I felt like I had really fallen from a cliff and that I had not survived.
It was very good.

So this story does not have a conventional happy ending, because awareness is in itself a path of destruction. It is not painless. Good news is: all the pain is imaginary. You're standing still on uneven ground.

*"Cornelia and Jane", from Yo La Tengo's 2013 album "Fade".

** This was the last post of a series of three texts on my experience in "Finca La Luz", in 2013. "Finca" was a small ashram-like space in Andaluzia/Spain, where Saraswathi Ma offered her presence in satsangs between February and November, 2013. All these posts are written in deep gratitude for her, and dedicated to the beautiful friends I met there.

#55. The ashram diaries: empty before leaving

It's late September and I'm coming back from my 3 months bike trip hoping it won’t take longer than a week for me to go back to Spain. I miss her, I want to be at Saraswathi Ma’s ashram n-o-w.  In my plans, it is a quick stop in Geneva to wash my clothes, leave the bike, pack some winter jackets, start the procedures to renew my residence permit and immediately board a plane to Sierra Nevada.

(Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road )*

Yet bureaucracy with my residence permit is no smooth this time.  A month passes in front of me while I’m here, stuck in Geneva with my expired visa. Sort of living illegally in the country, not allowed to renew my health insurance or flying back to Brazil, this time I’m also homeless, living at friends’ places, bags and clothes spread between Ana, Juli and Victor’s apartment.

(Suddenly everything has changed)**

But it’s surprising. It feels incredibly so light.

Not having a place is a relief, fulfillment, completeness.

10kg skinner, I’m all in my enormous loose jeans and breastless t-shirts.

Stripped from sexy clothes, home, documents, medical safety, plans for the future and even from my former lovely long curly hair         I come to sit alone by the lake and wait for some unfolding, noticing that Swiss days now are getting colder. Autumn comes into place.

Once unbearable, Geneva has never been so beautiful.

Away from the bad smell of sticky and useless belongings I naturally come to true learning.

:Bare Nakedness is a gift.

Empty and joyful, I'm now ready to go.

***
* "Song to the Open Road", by Walt Whitman
* "Suddenly Everything Has Changed", a song by The Flaming Lips 

This is the second post of "The Ashram Diaries" - a series about my 20-days living at the ashram Finca La Luz between late-October and November 17, 2013.

With Love and gratitude to Mooji and Saraswathi Ma.

***

*Suddenly, everything has changed

*Moojiji

* Saraswathi Ma

#54. Os Diários do Ashram - Amor, este tsunami/The Ashram Diaries - Love, a tsunami

[English version below]

O amor como um tsunami. O amor, este terremoto. Amor, letal, ou assim: uma navalha*, uma avalanche.

* * *

When I first met him I knew right there that my search was over. Nestas histórias de "encontrei o amor da minha vida" e, na vizinhança delas, a daqueles que encontraram Jesus, a Yoga, a vocação; nelas existe a imagem do encontro que contém tudo, que sobrepassa o impermanente, que encerra o tempo, que fecha as portas da memória, que dilui o vício da esperança - que esvazia a expectativa, uma navalha naquilo que quer alguma coisa que a gente não sabe bem o que é para um dia que a gente não sabe bem quando vai chegar.
Estas histórias, contadas retrospectivamente são meio assim: tudo agora está completo, e tudo sempre foi, mas só precisava ser encontrado. My search is over.

Dos lados de cá, o amor sempre me pareceu a um só tempo o sinônimo e a antítese do absoluto. Contido desde sempre dentro da minha compreensão como a única coisa que importa, ele pareceu sempre escapar, sempre insuficiente em si mesmo, sempre possível de mais e ainda assim sempre irrealizado. Minha fome constante, minha decepção permanente, o amor que eu sinto é maior do que eu e ao mesmo tempo me esmaga porque nunca me dá tudo que pode. Nunca meus companheiros ou amigos ou família parecem transbordar a fronteira do amor que eu espero e que eu sinto aqui, dentro de mim ( como é que você não percebe?); e então o vazio, a sensação de que algo falhou, e o abandono tem as as mesmas proporções do amor infinto, mas do lado avesso.

E assim, do lado certo e do lado avesso, pendurada entre o amar inevitavelmente incompleto e a solidão das expectativas frustradas, eu chego no começo de setembro a uma comunidade alternativa no meio da Serra Nevada junto com o Marvin. É de noite, a gente senta com uma menina alemã em volta da fogueira e eu escuto ela convidando: tem uma mulher iluminada que vive na vila aqui do lado. Vamos?

* * *

Estou aqui, na frente dela, mas não vejo luzes saindo da Saraswathi Ma, nem sinto que estou fora do meu corpo. Nada. Nenhuma queimação, nenhum chamado, nada se apresenta como um sinal cósmico. Pelo contrário, esta mulher é a mais prosaica das criaturas, um pouco mais velha do que eu, unhas do pé pintadas de vermelho, uns brincos grandes, uma pulseirinha de pérolas. A fronteira entre nós duas é tão pequena, e o fato de que ela é assim, meio Mariana, me coloca um abismo: se ela despertou, como é que se parece tanto comigo?

Fico ali, sentada, ouvindo, e alguma coisa de mim levanta. Vou fazer uma pergunta na frente de toda essa gente que eu nunca vi na vida: "Saraswathi, o que e intuicao?"

E pluft. Sem fogos de artificio de nenhuma sorte, meu coracao bate tranquilo enquanto ela fala comigo. Ela ela fala devagarinho, calma, com um acento britanico de urso de pelúcia, e eu nao tenho nada a nao ser uma sensacao de estranhamento. Deve ser isso, porque a única coisa que eu consigo sentir aqui é que ela fala de um lugar que eu reconheco, mas que nao sei muito bem onde fica. Ela nao tenta me convencer, mas de algum jeito eu entendo o que ela quer dizer sem entender muito bem como.

E de noite, de volta às nossas barracas. "It´s so weird, Marvin... She speaks from somewhere that is not the mind - yet it is doesn't challenge my intelligence, man".

* * * E depois disso eu ja nao lembro muito bem como foi - mas sei que foi rápido.
Dois dias depois eu estou acampando num jardim pra fazer um retiro silencioso com Mooji, que é um dos professores dela.
(Sei que nunca vou descrever a alegria que eu senti ao ver este homem pela primeira vez.)
Uma semana depois volto à Finca La Luz, onde vive Saraswathi, e sem entender direito por que eu simplesmente choro quando ela me olha. Foi assim, e durou 2 segundos: nos olhos dela eu vi o infinito, e o infinito era vazio. E quando ela olhava pra mim, e eu pra ela, era como se ela olhasse para todas as pessoas naquela sala. Entendi que tinha visto o Aleph do Borges.

Volto pra Genebra, arrumo minhas coisas, e em um mês estou aqui, na Andaluzia: sem cabelo, vivendo no ashram dela junto com outras 4 meninas. Eu, a doutoranda dos pensamentos complexos - eu agora estou aqui, com a cabeça aos pés da minha professora, sabendo que só existe este lugar no mundo, já que o lugar na verdade nao importa muito.


When I first met you I knew right there that my search was over.


Este é o primeiro de uma série de diários sobre os 20 dias que eu passei na Finca La Luz entre outubro e novembro de 2013.

Toda a devoçao do mundo ao Mooji e à Saraswathi: obrigada de novo, meus professores queridos, por cruzarem meu caminho quando eu atravessava a Espanha de bicicleta sem estar muito interessada em onde chegar.

Aí está: meu primeiro encontro com Saraswathi virou vídeo - e eu ainda aqui, de cabelo comprido e roupa de ciclista

Meu outro professor. Lindo, lindo: Mooji, eu sei que logo vou estar na sua Presença



* "Love´s a knife" - essas palavras nao sao minhas: justiça seja feita, eu emprestei da Saraswathi Ma
* "Finca La Luz" nao é literalmente um ashram permanente de Saraswathi Ma, mas um espaço de silêncio em Órgiva, Andaluzia, onde ela ofereceu sua presença durante seis meses entre junho e novembro de 2013. Ma agora está em trânsito, e sua agenda pode ser consultada em www.saraswathima.org
----------

[English version]



Love like a tsunami . Love, this earthquake. Love, lethal love or so : the sharpest knife *.
:an avalanche.

***

"When I first met him I knew right there that my search was over". In these stories of "I found my soulmate" or of those who have encountered Jesus, their Yoga path, their vocation or sense of mission in this lifetime - in all these stories I have always recognized the image of some sort of Absolute. Although alien to my own experience, I could see right away that they spoke in their own way of an Encounter which contained all encounters, which surpassed the impermanence, which stopped the time into Now, which was able to shut the doors of memory and dilute the addiction to hope. The ultimate Encounter would be that one that could render every sense of expectation senseless - there´s no use for waiting for something. It´s all given, it´s all there. My search is over.

As for love, I would say that love, hidden inside my own little Mariana box, love always appeared to me in a quite contradictory manner.  It has always been crystal clear to me since I was a child: love and only love is real. Yet why has it always showed itself as the synonym and the antithesis of the Absolute? I've always come to you, love, but you've ever seemed to escape from my hands, always insufficient in itself - enormous but unavoidably unfulfilled. My constant hunger has your name, love, my everlasting disappointment is a big continent in which all the citizens are none other than you. And you've crushed me, for never did my lovers or friends or family, in my eyes they appeared never to exhaust love the way I saw it. And every time, every single day in which my hunger for you was not satisfied, then came this emptiness, this feeling that something failed. Abandonment, this is my sense of you, mister love - this is you, but inside out.

And it was just like this, oscillating from inside and inside out, that I arrived to an alternative community in the middle of the Sierra Nevada along with my beloved friend Marvin. Night, the beginning of September and we're sitting with a German girl around the campfire. It's late and I hear her saying: there is an enlightened woman who lives in the village next door. Shall we go meet her tomorrow?

***

There I was, right in front of her, but I saw no pink-violet-orangish lights coming out of Saraswathi Ma nor did I feel I was out of my body or some crazy stuff. Nothing. No burning inside, no cosmic call - absolutely nothing, nothing presented itself as to prove me I was in the presence of some sort of goddess. Rather, this woman is the most prosaic of creatures. A little older than me, toenails painted red, earrings and a pearl bracelet. Dressed just like any of my friends could, I sense that the border between us is so invisible that it almost does not exist. But the very fact that she could be a Mariana somehow establishes a gap in my perception of us: if she is indeed awakened, how come does she look so much like me?

I'm there around some twenty people, and all of us are seating in silence. Out of the blue something from me raises my hand: "Saraswathi what is intuition?"

And pluft. No fireworks cross the sky of Órgiva, but my heart beats peacefully as she answers my question. She speaks slowly with a British accent that makes me feel I'm in front of the most polite creature on Earth, having a mug of tea and discussing how life feels like in the countryside.  It doesn't feel neither good nor bad - it´s just strange. But there´s this one thing that triggers my attention - she's speaking from a place that I recognize, yet its exact address is not exactly clear. And there she is, speaking, not trying to convince me in any manner, but I understand what she means without knowing exactly how.

Night, we´re back in our tents: "It's so weird , Marvin ... She speaks from somewhere that is not mental - but it is does not challenge my intelligence, man ."

* * *

And after that it all came so fast that I can barely remember.
Two days later I was camping in somebody´s garden to participate in a 7-day silent retreat with a guy called Mooji - which is actually one of her teachers.
(And I swear nothing in this world can ever describe the joy I felt as I saw this man for the first time.)
A week later I return to the house of Saraswathi, and without understanding why I just cry when she looks at me. It lasts 2 seconds, but somehow in her eyes I see the Infinite, and the Infinite is empty. She looks at me, I sense as if she is looking at all the people in that room at the same time.
Yes, I got it: that's Borges' Aleph. This is definitely the full-meal Love, capital letters, I've been looking for. Impossible to be hungry at this lady's restaurant.

I come back to Geneva, pack my things and in a month I'm back in Andalusia. Now I have no hair and no house; now I'm living in her ashram along with 4 other girls.  Mariana, the PhD student of complex thoughts - here I am     now        head to the feet my teacher, not knowing where to go, yet knowing there´s nowhere to be.
And it doesn't really matter, for everywhere and anywhere are just exactly the same and at the same time.


When I first met you I knew right there that my search was over .

* * *

This is the first post of a series of diaries about my 20 days at the Finca La Luz between October and mid-November 2013.

All my gratitude to Saraswathi Ma and Mooji for finding my way as I crossed Spain with no final destination.

Yes, yes - the moment of my first encounter with Saraswathi Ma was actually recorded and can be found at YouTube

Mooji, the Beautiful: happy because I know soon I will be in your Presence



* "Love´s a knife" - those are Saraswathi Ma's words
* "Finca La Luz" is not a permanent ashram of Saraswathi Ma - it is a space of silence in Órgiva, Andaluzia, where she offered us her Presence during six months between June and November/2013. Ma is now travelling, and her scheduled can be found at her website: www.saraswathima.org