Monday, July 10, 2017

The Day My Buddha Burned - part twelve

On the Subject of Thy Will
The study of life really does seem to be a study of what gets in the way of God’s will.
How have I felt God’s will – the act of surrender



Stories of Surrender
For many years I had been playing with the Lord’s prayer and mumbling ‘thy will be done’ half heartedly. I really didn’t want God’s will done at all. For goodness sake, I knew better than that. 
I mentioned before that my parents were atheists. My father’s parents were a mixture of Chinese, Welsh, English and Scottish. My father, taught me the Lord’s Prayer, as a sort of safety device I guess. I remember, as a small girl, reciting the Lord’s prayer before bed. And at the same time, God was never discussed in a serious manner. Jesus in particular was the butt of many jokes and believers were given no quarter. Thinking about it, from an adult’s point of view, I can’t imagine why my father would teach the prayer to me at all.
I used to say it to myself as a kind of goodnight mantra, right up into my teen years.
I spent years facing my demons – living them out – women, the physical body, …. Learning about them…
One day, when I was 25, I was in in deep meditation and I heard a voice say ‘Tiffany, come here.’ And I was so terrified that I stopped meditating. I looked at myself and saw that I was in a highly dysfunctional state. With the language I have now, I would say that my top two chakras were vibrantly open, but the rest were firmly unconscious and underdeveloped. I went on a crusade to ground myself in the physical body. And I did it.
After years or focusing on the physical body and achieving in the physical world, I felt ready to return awareness to meditation and my spiritual body. I started immediately seeing colours, feeling vibrations, seeing the white glow around alive bodies, trees, mountains. And I knew it was time to invoke the spirit into my heart and mind.
I had to face the word ‘God’ again. I had to align my feelings with words and culture. I felt, as always, alone, apart from books.
While sitting in meditation, I was often guided in my asana practice. My body moved itself into position, my hands formed mudras I have never studied and I saw positions I was to practice. I saw images of angels, guides and symbols that helped open up my awareness to the spirit body. And my main practice became surrender.
When I returned to my home country Australia, I focused on my weakest chakra, the root. I had never been able to feeling it at all. I had suffered sciatic pain in my right leg years ago, had been hit by a car that literally dinted in my right thigh when I was a teenager and had led a wander’s life since I was born. I didn’t identify as Australian, I didn’t feel at home in my family, I didn’t have a group that I felt comfortable in. I was highly developed individually and totally alien in a group. I avoided groups and distrusted them. I needed to develop roots.

That’s when I met a giant dark snake. 

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