The Sacred Place

A sacred place…

Bells ringing in the distance. Invocations being ushered through loudspeakers across the space. The rumor of the crowd, proceeding towards the sacred gateways. The bright lights cleansing the emptyspace above us. Sparse furniture. Incredibly high ceilings, that let the sunlight through here and there… A sense of isolation in this crowded place. A sense of being at peace, of being with the One, of being the One. At home, but in the home of the heart. Where everything meets. Lights, Soul, Eternity…

I am writing, at last, and again, from this place that has become one of the most sacred for me in this last year.

Of all places… Really.

Really…

Come on…

Yes!

Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport.

Same coffee place as many times this year. Same seat as many times this year. Same inspiration and inner opening to the infinite as many times this year.

What, of all places, makes a space, like this place, confined to the extent of what my ipod lets through, Sacred to me? Is Sacred anything we make Sacred? Does the Sacred actually arise from within?

Here is what makes THIS place Sacred to me. Like no other.

It all started this year. Flying over to Japan with Shiva to assist her for a week-end and connecting through BKK. As I had left home, I had had one of the most challenging discussion in my Life ever. My beloved, then, and I had realized, not accepted, nor decided, but realized that we needed space. That our Sacred union was no longer bearing fruits or giving us a sense of fullness. My heart full of a terrifying and complex mesh of emotions that I could not make sense of, not even contemplate, I deplaned in BKK for a 4 hours stop over, and I sat. With my journal. And I sat. And felt. Felt with such intensity. What was there to be felt. And that was a defining moment of my year. Sitting on this seat, letting the energy move through me, painfully. Not refusing the harshness of it all, not judging my clasping and anger and devotion. Not even watching it really. Feeling. As my Tradition teaches us to meditate: let feelings unfold and stay with them until your have absorbed them in the space of the heart. And this is how an awe-inspiring and terrifying outpour of emotions started transforming that random seat in a neutral café in BKK's airport into a Temple of my Heart. A Sacred place.

Today still, I feel here, in this amazing space, the waves of energy that washed through me 8 months ago… 8 months. Today. Exactly today. I just realized today that today is 8 months to the day from that sacred day when I left my expectations. When I checked in my former life at the airport, and that ONE luggage got lost for good and never made its way back to me. A former Life that I worship without regretting it.

And again I flew through BKK in April, on my way to Japan again, with Catherine. My dearest friend… And then too, energy moved through me. Loss. The reality has sunk in, and the prospect of building a new Life, was dawning on me. And God was I trying hard not to consciously resist that Change, when all I was instinctually drawn to was digging my heels in the pranic sand of my emotional desert and, well, RESIST. I had met someone in Japan, and knowing that this would probably not lead to nothing, I had been reminded that I would have to go out into the world of dating again, and meet people, and put my Self out there and yuk, yuk yuk build something. Again, I was alone in that same café in BKK's airport, and feelings were still intense. I remember thinking: how do I make sense of this amazing new play of actions that I really really really did not want and that I still do not want to have to deal with? Why do I have to do this? Do I even have a choice? How does my spiritual practice apply to this? Oh well, easy one this time around. The Gita is clear. Do not refuse the terms and conditions of your embodiment. You are a soldier? Then fight! You are a corporate manager? Then manage (ethically)! You are a householder and a lover? Then hold that house and Love! Love. That was the word. I had to let Love run through me again. With the risk of losing it - again. Of being hurt and falling flat on my face. Again. AGAIN! AGAIN!
And then again, that seat took an even more intense pranic charge, as I let my feeling mind, that sacred heart consciousness, hridaya, take over the process.
In BKK's airport.

And then again, here I was in August. Unexpectedly. I was bound to India but a few days before departing, my dearest friend Annie and I decided to change our plans and make our way to Ayuthaya instead, the former Thai capital. Why? We will never know. All I know is we were both destined to sit in a certain outdoor temple complex, in a small shrine dedicated to a huge thin Buddha, and find a sacred yoni, buried deep in the Earth below an amazing Temple. And receive Sacred pranic slaps in our faces for the whole duration of the trip. Being told who we were. Realizing what we were not. Making peace with what we could certainly be but never would. Because it was not the dharma of this Sacred Embodied Incarnation. Intensity. Talk about intensity! Om Tat Sat.
And as I left (and waited for my delayed flight for 8 hours in my Sacred airport), I had time to look down into the Sacred Lake of my heart again. So much complexity had been dissolved. So much clarity had arisen. So much acceptance had come up in my heart. That was big: I had transmuted the pain, not dissolved it. And there was still Love. Infinite Oceans of Love. For myself, to start with, but also for my former Beloved. Still. With the acceptance that this Love would never be consumed, but would never die. Knowing. That amazingly powerful energy of knowing, at last. Jnana. Which I had oh so many times discounted as useless. The experience of sacred knowledge. Not wisdom, just knowing what is. Not the future, but what is to be known now. Or for now.
And again that seat, that café, BKK's airport. And for the very first time in a very long time. A smile. Faint. But a smile. On the corner of my lips. Because, very much because, as I had told to my pranic wife in LA a few weeks before (and for those of you who have explored the sacred scripture Vjnana Bhairava Tantra - I told her what I needed to hear, so I could remember it), everything is going to be just fine. Just fine. Fine. And knowing this. Not believing anymore but knowing, in some sacred place in me, was all I needed to gain. And I did.

And today, here I am again. November. BKK airport, same seat, same café. I feel, as I am writing these words, that I have been on a pilgrimage this year. A circumambulation around my Heart. A sacred journey to the infinite space of the Universe inside me. A discovery into a remembrance of my Self. And as I sit, once more, in that Sacred Temple of my existence, I contemplate, with peace and gratitude where I am. On so many levels, I am in a place of full resonance with the Universe, inclusive of its challenges and my fuck-ups. I am embodied to be here, and to go through these meandrous rivers of Experience. Because the remembrance of the Self, the splendorous recognition of being the One, lies in experience. Especially in the sharp and dark corners of existence. As someone told me long ago, the greatest light is to be found in the greatest darkness. And as darkness breaks, great Love and Ecstasy pours through, like juice out of a ripe orange. In the shape of so many things that we did not expect. For me, in the embodied light of He who Loves me to insanity right now.
As I sit one more time in this airport, I realize I am not a super-hero. I am nothing special. I am just a Lover. I am a struggling actor of my Life, with the volition, the iccha Shakti, to leap into the Fire and never resist it anymore.

Time heals burns and wounds. What is combusted beyond recoverability was needed to let go of. Discard the old so you can cultivate the new.

In peace, in ecstasy, in joyous Love. In harmony. In intensity. In the fire.


Closing with Rumi, as always:
'Go forward, knowing the path will vanish under you
Open your arms, knowing they will burn away
Give everything you are, knowing it is nothing
Bathe always in His river, even when it's blood.'

And Madonna, in style:
"To be brave is to love someone unconditionally, without expecting anything in return. To just give. That takes courage, because we don't want to fall on our faces or leave ourselves open to hurt.

What do you do?

What do you do when you feel a river run through you? What do you do when your mind is fogged with the most ecstatic clouds in the sky? What do you do when your heart is so fully dedicated to another that nothing else can step into it, or come out of it? What do you do when you are, quite literally, intoxicated with Love? What do you do when you are unable to move, plan, process and even eat? What do you do? When Love strike in all its splendor and intensity?

When your waken dreams are making you unable to function? What do you do when you want to own something that you do not want to possess? Because you want to be possessed? What do you do when you don't expect it and Love meets you? When you are overwhelmed with desire, dedication and merging energies? What do you do?

You bathe in it, immerse yourself fully in the experience. Accept that Life's rhythm, suddenly, gets interrupted and that the river runs through you, while all other streams dry up. You do not observe. You jump into that ocean. You do not meditate on it. You accept the experience of it as the meditative process. You drink of that cup with full intention and surrender...

And you smile. Faintly. Inwardly. As the sun in your heart reflects the light of the Lover into your Soul. And the moonlight casts its blue light over the pathways of your destiny.

What do you do?

You don't think.

You breathe.

You live.

You love.

Like this...

De cara a la pared...



Rumi says...

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the night sky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.
The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.
How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this


Lhasa says...

Llorando
De cara a la pared
Se para la ciudad
Llorando
Y no hay mas,
Muero quizas
Ha! Donde estas

Sonando
De cara a la pared
Se quema la ciudad

Sonando
Sin respirar
Te quiero amor
Te quiero amor

Rezando
De cara a la pared
Se hunde la ciudad

Rezando
Santa Maria
Santa Maria
Santa Maria