Trinetri

When to the depths

Of grief I fell,

You grieved with me

In that hell.

Your grief set

The world aflame

And so it put

Mine to shame.

Silenced, I looked

Into your eyes

As you grieved for me,

O Bhairavi...

As my grief
Turned to joy

I followed you

Into the sky.

I could not keep up

With your flight.

I could not match

Your delight.

Amazed, I looked

Into your eyes

As you laughed at me,

O Bhairavi...

They say you live

In the world that lies

Beyond the darkness

Of closed eyes.

My eyes are locked

Upon your dance.

What use to me

Is a trance?

Drunk, I look

Into your eyes

As you dance before me

O Bhairavi...

Maddened, I sit

At your feet,

Lost in the spell

Of their beat.

Nothing left

For me to do

For I could never
Dance with you.

Defeated, I look

Into your eyes

As you devour me

O Bhairavi...

The pause...

Never have I heard you speak.
And yet I do know your voice.
A vague memory of the future
Lurks within me like a thief.
I listen, listen and listen
And I grow weary of the wait.
And in my madness I can hear
Voices spilling from the rocks.
But I do know what they are,
I know that you are silent. 
And then I hear it - the pause! 
The pause before you speak.
No sound yet, but the pause!
A silence as loud as a roar.
 
I know this pause is eternal.
I know you will never speak.
And yet, I am ecstatic...

Raindrop

Like a drop of rain falling
    Through the wide open sky
I fall through you in silence
    And watch emptiness go by.

I fell in love with you one day
    And even today I fall
Who knows where I shall land or if
    I shall land at all.

Where I might land some day
    It does not seem to matter
A drop is a drop while it falls
    When it lands... it's water!

*****

No, I have not fallen in love with a woman or anything like that! 

A conversation I had a couple of days back led me to the issue of being in trust. It is a remarkably tricky state to achieve. I am certainly not talking about trusting God or trusting fate or anything hocus-pocus like that. Imaginary props like that may bring some solace, but there is nothing wonderful about fooling yourself. I am talking about moving into trust for no reason at all. It is a very peculiar state of being and to touch it even for a moment is truly intoxicating. This is not about mental or emotional gymnastics - it is a completely different state of consciousness.

In a discourse during the consecration of the Linga Bhairavi Temple, Sadhguru talked about moving consciously into a state of trust.

"... I am not talking about belief. I am talking about moving into trust. So, how can I trust? The fact that you are sitting here comfortably (or not!) - that's trust. Because, you know there have been incidents where the Earth has opened up and swallowed people. There have been incidents where pieces of sky have fallen and people have been crushed to death. There have been situations - the very air that you breath has turned against you.... So you are anyway trustful... unconsciously. You are trustful unconsciously, unlovingly. I am talking about being trustful consciously, lovingly. That's devotion... Devotion is not fantasy. Devotion is not a belief system. Devotion is the sweetest way to be in existence."

It is could be very easy for someone to misunderstand what he is saying and think that he is talking about devotion to God. But he is not talking about trusting something you don't know. He is just talking about trusting existence. That does not mean that he is talking about believing that "everything is going to be fine in the future" - that would just self-deception. He is talking about just plain trust - based on nothing, demanding nothing. He is talking about trust that is rooted in the present, it is not concerned about the future. He is talking about falling in love with existence. He is talking about becoming a raindrop.

Falling in love with existence is very different from falling in love with a person. Falling in love with a person involves a lot of emotional nonsense. Falling in love with existence is meditation.

Babbling baby

The middle of the night,
Mommy sleeps.
The moon peers in
Through a shaft of light
And lights up the crib
Where Baby sits
Alone in his world
And babbles on...

*****

I remember listening to Sadhguru chastising people about how scattered they are, about how hard he has to work to bring them into the Here and Now. I remember feeling ashamed of myself as I heard him, and yet I knew that my energies were shamelessly dancing across half the globe. It is really unfortunate that we have so much energy. If we did not have so much of it, we would not waste so much of it. Of course, if we did not have energy, we would end up falling asleep since becoming meditative requires energy. I would like to think that being meditative does not require any effort at all, but I do know for a fact that going in that direction requires some effort. It requires effort to realign these million pieces of myself until they all face the same way.

And yet, scattered though we are, there come those rare moments of blessedness when we are struck with just the right amount of ennui - not enough to cause depression and make us stop living, but enough to cause us to stop looking. Looking! That original sin through which we turned outward to begin with! A stunted little consciousness looking out through two little windows into a sea of nonsense! Just the right amount of ennui so that the eyes close and we enter our own inner world.

No one else. Just a very private world, like a crib illuminated by a shaft of moonlight. No effort to meditate, just a profound silence caused by being where you really, really want to be. Here! Oh, what a wonderful place Here is!

To just be Here... to not make an effort to meditate... to not make an effort to become silent... to just babble incoherently without the obligation to make sense! What an ocean of silence lives in the nonsensical words of a baby!

Tonight I sat in the dark, in front of Bhairavi, the room just lit by the lamp of the gudi. Her immense presence filled the dark room... (She does not sleep!) That is when I saw that baby, babbling in the dark.

Jai Bhairavi!