In for a landing... : )

[Guest guest]

>> And you landed well. <<

And also wrote:

>> Sat Chit Tapas Ananda upon having recovered our original integrated

human / divine self... <<

Thank you so much for this lovely note. I especially liked this Sat

Chit Tapas Ananda idea/experience of yours. When I first came across

the three-fold idea, it was in the guise of Swami Satchitananda. I

didn't meet him, but a friend of my sister's considered him to be her

Guru. Later I met many others who were devotees, but, even though I

lived not far from his Yogaville and thought I wanted to visit there,

it never happened. It was years later, though, after meeting Ammachi

and reading more of her words and other spiritual writings that I

learned the true meaning of sat...chit...ananda. Also it was after

becoming familiar with Amma's renaming of her bramacharis when they

become Swamis, so I began to see how all these

word/concept/experiences were put together in one thing...very

poetic. Alot of them have amrita as part of their names, because, I

think, Amma has it in hers. Anyway, I have been reading about tapas

lately. In Linda Johnson's book, "Daughters of the Goddess: the Women

Saints of India," she writes about how many of these women, especially

those of high birth like Shree Maa, left their comfortable lives and

went off somewhere to practice tapas. In this instance, the word

tapas is being used to mean the practicing of austerities. Shree Maa

wandered all over India all by herself, without even a penny in her

pocket, something, I read, that is very unusual for women to do

there.

So I am interested by the connnection between this aspect of tapas and the aspect

of the will. The idea of the will has been very important to me, and I

have spent a long time attempting to find mine and understand it.

(I know this sounds funny ~ how could anyone not locate their will ~ but I grew up in

an extremely abusive household, and the only will that existed was the

abusers; the rest of us, my siblings and my mother and myself, had our

wills negated and obliterated. For a long time I associated this

obliteration of the will with spirituality and with openness...how

insidiuos the way that one person may affect others. I took me many

years to realize the falacy of this stance and to begin to sort out

what openness/connection, will, love, physicality, emotion, thought,

and spirit were all about and how they interrelated. I do believe, by

the way, that this sorting out quest was precisely one of the reasons

I took this birth with the particular family I choose. I should also

like to say, that in a visionary experience, I saw my father in his

true form as spirit, and it remains one of the most profoundly

beautific, healing, amazing experiences of my life.)

So...well...very amazing...your note has given me the opportunity to

verbalize for myself in a very clear way how this has been and come

together for me. Thank you very much...and thank you for the website.

Blessings, Shanti ~ Linda