P.S. regarding Anandi Ma

[Guest guest]

>>> nierika 09/02/01 00:44 AM >>>

To the group: I meant to add that I am not personally a devotee of Anandi Ma

and have never personally met her. But I have benefited from reading about

her life and reading her own words. I recall someone here once saying they

had received shaktipat from Shri Anandi Ma, and the form of practice that Ma

teaches is called Kundalini Maha Yoga. If anyone is interested, I would be

glad to provide the link to the Dyanyoga website. Blessings ~ Linda

 

Dear Linda, Bob, and friends,

 

I am the one who mentioned receiving shaktipat from Anandi Ma on the list. I

went to see her last year, out of instinct and ostensibly to get some help with

9 years of really roller coaster kundalini activity. She told me the shaktipat

experience would even things out, and this has been the case. Through my

connection with her the k activity became managable, and the spiritual growth is

strong and supported, without so many overwhelming times. Although I practiced

TM for 26 years, I never had that sense of having a guru, or knowing what one

would want one for. But my experience with Anandi Ma has brought a profoundly

nourishing sense of support and connection on the spiritual path. Now I finally

understand the starry-eyed devotee gazing lovingly on the guru, a feeling that

had quite escaped me before.

 

I have been enjoying your discussion of artmaking and kundalini, Bob and Linda.

Bob, thank you also for sending us an image of your beautiful landscape

painting. I am a painter also and have noticed similar kinds of energy activity

in the creative process. For years since kundalini I have heard the sound of OM

at all moments of creation and dissolution. This was a fairly pervasive roar in

the first ears of k activity but became a more clear, quiet opening and

subsiding sound in a greater field of silence over the course of time. I hear

the sound at the birth or death of any creature, and in the fullness of deep

attention, while painting. I have also heard it in the studio classroom, when

my students are painting with great focus. I hear it more often when I am

teaching figure painting, for some reason, than in other courses.

 

Bob, also I have been thinking about your description of working with children

and the kind of strong connection you feel when you are painting them. About 10

years ago, before graduate school, I taught in the inner city schools of

Chicago. I mainly worked in a high school that had a high rate of violence and

assults on faculty and other students and an 85 % drop out rate. My initial

experiences there were pretty challenging and I was desperate for ways to

connect with my students and deal with the fear and violence around me. I began

to make drawings of my students during breaks and lunch time. I especially

would ask students who were real problematic, like those in my homeroom of

felons, to sit for me. For a drawing, they had to sit quietly while we looked

at each other for about 20 minutes. I would give them the drawing, so everyone

was willing to sit. I found that after I had made a drawing of a student, any

behavior problems or conflicts I had with them would drop away. Many of these

were students with very violent police records, and in a couple of cases they

were students who had assaulted or threatened me. There is definitely something

in that silent exchange that I cannot explain. I keep thinking of Alice Neel's

paintings, the way those faces rise up to meet the gaze of the artist, and the

bodies just kind of lead up to support that mutual open gaze, like the way the

stalk of a plant holds its bloom. Maybe that is what it is like for you.

 

Love,

 

Jill

[Guest guest]

Dear Jill

Lovely Jill lovely. A very beautiful post. When the love comes up

during life sittings it is evidently special for both people. I have

been blessed in the same way as you. Your experience makes me

believe my speculations were true. Yours seem irrefutable. I have

had little ones grow up and come back to talk to me when grown and

they did that because they remembered the connection.

Here's to art'

Bob G.