Visiting Vallikavu and other thoughts

[Guest guest]

Dear Peter, Eknath and Kenna,

Thank you all for your prompt and helpful answers. Peter, I'm in no hurry

for the map. Will look for it when you post it.

I am making a file of all this info. for reference when I go.

Thanks to all again.

 

While reading my daily Ammachi Group Digest a few days ago, I had an insight

into something (I am sure other more in-the-moment people arrived at this

some time ago!) Perhaps being a product of cynical big city life for many

years, I did sometimes question the "realness" of the connection I felt when

I communicated with other devotees of Amma. Was it just a feeling of the

moment, engendered by emotional attachment to Amma, transferred to strangers

with the same interests and attachments? A kind of fan club mentality as it

were? This was not a matter over which I worried a great deal, but

occasionally a cynicism toward my feelings of fellowship with other

Amma-followers would appear in the corners of my mind. Makes one squirm a

bit.

This was the thought I had. Amma says we are all part of the one great

Supreme Consciousness. We know theoretically that we are all connected, the

great challenge and goal is realizing the experience of that belief. Most of

our (I speak only of myself here) relationships involving love or

connectedness to other human beings in this world are transactional and

selfish in nature. We "invest" love toward those whose reciprocal feelings

or company give us pleasure or satisfaction. This love is limited, because

its objects and applications are limited. While they may be reflections of

divine Love, they are a lot murkier and incomplete than Perfect Love is.

Amma is such an ocean of pure untainted love, that when I love her and she

loves me, I have the inkling of an experience of connecting to that Love that

is perfect. And when I feel the reflection of that same wondrous experience

in anther person, I feel lit up very like a Christmas light on a string,

conscious of drawing from that same perfect power for a moment. That's when

the phrase that Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "I am not in you, you are

in me" occurs to me-- if we are all existing in the same Self, and the

murkiness is removed for a moment from both our visions, then can I cannot

recognize in you the same divinity I felt in me at that moment? Amma's love

seems to come alive again, reflected in the heart and eyes and tears of a

fellow devotee even in Her physical absence.

Do you feel what I mean? Or have I babbled, and mixed metaphors to death?

Thank you for listening.

Usha

[Guest guest]

Usha wrote:

 

I did sometimes question the "realness" of the connection I felt when

> I communicated with other devotees of Amma. Was it just a feeling of the

> moment, engendered by emotional attachment to Amma, transferred to strangers

> with the same interests and attachments?

 

We know theoretically that we are all connected, the

> great challenge and goal is realizing the experience of that belief. Most of

> our (I speak only of myself here) relationships involving love or

> connectedness to other human beings in this world are transactional and

> selfish in nature. We "invest" love toward those whose reciprocal feelings

> or company give us pleasure or satisfaction. This love is limited, because

> its objects and applications are limited.

 

I appreciate your questions and thoughts here. Like many western women,

relationship was god for me, along with managing impressions and consuming.

A month at Vallikavu helped me see this, along with finally hearing Amma's

teachings about the limitations of relationship. Over the years, I see how

Amma uses relationships to smooth us down, like water in the river. I see

this best when all the people my ego struggles with come to the program and

suddenly we are all happy to be there together. What I realized at the

Ashram was that we got along as well as we did, all the hundreds of us with

so many differences, because we struggling little brothers and sisters

finally have a Big Mama we cannot manipulate, no matter how we try. I think

we all spend a lot of time finding out she really is our Big Mama, testing,

questionning, integrating, testing again.

 

The connections I value the most are in devotion. When a brother or a sister

shows devotion, I feel so close to them. Along the way, there are people who

have blessed me this way. I doubt that any of them know how much they have

inspired me. It always feels like a connection with Amma. I think that's one

way she helps us remember the Real Love to which you refer. Another way to

say this, is when we all sit together facing her, I feel closest to all of

us. One of my favorite meditations for a long time, is to imagine sharing

Amma's lap with various people with whom I am in relationship, the way she

can bring a large family group together in her arms. We all are one big

family group being held in her arms.

 

Bruce, if you're reading this, imagine these 2 little brothers, Al and

George W., sharing Amma's embrace along with any one else who thinks the

outcome of this election is anything but another wrinkle in the divine plan.

 

Om Amriteshvaryai Namah.

 

kenna