from the Devi Gita and other Inspirations
/
Excerpt from:
Belonging: Remembering ourselves Home By Toko-Pa Turner
“Embodied living is to involve ourselves not only with goodness, but with the ache of longing and absence, including them in our way of going. Can I be with my longing? Can I allow the emptiness of what is missing from me remain without trying to fill it with stand-ins and facsimiles? Can I be longing without expectation that it be soothed?
Can I, in living with absence, become the presence it is so hungry for?”
Excerpt from:
SHAKTI: REALM OF THE DIVINE MOTHER By VANAMALI
In every puja or ritual here is a particular set called Sankalpa or intention, in which the gods are invoked. This intention is the reason the priest undertakes the ritual. It may be for some physical purpose like the curing of a disease or passing an exam, or anything else. The intention is said to be so important that it can actually change the chain of events and make manifest the desire of the one who performs the ritual. Such reasoning is now backed by modern science; the quantum age has shown that the intention of the experimenter has a lot to do with the final result to be achieved from the experiment!
The individual is not an isolated phenomenon, a piece of flotsam floating aimlessly in the sea of the world, totally unconnected with everything else, with freedom to pursue his own selfish ends. He is part of an interconnected whole in which all of us are deeply involved. Human consciousness is
absolutely essential to the making of some objective sense out of the constant flux of subatomic particles. This is the amazing discovery of quantum physics that many scientists are still unable to accept.
In the Gita Devi, Devi says:
I am the intelligence from which the universe emanates and in which it abides. The ignorant believe me to be nothing more than Nature or Prakriti, but the wise experience me as the true self within. They glimpse me in their own hearts when their minds become as still and clear as an ocean without waves. The supreme wisdom is that which ends the delusion that anything exists apart from me. The fruit of this realization is a total lack of fear and the end of sorrow. When one understands that all the limitless universes are but a fraction of an atom in the unity of my being, that all the numberless lives in the universes are the wisps of vapor in one of my breaths, that all triumphs and tragedies, the good and the evil in all the worlds, are merely games I play for my own amusement, then life and death stand still - and the drama of individual life evaporates like a shallow pond on a warm day.
This world that you are experiencing now is nothing but my power. The only remedy for your ignorance is to worship me as your innermost self. Surrender yourself to me with one-pointed devotion and I will help you discover your true being. Abide in me as I abide in you. Know that even now at this very moment there is absolutely no difference between us. Realize and be fulfilled this instant.
