My Three Gurus ~ Bhagavan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri and Kanhangad, my Great Grandfather Guru. Swami Paramahamsa Muktananda, my Grandfather Guru. Mark Griffin, my Guru. Guru Marks Lotus Feet and myself ... digital Oil Artwork by me.
Is it a selfish Act? … This desire to release from the wheel???
Bhagavan Nityananda's Elder Sadhu Truth N.E.S.T.
Most of us spend our lives steeped in selfish motive. Whether making each move, unconscious of the fact, or in an out and out leveraging each situation to have the best outcome for self, it is our reality. For the sake of universal correctness, I will only write the statement that this as my reality. Being selfish is a natural occurrence, one brought forth by our very innate animal instincts to ‘survive’.
First of all, even with my seemingly hours of editing on this note, with so much more simply left out, It will still come across to many as ‘free associative thinking’. And it is. For most of my 900 friends on Facebook, I apologize for using words that might have no meaning for you, but in most cases I have tried to offer brief definitions of what the heck I am trying to share and explain.
The ‘Wheel’ is the Hindus understanding of the ‘Wheel of Samsara’, cause and effect literally meaning "continuous flow", which is the repeating cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth (reincarnation) within Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön, Jainism, Yoga and Sikhism {taken from Wikipedia}. I will go out on a limb and state that in EVERY indigenous tribe on the planet, reincarnation is a belief. One finds it everywhere but in Christianity and Islam. (And that can also be argued).
I’m living in India now for a year and three months, at the seat of my THREE guru lineage and I yearn to experience the Formless Absolute … I yearn to be ONE with God. ONLY. From my reading and understanding of sacred Eastern texts AND the Bible, I discover that I already AM that ONE, but still do not recognize it.
Sometimes, after taking a few, yogic deep bellows breaths, that oneness bursts within my heart as I sit in Bhagavan Nityananda’s temple in Ganeshpuri and the particles of myself do a weaving and undulating and expanding all through the grand hall and I feel one with everyone present. They are Me. I shared that once I exploded with the light in the temple. Sometimes that energy moves out into All of India and even all of the earth. Once or twice shining into the cosmos. During one of my Avatar Kriya Babaji mantra nights, I {imagined}, certainly, that he whisked me up from my seat, took me backwards and I saw the earth become a tiny light … the cosmic cave in Khultabad, sitting with guru Mark, took me up and beyond the earth as well.
I yearn to be ONE. How to get there, from my limited, unopened third eye perspective, is the journey I wish to reveal now. As my ancient one, the monk always says, “Its right in front of your tim, but you can’t see it. So many guides are waiting to assist you, but you are not going deeper, you are not giving them the opportunity to bestow blessings on you. You are still attached to the Bliss Bunny effect of running the energy through the physical body”. Yes, that is true. But what could be more profoundly healing than having every cell of your body resonate, vibrating with this ONENESS? “But there is MORE beyond the senses. So much more! he says.”
What? Wow!!! REALLY? That is Awesome, I think, but why me? He says, ‘its not just you tim, you’re nothing special. Everyone has this opportunity, stop selfishly considering yourself to be ‘special’. OK, I am trying … but try as I might to let go of this ACTOR persona, this thing called ‘shaktipat’, the blessings bestowed to me by my guru to activate this ever running prana of electricity, I only come back around to all the desires I have to be an amazing Actor, winning Oscars, Starring on Broadway and even being the Lead Tenor in an Opera House! Lol. Of course I want to become an awesome healer too, leading others to recognize their OWN innate healing abilities … I Want I want I want. When does that go away? Perhaps for this body, mind and soul, never. Perhaps a little bit day after day … releasing the dreams. I thought I did release the dream. But why would my Operatic Tenor voice manifest after ‘giving up the dream’? What is all this about? Why do i, JTP Maloney get to be in India, number one and how did it happen that I am blessed to sit with Bade Baba, who was Krishna in a previous incarnation, by the way and for those who do not know the Avatar story, Krishna was Jesus TOO! But why do I get to sit everyday in this village for over a year on a tourist visa? Questions that are temporarily subdued by another sit with the Bade Baba, my Bhagavan Nityananda, where all is washed, all is tidy and cleaned … actually, his temple is quite literally this for me. I can walk inside with all of my angst, all of my selfish motives and forget myself and become ONE for that hour or two or three. It never ceases to amaze me that in the midst of such a chaotic, noisy darshan hall … I am transfixed by the Kalachakra artistry of the temple sanctum and find myself sinking into the whiteness of it all within minutes … but all that took time too, forgetting the sounds or embracing them. Not sure how that goes … but they disappear at times. I feel like this is my classroom. So many times people would try to persuade me to go to a silent place, but I see the value of overcoming the obstacle of ‘extraneous noise’ as part and parcel with the unfolding tranquility that comes from releasing the judgments, embracing the talkers as just another part of myself … Living in Ganeshpuri, realizing that having this shakti includes the command from Shiva’s Guru Gita: ‘Anena yad bhavet kaaryam, tad vadaami mahaamate; Loko pakaarakam devi, laukikam tu na bhaavayet.’ (O Wise One, much can be accomplished through these spiritual practices. Focus your attention on service and working for the welfare of people, instead of using your accrued Shakti for self-centered worldly gain.) This Command of Shiva, to step outside of my attachment to the bliss to trying to be here for everyone has served me exponentially to FACE my karmas of attachment, of my own personal neediness to be ‘special’, to be praised. Of course I have had the help of the monk to reveal to me some of my own inner workings that I could not see myself. Through it I discovered I was doing every ounce of my seva, the Indians call ‘charity work’, Selfless Service … with this kind of ‘unconscious, or just near the conscious level’ of, ‘watch me’ see, I am doing this. Never did that interfere with Baba giving me this profound energy blast in the temple. He seems to overlook these miniscule issues, because there is a hint of a truth that I really DO want to inspire others to do the same thing. I wanted to hand that banana to the person I was serving regardless of the disease or caste they were coming from. I wanted to take my shoes off and walk through the dried urine in the homeless shelter, just to prove a point and I did. ~I wanted to pick up that dying person and cart him through the village in a rickshaw to ‘lead by example’ as we are taught in America. But in that instant, I got scared and I left that man to die ‘naturally’ as he seemed to wish. I’ve seen at least five homeless Older people do this same thing, lying in the sun. This skin and bones man, with his head opened, maggots crawling out because he had not moved from his place in the homeless shelter, suffering for an entire nine months as I fed him almost daily with my extra chapatti from Baba Canteen. The language barrier and the fact that most other villagers will not step foot in this place did not help. My selfishness. I simply did not have the where withal to ASK, ‘What can I do to help this man?’ I discovered too late. There was an option; a government hospital not 10 minutes away. I still mourn that opportunity to show compassion and perhaps that ‘showing off’ of what a truly humane person would choose to do or should choose to do in any given circumstance.
Now I have returned to the selfishness of needing to walk past these people that I fed every few days as I go towards my Baba’s temple. And I choose NOT to look anymore, once again going back to that place where I was so comfortable. The selfishness of holding onto my shakti. Not serving.
Well, making the decision to serve one or two people, instead of everyone.
My personal reveal about the ONE and how to ‘get it’ is this: The monk says, “This un-manifest Brahman, or formless Absolute reality, i.e.: God is all around you tim”?
Hmm, what is all around … I’m thinking, thinking of so many different possibilities?Then I come back to a prayer I read in one of Vivekananda’s writings. AIR. Vayu … Vayu equals AIR in Hindi. The Vayu, Air, ie: Oxygen… is the Unmanifest Brahman. Pieces of the puzzle come closer~ So, very cool! I was right all this time … that idea I latched onto with guru Mark, ‘breathing with intention’… sharing with hundreds of friends along these last many years, one on one … that the ONLY way to connect with God on this physical plane is to recognize that he resides in Everything. But more importantly, recognizing that the ‘secret code’ of what Jesus shared about Christ makes us one, in its simplicity, sipping of the oxygen, the air, ie: GOD, with your gratitude … transmuting those molecules of oxygen into the ‘drops of bliss’ or the ‘battery charge’ … or as we say in Christian terms, ‘having the holy spirit descend upon us’ … Chills, tingles … electricity. Whatever you want to call it. I was right. The BIG ‘I’ was right, that selfish part of myself who would occasionally look around my meditation group and calculate who was doing the deep bellows breathing, who was not. I understood the mechanism of this process of receiving the energies, through the retention of the breath and the space between the breaths ~ those are the places, the spaces of emptiness where that molecule, that atom, explodes into something else… into the connection with All that IS, the absolute Bliss.
My animal survival of being selfish is still present and Surviving i am. More than surviving 16 years with hiv ~ I have found my self, presented with all my faults and all of my selfish motives, yet I am still in love with this ONE called ‘Shaktim’, because the soul is perfect, will Always be perfect, as it is part of ‘THE ONE’ … Jai Nityananda
My good fortune… my 80 something year old Swami G, the one who was my bunk mate during my gurus’ first retreat at Fire Mountain, the one I got this mansion for, has accepted my offer to live with me … and Pradip, the one I call ‘Samadhi Baba’, the one who is on my 9 foot banner for the ELDER SADHUS has also come around after my many invitations. This is getting good folks ~ Karma yoga, serving the guru lineage and Elder Sadhus … I’ve NEVER been MORE Selfishly Happy !!! Jai Shree Nityananda!
The Above Photos are some of my Digital Oil Artwork ~ if you are interested in supporting Shaktimseva~ 100% of your donations will go toward my seva projects ... paypal timmaloney82@gmail.com
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