Take a walk on the wild side.

I mean, the dark side.

The side nobody wants to know about, or really talk about, particularly when it comes to the spiritual path.

You see, avoiding this is the most dangerous side of the human psyche. Dangerous. And we are all dangerous. If we are the full spectrum of creation, which we are, if we are the creative energy and power of nature, which we are, then we are all the colours of the rainbow. And when we come to the realisation of Self, we have gone to a place where the mind and the ego don’t exist. But if we are meant to stay, meant to be in this body and live on this floating orb in space, then eventually we will have to come to terms with the fact that we are not just love and light. We are, in fact, love, light, dark and dangerous.

Some of you will not want to hear this and will scroll on. I get it. At this stage, it may not be the liberating message it is to you. But believe me, the greatest freedom we have is this awareness, this understanding. We are all and everything, and that includes the dark.

What’s the go with that, I hear you asking?

Because the hardest thing to do, crazy as it is, is full self-acceptance. Particularly full acceptance of the whole of who we are. The parts we don’t want to see. The parts we have had to grapple with. The parts that, when we let them loose when we were younger, caused all kinds of problems. The parts that, as we were growing and dealing with life and handling our hurts, our quirks and the fullness of our own power, hurt us and hurt others. Not that we meant to, but sometimes we have to admit we did. And if we didn’t, we were never going to know the full extent of us, our power, our force.

We may think we are less than, for all the obvious reasons, but we usually stand paralysed in fear of the truth of what goes on deep within us.

The dark.

And here’s the rub. The more the light, the more the dark.

What? I hear you say.

Yes. The Shakti will shine a light on who you are. She will reveal you back to you, and that is one of the least attractive parts of the spiritual journey.

If you’re reading this, I wager you are a creative, or part creative. And creatives have an abundance of this force, the creative force. We also have an abundance of challenges with our personality. Why? Because the force flows so strongly it reaches the point of expression, artistic expression; however, that is for you. But to be a creative, you must have a strong love type, and that means we are more sensitive, deeper feelers.

And to fit in, we have spent a large part of our lives heavily monitoring and curating what we share, what people get from us, trying so hard to hide the rest. Which usually means avoiding feeling more, avoiding facing it, getting into anything that distracts us, whether it’s a night on the booze or another trip away.

But how can we possibly expect to have self-knowledge if we don’t know what’s under the hood?

At some stage we are going to have to stare straight into the mirror with a clear and open mind and start to see the parts of us we think we are hiding but which, honestly, are in plain sight.

The greatest delusion of all is that we are all light. That nothing is wrong, nothing goes wrong, that we have a perfect existence. My friend, that is the lie of the psychopath. The ‘paths’, as I call them. A little illustrated creature I created a couple of years ago to portray the psychopath, the sociopath, the narc, those lovely creatures who share this world and society with us. Dark. They are controlled by the dark. And their ability to self-reflect, to know it, is limited.

And guess what? We all have that dark within us. We all have the capacity to be that, whether it’s asleep or active. To me, self-love is the ability to come to terms with the ugly parts of us, bring them to the light, and accept them. In fact, that’s the way. The yoga, so to speak. And until we do, they will run us. We will spend way too much time trying to be something we aren’t, not living the full and wonderful life we can live when we fully accept ourselves, warts and all. Quite literally.

If you want self-knowledge, then at some stage you will have to get to know who you are. And come to terms with the fact that you won’t transform it all. Not at all. No one will. That is something a ‘path’ would say. Instead, you become mindful and aware of who you are. You are present to it, and you handle it. And sometimes it will be really tough. You will want to let her out of the bag. Sometimes you will have to really manage yourself so you can sit and face these parts of you, hold them, and in a way, neutralise them. Again and again. This, you will be glad to hear, gets easier. To the point that the alternative, which is what everyone else does, ignoring it and staying delirious or delulu, becomes much, much harder.

If we are going to talk real authenticity, this is it. Deep compassion for the parts of us we’d rather throw in the bin while we make up a persona, a character we think we need to be to be accepted.

Some of my dark I’ve allowed room, because she actually saves me in certain situations. I have learnt that to keep the ‘paths’ at bay, I am better off letting parts of me out that in the past I would have sat on or dismissed, even subconsciously, to be seen a certain way. I’m not saying this is all conscious. It’s mostly not, unless you’re a ‘path’, of course. Last year I painted an image of Bhadrakali, in a style I was exploring, set in the landscape of the town I was in. Instead of holding a severed head in her hand like the typical iconography, she was holding a scared little ‘path’. That was a little personal addition I liked. It was satisfying to paint. Even more so when people had no idea what to make of it. Why would I want to paint something that looks like a little shit? Because that is what they are, and I want them to see it.

When an ugly part of me comes out, with all the work I have done, I trust she is meant to. I trust my asana, my solid seat in my true nature. And I can admit it, too.

Can you?

At some stage, if you want to be free, you need to free up the dark in you. The more you keep it hidden, the more it stays in the dark, the more damaging it is.

And here’s another big thing to contemplate. The more hidden it is, the less you know yourself. And the less the light can come in. Because the healing is done in bringing your ugly to the light, not expecting it to leave completely, but watching it get less and less and less of a problem. Then you really will be powerful. Because the more powerful you are, truly, in a cosmic, universal, self aware way, the less dangerous you are.

Something I heard a lot on this journey was the truth that the more light you become, the more dark comes too.

When I think of it through my art journey, the previous version of me was dark and emotional, and I loved it. I loved going deep into the psychology of myself, my brother, my husband, the fuckery of the human and the human condition. But eventually it was all taken away, and I was freed up, and I was left with the parts of me that had been hidden, unseen and unacknowledged. They eventually came up. It was shocking. Honestly, it was so hard, so tough, it was a painful time.

Once I had come back to my art, I was curious to see what would come out. To my surprise, it was full of colour, an almost innocent, more childlike way of creating. The dark had moved, or been met by the light and equalised in a way. I couldn’t relate anymore to the old deep dark stuff. Apart from my ‘paths’, of course.

But what keeps the dark? The ego. And what keeps the light away? The ego. How? In the delulu. The identity. The need to be safe and accepted. You see, what all this means is that the ego is the sneakiest, most slithery, most tricky ‘path’ of all. If you come up to me and tell me the boring line that you have it all sorted, that you never feel sad, that you are good vibes only, I’ll know you have done no shadow work at all, and no really good spiritual work. Because it’s bullshit.

Life is the full spectrum.

Creation is all of everything.

The world is a very clear example of the light and the dark, and at the moment the dark is really strong.

And consider this. The light is challenged the most by the dark, not the other way around. We are not light abundant. We are predominantly dark matter. The stuff of the universe is dark matter. But that’s matter. MATTER. It is not the source. Consciousness is.

And consciousness is the light. Consciousness is the stuff of matter. We are consciousness as matter, walking little beings of karma and personality, egos and minds. We come with stuff to learn, things to overcome, and most importantly, things to know and accept about the truth of who we are. And we will never know the truth if we don’t come to terms with the dark and the light in us.

One of the things I understood through all this is how stupid the question is: if there is a god, then why do puppies die? It is a limited and stupid question, and it comes from a place of ignorance. That is the danger of personifying God and not knowing spirit, or consciousness. People like this, I wager, would need a lot of therapy to come to terms with the dark.

There is no god out there in the sky who favours and punishes. There is consciousness, and there is karma, and there is ego, and we need to learn to navigate, do the best we can, accept the things we can’t change, and be very honest about those gnarly hidden parts. Bring it all to the light of the Self and liberate yourself from the pressure of wearing a mask and carrying on a persona. You are fabulous. Life is tough, and also magnificent. Some of us have been beaten up more than others, but we all have to equally eat humble pie and accept that we really suck in some ways.

And yet, we are still the Self. Loved and adored by the universe, even if we get our little backsides spanked occasionally by it.

Life is going to throw a lot of curveballs and landmines, and it is all just a story, and it gives us insights, moments of light that come and shine brightly on the dark within. There is freedom there.

Often in the spiritual tradition I come from, we finish a program with a chant. I have shared it before, but it’s time to mention it again and end today’s rant.

This is perfect; that is perfect. Take the perfect away from the perfect, and only the perfect remains.

You are perfect, as you are. Not ego perfect. Divinely perfect.

With great love, Ammaji xxx

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

MataKamaleshwari©

There is something that is very clear for me. Nothing trumps experience. Nothing. Truth is truth. It’s lovely to know some stuff, some origins, some systems, but nothing compares to how the divine is coming through you. Life force. Shakti. Wisdom, love, purpose, all of it.

In meditation this week, after a few really hectic weeks finalising my studies in entrepreneurship- nice to have that done, and running everything that I am- the Devi gave me an in-my-face reminder. She gave my own teaching back to me. It felt like a subtle reset. Truth is the highest virtue for me. Or maybe not virtue. Just truth. Clear. Anyway, this keeps me on track, because this teaching, the one that came to me many years ago, is the ground that ALL of what has been created since has come from.

Here it is:

Big Heart. Big Mind. Big Being.

This is what I live by. This is my teaching.

In this moment, I meet Presence with full awareness of my inner power, all-loving, all-knowing, and free in action.

I open my eyes as the witness, curious, alive to life. From a clear space in my mind, my heart, and my belly, I bring this pure space into the world.

A wise mind, vast as the blue sky. A loving heart, tender as the bond of mother and child. Being itself, radiant, creative, whole.

When it falls apart, I notice, breathe, and begin again. Each return a remembrance of the clear space within. Shakti, the universal Mother, flowing through my being. Shakti, the cosmic creative power, transforming all that comes near.

That is it. That will give you everything. It contains everything within it. Of course, to know what that means, we need to do some work together. But this is enough if you hold it, contemplate it, let it unfold.

Nothing in here says be weak, be flaky, fence yourself in with boundaries. It gives you the way. And as the distinctions and issues come up while you hold this, that is when the questions will come. Shoot them to me, and we go right into it together.

And if this is stirring something in you, the doors are open.

The next round of The Artist’s Return begins Tuesday 18 August. It’s a live, small-group journey for creatives with a spiritual nature, the doorway back to your mystical and spiritual creative path, and back to the place your work actually comes from.

This is where we hold the teaching together and let it unfold.

Come and join us. → The Artist’s Return

That is enough for today.

Enjoy your day.

With great love,
Ammaji xxx

Jai jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺
MataKamaleshwari©

Dear one,

This week we had a very auspicious and mystical moon. The Guru moon. Gurupurnima.

Now guru has many meanings, and before you run away in fear from all the naughty ones, let us keep this real and honour the true guru.

Every year on Gurupurnima I make a post that usually just says one word. Guruupaya. It is personal and deep for me. I spend the day of that full moon in full immersion with what that is for me, filled with gratitude for the guru principle.

In the Trika we have an ingenious system. The malas and the upayas. A precise map of how consciousness contracts and exactly how it finds its way back; it is the backbone of what is taught in the Artist’s Return. When I finally understood it, truly and fully, it utterly transformed my life, and not just the spiritual side. The worldly side too. It was incredible.

And there is a particular way you know the teaching is really landing in you, that you are awakening. You stop needing things to be explained. You just understand. You pick up a scripture and you get it, the nuanced version, the real version. Not your psychic events or your kirtan highs. The real thing. And that understanding is not something you achieve by effort. It comes from the guru’s grace.

Guruupaya

Guruupaya is one of the teachings in the Shiva Sutras, in the second section, the one on Shaktopaya. Upaya means the means, the way, the path. So, the guru is the way. No other practice necessary.

When I started really paying attention, truly listening in my sadhana, I heard it again and again from my own teachers and from the great beings. It was when they opened fully to the guru that they got everything. The way, the sadhana, the things to overcome, the transformation, and the grace.

So how does this translate for art and creatives?

Well, it is just the same.

Not just any teacher. The teacher who carries the energy. The mystical, creative energy of mastery.

So today I am sitting in gratitude for the teachers on my path. My first ballet teacher. My piano teacher. My conductor in the orchestra. My favourite teacher at art school. And the writers I have loved along the way, the ones who inspired me to write.

But it is more than the people. It is the energy that flows through the great ones.

So when you are reading this, get up and do this- listen to the music. Read the great writing. Stand in front of the art of the masters and let yourself be amazed. Sit with it, in awe, and let that energy settle in you and stay.

Because what flowed through them flows through you too.

The piano studio

It is fitting, to fully trust the great teachers. The ones who have attained what you are looking to attain. To pay attention to them. Everything about them. To listen to their music, read their words, watch their plays, sit and contemplate their artworks. Whatever it is for you.

I remember being at boarding school and spending hours each day in the piano studios. Hours and hours of the boring stuff just to get to the good stuff.

I also, at the time, suffered terribly from stage fright. It was acute. No amount of talent mattered when it came time to perform on the big stage in the auditorium. I was fine in a group. I was great in the school plays and in the orchestra. But alone at a piano, punching out Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk in front of hundreds of people, was another thing entirely. There were reasons, and over time I got help for it.

But what kept me going was a strange awareness that all those beings I adored were in the music they wrote. Mozart was my guy. So I would sit and look at the notes before playing. I would connect to the energy of Mozart, and I would even ask for his blessings and say a little prayer. Yes, I was always this way, ha ha.

And it worked. At the time it was the best thing I had, and I put all my focus onto it, so the fingers would move instead of stiffen and rust the instant I sat down on stage. Even to sit my music exams I had to do this. It was pretty awful back then.

But it is no wonder I cottoned on to this upaya. This direct and simple path. The energy, the gift, the power that flowed through them flows through me, and it flows through all of you too. And when you really go for it, you become so focused on them that you take all the care and the focus and the importance off yourself. And things start to move so beautifully.

We may not make something as spectacular as the Jupiter Symphony. I mean, that is a godly brilliance in musical form. We might not be a Steinbeck or a Rembrandt. But we will be something that resonates and radiates with what we are meant to do. When we do it with the focus and the dedication we hold for the great masters. The guru principle, energy that helps reveal the way.

The holy feet

In the Trika, guruupaya is always represented by a little pair of silver or gold sandals on the puja, on the altar. Or a pair of holy feet. We honour those every day. We put all our woes at those feet. We let ourselves be empty in front of them.

And we view nature the same way. This guru energy is in nature. It is in all the beings that have helped you become what you were here to be.

But just because something is destined for you does not mean you have read the cues and done what needed to be done to reach it. So guruupaya is a brilliant method. A stunningly divine and clever way to stop with the ego. With the neediness, the desires, the aversions, the misguided control. We become free of all that, because we are letting something so much bigger move through us and in us.

That is why we have satsang on the spiritual path. Satsang means to be in the company of truth. And that often means the company of the great beings. We sit with their teachings, their energy, their methods. Curiously. Eagerly. Waiting for that moment of recognition, of grace. Anything.

And it goes for everything. Especially the arts.

So be mindful of who you look up to. What you look up to, value and revere. Because the energy of it, of them, is influencing you. Curate and select your great beings, your masters, the great works. And open with the innocence of a child hearing or seeing them for the very first time. Sit in awe, in wonder, in reverence.

A soft invitation

Two small things before I go.

Tell me what you would like more of in these letters. You two are the reason I write them the way I write them, and I would love to know what is feeding you and what you would like me to bring in.

With great love,

Ammaji

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

MataKamaleshwari©

Last week, I told you that Pressfield got it wrong. That making art is not a war, that resistance is not your enemy, and that you can put the sword down.

I did not have the Spanda Karikas in mind when I said it.

But here is what happens after decades in practice.

It stops being a thing you consult. It becomes you. It gets into how you see and what you notice and what makes you sit bolt upright. And then the good part starts, because you get very, very good at spotting where it comes out in your life. That is the tradition, wearing my clothes.

So let me introduce you to my most favourite ever:

One of the texts I love most in the whole Trika tradition is the Spanda Karikas.

So much so that at one point, I coined the term spanda woman. I was going to make a t-shirt. That is still in the pipeline, by the way, I have not let it go. Maybe there will be a few spanda women in time.

Spanda man, too, if that is you.

Ninth-century Kashmir. A man called Vasugupta wrote it. It is not long, a few dozen verses, and spanda means the throb, the pulse, the creative vibration that everything comes out of and goes back into. It is a text about the universe pulsing, and it turns out it is also a text about you at your desk.

And there is a verse in it that is so relevant to this whole creative identity thing and the struggle.

Here is what it is translated as:

‘That the one who is stopped is the one who is incapacitated by his own impurity, and who still longs to do what ought to be done.’

Incapacitated. And still longing.

Not indifferent. Not lazy. Not lacking. The wanting is completely, entirely intact. It is right there, burning, the whole time.

That is what makes it hurt so much.

If you did not want it, you would just walk away and take up lawn bowls.

That is the artist. That has always been the artist. Somebody wrote it down before the printing press and did not need to meet you to know exactly who you were.

And then a second man came along

Because this is what happens with these old texts. Somebody writes the verses, and then somebody else writes a commentary explaining them, and sometimes the commentator is the one who lands the punch.

His name was Kallata. And he tells us what that agitation actually consists of.

The agitation, he says, is the felt-sense that takes the form “I am so-and-so.”

Read it again.

The agitation is not the block.

The agitation IS the identity.

I am the one who never finishes. I am not disciplined enough. I am the one who was told at nine that I had no talent. I am not a real artist, not like them. I am the one who always ruins it right at the end.

I am so-and-so.

That is it. That is the whole thing. That is what has been sitting in the seat marked I, wearing your name, quietly collecting evidence against you.

And Kallata says that when THAT dissolves, what you were after is simply there. Not achieved. Not built. Not won. There. Because it was never anywhere else, and it never went anywhere.

You do not fight a veil.

And there is one more

The verse sitting right before it finishes Pressfield off entirely.

It says a person does not act by driving the goad of desire. One acts by coming into contact with the strength of the Self and becoming equal to That.

Not force. Contact.

Your whole creative life in one line. Ninth century. No sword anywhere in it.

So what do you do with this:

Nothing needs fixing. That is the first thing, and most of you will not believe me.

But there is something you can do, and it is very simple, and you can do it this afternoon.

Next time you are stuck, do not look at the stuckness. Look underneath it.

There is a sentence under there. There always is. It starts with “I am…..x”, and then it says something about you.

Find it. Then start taking words off the end of it. I am the one who never finishes. I am the one who never. I am the one. I am.

Keep going until there is nothing left but the bare I am.

And notice that it is still completely true. Nothing has been lost. Everything that was hurting has come off, and the I is still standing there, entirely undamaged.

That is when you ask, and you ask it like you actually need to know and not like a phrase you are repeating.

Who am I?

The so-and-so will answer first. Of course it will. It has had years of practice and it is very fast.

Refuse it. Ask again.

Do not go looking for a thought; you will not think your way to this. Just keep the question open and turn your attention around to face whoever is doing the asking. Hold it open longer than is comfortable, because the entire thing is in refusing to close it.

And what turns up is not a sentence.

It is a throb. A pulse. A current.

Spanda.

That is all I will say about it here. It is not really a technique; it is a looking, and it takes about ten minutes and a willingness to be honest about what you have been calling yourself.

Then get up and go and make something. That part is not optional. Recognition that does not move the hands is just a nice afternoon.

So, what is your sentence?

You know the one. Put it in the comments if you are brave enough to write it down, because writing it down is already half of it. And I read every single one.

Put the sword down. There was never anything to fight.

With great love,

Mata Kamaleshwari
wisdom . service . love

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

MataKamaleshwari©

And if reading this made something in you go tight and stay tight, I have Ignition sessions left, and I am giving them away. Free, one-off, just so I can get some testimonials. Just book yourself a time, and I will send you the link when I see it come through.

Session Link

Last week, I said creativity is not a war and told you to put the sword down. Here is the ground that was standing on, because I did not make it up. There is a verse. Spanda Karika, section one, verse nine.

nijashuddhya asamarthasya kartavyeshv abhilashinah
yada kshobhah praliyeta tada syat paramam padam

When the agitation of the one who is incapa…

Read more

The War of Art.

Even the title is a mistake.

He told a generation of artists that making art is a war. That resistance is the enemy. That the only way through is to fight it every single day, for the rest of your life.

What an exhausting way to create.

I saw someone talking about the book this week, and I got the aha immediately. Great timing, too, with me moving into this work. I did not need to pick it up. I had a copy somewhere. Well, actually, it went to the op shop when I moved. Of course it did.

War of Art. War.

We are the peace side. Not the war side. Generally. As personalities.

And what else is in war? Fighting. And what have I been saying again and again and again?

The fight is unnecessary. The struggle is unskilful.

So let’s pull this apart properly.

What is with the struggle?

More than that. What is with the identity of the struggle?

What is happening here is a total misunderstanding of the creative personality. And we, even if only subconsciously, have swallowed the narrative whole. A narrative handed to us by a society that does not even understand itself, and yet somehow feels qualified to judge the creatives, the artists, so very harshly.

In spiritual terms, to be an artist, a real one, you have a dominant love type. Bhakti leanings. Devotional, sensitive, loving. That is what is needed to be a creative. None of the rest.

If you come across a wisdom type or a service type who is an artist, then that is their wing, so to speak. The less dominant type, but it is whatever love type they have doing the work.

So, we are predominantly loving and sensitive. Overthinkers and feelers. And we are never trained or educated in how to handle that. How to use it. How to be it in the world.

Well. Let me put an end to that. Because it is simply ignorance.

We can and should be well-suited to this world. And I believe we should stop letting others dictate what is best for us, like we need managing. We don’t. But we do need self-awareness and accountability. Those are different things entirely.

The struggle is not inevitable

We take it on like it is. It’s not.

A love type, a creative, a bhakta has a certain set of unique struggles. All types do. And I know these ones far too well.

A love type just needs to be really present to and honest about how we respond to the world, and what we actually need, and be full of self-certainty that we are enough.

That’s it.

The art world, in fact, I believe, needs pulling apart and re-designing. By us. Not by the rest. Not by the business people and the academics. By us.

And here is the lucky part. The spiritual side is creative. Which means we have everything working for us. Consciousness itself.

If we could just trust and believe that we are enough. And let the other parts of us, the service and the wisdom sides, give us a helping hand the right way.

The deep feeling. The witnessing. The sensitivity. That is our greatest hurdle. It is also our greatest strength, and it can be worked with to the point of becoming a superpower.

Society will never change. Or it may change slowly. But we have already proven our resilience. We keep showing up. We keep changing the world.

In fact, without us, there would be little knowledge of history at all.

So if it is not a war, what is it?

Here is what nobody told you.

What stops you is not a lack of talent. Or discipline. Or grit.

It is forgetting.

You have lost sight of your own creative nature. The source everything comes from. You have an Inner Creative Source, the place the work comes from before doubt and forcing take over. It does not run dry. It does not break.

But it can be forgotten.

And forgetting has a cure that fighting never will.

You do not push your way back to something you have forgotten. You recognise it. You return to it.

You were never fighting a shortage. You were standing on top of a source you had stopped seeing.

That is the whole shift. Not force. Recognition.

You do not fight a veil

Resistance is real. I am not saying it isn’t.

But it was never your enemy, and it was never a war. It is a concealment. A veil over what you already are.

You do not fight a veil. You do not battle fog into submission.

A veil does not need a sword. It needs remembering.

He could not see this because he did not know the nature of consciousness. Or creative energy. Or you.

The enemy was never resistance.

It is forgetting. Forgetting your own creative, mystical nature and how it moves.

You do not win your way back to your art. You remember your way back.

Put the sword down.

And where you are stuck is not where I am stuck

Some of you just need to start and stop with the fear and the excuses. You need a good self-inquiry technique and some accountability around how and why you procrastinate.

Some of you need to keep it going through the ugly, rough middle parts. This is my least favourite part, and I can put work down for months at this stage.

For some, it is finishing. The letting go. What do I do now that the work is ready to go?

For some, it is understanding why the resistance has come up at all, and why the sudden big curve balls arrive right on cue.

And for others, it is simply the creative personality being given far too much room to mess it all up.

Ugh. I know. I know all of them.

Either way. It is not a war.

If anything, it is a yoga

Yoga in the way it really means. The means to union with the divine. Or more accurately, from a Trika perspective, the means to recognising the true Self WITHIN.

We are already that. It is a recognition issue.

And it is exactly the same with artists.

I have just put a new video up on YouTube talking about all of this:

To be creative and spiritual is not for the faint-hearted, and you are my friends and my colleagues and my dear ones. I mean that.

Just don’t get sucked into the battle and the suffering.

Let’s help each other. Let’s be there for each other.

So tell me. What can I create that would actually help?

And if you are reading this and it is you

If you recognised yourself in any of those five, and you are stuck, or struggling, or standing on top of your own source and cannot see it, I have four Ignition sessions left, and I am giving them away in return for testimonials. So here’s a great opportunity for a free session!

Free. Once only. No catch and no pitch at the end.

Just book yourself a time, and I will send you the link when I see it come through.

Four sessions. Then it closes.

Session link

Be brave, mon Dieu. Do the yoga.

With great love,

Mataji xxx

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

MataKamaleshwari©

This Kula is a mystery school for the arts, for creativity, for those willing to live a creative life, the life most in alignment with Shakti, the creative power, the feminine power. Creativity is the mighty force of the sacred feminine.

This is where I am bringing the mystery school back. Art and creativity have become so mundane: political, boring, academised, material. There are exceptions, of course, but the source has almost been entirely lost.

And the source is that Shakti. The source is waiting, eternally, for our attention, for us to recognise our divine nature, and the endless waterfall of creativity, of inspiration, of peace, of freedom from doubt and resistance, of the asana, the seat that holds it all, so we can ride through and complete.

Completion comes from wisdom, actually. Completion, and the inability to complete, means a little ignorance has entered the space and clouded the wisdom centre. Wisdom is the cure, the antidote, the energy that allows you to complete. Somewhere, understanding has become misaligned.

Love, however, is what holds you through the whole process, through the ugly, mundane part of creation. Creativity. Whether that’s your canvas, your novel, even your business. Love is what gives you the longevity and eagerness to show up when it’s just chop wood, carry water. When it’s the nitty-gritty that can’t be avoided. When it’s no longer the bliss of downloads and realisations, when it’s just what I call fruit and veg. The necessities that are a little mundane and tedious.

Love. Therefore, devotion. Devotion is a science, too. While we all have devotion within us, some more than others, even if you’re blessed to be a devotional type, a love type, as I call it, without the right nuances of understanding and focus, you may be shooting blanks, so to speak. You may be planting burnt seeds; things can’t germinate.

Devotion is dual, dualistic in fact, even though nonduality is usually what I teach. All devotion, by its nature, is dualistic: there is you, and there is the one you hold high and love dearly. Bhakti is all about relationship. It is where you revere and hold as the highest the object of your devotion: the Self, God, Shakti, Shiva, your craft, the artwork. You look after it like it’s your own child, tending to it with loving care and attention. No wonder the muse is always feminine! She is the creative force, she is the process, and she is the end result. Everything about it is divine and mystical.

So the best we can do is cultivate the right attitude and practice.

What I absolutely adore about the Trika, and what surprised me as I went through Artist’s Return recently, seeing how I’d naturally done this without realising, is the understanding of the way, the path, the means to reach the divine. There are three main means.

The Innermost Way: Week One

There is an innermost means, the most intelligent and sophisticated, where the aspirant, using iccha, pure divine will, can hold the clear space without props. That is the highest teaching, and it’s what I teach first. It’s what I’ve done with Artist’s Return: straight into this practice, boom. However, I know that unless the participant has the right awareness and attitude, this will most likely take a while to get. That is week one.

The Mind: Week Two

Week two moves to a lesser means: the mind, the mental realm. Nothing physical here: no breath, no physical words. This is the land of self-inquiry. I give a self-inquiry technique I created called the Recognition Sequence.

The Physical Practices: Week Three

The least superior way, and don’t get hung up on the word “superior,” I’m simply being honest that this is more blue collar, though it still works, it just takes more effort and focused awareness, is all the physical things: yoga, breath, mantra, nature, puja. These are what we can set up to help us reach the subtler means. The more energy they generate, the more focus we build, the easier the inner, more subtle work becomes. So I provide the creative versions of these in week three. It flowed that way without my even noticing, until recently. It really was downloaded from a mystical source.

The innermost place is Shiva. Waiting. Eternal. Home. Perfect. Whole. Complete. Every aspect of the divine we can think of, sitting there, in all of us.

The way to Shiva, as described in Hymns to Shiva by Utpaladeva (in the Lakshmanjoo book series):

“On this path of Shiva, which is away from all delusions, which is absolutely pure and straight, no yoga, no penance, and no mode of worship is needed. The only need here is devotion, pure devotion. If they are really attached to You, they will find You.” (Absolute truth here, read that sentence again!) “If they are not attached, they may perform yoga, they may perform penance, and they may perform puja, yet still they cannot find You. Devotion, bhakti, is the only means to find Your true nature.”

So, in essence, these old, once very secret, tantric ways are coming to the fore. So much so that I honestly predict their time is now, and that they will eventually become the dominant spirituality. But that’s an aside, just sharing.

For those who have mocked, or been scared, or intimidated by the kind of madness an artist must show towards their work: think again. Readjust that concern. Madness is required. It is required on the spiritual path as much as the creative path. Madness, as such, is an intense way of love.

Yes, I hear you, and it constrains me too, with my artwork at least: life, bills, earning a living. My entire being is designed to live in the jungle somewhere, creating and being. But here I am. How do we do that, the life part, while committing to that level of devotion? People call it dropping out, but we know it’s dropping in. You’re going to have to run in a different direction to the general public. Live in a way that others lower their glasses at. The divine life will require that of you, but (the good news) you can still function fully in the world. It will take a little education and discipline to know how to hold it all. It’s a dance, for sure, but it’s possible, and it’s so much better.

And for artists and creatives, it’s outlined for you in Artist’s Return.

Welcome to the mystery school.

Jai Jai Maa. 🌺🌺🌺

With great love,

Mataji xxx

Matakamaleshwari©

Beliefs. Things concocted in the mind from whatever resource, in response to whatever happening, that we then take on as identity. When we talk beliefs, we are talking identity.

And identity is from the mind and is from meaning-making. It is all ego. We have leanings and tendencies from our previous births, from karmas, from our upbringing and mostly from how we feel we fit into society.

Beliefs need to be constantly reviewed, questioned and put through the same critical reflection as our own personal self-inquiry.

Beliefs are most often utterly delusional and made to feel something. Smug, safe, superior, righteous, humble, powerful, smart, rebellious. Whatever.

I like to think that creatives and people who know life is art are adept at this. But lately I’ve been finding, again, that they too stick to something that gives them meaning and identity and subscribe to ideas and beliefs that follow a status quo.

This, to me, is therefore a narrative, and narrative-loving people will have strong beliefs and can be quite dogmatic in those beliefs.

Here is another reason why I adore the Trika so much. It’s fluid. It’s the sea, water. It naturally fills where it is placed with perfect equanimity. It is not left to being a belief, it is not merely another philosophy, it is also not just a way of living, it is all of being and being from truth. TRUTH. My highest value. Truth. How do we get to truth? By having a broad and open mind and being open to questioning our strongly held beliefs. By going beyond the mind and our circumstances and viewing everything with a universal mind.

Now we are aware and conscious.

The antithesis to that is to choose mind-born identity and use any philosophical system to suit your strongly held belief.

Truth is that there is consciousness. We are all consciousness, the exact same consciousness living this worldly life for the sole purpose of recognising we are all one consciousness. There is no division between us and anything. We can be Shiva, or we can be Shakti, or we can be both.

There is never anything that separates. It only includes, and includes in an intelligent, truthful way, not in a modern political inclusive way, which, as modern-day politics will show you, is as deceiving, delusional and dangerous as exclusivity. In fact, modern-day politics is so far up its own arse that no one can see what is going on.

When people start flexing their education and status as an excuse to ram a party down your throat, saying they believe in science and education and what is clearly “right,” you know you are standing with a dimwit. Best off to just say “no worries mate” and move on to the next person and pray they have an ounce of being interesting, let alone awareness.

I’ve had a few encounters like this lately. Someone very smart, very interesting, and then very quickly very self-righteous. A supporter of a particular persuasion who professed to be so into science and what the science said. And yet his argument I could untangle in a few short, clear, light-of-day sentences, all using science, until he got up and walked off. Couldn’t handle it. No comeback, because there was nowhere to go. I didn’t disagree with him. I gave him a few questions that would have guided him to a fresh, universal perspective, and he got lost for words. His voice got small and delicate, and he left.

In short, it impacted his identity. And identity is built on dust. The mind. Survival. Importance and significance.

The Shiva Sutras name this with devastating precision.

Sutra 1.2. Jnanam bandhah. Knowledge is bondage.

Abhinavagupta, the great Trika master, puts it this way: ignorance is any kind of knowledge that does not entirely illuminate the reality of that-which-is-to-be-known. (hareesh.org)

That man had plenty of knowledge. He was in complete bondage to it.

To stay with the political example, one that is wholly and fully made of bias and identity, like following a football team. “I do it because my Dad did. I do it because I like the colours. I do it because all the intelligent people do it. I do it because they win the most and make me feel like I’m on the winning side of life.” Snore.

People talk science to back their decisions and laugh at faith, and yet both require a blindness. Once you take on and commit to a side, you are blinded. Universal perspective and adaptiveness have left the building. The ability to find a solution also has. The ability to think of what is best for all has also gone.

Instead, you are left with what started the whole thing. Your identity and limited awareness.

We are all biased in one way or another. We all need to have the ability to bring the yoga, to bring the consciousness to it and really look and question without getting too smart and manipulating truth to suit our personal narrative.

I’m horrified at what humanity has done in recent years to the world, the crazy and extreme ideologies. It’s all just a big thinking orgy. And thanks to questioning and remaining open and curious, it’s so clear why the world is swinging and dividing the way it is. Yet the very people driving that division cannot see it. That is jnanam bandhah. Right there.

The irony is, science is a religion too these days and can be just as biased and blind as anything else. Truth is different. This requires a letting go, a dismantling, which can create a fragility for a brief while as you take your claws out of your strongly held beliefs. Science has been bought by corporations and politicians since time immemorial. Yet we gulp it up and consume it like it’s gospel. Blind faith.

Experience. Presence. Beingness. Where all creativity comes from. All brilliance, too. And love. Put yourself out there and try something new and different. Be open to possibilities and to the fact that the truth is stronger, louder and clearer than all the mental noise out there. Then go with it for sure. Put a stake in the ground. But remain a yogi. A creative yogi. Keep questioning and checking on that, too. Move. No one has nailed you to the floor but yourself, and your need to belong and fit in and be seen as something. Always thinking the other is less intelligent, less educated, more deluded. So foolish.

Stand in awareness. Speak from your centre. Question the narrative. Bring everything to Shiva. To the Goddess. Always retain a beginner’s mind. Then create. Create your life. Be love. Be your word. Be a signal of divinity and divine truth. Universal, wise, loving and not persuaded by the fools. If you are seen as a fool, then hooray. Be a fool in the truest sense. Step into the unknown, walk on the edge of uncertainty, where life is its most vibrant, and we are closer to the Self. This way you won’t fall asleep and fall on your own sword.

There is no right or wrong; there is what is best for this present moment, and that has no sides and has nothing to do with science or religion or diet or education. None of it ever did, nor was it even necessary. And be prepared for that to piss off a lot of people. People will want to get up and walk away from you, utterly aghast at your freedom of being. At least a seed has been planted that an ounce of awareness will pick up and nurture.

I like to think artists are in a unique place to ask us to question and reflect, to portray a bigger truth or a snapshot of how cray cray we are being.

I’ve often watched the whole “spirituality and politics should never mix” thing. Interested. No set idea. Just curiosity. Political people say it’s unethical not to use your platform to support political beliefs. Spiritual people say it’s not the place for God. It’s something I’ve really let play out, as I had no idea what was correct. I have my own natural persuasions, of course, but I challenge them and sometimes have to do things I may not like for the benefit of what is the wiser thing to do.

We have all seen the performers, too, standing there looking all holy, being endorsed or endorsing a party, a team. Corruption often involved. Spiritual leaders, monks, and priests, falling into the same maya. So I’d say hands off it all. See it all playing out, and provide wise and loving counsel and keep people from falling into identity. That is a better job. Keep questioning and challenging the status quo for sure, but it’s a bigger play. It’s an international karma at play.

Be a beacon of hope and truth, not the delulu kind we are currently seeing. Do that. Create from that. Vote for that. Back that. Bat for THAT.

Nice. I can leave this now.

The Trika goes much deeper on this. Sutra 1.2 is just the beginning. If you want the full inquiry into knowledge, identity and what Kashmir Shaivism actually does with all of this, that conversation is happening over with paid subscribers. Come join us.

Go the Socceroos ;-)

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With great love,
Ammaji xxx
Mata Kamaleshwari©

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55, karma, and the cremation ground. Reflections from a mystic on the golden age of reckoning.

*(I didn’t click it through properly! Apologies for the delay, here she is x)

This week was my birthday week. 55 human years.

55 has been called a golden age. Not because it’s like a golden period of life, but because it is a well-known age where karma comes home to roost. So to speak.

55 takes a lot of people out. There is usually something quite big and dramatic happening in our lives, or nothing, and we sail on as usual, but if that person was paying attention, they would see something big was going on at least around them.

Let’s see, I’ll keep you posted, but already this year has been incredibly dynamic for me, and I’m having to micro-adapt with each stage and new week along the way, keeping it all very shanti shanti as much as possible.

My father told me he retired at 55. Retirement in his language is different to the rest of us, mind you, he still works hard, but for causes now instead of corporations. My mother died at 55. Struth. Then I got messages from friends who were now retiring.

Sometimes, when you’ve been given this ascetic life, the life of a mystic, for those of you who have also had that, you may have also experienced the Self very early on, knowing there is an observer within that is not the mind or ‘us’, our identity. This observer stays through life, and we witness and notice the space between, even if that has been closed by realisation, it is still open simply by being different and being an observer.

I had a big laugh with my darling friend in the States, another Amma, about how we are both living on the edge, no partners, no big careers or golden handshakes to retire on, still always a little different and a wild card. Sometimes we pine for all of that, but that is our lower nature speaking. The freedom we wouldn’t give up for anything.

It’s always great to have someone walking a similar path. We are. Here. In this Kula. To varying degrees, but we are, and we are important to each other.

Think of it. Being mystical by nature in a community, and I’m gathering you’re probably in Australia or some English-speaking country, which would be predominantly Christian. And often our modern prejudice, as quiet as it may seem, as funny and open a party as we like to think we are, is actually an ancient, ingrained and carried-over paranoia from an old belief. Something so strong that millions of people, predominantly women, were executed for it. The divine feminine, the occult, and the mystical were nearly wiped out entirely. We came very close to losing it all.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that it is now flourishing. The occult is, in fact, one of the fastest-growing areas of interest in the world right now, and I love it. I just hope people move past the astrology and tarot cards to the really good stuff. Classical tantra. That is where it gets interesting.

So yes, it is something that still comes up in our families, in groups of people, and we have to endure it. Even if we are the lucky ones, because we see, because we observe, because we are open and flexible. That is the mind of a yogi. That is the beginner’s mind, and that is the mind of a creative. Open, curious and flexible, watching the thinking rather than relying on the thinking. Thinking is simply an addiction and nothing to flex about.

Sometimes I really miss my old spiritual community so much. Both my own Sangha, I used to run, the Self Knowledge Sangha, and of course, my old ashram community. Around these kinds of events, too, times we would all celebrate together, our way, focused on the divine, giving back, giving to all. Just great energy and great people celebrating consciousness, and however that manifests for them. Simple. Faith-centric. Beautiful.

The beauty is, however, we are never not joyous when we are filled with Shakti. Filled with that brimming, effervescent creative energy. Even in our tears and anxiety, it is a very short step to recognising and remembering who we are. That is a yogi. Not delusional, not delirious, not chasing the high, not life-bypassing, but genuine knowledge, self-knowledge of who we are. The Self. Shiva. The Goddess. All one and the same. The Clear Space, as I like to say.

In honour of the journey, and this golden age of karmic reckoning, which I already know is going to be good, I’m thinking of the Shakti. Creative power, force, the sacred feminine. Spandashakti, which is the name of my yoga. Spandashakti Yoga. I think that is coming back, from the cremation ground, a new gentle shoot. Gentle but strong and rooted. That’s all. Poking up through the ash and bones and debris, vibrant green.

Muktananda writes a lot about the Shakti and about Spanda. So I will leave with a verse from him today, from his extraordinary book, The Secret of the Siddhas. And I’m letting this all hang out today, because I want to, and it’s still my birthday week, and I can. ;-)

From my experience, the greatest way, the highest means, is and always will be the Guru, in the truest meaning of that, which I can write about some other day if you like, let me know. It was for me, Guruopaya. The means. The way. Nothing else needed that way. A new way, however, with it all is for this new era. But I have Bhagawan Nityananda in my heart, in my inner gaze, in my world, everywhere. Each step I take is his, each breath I take is his, each work I create is his, and that is the most wholesome and blissful way to be. No, I’m not talking about a glittery superstar cult leader, don’t get all paranoid with the word, but I am meaning only the one who has walked and gone across the river and is pure light and able to be that for others. That. Only that.

‘The miracle of Chitshakti is Her extraordinary activity of revealing the universe of the perceiver and the perceived and then reabsorbing it into Her-self. Chitshakti is uniquely independent. She reabsorbs the outer universe and can manifest it in countless ways whenever She desires. Chitshakti is astonishing. She can accomplish anything and become anything. She is also known as kundalini. She is the yogini who performs actions spontaneously. She is the grace bestowing power of God, which resides in the Guru. She makes inner movements of divine energy (kriyas) take place. She pervades everyone in the world equally but remains pure and different from all. She is also called Shiva. Her blessing is the perpetual and sublime bliss of the yogis. In the form of his supreme bliss, she dwells in the hearts of all as the Self.’

— Swami Muktananda, Secret of the Siddhas

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With great love,
Ammaji xxx
Mata Kamaleshwari©

Sleep was okay. Which, for me, is excellent. For you, it would be a terrible night’s sleep. All relative.

I showed up as usual. Morning puja, meditation, japa.

Then the second force arrived with enthusiasm.

One cat pooped on the bathroom floor because I have had the audacity to put them on a small diet. The other chewed up my blueberry plant. An order I genuinely needed was stolen from the foyer of my building, signed for by some resident who had absolutely no business touching it. Amazon said, ‘Too bad, it was signed for’. It was not. Then a second delivery person did the exact same thing an hour later.

And boom.

A haze came over my third eye. Focus gone.

I could handle the messy morning. But now something bigger was present, and I could not locate it. Maybe I hadn’t eaten. Late brunch. Nope, haze is getting worse. Sat down to get some work done. Worse still.

Okay. What is actually going on here?

Time for self-inquiry. I started getting to it, ran a few things by my AI, worked through a few rounds, and each time I got close, I could feel the haze intensify. Which meant I was onto something. The body always knows before the mind does.

When I finally landed on it, the real thing underneath all the morning noise, the biggest, most natural releasing breath happened. Emotions entered the space. Good. Emotions are better than thoughts. My whole body came back online.

The haze resolved into pure fatigue from the sheer volume of work I have been doing. So many different things needing attention at once. But underneath all of that, one clear thing had been getting drowned out by everything else.

I needed to realign. And then I needed to leave my little cave and get back out into the world after too many days at the computer.

There is a personal commitment to myself in this new era, and nothing - nothing - gets to drown that out.

I talk a lot about clarity, truth, compassion, and honest self-reflection. And one of the most honest spiritual teachings I know is this: spirituality is, at its most essential, the ability to greet all of life and everyone in it with love. And that begins with ourselves. Not in a selfish, navel-gazing way. In the way of knowing what actually matters to you. Of having the kind of commitment that lets you hold your word - your real word, the one that is the part of the divine you feel is most missing, the one that drives everything you do and chase, often without even knowing it, and protect it. So that when other things come in, even important things, you can meet them without losing the thread.

The cat poop, the stolen packages, the blueberry plant - they were never the problem. They were the warning bells. Small signals that something deeper wanted attention.

This is what the yoga actually looks like. Not the Instagram version. The real version.

Now. Here is the thing that has been on my mind. A teaching that genuinely bugs me.

I have spent some time in the Trika tradition. I did the ashram. I read the texts. I followed the teachers and the lineage with everything I had. And yet, very real movement in me - genuine shifts, moments of recognition, commonly happened as a householder. In the world. Being me. Keeping a home, raising children, navigating relationships, postpartum, menopause, the full catastrophe of ordinary human life.

I never exclusively needed the jungle, the cave, the monastery. It was all one. It was always all one.

And yet the stories handed to me were almost entirely the stories of men. Childless, partnerless, either wandering or walking away from everything - often leaving it to the women to handle - while they went off to realise themselves on a rock somewhere. I say this not with bitterness but with clarity. I watched it. I lived inside it. And I was always, always questioning it.

Easy to be still and silent, sitting alone watching the sunrise and sunset all day. How about while keeping a home? Growing a child in your body and navigating the enormous terrain of relationships and life? Every single ordinary human thing has Shiva in it, the quiet, the still, the ground of awareness, if you know how to look.

Here is what the historical record actually shows.

The Trika was never a monastic tradition. This is not opinion; it is in the texts. Abhinavagupta’s Tantraloka, the great encyclopedic work of Kashmir Shaivism, explicitly reformed the older esoteric practices to make them available to householders, ordinary people living fully in the world. The emphasis shifted to inner experience, to recognition, to practice woven into the fabric of daily life rather than removed from it. And the Vijnanabhairava Tantra, one of the root texts of this lineage, 112 practices for awakening, draws on sneezing, hunger, the moment of falling asleep, the taste of food, and the experience of extreme emotion. Ordinary life, every bit of it, as the doorway to God consciousness.

For the Tantrik practitioner, every activity is an offering of self to Self, whether raising children, doing the dishes, or navigating a very irritating morning. That is not a modern reframe. That is the original teaching.

And women were not an afterthought in this tradition. The spiritual lineage of Vasugupta, who gave us the Shiva Sutras, included both Siddhas and Yoginis as equal transmitters from the beginning. The Trika was always for all.

Global spirituality, like global medicine, has been largely built around the male experience for at least two thousand years. I have heard teachers say that women are here to serve men on their spiritual journey. I watched women believe it and teach it. I am not anti-man in the slightest. I am deeply, thoroughly anti-nonsense.

We receive. To receive is to be feminine. We create life. We held the world together while men went to the jungle to find themselves. And women have always been able to move between the mystical and the utterly mundane, the sacred and the breakfast dishes, without needing a clean break between them. We never needed to leave. The leaving was never ours to do.

As I watch institution after institution, teacher after teacher, monk after monk implode under the weight of their own unexamined humanity, I think the evidence is becoming impossible to ignore. The old containers are not holding. The old institutional structures have loopholes, and those loopholes are costing people enormously. Not because the path is false. The path is real. The sadhana is real. The attainment is real. But even from great heights, the ego can expose itself when discernment is lost, and the structures that were supposed to prevent that are the very things making it possible.

I wrote about this in my book The She-Monk in 2016 - Our Daily Life is the New Spiritual Practice. I was picking it up then. Something is shifting now that is much bigger. The old ways are not being burned down. People are simply waking up and no longer relating to them. Women are stepping forward with a different shape of leadership - fully human, in the world, nothing hidden - and the old institutional frameworks were not built to hold that. So we leave them behind. Not in anger. In clarity.

So, your crappy morning. Your noisy mind. Your stolen package and your rebellious cat.

These are not obstacles to your practice. They are your practice.

The question is not how to escape them so you can finally be spiritual. The question is what they are showing you -- and whether you have the tools to look.

If you overthink, learn to return to the Clear Space. Meditate. Daily. Thirty minutes of genuine stillness is enough. If your mind is underused, find your purpose - create, engage, do the thing that requires all of you to show up.

Look at the three paths: wisdom, love, service. Walk all three. Do your inquiry. Meet what is present. Stay in the world.

Your daily life is the ashram. It always was.

With love,

Ammaji

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺
wisdom . service . love

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MataKamaleshwari©

I go through seasons of intense downloads. Always have. Usually insights, inspiration, knowledge. Sometimes visual. The last couple of weeks have been regular and full-on -in dreams, in meditation, during puja, over brunch, staring out the window, working on social media. It has been pouring through, and I have had to keep a notepad and pen with me constantly so I do not get clogged up.

But when it came time to share with you this week, I drew a complete blank. Which never happens.

So instead, let me tell you about one of my most successful social media posts ever this week - and where it came from.

Last weekend I went to a friend’s house for afternoon tea and met another friend of hers - an artist, a curator, an art therapist and an art teacher. Genuinely lovely, genuinely impressive. At one point in our conversation, I said something that made her go completely quiet. I remember thinking - did I just say something strange?

What I had said was this. People think resistance is a necessary suffering. It is not. It is actually the cosmos helping you. It is creating a tension specifically so you adjust, shift, resolve, or change something. And the more creative you are, the more intensely this plays out.

I made a video about this during the week -- have a look if you would like: watch it here.

In it, I mention Gurdjieff. A twentieth-century mystic I heard about often during my sadhana years. He spoke of three forces. And they map beautifully onto the five-fold act of Shiva.

Here is how it plays out.

You have an idea. A desire. Something you want to do - write a book, say. You have it mapped out. Chapters broken down. You know where it ends. All the right things.

Then you hit a roadblock. Big time. And most people - genuinely most, perhaps ninety percent - give up right here. The universe flexes a little muscle, and down they go. It is not for me. I am not enough. That is anavamala playing out - the contraction that makes us feel separate, limited, not up to it. And here is the thing. The universe has just handed you a golden opportunity to heal that very contraction. And the towel gets thrown in instead.

The resistance burns. The unpleasant inner narrator gets loud. You put on a mask just to manage your own thoughts, let alone what you imagine everyone else will think. So the excuses arrive. Other projects appear, more appealing, less threatening. You tell a few people about your idea, then somehow blow the summer with friends, spend autumn planning holidays, disappear in winter doing a course in something utterly unrelated or even necessary - and come full circle to nothing.

Feeling like this is personal to you?

It is how it gets all of us.

I get it. In 2019, I raised money to write a cookbook for a small village school in India. A huge undertaking. I had a team, raised funds through a GoFundMe, and - exhausted and completely flat out with my own business and life - headed to India for my third trip to India that year and worked like an absolute navvy for two weeks, pulling off something genuinely remarkable in a small village town during the heaviest monsoon in years.

It flooded completely. The power went out, so the photographers we had hired from a photography school in Mumbai could not recharge their batteries. The kitchens were poky, mosquito-infested, and dark with no lighting. We were saturated through three or four changes of clothes a day from the humidity alone, and then walking through knee-high filthy water from morning to night.

And on top of all of that - an old ashram Swami had called ahead to tell people not to work with me, which I only became aware of once I was lined up at the airport gate for my midnight flight. It was a fascinating time.

So I arrived after an all-night flight, with one assistant, no sleep, two photography students waiting, and the women chefs pulling out one by one. Everything was paid for in advance with no possibility of a refund. And then after that trip, let us add COVID global disaster, illness, menopause, you name it.

So yes. Do I know resistance? That is a hell yes. And that is only one story from the mystery of the last seven years. A period of time I may never fully understand, and I have stopped waiting around to find out.

Resistance is not always just a matter of pushing through or a little lapse in discipline. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it is much bigger than that. You may be moving ahead with something whose time has not quite come. Something that needs softening, expanding, rewriting, reviewing. A purification and a rectification.

Which brings us back to Gurdjieff and his three forces.

First force - Affirming.

The idea. The spanda. The calling. The thing that wants to come into being.

Second force - Denying.

The block. The delay. The struggle. The confusion. Perfectly named, if you ask me.

But remember Shiva’s five-fold act - there is ignorance, and there is grace. Two more steps come into play here. Grace - that thing utterly and truly outside our control, operating independently, supremely free. We have that on our side, whether we feel it or not. And we deploy the yoga - the way, the means, the patience, the faith. The tapas. The fire of transformation, of growth, of the karmic hit working itself through.

So yes - there is an opposing force in every single creative act. Every start. Every idea. That is exactly why the idea sounds wonderful right up until reality kicks in, and suddenly we are doing anything except the thing - and then beating ourselves up for it, keeping that merry little dance going. (I just pictured a Scottish dancer doing some kind of Riverdance, which is exactly what avoidance looks like from the outside. Full ignorance, in full flow.)

Third force - Reconciling.

The relief. The dropping of the harshness. The continuation and flow of the now-reformed, improved idea. Gorgeous, isn’t it? I love this one.

Affirming. Denying. Reconciling.

Reconciling is the part where we bring it all back to balance and harmony - navigating what was and was not within our control, without beating ourselves up in the process, and without running off to do something else instead.

I still have the remainder of the money I raised, sitting in a bank account, and a publisher who has agreed to work with that amount to produce the book. I have reached out to people for help but haven’t found the right ones yet. It will work out.

The Shakti wants me to get myself back on my feet first, and that is happening - slowly, steadily. And I know that when the book does get done, it will still be needed in that little town. I have also had a couple of international charities express interest in the idea, inviting me to visit communities in other countries that could use exactly this kind of project - a recipe book the community can sell, generating income so children can go to school and get an education.

With the right perspective, the right wisdom, faith, and surrender, it will all work out. As it should. As it can.

The suffering part - that is the ignorance. Honestly, I think the hardest part of life is being able to be okay with it exactly as it is. The crappy childhood stories. The lost marriages. The forgotten friends and family. The lost jobs. The things we go through.

Rectifying that. Reconciling it. Staying open and soft through it.

That is when you are a yogi.

Maybe you have way too many examples, just like me. That is okay. You are here for something important. Want to hear something just between you and me? This work, this angle, this spiritual and creative life is for the older souls. If you are here and reading this and resonating and horrified with how hard it has been for you, then you are one, and the resistance generally is always harder the closer you get to your own self-realisation. So go easy on yourself, not everyone is going to go through it as hard, as it is not their time.

Can you see how this is playing out in your own life right now? The three forces?

Share, if you would like, what you have had to deal with. Maybe we can find the third force together. The grace. The way. Now, my kitchen table is fully set up with paints and easels, and all good things, and creativity awaits. ‘Til next time.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Ammaji xxx
Mata Kamaleshwari©

Spiritual work is the craft. Like art, like any genuine discipline, it requires constant refinement. Not just knowledge, not just practice, not just turning up - but the willingness to keep looking at yourself honestly, especially at the parts you would rather not see.

And all of it - every genuine insight, every real shift, every moment of recognition - comes through grace. Not effort alone. Grace moves freely, spontaneously, completely outside our control. What we can do is work away at ourselves and build the conditions in which grace can move. Clear the debris. Create the space. Show up with as much honesty as we can manage.

Which brings me to the thing I want to talk about today. The thing that is genuinely one of the most useful tools available for anyone doing serious inner work - and the one that spiritually inclined people are most likely to overlook, dismiss, or feel quietly superior about.

Therapy.

I know. Stay with me.

We tend to think therapy is for people with serious mental health problems. It is not. Although I am yet to meet a person without some version of mental health challenges -and I find I naturally warm to the ones who are aware and humble about their dents and scratches rather than pretending they do not exist.

Here is the truth from someone who had access to rigorous self-inquiry training for decades. Even with all of that - even with the years of practice, the skilled teacher, the genuine inner work - some things never came up that needed to. Things a fresh, external, professional perspective would have caught. Things I would have moved through faster, with less collateral damage, had I had that support alongside my sadhana.

Therapy offers something that spiritual practice alone cannot always provide - a safe, confidential space with someone trained to help you see what you are not willing or not yet able to see in yourself. Without the ego armour. Without the spiritual framework becoming a reason not to look. Without the bypassing. Impersonal, not a friend, someone you pay to cut through the b.s. faster.

And bypassing is real. I see it everywhere.

The bhakti practitioner is so focused on the beloved, on devotion and ritual and the beauty of the other - sometimes so thoroughly outsourcing their inner world that the deep alchemy that should be happening inside them never quite lands. The jnani is so impressive in their intellectual understanding, so fluent in the language of non-duality, that they do not notice the very real red lights flashing from their inner world -which they have conveniently filed under illusion and arrogantly ignore their issues. The karma yogi is so busy serving, producing, doing - so proud of the action and the output - that they never stop to ask who is doing all of it, and why or if their action is really useful or necessary and not harming others.

Every path has its loopholes. A good teacher will close them fast, and you will not enjoy it. But not everyone has consistent access to that quality of teacher. And even those who do can use additional support.

The world we are living in right now is faster, more uncertain, and more relentlessly stimulating than at any other point in human history. The more aware you are, the more open, the more creative and sensitive - the more you will feel all of it, even when you are not consciously aware that it is affecting you. It is. We are all wired and stressed and carrying far more than we realise.

Get help. Please. Not as a crutch. Not as a replacement for your practice. As a regular checkpoint - a place to put down what you are carrying and have someone skilled help you see what you might be refusing to look at, which may be quietly blocking everything you are working toward.

In Australia, there are free services and concession packages. I am sure there are in your part of the world too. The boomer and older generations’ attitude that needing help means you are broken or weak has done enormous damage. Imagine if that generation had actually done this work - how much collective healing would have flowed from it. They don’t realise how still stuck in survival patterns they are and how it impacts those around them.

My teacher used to say - liberation takes as long as you want it to.

Sit with that for a moment. Not as a rebuke. As an invitation.

The grace is already there. It was always already there. But the things we are not willing to look at and change are what keep us from receiving it. From the recognition. From the growth that comes from having to shake things up, find the new formula, and move forward.

On this path, things will come up for review. Relationships. Jobs. Living situations. Patterns. Old identities. And when they do, there are really only three options - change yourself, change the situation, or leave. That is it. There are no other options other than grizzle. And if you find yourself grizzling about the same thing repeatedly, that is the path asking you clearly - which of the three is it going to be?

Be brave. You are already on the bravest path there is. Self-realisation. Self-knowledge. The whole purpose of life.

After being creative, of course. :-)

One more thing. This download has been making me think about running some training specifically in self-inquiry - using the Recognition Sequence I have developed over years of practice and teaching. It is the most practical and precise tool I have for this exact territory. If that is something you would want, reply to this email with a YES, and I will know whether it is worth putting together. This is a tool for you to use regularly on yourself to start to see the parts that you have not wanted to see. Just for you. Only you.

Genuinely curious. Tell me.

Reply YES if you want the Recognition Sequence training. And if you are not yet on the free Creative Reset practice - that is at matakamaleshwari.com. A good place to start.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Ammaji xxx

MataKamaleshwari©

You know that feeling. Something that was moving - your creativity, your practice, your inspiration, your sense of aliveness in the work - just stops. Or more accurately, it feels like it stops. It hasn’t gone anywhere. But right now you cannot find it.

The standard advice - for artists, for sadhakas, for anyone in this situation - is some version of the same thing. Just show up. Push through. Fight the resistance. Build the habit. Trust the process.

Sometimes that is right. But for the spiritually aware person who senses that creative energy is not manufactured but flows from a much deeper source, it is often not enough. And when it is not enough, following it just makes things worse.

Because forcing from a contracted state deepens the contraction. And disappearing - into busyness, into distraction, into the convincing story that you have lost it for good - lets the resistance win completely.

There is a third way.

I call it PIER. And I love that it spells PIER - because that is exactly what it is. The structure that takes you from the shore back out over the water. From stuck back to flow. From the land back to the source.

P - Pause.

The hardest step. The most important one.

The first thing most of us do when energy stops is panic. Or force. Or disappear and pretend it is not happening. None of those work.

Pausing is not abandonment. It is not giving up. It is intelligence. Stop fighting where you are. Just stop. Breathe. Be here without judgement. The pause is not empty - it is full of information, if you let it be.

I - Inquire.

Not self-criticism. Genuine curiosity.

Once you have paused, ask honestly - what is actually going on here?

Is this avoidance, or is this gestation? Is this resistance to push through or resistance to listen to? Is something turning inward for a reason?

This question alone changes everything. Because most of the time, in the middle of a contraction, we have never actually asked it. We just react. The inquiry creates a pause inside the pause - a moment of genuine seeing that is already the beginning of movement.

E - Expand.

This is the heart of the method.

Return to the Clear Space within - the place of pure beingness where creative energy, Shakti, was always flowing. Not a technique. Not a mindset shift. A genuine return to what you already are.

This is where PIER parts ways with most methods. Others help with mindset, micro habits, and accountability. All useful. But this goes somewhere else entirely - beyond the noise of the mind, to the place where life and creativity and practice all live not as something you do but as something you are.

The expansion is not manufactured. It is recognised. It was there the whole time.

R - Return.

From expansion, not pressure.

From that expanded place - if the work is still calling - you return to it. Not from guilt. Not from obligation. Not from proving anything to anyone. From a genuine yes. From expansion. From connection to the Shakti moving through you.

The work, the practice, the creative life that comes from that place is completely different to what comes from forcing. You can feel the difference. And the people around you can feel it even when they cannot name it.

PIER is not a quick fix. It is a practice. The more you use it, the more natural it becomes - until eventually the pause, the inquiry, the expansion happen almost automatically. You spend less and less time in the contraction and more and more time in the flow.

That is the Clear Space. That is what I teach.

I made a video on this recently - my first on YouTube. If you’re interested in seeing it (and subscribing, liking and leaving a comment!), and would like to watch it: The PIER Method on YouTube. And for the meditators and creatives, if you want to feel the E - the expansion - right now, the free 15-minute Creative Reset practice is at matakamaleshwari.com.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Mataji

MataKamaleshwari©

Shvia Shakti depicted here by an anonymous painter at the Kalighat School, Calcutta (Kolkata), West Bengal, ca. 1880 - 1920. My current favourite art movement. I am still trying to unlearn enough to be able to create like this. ;-)

I have been thinking about art this week. About beauty. About what actually happens in us when something genuinely beautiful lands - a piece of music that empties the mind, a painting that holds you without explanation, a poem that cracks something open. We tend to call it aesthetic pleasure and move on if we are aware enough. But the tradition says something far more precise and far more extraordinary is happening.

It led me straight back to Abhinavagupta.

Abhinavagupta - my fave, an incomparable genius, that towering tenth-century Kashmir Shaivite master, arguably one of the most brilliant spiritual and philosophical minds the world has ever produced, and the central figure of the Trika tradition - was not only a philosopher and tantric adept. He was also one of the greatest aestheticians India ever produced. His commentary on Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra, known as the Abhinavabharati, remains the most authoritative and intellectually ambitious engagement with the nature of art and aesthetic experience in the entire tradition. In fact, other traditions pinch it constantly and claim it as their own.

What he says about art is not just interesting. It is extraordinary, it’s glorious.

Abhinavagupta begins with a concept you will know - rasa. Usually translated as aesthetic flavour, essence, or taste. The ancient teacher Bharata Muni had identified eight rasas - love, sorrow, rage, humour, fear, disgust, courage, and wonder - the eight fundamental emotional essences that art can evoke. Abhinavagupta accepted all eight and then added a ninth.

Shanta. Tranquility. Serenity. The stillness that arises when all other rasas have been tasted and transcended. I, from experience, will state that Shanta is the highest. Peace brings all healing; it is the state of the zone of creation, the famous artists’ or sports zone of complete clarity and fullness. It is the state we are after; the others lead to it, that state grace enters. That’s my wish for everyone, Shanta. Back to Abhinavagupta.

And he named Shanta not as one rasa among others but as the culminating one - the state toward which all genuine aesthetic experience naturally tends, if the person receiving it is open enough to go all the way.

But here is where Abhinavagupta departs entirely from what came before him, and where the Trika understanding completely transforms the theory of art.

He argues that rasa is not in the artwork. It is not in the performer, the poet, the painter. It is not even in the emotion being depicted. Rasa arises in the consciousness of the one who receives the work, in the witness. The artwork is the occasion. Your consciousness is where rasa actually comes into being.

In a profound aesthetic encounter - a painting that stops you, a poem that cracks you open, a piece of music that empties the mind - something remarkable happens. The ego briefly dissolves. The ordinary sense of being a separate, bounded self loosens. You forget, just for a moment, to be only yourself. And in that loosening, something vast and luminous moves through. That movement, that bliss - Abhinavagupta calls it rasasvada. And he says directly: it is a glimpse of brahmic bliss. It approximates the bliss of the Self.

In a profound aesthetic encounter - a painting that stops you, a poem that cracks you open, a piece of music that empties the mind - something remarkable happens. The ego briefly dissolves. The ordinary sense of being a separate, bounded self loosens. You forget, just for a moment, to be only yourself. And in that loosening, something vast and luminous moves through. That movement, that bliss - Abhinavagupta calls it rasasvada. And he says directly: it is a glimpse of brahmic bliss. It approximates the bliss of the Self.

And then Abhinavagupta says something that I find fabulously moving. He says that Shiva himself is the divine artist. The entire manifest universe - this play of consciousness, this lila - is Shiva’s artwork. The world is not something that happened to consciousness. It is something consciousness is making, continuously, for the sheer joy of creation and reception.

Which means that every genuine act of creativity - every time a human being makes something from the deepest place in themselves - is a participation in that original creative act. The artist as channel. The artwork is a fragment of the whole, reflecting the beauty of the entire cosmos in miniature.

And the freedom to create - Abhinavagupta is specific about this - is not a human gift. It is a reflection of Shiva’s absolute freedom. Svatantrya. The creative impulse in you is divine in origin. It always was.

Your contemplation this week, if you would like one, is simply this. The next time you encounter something beautiful - a piece of music, a painting, a poem, a view, a moment - rather than analysing it or reaching for words, simply stay in the moment just after the beauty lands. You can throw a fudgy chocolate brownie in there, too. ;-) Before the mind arrives with its commentary. That interval, that spaciousness, that quiet bliss - that is rasasvada. That is the Self recognising itself through the work of another.

You do not need to understand it. You only need to notice it.

Shiva is the artist. The beauty of the Trika is that Shiva and Shakti are totally interchangeable. I love this so much. You can also say that the Mother is the artist. The world is the work. You are both the canvas and the witness.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Mataji xxx

P.S. If this teaching landed and you would like to take it into your body and your creative energy directly, I have just released a free 15-minute Creative Reset video on my website. It is built around a dharana, played with and made specifically for creative energy. Because everything is creativity. Everything is SpandaShakti. You can find it and sign up at matakamaleshwari.com - I would love to know how it lands for you.

Mata Kamaleshwari©

I have just done something I have been quietly moving toward for a while - merged my worlds and given this place its proper name.

Welcome to the Artist’s Kula.

Same teachings. Same voice. Same devotion to the Trika and to the Shakti who is creative energy herself. But now with a name that actually says what this is - a kula. A community of practitioners gathered around a shared lineage and a shared love of the creative life.

It says, artists. But a sadhaka is a creative. A creative is a sadhaka. There is no difference. What blocks the artist blocks the spiritual seeker. What frees the spiritual seeker frees the artist. If you have been here for the teachings, you belong here. If you have been here for the creativity, you belong here. It was always the same place.

I could not be happier about it.

Sunday’s letter lands as usual. See you then.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺

With love,
Mata Kamaleshwari

‘She is the Sea’. Acrylic on canvas.

It has been a while since I talked art.

I get so many ideas and so much inspiration - perhaps I am just a frustrated ‘on leave’ spiritual teacher with paint on her hands. Thank god for this outlet. But I have wanted to just talk art for a while, and when a friend brought it up recently, it was boom, ok, all over it. So I want to share a little of my creative process. The recent stage, anyway. One day, I will share the earlier original stage, which was vastly different - though there was always evidence that what I am doing now was taking shape.

You would think that because art is creative and entrepreneurship is creative, they would come from the same part of the brain. They do not. I have zero scientific evidence to back this up, but I do have a tonne of experience. All the work of building the Goddess Culture Movement - which this Substack will soon be moving over to Mata Kamaleshwari, so watch this space - was so exhilarating and deeply creative. I loved it. But my own art creativity suffered. And the Clear Space work and the Artist’s Return, while deeply satisfying in a different way, does not help either.

Neither does a one-year-old cat who has decided that paintbrushes are toys to be hidden in inaccessible places. My security camera plays footage every morning of Billy tap dancing on my little kitchen table and artworks, waving at the camera. We are still adjusting. I am currently at the stage of considering pigeon spikes around the table. Joke. Not really. Ok, joke.

Enough coffee chat.

Art.

As much as I love the idea of throwing art school out the door and starting fresh - and I genuinely do love that idea - I cannot quite do it. To this day, I still follow the process I was taught. The difference is that, instead of developing concepts, proving points, and working toward a predetermined outcome, I paint what comes up in my inner world during my morning puja, japa, and meditation.

Every day. Not every day does something arrive, and I never force it. But with my intention set - let the Shakti determine what to paint - they come when they want. I fill a sketchbook every year, sometimes more. I have no shortage of ideas. In fact, I have almost too many.

The downloads vary enormously. Full structured images. Moving energy behind the mind’s eye. Geometric symbols, sigils, yantras, and sometimes things one cannot even fathom how to represent. Which means I do not have one style - and have stopped trying to have one. My love of street art and kitsch religious imagery, of design and especially colour, and my irreverent nature all come through. Whatever wants to come, comes.

Once the morning session is over, the images are recorded with simple, quick line drawings, nothing more, and eventually, I choose a few to work on at a time. Then I pull out a larger visual diary, play with the design, and try to stay as true to the original download as possible. If references are needed, - bodies, light direction, specific objects - I set up and take photos.

Which is exactly what happened with ‘She is the Sea.’

This painting came as a vision of the Triambika - the three eyes of the Goddess - in the sea. To me, the Goddess is the sea. Every single time I visit the ocean, I’m filled with reverence for Her. Swimming is being immersed in Her. I get filled with such joy and gratitude and a palpable sense of good fortune from her blessings. Anything negative gets taken away, and all goodness is restored. Every single time, without exception.

So when this vision came, it jumped the queue immediately.

The living room was set up with the lighting in the right direction and at the right time of day to capture what was in the vision. I took photos of my puja tray, lit and filled with flowers. I drove down to my favourite stretch of the Mornington Peninsula at the right time of day to photograph the background - that particular quality of light on the water. And I researched and drew crows.

Then came the palette. As is often the case these days, the underpainting is a fluorescent colour that makes the inner child in me absolutely delighted. I love having it flash through in areas on the finished work, setting the tone for everything that comes on top.

I paint with flow paints - a very modern acrylic that moves more like ink or watercolour, pigment-rich and glorious but tricky to control. To build the final density, it takes quite a few layers. I am still discovering new potential in this medium every time.

Once the layers are done, comes the final embellishment. A maximalist at heart - I cannot help it. Out come the fine brushes and paint pens and the mantras that came with the vision or that were being chanted when the vision arrived. I love to tie that in, even if it means nothing to the viewer. Fun, bold, expressive, bright, full of movement, and deeply symbolic. Each work literally contains so much - sometimes even I do not fully know what is in it. It is simply what She wants expressed.

The final embellishments have to come as a download too, as the work develops. I rarely have any idea what they will look like, and cannot do them until they arrive. If I push through before they come, I ruin it. So I wait. That is how this work moves.

She is the Sea is in my private collection.

She has been in storage with everything else, but is currently at a friend’s house, and I am collecting her this week, so heading to my old town for the opening night of ‘Common’, the first group exhibition for Melton region artists, held at CS Gallery in Caroline Springs. A show I actually instigated with the local arts and culture committee at the shire.

She might go above my bedhead, the only large enough piece of free wall real estate in my little apartment. Perfect.

If I had my way, entirely, I would simply hang out in a studio and create. All day. With no cats tap dancing on the art table. But then I’d still be a frustrated on-leave spiritual mentor. ;-)

There are a few works up on my website on a private viewing page - you are more than welcome to have a look. I would genuinely love to know what they mean to you. Do let me know.

Private collection viewing at matakamaleshwari.com/art - I would love to hear what lands for you.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Mataji xxx
Mata Kamaleshwari©

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It is Mother’s Day here in Australia.

When my kids were little, Mother’s Day was the most glorious day. Truly, the best celebrated. Because when your kids are little, they get some pocket money and go to the Mother’s Day stall at school - the one you would have worked hard at for a couple of weeks, helping create. Then they choose something special for you. Some little thing wrapped in cellophane and ribbon, given with so much innocent and pure love alongside a cup of tea and some toast, hopefully in bed.

My kids would fuss about for ages. Go into the garden and get flowers, or up the street. They would make sure I was still in bed, even if by this stage I was absolutely gagging for tea and something to eat. And in would come the kids, the smiles, the huge family dog, and we would all celebrate together. Warm-hearted and simple. The best of all special days.

Of course, each to their own and there can be many reasons why, but this cultural trend away from motherhood at such a large scale is not a good one. I have strong views about it that are perhaps best kept for another time. What I will say is that what motherhood does and gives to a soul is extraordinary. And we are losing sight of that.

But this leads me to what happens if you didn’t have the best mother.

As many of us grow up and slowly realise there is something not quite right with our parents, days like this can become a painful reminder of what we have had to endure or miss out on. My mother left this earthly existence over twenty years ago. Even though our relationship was not the healthiest, her absence left such a mark on birthdays, at Christmas, and on Mother’s Day, especially.

However. The yoga never ends. The opportunities constantly cycle around.

If this has been the case for you, my message today is simple. Move toward peace, and then toward love. Put down the pitchforks, the hurts, the memories - just for a moment. The judgements, the scars, the bruises. Move to calm. To accept that our parents did the best they could with what they had can be so hard when you know they could have done better and didn’t. I know. But stay with me.

When I was sixteen, I was at boarding school. I had left an abusive household and only went home rarely. It was a seriously painful time. I wrote about a particular moment from that period in my book The She-Monk - a moment that changed everything for me.

A friend’s mother had become a Buddhist nun and had come to the school to give a talk. I had no idea until I saw her in the car park. When I heard about it, I was hungry to know as much as I could. My spiritual awakening had happened at eleven, and I was always on the lookout for the next step, the next download, the next practice. I had one shot at her - she was heading home. I asked what she had spoken about.

She said: “Karma.”

Everything in me lit up. That was exactly what my awakening had been about - the laws of karma. So I asked her to give me one teaching. One example.

She replied: “We choose our parents.”

Out of everything she could have said, she said that.

It struck like lightning through my system. It did more good than any therapy or medicine could have, because it meant everything is as it should be. That in some cosmic, difficult set-up, I had walked into this incarnation fully knowing what would happen. I had chosen those parents - the ones who had been the cause of so much damage. A lifetime of damage, it turns out, this body is still navigating physically.

Such peace came. Such allowing. Such acknowledgement.

I began reading Buddhist books, going wherever I could find more. But it still didn’t have the depth of my experience at eleven, so I knew it wasn’t my final resting place and kept seeking - until at twenty-five, a Trika guru moved to my town. You see, it is all a setup. If someone of remarkable realisation moves to you, that is a fairly significant sign of your next step. And please - please - if you go down that path, make sure they carry genuine realisation. Not study. Not a course. Not enthusiasm. Realisation.

So. That is what I want to offer you today.

Always lean toward love. Always forgive. Let this be a day of forgiveness. Forgive them for not being there. Forgive them for leaving, or for dying before they could give you what you needed. Forgive them for their own damage and karmas that made them so hard to be around. I know it can feel like a toxic teaching - to always move to love, to show up for your parents and ancestors. But it is true. It does happen. You can eventually be in the same room as them, once you have found your peace. It will show you how far you have come. They may still be dreadful - trust me, I have experienced this firsthand - but your peace will only deepen from the leaning in.

I have one photograph of my mother. It sometimes goes back into a cupboard, then comes out again. It is of her walking along the beach I grew up on, on an autumn day when there are sandbars everywhere, and the tide has gone right out. She is throwing sticks for the dog, who is playing beside her, but she has her back to the camera and is walking away in that soft autumn light.

It tells a story of her human journey. But also of the universal one - that we are all merely passing through, and all of us get it wrong, and all of us make a mess of it. There is no parent who has not. I believe that is part of the setup. Part of what the soul chose to work with. And when a child can hold that - the way that nun in the car park handed it to me at sixteen - it changes everything. It did not end the rocky road with my parents. But it ended my attachment to the karma of it. I had a base camp to return to. And I did. Again and again and again.

If you have a rare clean slate today - children who adore you, a mother who is present and well - have the most magnificent, innocent, simple day.

If you are more the norm and things are not as you would have liked, and stuff went down, and Mum was not perfect - forgive her. Light a candle. Burn some incense and sit with her as spirit before reaching out.

If you are like me and your mother is on the other side, do the same. Light the candle, burn the incense, sit with her. Because she is there with you. And she is not the mother who was in pain or unwell. She wants to reach out and support you. The more you open to this, the more you will feel how much she is working for you from where she is now.

And if you have kids, lucky you. A call, a flower, a meal, or even a terrible cup of tea with burnt toast is pure prasadam. It is an offering from the divine mother herself. Joy. Relish every moment of it.

And if you fit into none of these categories, what a day to be with the universal Mother Goddess! 😍 Shower her with love. Pick her flowers, make her tea, feed her, sit with her, sing to her. Absolutely nothing is better than that. In fact, all of you do that. I do it every single day, and it still feels like a kind of Christmas to honour and love her.

Love her, be with her, dote on her, and feel the bliss.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With love,
Ammaji

Mata Kamaleshwari©

Be neither excited nor sad.

Not because feeling is wrong. Not because you should be flat and unmoved and quietly vacant. But because in this dual universe, each extreme carries its opposite already built inside it. Excitement collapses into its opposite. The high produces the low. The peak brings the valley. Every time, without exception, if you are riding the feeling rather than moving through it.

This is the nature of duality. And the yogi - the one who is genuinely doing the work - learns to recognise this not as a problem to be solved but as the structure of the game.

So what is the alternative? Not numbness. Not detachment in the cold, dissociated sense that word sometimes carries. The tradition offers us something far more interesting.

Dispassion.

There are, in the understanding I work with, three movements of the same energy. The first is passion - raw, unprocessed, nervous-system dependent. The feeling that hooks you, triggers you, runs you. You are not having the feeling. The feeling is having you. There is nothing wrong with passion as a starting point. It is alive. It is Shakti moving. But left unchecked and unprocessed, it keeps you on the wheel.

Bring it closer to the Self, and it becomes compassion. The same energy, but now it has warmth and awareness in it. It can hold others. It is not just about you and your reaction. Compassion is passion that has learned to breathe.

Bring it all the way, and it becomes dispassion. And here is what most people misunderstand about dispassion - it is not the absence of feeling. The passion is still there. The caring is fully there. You are engaged with life completely. But you are not invested in the outcome. There is no push. No excessive emotion riding it. No white-knuckled need for it to go a particular way. You care - genuinely, deeply - but you are not gripped. You are free of the fruit while still tending the tree. This is what the Bhagavad Gita means by nishkama karma - action without attachment to results. It is not indifference. It is freedom.

Now. Let me be very clear about something, because I am tired of the spiritual bypassing that passes for wisdom in too many circles right now.

Be real.

None of this good feelings only, good vibes only, high frequency only nonsense. A loved one has died. You have received devastating news. Your child is ill. Your relationship has ended. Your life as you knew it has changed overnight. Big feelings will come. Enormous feelings. Feelings that take you to the floor.

That is not spiritual failure. That is being human. That is healthy. That is the body and heart doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

The question is not whether you feel it. The question is what you do with it once it arrives.

You feel it. You let it move. You do your inquiry, and you work with it until the energy begins to expand, to open, to move from contraction back toward spaciousness. Not forcing. Not performing acceptance. Actually processing. This may take minutes. It may take days. It may take years for the deepest ones. That is fine. That is the path.

The Spanda Karikas - an extraordinary ninth-century text by Vasugupta, 53 verses on the divine vibration at the heart of all experience - tells us something gorgeous.

Spanda, the divine pulse, the living throb of consciousness, is most available to us at the extreme points of experience. The moment of waking. The edge of sleep. A sudden shock. An eruption of joy so complete it empties the mind. And yes - even a sneeze. That involuntary moment of total absorption where the ordinary sense of self briefly dissolves.

These are the cracks in the mundane. The moments where the grip loosens just enough for the underlying reality to pulse through.

The yogi who remains alert -- who has cultivated the witness through genuine sadhana - can catch spanda in these moments. Not chase it. Catch it. There is a difference. Catching requires stillness and readiness. Chasing requires grasping. And grasping is exactly what closes the very door you are trying to walk through.

Be very mindful of chasing joy and happiness. Let them be natural states that arise from your sadhana, your genuine inner work, your slow and real spiritual evolution - arising for no particular reason, because that is who you are becoming, not because something external produced them. The moment joy becomes something you need, something you manufacture or pursue, it has become a drug. It has control over you. You are addicted to the positive just as surely as another person is addicted to the negative. Neither is freedom. Both are the wheel.

And be equally alert to obsessive thoughts, controlling behaviour, and shadow patterns showing up. All of it - the highs and the lows - is material for your inquiry practice. Being gripped by any of it is unskilful. Avoiding admitting you are gripped is more unskilful still. And not knowing you are gripped at all - that is pure ignorance. My recognition sequence exists for exactly this. If something in you wants it, you know where to find me.

Chocolate and chippies are, of course, exempt from this teaching. They are God’s food, and I will not hear otherwise.

A word about flying too close to the sun.

I witnessed this again and again during years of ashram life and retreat work. And the pattern is always the same. Someone opens - genuine opening, real Shakti, real grace moving through them. And then instead of integrating, instead of grounding, they chase the next experience. And the next. Transcendent bliss after transcendent bliss, peak state after peak state, never stopping, never landing, never letting the vessel settle and absorb what has been given.

What begins as a genuine spiritual opening starts to look - and I say this with great care but also great honesty - like a kind of mania. The ego gets involved. It gets hooked on the peaks. It starts to believe that the frequency of peak experiences means something special about the person having them. That they are blessed. Chosen. Further along than others. That the Shakti is theirs in some particular way.

That is the cliff edge. And the fall from it is a very hard landing.

It is not the peak states that are the problem. They are real. They are grace. But grace is not a personality trait, and Shakti is not a trophy. The moment the ego starts collecting experiences rather than being transformed by them, the whole thing inverts. What looked like rapid evolution is actually spiritual inflation - and inflation, as anyone who has witnessed it closely knows, always corrects.

Transcend and transform.

Peace.

Be sensible. Be temperate. Be grounded. The vessel must be prepared to hold what it is being given. That preparation is sadhana. There are no shortcuts, and enthusiasm is not a substitute.

I will say this again and again because I do not hear it said nearly enough in this era of what I can only call women’s weekly spirituality - the Instagram version, the retreat highlight reel, the carefully curated awakening aesthetic.

The path is long. It is real. It asks everything of you. And it gives everything back.

But only if you stay on it. Grounded. Alert. Dispassionate.

Watching for the spanda in the sneeze.

Jai Jai Maa 🌺🌺🌺

With great love,
Mataji xxx

MataKamaleshwari©