You know what kind of person I am? The kind who does a 41 day water only fast. Why? Because if The J Naz did 40 days in the desert, then I’m gonna do 41, cause, fuck Jesus! I have second sister syndrome. Everything I do is met by a deafening, “Meh”. I feel so ordinary at times, I forget. I forget how fucking magical all this crazy bullshit is!
I was really fucking struggling back there. It felt like I was drowning but I couldn’t die. A bit like masturbating and not being able to cum. I went insane. Not metaphorically. I lost my fucking marbles. It’s ok, I gathered most of them back up and put them in my gob. Didn’t. I now lie. See! I got BAD!
Almost everyone in my life did something that shocked me. My life seemed to be falling apart. I mustn’t have been relying correctly, or praying the right way, or I had a misconception of emptiness, or blah, blah fucking blah.
I got to a point where the whole world had gone mad. I was alone in both my biological and spiritual family. My teachers had all spectacularly fucked off and my life was in ruin. Then my landlord evicted me. Then my best friend did something I couldn’t resolve, then my sister and my husband, then my son, and then the Rona came, I somehow lost my boy, but gained something I had NO FUCKONG idea I would.
I was at a point I was running through a street trying to get away from all this madness and realised, there’s nowhere to go. There never has been. I’ve tried for 20 years to get closer to my Spiritual Guide through classes and festivals, ordination and utter rejection and abandonment by every single one of them. No one has actually checked up on me. They all rely on gossip and hearsay. I’m still bitter, it seems, but I’m improving generally.
I have to be fucking honest. It’s my schtick. I need to just speak the truth (not Truth) and be corrected if need be. But this needs saying, if Dorje Shugdan blesses me to.
I got so fucking alone I was convinced I was inside a box for eternity. That’s when I realised. My Guru had answered one of my sincerest prayers. I’ve had a picture of some sort of mahamudra retreat for YEARS, but, being unwelcome at most centres, or certainly being made to feel I was, I could never do it at a centre. The conditions just didn’t seem to come about. I’ll start a new paragraph now so it looks better.
There we go. So, I had one of Sparkie’s* mahamudra cards on my shrine for years and I’d got to Tantric Grounds and Paths on TTP, but after attending a meeting at Düldzin, I was told, “Sorry Love, no. Again.”
Ah, fuck this bollocks, I thought. And did what I always do and did one at home. Not my home. I haven’t had a MY home for over a year now, in a spare room of a haunted house. Which is also fucking spot on awesome. Guess who Dorje Shugdan is the boss of? 🤭 So, I have those guys to thank too. It was difficult wrangling them, some fierce, violent rape had happened to my partner here, the man then killed himself. Luckily, it all came together in perfect timing with other incredible and fucking MAGICAL things. I hated it, all the way. It was torment. Except for a few weeks in the middle when I had a “nice time”, it was fucking Hell.
I can almost feel Sparkie* and Khenrab smile. I bitched about it every step of the fucking way (as Pende-la would attest) and quit so many times, and came back. I lost my fucking mind. And came back. I died on my own Yggdrasil, and he still fucking held me. I mentally destroyed everything my Guru have me, and still he waited patiently for me.
I might write more about it over time. Details of it, my six week and 4 silent day retreat on Mahamudra, I’m free to speak about my experiences as I choose. My Guru have me a precious gift. Free will. During my time in Hell with Him, he guided me to the absolute neverworld of my mind.
Does that mean Buddha harms? No. That means Buddha fulfilled my request. I asked him. I practiced taking and whenever suffering came he held me through it. At one point, I lay naked in bed, wrapped in my robes, completely disconnected from any sense of reality. I could not mentally handle it at times, and he slowed things down, but once I’d rested, I’d ask for more. And he gave me more. I needed to know suffering. I needed to take it away, and a good friend taught my not to look away like those dead people do.
After a massive battering, I can safely safe I’m very happy with how it all worked out. Incredible, difficult, wonderful, terrible and so much more. A very small step towards Great Enlightenment, but, for me, Giant’s have kept and held my in the palm of their hand as they did so.
More soon x