The Launch of Bhakti Shakti!
On January 17, 2022, my Dear God Sister, Pranada Comtois will launch a new book called Bhakti Shakti about the sacred feminine Sri Radha live on Facebook/PranadaComtois. To hear more about this exciting new book, please click on this link to listen to an interview we just did together.
All the best,Rukmini Walker [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMdODcqEhFw[/embed]
Feeling Freely
~by Pranada Comtois
Yasoda looked at Krsna, who had the complexion of a delicate blue sapphire. All her senses became eyes to worship his exquisite form of abundant sweetness. She became stunned, ecstasy surged throughout her body, and affectionate tears streamed down her face. On hearing of Krsna’s birth, Nanda jubilantly dashed from the cowshed toward the birth room. Rohini greeted him at Yasoda’s door. When he saw Krsna’s face – with large eyes sweeping toward his ears, with his cherry red lips, button nose, and perfect ears – Nanda became motionless, filled with the intoxicating presence of supreme bliss incarnate. Rohini waited for Nanda to come back to his senses, then had him sit down, and gently placed Krsna on his lap. Nanda tenderly held his son like a priceless jewel, tasting the beauty of his form, drinking the pleasing nectar of his face, smelling the fragrance of his head with its black curly locks. The affection Nanda had for his son and his bliss astonished everyone present.Word of Krsna’s birth and his parent’s unprecedented happiness spread rapidly in Gokula. Women, who had abandoned their jewelry in grief because Yasoda had been childless for so long, now adorned themselves with their finest pieces and hurried toward the new mother. Many of them converged on the road, laughing and sharing exclamations of wonder as they left a trail of fragrant flowers that fell from their decorated dancing braids. And the men came too, rushing forward. All of them vibrant with spontaneous love for precious Krsna, their very life.Everyone filled their eyes with delight by lifting the blanket on Krsna and touching him while smiling. One, two, four, or eight people, alone or in pairs, in groups or many groups, youths and elders entered the house to see baby Krsna. They joined together in Nanda’s courtyard and sprinkled each other with ghee, yogurt, and turmeric. They danced and sang with joyous abandon. Soon they began exuberantly showering each other with milk. Then some men threw other men into large pots of yogurt and everyone laughed heartily overcome with ecstasy in welcoming Krsna. Hearing of this unrestricted merriment and abundant jubilation, I submerged in their broad, boundless joy and was seized with a desire to know Krsna; to love Krsna. I marveled at the cowherds’ liberal emotions. I wanted to freely feel, safely feel like that. Mostly I’m afraid of my feelings; they’ve gotten me into lots of trouble. And attachment to matter is not only the cause of my bondage, but it’s agonizing.I felt a twinge of envy. The residents of Vraja are able to safely feel, I thought. They’re able to fully express emotions without concern that their attachment–their all-consuming, mind-numbing attachment–will drag them into the separateness of dark self-interest and samsara. I was possessed of a desire to feel freely and drown in the joy of that pure love. To feel freely, to feel safely, to feel truly, we must consciously choose our object of love. We require a perfect object of love. We know what happens when we don’t love the Supreme Person. Our love never flames into a blaze or it withers on the vine before it blooms its delicacy or we’re betrayed or abused or neglected or left. To experience that giving is receiving we must repose our love in Krsna, the perfect object of love. This is the thing. Krsna wants our very self. Everything. Krsna loves much; he exists to love and immerses himself completely in loving relationships. He gives himself fully to those who love him. Giving to Krsna is always receiving because he gives more than we have to offer him. Just looking at him sends intense waves of ecstasy throughout the devotee’s body. Imagine the ecstasy of having daily exchanges of love with such a person! But to have his love, to own him in love, we have to give everything. Our very self. Nothing held back. He is all in; he expects the same of us. We must come to this: I will love unbridled; I will love Krsna unrestrained without selfish motivation, without interruption.And “that’s the rub.” We look at attractive Krsna and say, “I’m not so sure.” (We’re probably not thinking clearly about what Death will allow us to hold onto.)And life looks at us and says, “Let me help you with that.” And proceeds to nip at us here, tear at us there, wear on us under here, saw on us over there. And our loves look at us and say, “I’m not so sure,” and heartbroken we look for the next love.These negative impetuses can impel us toward pure love of Krsna–if we simultaneously engage in the Bhakti practice of keeping company with those who are developing their love for Krsna, and we allow Krsna to take birth in our hearts by hearing about, reading about, speaking about, and singing about Krsna, who is an ocean of unlimited good qualities, who is the very form of truth and beauty, who is the supreme lover, who is our undying friend, who is happy in giving joy to others, who weaves his overture as the charming flute-player – who is waiting for us.
Pranada Comtois is a devoted pilgrim and award-winning author of Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness. Her writing sheds light on bhakti’s wisdom school of heartfulness. At sixteen she met her teacher A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and began her lifelong study and practice of bhakti. Her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications and she is a featured speaker in the film “Women of Bhakti.” Her second book, Bhakti-Shakti: The Goddess of Divine Love is due out in 2022 through Mandala Publishing. Connect with Pranada here.
Love in the Dark Matter of the Universe
~by Pranada Comtois
*To listen to an audio version of this blog, spoken by Pranada Comtois, please click on the "play" button
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Holding a book in my hands, the author beckons me, “Imagine feeling more love from someone than you have ever known.” Yes! I muse and settle in for a journey with the 300-page book. The line on the back cover “love is a state of being” had garnered my full attention.I read on, “This lover doesn’t need anything from you . . . only wants your complete fulfillment.” Two paragraphs later, I’m introduced to the lover, “It’s the subatomic texture of the universe, the dark matter that connects everything.”Whoa, can we back up a second? The “someone” on the first page just became an “it.” Then onto the next sentence, “When you tune into that flow you will feel it in your own heart . . . ” Well, now I have love as a vague flow; a lover that is an it.Maybe the author needed a better editor, I think, and I brave my way forward. After several chapters I set the book down disappointed. When did our experience of love and loving manifest as an amorphous mass? Have we ever loved an indescript, indeterminate, shapeless something/nothing? Can we talk or share our heart with dark matter? How might we sculpt subatomic texture so we can embrace it? Will the unnamed flow receive our gifts and send a thank you note?To confirm I’m not asking more from the author than ought to be expected, I turn to the dictionary: “Love; a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.”This reassures me. Love is what I thought it was: an exchange between two people. When love is used colloquially in a statement like, “I love sunsets,” we use love loosely—imprecisely—to mean a liking. We’re not talking about the nuanced relationship we can experience with another person.Even love of oneself, though genuine love, is not a full expression of love. What give and take of thoughts, emotions, and gifts take place with oneself? The exchange is one-sided and thus limited. The full face of love involves two sentient beings.A “state of being” refers to a condition of the self that exists eternally. Such a state isn’t modified by time or space, what to speak of lesser influences like moods or shifts of opinion. When we go inward we can make contact with the eternal self, whose nature is described by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita (2.16):Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent [the material body] there is no endurance and of the eternal [the soul] there is no change. This they have concluded by studying the nature of both.The self, or the soul, is a unit of consciousness, a spiritual substance, comprised of Being (sat), Knowing (chit), and Loving (ananda). In short, the self exists, knows, and loves. In her original condition—in her eternal state of being—she is a knowing, joyful lover. That original state is called wise-love.Since we are not experiencing wise-love as a state of being now, how can we achieve it? The Bhakti texts describe that when the self connects with her Source, the Supreme Person (from whom she garners her characteristics of Being, Knowing, and Loving) in love and service through a practice of Bhakti, she can wake from the current dream that has her believing she is either the male or female body she is currently inhabiting.Waking from the dream of the false ego to the real self through a Bhakti yoga practice of hearing and chanting about the Supreme’s name, personality, and activities, she finds wise-love as a state of being. Such pure love flows ever-fresh and ceaselessly from her heart toward other souls and her Significant Other. In that illumined dance of love she can hold her Supreme Beloved – who is infinite gorgeousness itself – in her real arms and gaze upon the unmatched beauty of her Beloved’s face with the soul’s real eyes.
Pranada Comtois is a devoted pilgrim and award-winning author of Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness. Her writing sheds light on bhakti’s wisdom school of heartfulness. At sixteen she met her teacher A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and began her lifelong study and practice of bhakti. Her writing has appeared in numerous online and print publications and she is a featured speaker in the film “Women of Bhakti.” Her second book, Bhakti-Shakti: The Goddess of Divine Love is due out in 2021 through Mandala Publishing. Connect with Pranada here.
O Prabhupada, Brilliant Moon
Forty-three years ago on November 14th, 1977, our beloved Guru Maharaj, Srila Prabhupada departed this world from Sri Vrndavana Dham, ending his pastimes here in this world, and returning to the Vrndavan of the spiritual world. According to the lunar calendar, we are honoring that day today, Wednesday, November, 18th.Here is a video remembrance of Srila Prabhupada by his spiritual daughter and disciple, Pranada Devi Dasi that evokes his mood of brilliant compassion. Please click here to watchSrila Prabhupada, thank you for showering this world with your divine compassion,Your eternal daughter,Rukmini Devi Dasi
Deepening my Relationship with The Goddess
Pranada Comtois
It’s the nature of spiritual practice, or sadhana, to move from head-to-heart to become harmonized. This is why it took me several years after I began my practice of Bhakti yoga, nearly fifty years ago, to really internalize certain concepts beyond theory and let them find a deep place in my being. This isn’t surprising since one such concept, and perhaps one of the most provocative, is that -according to Bhakti Theology- all souls (whether in a male or female body) are feminine!Ironically, females were oppressed in the Bhakti community where I lived and in response, for a while, I tried to suppress my own femininity. Even though we had all been taught that we are not our physical bodies, gender seemed to become an issue in many Bhakti temples. Throughout those struggles I absorbed myself in japa and kirtan,the main practices of Bhakti yoga. Quietly to myself, and out loud in groups, respectively, I chanted the ancient Hare Krishna maha-mantra, which addresses the Supreme Divine as both male and female.Although, at first my focus was on Krishna – the divine masculine – as my meditation progressed through the decades, Radha – the divine feminine and supreme Goddess—came to the forefront of my heart and awareness. Soon, pleasing her, serving her, and seeing her became my passionate, cherished goal.[perfectpullquote align="full" cite="" link="" color="" class="" size=""]As my practice continued, Radha revealed her beautiful qualities to me. She is patient, grave, affectionate, compassionate, gentle, grateful, merciful, respectful, etc. In fact, all souls possess the same goddess-like qualities at their spiritual cores. How I longed to awaken these within myself![/perfectpullquote]
One text describes: “Radha is the full power, and Krishna is the possessor of full power.” Gradually Radha, the Divine Feminine, showed me the formidable power of the feminine, for her love conquers the all-powerful Krishna!This divine vision of Goddess Radha overpowering God through love – knocking him off his throne – astonished me. I realized that the Goddess not only shares the throne at the summit of reality, she demurely controls it, as well as he who owns it! And she does so with the deepest compassion and pure love: a love that drives God mad.Each day my relationship with Radha – and understanding how powerful the feminine can be – deepens. Meditating on Goddess Radha has unlocked transcendental reflections in me as I begin to understand the awesome implications in declaring all souls as feminine: that we all have these qualities and this power of spiritual love, regardless of our biological genders. What a different world it would be if all people imbibed these powerful, divine qualities!We experience masculine and feminine in this world – however imbalanced – because they have a pure state in the spiritual world. Unfortunately, our experiences of masculine and feminine energies are but impoverished reflections of their spiritual source and oftentimes the world subjugates the female and accentuates the male.[perfectpullquote align="full" cite="" link="" color="" class="" size=""]The Goddess teaches us how to do away with inebriated concepts of gender by empowering ourselves with her divine qualities and her overpowering, pure love through service to our Divine Other.[/perfectpullquote]
This is the path of Bhakti, which I call “The Way of the Feminine Divine.” It is the means by which we achieve our full potential as spiritual beings. It is the way of the Goddess of Wise-Love, Radha, unto whom I offer my life each day in the service of helping others call Radha into their lives.Goddess Radha is the exemplar lover and the shelter of all affection. For me, she’s the transcendent goal. Whether in a male or female body and whichever gender we identify with, in our spiritual perfection – according to Bhakti – we’re all servants of the Supreme Goddess Radha!And what happens when we become servants of the divine goddess in the truest sense? We become spiritual lovers. We conquer God! We conquer our Divine Other with our love. Is there any greater potential for the soul? Not as I see it.This essay was originally published in GODDESS, When She Rules: Expressions by Contemporary Women, (Golden Dragonfly Press, Jan.2018)______________________________________________
Pranada Comtois is a devoted pilgrim, teacher, and award-winning author of Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness. Her writing sheds light on bhakti’s wisdom school of heartfulness with a focus on how to culture wise-love in our lives and relationships so we can experience the inherent, unbounded joy of the self. At sixteen she met her teacher A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and began her lifelong study and practice of bhakti. The wisdom of her teaching grows from living for twenty years as a contemplative in bhakti ashrams, and another twenty years raising a family and running two multi-million dollar businesses. Pranada is an activist in women’s spiritual empowerment. She was the first to speak up for gender harmony in the modern bhakti tradition and successfully organized global steps against gender injustice. Her writing has appeared in Integral Yoga, Rebelle Society, Elephant Journal, Tattooed Buddha, and the books Journey of the Heart, Bhakti Blossoms, and GODDESS: When She Rules. She is a featured speaker in the film Women of Bhakti.Her debut, award-winning book, Wise-Love: Bhakti and the Search for the Soul of Consciousness is available here. Connect with Pranada on her website here.