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.
12 Truths I Learned from Life and Writing
Anne Lamott is one of my favorite Christian writers. She’s so humble, real, irreverent, funny and down-to-earth. I think we can all learn a lot from her about not taking ourselves and our walking of the spiritual path so seriously - I mean in a glum sort of way. I think a serious spiritual practitioner is also someone who can laugh at herself and her own foibles and at the absurdities of living in the material world. Take a listen and see if you like her TED talk as much as I did --> Click here or on the image below -- 12 truths I learned from life and writing (Anne Lamott | TED2017)All the best,Rukmini Walker[embed]https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_lamott_12_truths_i_learned_from_life_and_writing?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread#t-903072[/embed]
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.