Holy Anandamayi Ma
I was always surrounded by strong women, and always tried to become stronger than I am. Almost all my adult life I have fought, fought, argued, conquered and overcome. I was one of millions of women, from which society requires to do more than she can, and to implement more than there is in her potential. But one day I thought: "Is it me? What is my path? And where to find the knowledge that will help me to move towards my true destiny? "
Society wants a modern woman to be successful, conspicuous and businesslike. To be always in time, to follow a crazy flow of change, to be an inspiring wife, a caring mother and an attractive mistress at the same time, to earn and to stay forever young. True knowledge is replaced with false values. A woman is drawn away from her natural essence of being Goddess, Mother, Lada, Shakti, and step by step she becomes a servant of consumption and advertising, plastic surgery and the race for money, corruption and moral decline. This does not bring her harmony and happiness. In the constant "race for armaments" she simply forgets to ask herself: Who am I? what is my true nature? The cause is that there is no time, there are pre-set programs and frameworks, and the woman is turned into a commodity to be sold at a profit until the expiry date is over.
Nowadays a girl’s independency starts from a career choice, and she is guided solely by considerations of high income and demand. It is a way that is based on survival and winning a place in the sun. Real estate, personal property, working late at the office, meetings, business contacts and advantageous ties. Such a life results in years at the computer and near the phone, and weakness and desolation on the background.
As a child I loved to sculpt in clay, work with thread, beads, buttons and fabrics. I "cooked" soup of sand, pebbles, twigs and young greens from the garden. I was happy kneading the dough and cooking. When no one saw me, I danced. Now I do not remember what I was dreaming about, but I remember feeling like I was harmonious in these simple creative activities. Now when I am 30 and experienced enough, I feel peace and inner agreement when I pick up the needle and a cloth, when I touching flour and when I dance alone. Under the pressure of stereotypes and frameworks, I unconsciously changed myself and partly lost myself.
A society’s pressure is enormous. A woman often has neither strength nor time nor awareness to counter this onslaught. When mindlessly following fashion trends, copying advertised "style icons" and imitating supposedly successful way life, a woman is turned into a glamorous sexual biorobot with a complete lack of independent thinking and creativity. She is involved into a race in a vicious circle. She is playing a game on clearly defined rules. The consumer society dictates the conditions of survival. Following the trend becomes a natural sense of the lives of many "sleeping beauties".
At the age of 13-27 years I always went on high heels. I used to wear short skirts and tight dresses. Approximately twenty times I changed hair color and haircut, starting from a fully shaved head and up to permanent wave, from blonde nymphet image to the role of the grim lady with raven hair. There were accrued nails, a lot of makeup and daily red lipstick. Most of the money earned, I spend on clothes, jewelry, shoes and handbags. I constantly compared myself to the ideal woman when looking through fashion magazines and watching fashion channels. I felt I am not good enough, incomplete and unrealized. It was grafted blind desire to appear and not be. An attempt to sell myself more profitable. These years my values were on the level of a usual consumer: to build a career, to find “a ready man”, to marry successfully, to give birth to healthy children, to travel and to enjoy affordable pleasures of the world.
Drawing attention of society - especially a male half of it - to her outer shell, a woman seals and gradually loses her inner world. Wasting force obtained from the birth in order to get material world objectives, women forget about development and transformation of their deep nature. The world dictates them not only how to dress, but also what to read and what to watch, what to listen to, what to think, to whom to be leveled to and where to move. The ability to create and to build, to store and to deliver is replaced by cheap entertainment, and a sense of beauty and harmony is fitted by false, successfully sold standards. Finally, women are living their life filling the inner emptiness by artificial fillers. A vain attempt to fill a gaping emotional hole.
"I raced like a greyhound for a mechanical rabbit in the race. And then one day I stopped. Three years ago I wrote in Livejournal: "Recently, I look at people and they seem to me strangers and very distant. They pronounce important words and they eager to outweigh on non-existent scales, but it seems to me that they are now bursting soap bubbles and crumble billions of shimmering dust ... and suddenly the air is clean and clear - without me and without them. I do not know at what moment this rejection was born – because I loved people to chest pain. And now I can not even articulate my feelings towards people, I just feel pain of their nameless spiritual emptiness and desire to fill this emptiness with a false tow. I am also empty, because the world is a reflection of ourselves.
Tonight I talked to a person. He tells me about plans, improvements, monitoring. He proposes me to spread papers on the new system and requires dedication, zeal and enthusiasm. But I do want to ask: "Hey man, are you still alive? Do you have buttons instead of eyes from birth? Hey man, do you dance somewhere inside you? And if tomorrow is the last day on earth, what would you say to Him?" Adapting themselves to the rigid world, people replace the true values with false narcissism, burning passions, false notes, pity, consumption of each other. Very rarely I meet people, glowing from authenticity and real life. But once, when we were sent into the world, we were clean, are eyes were clear and our thoughts were clear too. "
It is a huge responsibility - to be born a woman. From ancient times the female energy was considered to be the main creative force. A woman is able to change the world through continuous personal development and transformation of energy coming from the outside. Properly assessing the reality and developing her spiritual qualities, wisdom, compassion, attention, awareness, woman makes an invaluable contribution to the future, to the history of her family and society as a whole. Like attracts like. Society is formed by thoughts, actions, that is the potential that it has. And a half of this potential depends on women. Bringing harmony and creativity, a woman is able to direct the development of the surrounding world in its peaceful course.
“In my parents’ yard there is a wooden bench. It is hidden behind the house, where it is always very sunny. In moments of devastation, I climb up to it, substitute the face of the wind and listen to the flow inside. At such moments, I do not feel the body, I feel a clot in the chest, which is heated by the solar heat through my eyes. Perhaps this clot is the soul, smooth, quiet and relaxing, not marred by confusions of the mind and the mind whispers. If I feel this clot, for a long time there is a feeling that everything is empty - all this fuss, money, passion, emotion, throwing doubts. These immersions give me humility - life flashes and lures, hurt and happy, but as all the material, it winds the ashes to the wind. Things and relationships are broken, achievements are covered with ashes of time, seasons, faced and feelings are changed. At such moments, I realize that beauty is not eternal, human ties are ephemeral and time is fleeting and inexorable. I am not afraid of this understanding. It calms. What torments and tortures the person at a particular stage of the journey - empty vanity, which ultimately will be judged by God as plus or minus, no more. At some point I realized that the correctness or incorrectness of any act, decision, thought, action is determined only by the amount of love invested in them... no ego, no passion, but love as an offering to God without regard to any personal benefit. Since then, I no longer deceive myself. I love what I love, and I pass by people and things I can not give love to. I do not live a life that breaks the soul. In my understanding life can and should break the body in order to tame shell, fit it for the steady flicker of the soul. Breaking and deceiving the soul, drowning down its whisper inside - is a crime against oneself, a crime against the love of God, who gave us a chance of immeasurable birth. Probably, there would be no family, no children, no friends, home, money, achievement, career, beauty, impressions in my life, but it all seems to me now nothing to worry about. And the reason is that I feel inside this clot of life and love. I try not to lose this feeling and to live each day consciously.”
There is a certain energy potential in every woman from her birth. It is the ability and the knowledge accumulated in previous lives, through which she faced her karma in material and spiritual conditions: country, city, family, friends, beauty, business and development opportunities. Depending on the personal deeds and actions, one either accumulates extra energy and knowledge, or devastates his consciousness. Spending his life on time values and senseless dreams that bring pleasure just here and now, one loses his potential. In the absence of the spiritual experience a woman gradually loses herself and her dignity. And the opportunity to change one’s life depends on the amount of saved energy and moral purity.
A development of personal qualities, creative perception, the ability to think critically and evaluate the environmental reality, helps a woman to find her own path of development and spiritual growth. This is the "career" for a woman. Preserving and developing a spirit, a woman lets in her life happiness, joy, peace, that give more impetus to the development. A work on self-awareness, self-education and self-development helps to find the right way in the wilds of contemporary morality and the world of double standards.
"Two years ago I wrote in LiveJournal:" My friend called me and began to cry on her destiny. She said, she wants to work, to earn money, to change a car, to buy new things, to interact with people, and she has to stay home with the child and her husband. She complained that she vegetates in four walls, when real life is passing by. At the same time she has a good husband, a nice little girl, a great apartment, two cars, and a complete freedom of action. I was trying to tell her that real life is not just a career, but it is a self-development and a development of the child and the family, but my point of view was neither heard, nor even considered as an option. The person felt miserable and deprived, frustrated and flawed. It was useless to say that being free of making money, of survival, of moving to strange corners, a woman can really be a woman and open quietly, without any fuss, new aspects of her personality. Having hung up I wanted to cry. Most of women bring a child to the world and create a family, in order to perform the task assigned by nature and not to be alone - no more. It is very sad. It is simply terrifying to see deficient mothers, deficient children, deficient families. And they are completely unawareness of this deficiency. There are no words to express my sincere sorrow for a true woman's happiness lost in the pursuit of consumerism, materialism, money, ambition, career, autonomy, independence, and other attributes of supposedly realized feminine personality. And women are torn to all this, they dream and rave. All this is silly and sad ... "".
If a man possesses something, it will always be not enough for him. Not enough money, not enough power, not enough having one man, not enough friends, not enough fun, not enough oneself. Consumer, having no essence of his own, consists of what he possesses. The best way to move from selfish attitude towards spiritual values is self-awareness through the purification of body, speech and mind. What can help to go through this difficult path is a practice of Yoga, which, if desired, can be a powerful tool to generate spiritual experiences and knowledge about oneself and the world around.
Gradual yogic effort on one’s own body and mind helps to comprehend the laws of the universe, to abandon illusions, to become aware of karmic (causal) connections, to make every personal choice accordance with them and to realize an inherent creativity. Moving ahead on the path of yoga, a woman ceases to shift responsibility for her life in the external circumstances and learns to manage her internal states: emotions, feelings, control her desires, she cultivates patience, humility, understanding and compassion, generates a sense of mutual aid. She forms the true reality around with infinite opportunities of accomplishing her mission.
"I learned about yoga about five years ago. All this time I left and then came back on this difficult path. Sometimes I feel myself infinitely lonely, because I can not live in habitual and illusory pleasures, imposed on us by society. But in such moments I clearly observe and realize that loneliness - this is only the other side of freedom. We can not be free and not alone. Naturally, one of the stages on the way to one’s natural essence is an experience of loneliness, an experience of being united and separate at the same time. Year by year, a feeling of loneliness in me is transformed into an awareness. That is when you clearly understand and realize what are you doing and why.
One thing I know for sure: the knowledge, the skills and the attitude that yoga brought into my life, - they are priceless and they changed me radically. Now Yoga for me is life. And my way to a Woman goes through this life. For me yoga is not gymnastics, but a way of thinking, a way of union with the divine and absolute, the way of unity with myself. I do not divide yoga into morning Shatkarmas, asanas, pranayama, meditation and life with open eyes. I live in yoga, and yoga lives in me. The practice helps to stop in the bustle of life and to hear, to feel, to touch. Yoga teaches us to cease to run, to rush, to look at others, learns to dive into ourselves and to stand still.
Yoga teaches me to love ... really – to love without selfishness and desire to possess. And it is very difficult - to learn unconditional love and to let go. But for me, this path is the true destination of a woman - to be a Mother. Being a Mother means to love, to compassionate and to accept people as they are. After all, Mother has great compassion for her child and should take her children as they are. Someone realizes himself as a Mother in the family, giving birth to children. And someone becomes a mother of all living beings. Everything comes according to karma."
When overcoming one’s own limitations, dependencies and correcting deficiencies, a woman teaches and learns to properly and adequately act in the material world, bringing benefit to people and to the natural environment. Recognizing a need to develop in the direction of knowledge and wisdom, bringing an inner light to the world, a woman can reveal her own purpose. In this spiritual creative power and love for all living beings a true nature of woman manifests. And the world around her becomes more harmonious and brighter.
"It is incredibly hard to live in this world of furious. It is a lot of work to leave the common truth, to bring good into everyday life, to be a woman according to the deep essence, but this work is very beneficial. Indian holy of holies Anandamayi Ma once said: "In search for knowledge of inner essence a great Mother of all existent can be detected. When the Mother is found, everything is found. To learn the Mother means to realize the Mother, to become a Mother. Ma means Atma. "to become" actually means that it is already so, and always has been.""
The choice of what your life will be like, depends just on your aspirations. And as the proverb says: "When there are two ways in front of you, always choose the most difficult one."
the author Anastasia Kaurova