I spent the day in a Hare Krishna temple today. Monks. Devotees. Young girls lost in their search of meaning. Or so I have perceived them to be. I might be completely wrong. But here’s a personal blog so it is my perception that you’ll read. I didn’t write in a while. Not for you at least. For me. I have been writing. But not letting myself dive deeper into that creative force. Maya original. Maya illusion. I have been writing Maya Musings instead. A whole other world. Different realms of myself within this one realm. Who am I really? I am letting it Roar. Fully expressing myself through all that there is. Living my best life. Making my life a masterpiece. I stopped questioning. I started living. Letting the questions unravel through experience instead of intellectualising it. It feels free. It is freeing. Fully back into my 3D self. Yet this time living from the heart. Never losing sight of my higher self. My highest expression of the divine. Allowing her to live through me. How beautiful. Flowing in softness and beauty. Flowing in joy. Flowing in the divine.
‘The illusion’. They kept calling me that. The monks laughed when I told them my name. Lecture on what is. What is? Guess who will be asking countless questions on what is? Maya. No other than the illusion of all that there is. We chanted. We danced. And then I sat there listening to the lecture and I couldn’t grasp it. Did the scripture really say that? I did read some of it and yet I did not understand that ‘most humans acted like dogs in search of sex and food completely neglecting the true meaning of life which is to worship the most beautiful man on earth’. My candle just burnt off as I wrote that. The light went off. There must be some truth to it. Or am I the one who’s wrong? There we go. Here I am. Questioning again. Yes there is more to this material world and I have been deeply exploring it for the past 3 years. Diving deep into the ethers of my own self. Expanding consciousness through all that there is. I am finally coming back to Earth. Finally grounding. Today was an interesting experience. I have been to other temples through my exploration. Buddhist temples. Yogananda’s temple. I even found enlightenment in the Buddhist temple. In a cup of hot water. In between 2 cups of tea. The space in between. Or so they called. A marvellous experience. A day, I will always remember. The day I found bliss in water. Visiting Yogananda, I found solace. I never used that word before but that’s how I felt. I sat there after the lecture meditating for hours. I left my body, yet could never feel so present. Today was so different. I found sadness and deep gratitude for myself and my freedom.
I felt a huge resistance too. A resistance following a path of devotion. Finding a guru. Following his teachings exclusively. To me, everyone is a teacher. My 7 years old niece is my best teacher. She’s 7. Why should I be looking for a guru when I have all I need within? I said that to them. They asked: why do you want to be God? I said, I already am God. God lives within me and within all of us. I do not want to be God, I already am an expression of it all. Why wouldn’t I want to be? It was surprising to me. This whole day. I found solace in the chanting. But the way the teachings were transmitted verbally was quite interesting to not say something else. Very indoctrinating. Visions of religious horror. I wouldn’t have thought so. Hare Krishna. The supreme God. All that there is. I have been enquiring. Reading. Following my own path made of many paths. Yet. Today I was told that all paths were wrong but one. How could one pretend to come from love when rejecting all that there is but what he says? I couldn’t grasp that. Of course, I could not hold back either. ‘Let’s hear what this intelligent young lady has to say’. I have lots to say. Intellectual ping pong game. Monks vs Maya. No pun intended.
There was a general laughter when I said my name was Maya. It came towards the end. Obviously as I could not stop asking question. How surprising. For the whole lecture, ‘Maya; was portrayed as the anti-supreme. The source of all evil. The source of all human suffering. What struck me most was how everything was portrayed as misery. We are in a prison. Stuck in an unatural state. All we do is to protect ourselves from the dangers of this horrible world. This world is nothing but horrible. I had heard that before. I had understood it from my own studies of scriptures but seeing it in full action for the first time. Sitting with people who actually believed it. I felt sad. But why? Why would I feel sad for them? They seemed quite happy with their own state of being. Perhaps there was something sad about myself. What was it? What is it? I felt sadness for the girls living in the temple. Beautiful young girls. They looked sad. One of them had tears in her eyes throughout the entire lecture. She seemed as if she did not want to be there. She came to me at the end and said ‘I love your rings’ which I heard ‘Please help me escape’. Yet. Why am I so concerned about them? Where really I should be concerned about myself.
I felt sad yet so grateful. I was grateful that I was rooted enough in my being not to let myself be swayed by these religious dogma. Because that’s what it is truly. They pray on people at their most desperate. Convince them there is only one truth to this life. Giving up on everything and eveyone. Living convinced that our destiny is to suffer. Living a life trying to escape suffering, to escape this ‘unnatural state’, to escape this ‘human prison’ while in fact they’re only perpetuating that prison for themselves. I felt sad because for a long time I was doing the exact same thing to myself. Only less officially. Trying to escape this prison I had created for myself. Seeing my own life as misery. Living in struggle and victimizing myself. That’s what I saw there. That part of me reflected in their devotion. Perhaps that’s where the resistance stems from. The refusal to subordinate my freedom. I believe in the divine. I believe in God. I believe in the Supreme Godhead. And I believe it is all me. I am it. I am all of it. And through myself I learn about it all. The divine unravels through me and everyone around me is here to teach me. I am all that there is. Yet, I am nothing at once. I am and I am not. I am everything and nothing. My freedom is in carving my own path. My freedom is in allowing myself to explore the boundless, infinite expression of the divine that I am within the confines of this beautiful human body. Within this magnificent vessel of light. I am all that there is. The Earth, the Air, the Fire and the Water. I am it. I am all of it. And oh, how I am grateful for it. Thank you God. Thank you Krishna. Thank you Maya. Thank you all that there is. For allowing me to experience it all through me.
I am forever blessed and grateful.
Living in bliss. Maya is my bliss. A light so pure that everyone sees as illusion. Yet. Look deeper. The illusion is nothing but light. Distortion. Abyss. Darkness. Bliss.
Hare Krsna-Hi Maya, I was looking at Daniel Pinchbeck's Substack (for the first time) and on his site he recommends several others-yours included. I was attracted right away because your name is Maya, so before I'd even really looked at his material I found myself here on your Substack. Monks vs. Maya caught my eyes first, and somehow I hoped/felt your article just might reference the Hare Krsna's. I wasn't disappointed, and I want to praise your willingness to check out everything/anything spiritual. Not many will ever honestly look for truth everywhere, and ISKCON, the Hare Krsnas, are not exactly most people's idea of "cool". I don't have much time right now so I'll just say a couple things. First: I joined ISKCON over 40 years ago at age 18. I thought the devotees were wrong about almost everything, but I wanted to try becoming a monk for at least a while-like a year or two. I tried chanting 16+ rounds every day & listening closely to the chanting. Within three weeks I was transformed and I mean TRANSFORMED! Krsna revealed Himself to me-I realized He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Second: I am not involved in present day ISKCON, and I have not been for decades. I rejected my so-called guru (in ISKCON) and only follow the founder Srila Prabhupada. ISKCON is not presently following the founders instructions and is (I believe) a spiritual dead end. Anyways, I just wanted to tell you I liked your article & will be back to read more when I have time. Thanks for writing it-Haribol.