Mine was the gradual path of realization. I had no idea of the destination, I didn’t have an image of what awakening looked like, I just wanted freedom from my own suffering. For many years that sense of inner freedom came and went.
I saw that when I returned to suffering, triggered by some external event that activated an inner belief or reaction, the suffering was greater. The less of it there was, the more intensely I felt it!
So the sense of suffering was extremely felt, as a radical sensitivity to it arose. And that was where the work really lay, in facing my last vestiges of reactivity, again and again.
By and by, as I really looked at it, became present to it and ever willing to surrender, I realized (yet again) that it was a vestige of the past that no longer served me nor served love nor served the world. And in that clear seeing, the cliff of self fell into the ocean of Being, once and for all. I would say it really was a gradual erosion over time, through devotion to undoing, through a great willingness to meet whatever came, through having no idea of a future place, and mostly through grace.
Now there is only a fragrance of any of the past, like a whisper of a voice that says, “Remember me?” And I say, “Yes, I hear you and love you, you were a great teacher.”
Sometimes I say my path started in the mid 90’s when I stumbled into transformation, but really my path started a long long time before that, and somehow I have been following it all my life. Now there is service to love, to this work I do with my wife and teacher, Amoda Maa, and a love of writing poetry that speaks to the heart and soul of us.
So here are some poems I have written recently.
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You may not be able to heal the entire world
But you can heal your world
And that will be enough.
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Eventually all beings stand before the eternal mystery
The seeker is simply choosing to do that now.
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You try and fix yourself
For decades, but it becomes futile
There is always something more to fix
Eventually you give up all attempts at fixing
And surrender happens as if by itself.
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Release all your tales of woe
Like ten thousand trapped doves
They will fly into the beyond
And become the love you seek.
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Truth has no words
And makes no sound
If you want to know
The deepest grace
Enter that silence
With no expectation.
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EMBODY IT.
You will not solve the great riddle
Of an embodied liberation
With mind alone
You must include your body
Your subtle energy body
Your nervous system
Your digestion
Your walled in heart
Your spinning chakras out of whack
The stored up past in the adrenals and liver
Yes, the whole living temple.
You may not like this attending to the density of form
But really you are not attending to form, you are liberating trapped energy so that it may all flow naturally and harmonically
Embodiment is holistic, the whole of us must be included
Or else awakening is lopsided and detached.
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Develop an inner knowing
That no matter how stormy
It may become on the outside
There can still be a great equanimity
On the inside
And that means we are not consumed
By that storm…
Yet still the storm may rage.
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When the questions are exhausted
A great silence falls upon us
The search is over
Only peace remains.
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Speak of your longing
Give it a voice
Open your throat
Connected to your heart
Don’t worry about others
They all want the same as you
But they have their own way
Of dealing with life.
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You are a harmony, a union with all that is
Nothing you think or believe
Can bring you closer to the divine
For you are the divine
Simply you have forgotten.
Yet truly even that doesn’t matter
Except to you,
And when you remember
You will laugh at your foolishness
And shed a tear for all the suffering of forgetfulness.
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THE WAVES THAT DANCE.
You will not find me in any thing
You may call me by this name
But it will not be me
All these descriptions
Of what I do and how I look
Are not the truth
They are the waves that dance
For I am the Nameless One
Dancing through eternity
Taking form and shedding it
I am what animates all things
Inside the inside
The mysterious intelligence
That informs all that appears
You cannot name me
For I am not that
But you can know me directly
By sitting utterly still
On a starlit night
And breathing the universe
In and out
Let it in through your chest
And out through your breath
Sweet movement of eternal ocean.
BIO
Kavi offers meetings and private sessions to facilitate a deeper understanding and exploration of where the spiritual (nondual) meets the world of form (body, symptoms and beliefs). He is also a prolific poet of the heart and musician. He is the husband of the spiritual teacher Amoda Maa, and the co-founder and co-spiritual director of the Amoda Maa Foundation.
Kavi writes on Substack: : https://kavijezziehockaday.substack.com
Kavi’s website: https://www.kavijezziehockaday.com
Kavi’s Twitter (X) where he posts 8 poems a day!: https://twitter.com/KavijiPoet
