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| "All of life moves in cycles;
the whole universe is cyclic. Just as the earth moves around the sun in a
regular cycle, all of Nature moves in a cyclic pattern. The seasons move in a
circle: spring, summer, autumn, winter, then spring again, and so forth. From
the seed comes the tree, the tree again provides seeds, and the seeds grow into
trees. It is a circle." --Ammachi  |
| About the Stages: The stages are cyclical; they happen over and over again in many different ways. The stages are nonlinear in the sense that one does not necessarily follow another. Sometimes more than one stage will take place at the same time. Usually their motion resembles an ascending spiral. It can appear as though you have returned to the same spot, and are not making progress. In reality, the same location could be a little higher up on the spiral. The book, The Path of the Mother, presents myths and personal accounts to illustrate each stage. Woven among the stories are suggestions for spiritual practices relevant to each stage. STAGE ONE: Getting to Know the Mother Stage one of getting to know the Mother includes learning about her on all levels, and can include glimpses of all six stages. Consciously or unconsciously we all have an image or an idealistic view of the divine Mother. We know at least some aspect of who she is from our experience with our own mothers. We've been in her dark womb, experienced oceanic bliss in her amniotic fluid, struggled out through her birth canal, smelled her body, tasted her milk, listened to her cooing, and rested at her breast in her arms. Bonding with our own mothers can give us at least part of the information we need in order to know the divine Mother. Even people who grew up motherless or did not bond with their mothers at the time of birth, understand the concept of the perfect mother. They know what the perfect mother would have done for them, and how her presence would have comforted them. There are many ways to know the great Mother - through a stormy day at the ocean, the whistling of the wind through pines, a grandmother teaching you how to sew, an uncle taking you fishing on a secluded lake, a father strolling with you through the woods, a teacher showing you the secrets of the animal and mineral kingdoms. STAGE TWO: Love and Rapture The story of love takes us to the second stage on the Path of the Mother. Here we are swept into bliss and rapture beyond any we have ever experienced before. While in stage one, the love we feel is comforting, it tends to be more abstract and distant; in stage two, our love for her becomes deeply personal and all-encompassing, as a lover for the beloved. It would not be unusual to have an experience of this second stage early on in your relationship to the Mother, sometimes before stage one. Often she gives us samplings or previews of what is to come so that we have some sense of the goal, some indication that it is worthwhile to embark on the journey in the first place. Unwavering devotion and longing to be merged with the Mother are some of the characteristics of this stage. It can also be a stage in which we experience being bathed in light, merging with the absolute, having visions of divine beings, or having the sense that all is one. Consumed with love for her, our longing brings feelings of ecstasy. To love someone greatly is one of the simplest and, at the same time, most advanced of spiritual practices. Love alone will take us to the deeper spiritual truth within. STAGE THREE: The Mother's Discipline Now we come to stage three along the Path of the Mother: The Mother's discipline. In Hinduism, many forms of the Mother depict her as holding a goad in one of her four arms, and a noose in another. The goad is an instrument used to poke an elephant so it will keep moving. It is a symbol that Mother also keeps us moving. The noose is what she has around our necks to prevent us from wandering too far away--she holds the end of the rope. These are symbols of how Mother guides us on our spiritual path. In stage three we become willing to receive her discipline and her scolding because we feel an intimacy with the Mother in a very childlike and fundamental way. In addition, because we love her so much, we actually enjoy that she holds the rope more tightly than she would in stage one or two. In this stage, with a love greater than we've ever known, she grinds us down, removes the dust and dirt, the pain and suffering, and leaves us shining with love, setting us free. STAGE FOUR: The Shadow In the shadow, stage four of the Path of the Mother, the Mother's light reveals old, forgotten secrets, ones that probably arouse pain and fear. The inevitable outcome of doing tapas [intense spiritual disciplines] is set into motion. Our denuded inner ugliness can cause us to feel like running away, but by this time we love her too much to run away. We have seen that her goad and her noose have served us well. With some sense of trepidation, we accept Mother's guidance through the shadow to purify our emotions, our mind, and our negative tendencies. Feelings of innocence and helplessness are particularly useful at this stage, because we might need to run to her like a child. However, during this stage we might harbor doubts and ask, "How can the Divine Mother really love me if she allows painful occurrences?" Or, "How can the great Mother be omnipotent and at the same time let these events or feelings take place?" Perhaps you've survived the death of a loved one, fallen ill, or lost your home. Even seemingly insignificant events [such as the author's in a story that precedes] can bring to our consciousness a deep sense of frailty, loss, or betrayal. Some of us may respond so negatively to the purification process that we don't ever want to have anything to do with the Mother again. But in stages one through three our love has become so strong, this is not likely to occur. If it does, however, it is a necessary part of the journey, and an essential wavering. Still, rather than facing the cause of your pain, you may think you'd prefer to just let her fade out of your life forever. In this case, often there is a deep spiritual or religious wound that is the main cause of the suffering and pain. When you recognize this possibility, your awareness of it can be a major turning point in your spiritual quest. At some point in this fourth stage you realize the real problem lies within you, so you look inside and ask, "What is the divine Mother trying to teach me?" STAGE FIVE: Surrender This [story] brings us to stage five along the Path of the Mother: surrender, or releasing gradually. Usually an in-depth view of our shadow leaves us feeling tender and washed out, and often with a sense of failure. It even might leave us with a sense of disorientation as to who we are and where we are in relation to the world around us. In this state of not knowing, we are the most likely to have an experience of surrender; we are likely to have a glimpse of what it means to allow the Mother to enter in, filling us with her grace and her infinite love. Most of us are terrified of surrender because we think it implies no longer being in charge, no longer being in control of our lives. In actuality, that is exactly the goal. A state of surrender means we no longer make claims such as "I did this or that" or "I accomplished this or that." Instead we recognize that everything we do is the result of divine energy moving in and through us. Once we've experienced the grace of surrender, we are more willing to do the spiritual practice of surrender. As a practice, surrender does not necessarily come easily, nor do we necessarily experience it as grace. Instead, we now know it is desirable, so we practice it. We say, "Okay, I guess I'd better surrender to this or that situation." We invite feelings of submission; we encourage ourselves to experience the Mother as the cause of all our actions, our thoughts, and our feelings. We coax ourselves, bit by bit, into yielding. In this way surrender is an act of will; it is a practice which ultimately leads to the real surrender. Usually it is a slow and gradual process taking place over many years. STAGE SIX: Contentment and Yearning The above story [in The Path of the Mother] reveals aspects of stage six in which feelings of contentment and yearning enter in, playing back and forth. In this stage we are more serene, more balanced. Sadness, anger, despair, happiness, and joy are experienced as enriching sensations, flowing through us as naturally as waves lapping onto the shore. Our lives are more harmonious, not necessarily the occurrences themselves, but rather the way in which we perceive them. Our minds are not so bothered by the past or the future, or by what someone said or did, or at least we let uncomfortable feelings come and go more easily than we used to. Since we don't tend to cling to past events or worry about the future, a quiet space is created inside of us in which we yearn for the Mother to be with us in everything we do and say. In this stage we begin to realize that everything we do is guided by the Mother. Her consistent patience with all our concerns-- health, finances, relationships-- has opened our hearts so that we now trust almost every aspect of her Motherhood. Her dedicated concern for our every desire has brought us to a point where we feel a comfortable faith in her counsel. .It is said that the Mother will give us everything we want until the day we want what she wants to give us: merging as one with the absolute. In stage six, no matter what our life task is --householder, professional, or renunciate --our desire for objects of the material world begins to fade. We become content with very little because we recognize that our wealth lies in Mother's love In ancient Hinduism, during the third stage of life after the children are raised, elderly couples used to retire to the forest to an ashram or special meditation hut. The husband and wife would leave the cares of the world behind and begin focusing on the supreme. In the present day world, this loss of interest in accumulating wealth and temporal pleasure is a very gradual process that can happen at any time. While it can enrich our lives to experience this stage in our early years, it is bound to happen as we approach old age and death. No matter how old we are, in the later spiraling of stage six, the Mother becomes our only goal in life. The more empty our minds become, the more we might cry out like small children asking the Mother to come closer. At this point, a fire kindles within, and we develop an intense longing to be identified with the her, with the universal self. Details about The Path of the Mother  ORDER FROM: Amazon: The Path of the Mother : With the Divine...
Permission to quote Ammachi is given by the MA Center in San Ramon Copyright © 2000 by Savitri L. Bess. All rights reserved |