Here is my first attempt to write about my process, the process of growth and understanding that Santosha Tantra has taken me through (and continues to this day to take me through) out of her great compassion and love, and her absolute Freedom and Enlightenment. I felt that you might enjoy reading about my story with my Guru, Who is the Divine She to Adi Da’s Divine He. She is amazing and wonderful beyond words, and I am grateful with all my heart to Santosha Ma and to Adi Da for my life with them, with her.
I was in Adi Da’s community for 12 years. (1980-1992) The biggest reason I left (besides that it was my lucky destiny to live and serve Santosha Ma!) was that I was in a relationship of domestic violence, so I would say I had no personal power or clarity about what I really wanted for myself in this life, except my attraction to the Divine – first Adi Da, then Santosha Ma. I stayed with my second husband living in Marin County, CA, for 7 years. I love Beloved Adi Da, and we went to Adidam, the building in Marin at the time, every evening we could. I participated in all that I could, taught at Big Wisdom School in Marin as my job. I am a musician and did music with everyone there for all the occasions and celebrations. I was doing all that, and also enduring the righteous temper of my second husband, who hit me if we disagreed on anything. I discovered this was very common in the community. While living in a household of three couples, the three wives one day all revealed we were being hit by our husbands and had all been hit that very morning.
This is what moved me, to realize that the women and also some of the children in Marin (and I am sure elsewhere in the world) were treated in this manner without consequence to the men. Finally, I left my husband, but stayed in the community for a while longer. There was a day when I felt a clarity come over me that it was wrong, and I could not accept it anymore – physical or emotional or psychological abuse. It was over in me.
Just the previous year I had been in Fiji for three weeks on retreat with Sri Adi Da, which was wonderful. A year later I finally left my husband, and a year after that, I left the community after meeting Santosha Ma at Lake Lagunitas in Marin (told in How I Came To Santosha Ma). It was a Divine happening, indisputably proven to me bodily, a wonder and Grace, so that I felt it was true to Adi Da and to Santosha Ma and to my own heart to leave Adidam and come to Santosha Ma. It is a profound gift for which I am grateful beyond words.
So, I actually left Gracefully, in part because of the violence, but really because Santosha Ma appeared right at the time I was breaking free from that cycle in myself. Immediately, Santosha Ma encouraged me to be strong now, and really break this pattern which began in me when I was 15 during high school. I was 37 when I began to break out of it, and 38 when I came to my Beloved Santosha Ma.
My Guru embraced me in friendship, as she did with all that came to her. She was so dynamic and funny and creative, and each visit to her was full of inspiration, healing and instruction. She used any and every means of creative play with us to show us the reality of the patriarchy. It was s-l-o-w going for her! A snail’s pace, I recall saying to her, was my top speed! What she endured from me is unimaginable. But you can see it in the life of Beloved Adi Da also. He gave everything endlessly, in every way he could muster, and his devotees (including me) were resistive, blaming, competitive, and just lame about what needed to be done to grow.
Santosha Ma endured that childish selfishness from us, and suffered many illnesses, on the brink of death a few times also, but is still here. She is Radiant and Free and Happy, a Divine Force of Love. She always was, but seems to grow more and more so as she (we) age. In this Brightness, she has tirelessly worked with me to reveal to me the beliefs and habits of life that are blocking me from falling into contemplation naturally. Of course, it is all about money, food and sex!
I wish I could say that when I came to her, I understood it all and became her devoted one, giving up all indulgences for the real practice of happiness. But no, that did not happen. All I still believed about having to be with a man continued for a long time. I made choices that I can only call dumb now – quite dumb, but I have learned to see them as gems of understanding, as Santosha Ma calls them. The mistakes made brought me to a place of openness to consider what I was believing, and if it was actually reality or not. Women in this culture of my generation (I am 67), while some were fighting for more rights, some of us looked on in appreciation, but still lived the assumption that we were secondary to men, dependent on men for a few things – survival, sexual identity, self-worth, strength to move into life. All of that was observed and then investigated in Santosha Ma’s company, in the space of her perfect clarity and depth of emotional understanding that is astounding. I began to take responsibility for everything that had happened in my life – everything. This was a major turning point for me, and it wasn’t until after 25 years of her loving work and help, that I felt free of those beliefs. And I do mean free of them. It is a deep understanding in me, that I am myself, and responsible for myself, and anything that happens in my life is my choice (please bar the obvious exceptions).
And so, no longer am I the victim of anyone in my past or present. It is my choice to learn from my mistakes and move forward with an improved understanding of whatever situation I had difficulty with. In this culture, mistakes are not taken as gems to learn from and grow. They are not openly confessed and just worked with, and shifted around and seen as ‘OK, that didn’t work, what next? What can I do here? What do I want now?’ The ego pride that needs to look good under all circumstances is now weakened, silly, an obstacle in any situation or task. My belief that I was not complete without a man is now really obviously untrue! My fear to move into life unless accompanied is gone. My need for a man’s approval for any aspect of my living is gone.
This is not an attack on men at all. This is the vanishing of the belief system, piece by piece, that holds this human culture in the grip of the patriarchy. It has a grip on men as well as women, and all suffer under this system. Women are obviously more abused as second-class citizens, sex objects, battering rams for release of male stress; it goes on. I am sure everyone is now aware of this inequality between men and women in this place. How can we experience the Unified Field of Love in that system? We cannot. Santosha Ma is living a life outside the system, and she has shown it to me in great depth.
To see it and be free of it is astounding. I am in the heart of my Beloved Guru, and my life is lived in her service, in gratitude and happiness, and creative play and all kinds of enjoyment and fiery consideration. What a magnificent life!
