I REMEMBER MY FIRST ENCOUNTER…
I remember my first encounter with Igor in a very energetic way. We sat together and I felt incapable of speaking, as all words would have just felt untrue. But there was something else cutting through the discomfort of my mind. Beneath that speechlessness lay a deep communication, an understanding beyond words, a flow of such knowing and resonating, an exchange of information words would never achieve.
This is the power of transmission. Before I even knew, what that term meant, I experienced the deep communication between Hearts - not as the place of emotion and feelings - but as the abode of the Soul. A place where the mind cannot enter. A place that knows already. And this is, as I know today, how I was brought into the hands of my Teacher - by the calling of my Soul.
It still took a couple of years before I attended my first retreat with Igor, and the day I did, I knew I had arrived. I had arrived at the starting point of the path I was seeking for lifetimes. There are things our Hearts simply know, every cell of our being just knows. This work started to align everything I had ever experienced, sought, questioned, suffered and realized so far. It was as if an intuitive sense of matrix, a constant discomforting questioning about reality, had started to crumble into true Reality- the Truth of my own Being.
My whole life felt like one patient waiting for divine intervention. Igor coming into my life has put an end to that feeling and made me receive something I almost didn't believe anymore was possible.
The bliss and unburdening of coming home to my true Self is beyond words and still, it was only the beginning.
Many people have asked me about this path and Igor’s Teaching, but any attempt at description slips my grasp. As Reality is constantly changing, so does Truth, because She is alive. This path is like the unfolding of a flower. What words could ever describe the process of a bud unfolding its petals?
To me, the Beauty of this path lies in the twofold way this process happens and therefore, encompasses every aspect of life:
On one hand, it is the dissolving of identity into my nature as Consciousness. On the other hand, it is at the same time the integration into my physical form as a human being with all its partaking in the individual and collective psyche.
An essential part of what this path allows, is the clearing of my automatic tendencies, which grew out of a traumatic misunderstanding of being a separate entity. This conditioning is ingrained into the psyche and is too deep to be solved by psychological methods. Entering a fusion with the Teacher, who is embodying the free flow of universal life force, allows us to surrender to the house cleaning She does. Shakti tunes us back into our natural state that lies silent below all conditioning and fear, ready to be rediscovered. This natural, original state is pure Silence and Peace, pure Awareness beyond form, Shivahood - Residing in the Heart as pure Consciousness. She liberates on an individual level of incarnation to reveal He who IS absence of individuality. This may seem paradoxical, and therefore is magical and mystical.
My former approach of inquiry by means of “neti neti” ("not this, not this"), includes now, what has been disregarded before. Individually and collectively through history, the means of the Divine Feminine have vanished into oblivion, and with Her sanity, balance, freedom and the power of natural, beautiful wilderness. That very magical essence inherent in Life had been banned from our lives. She has always been a danger, as She is unpredictable in Her all encompassing power. Spirituality has become therefore a powerless up reaching, fueled with hopes, beliefs and eventual paranormal experiences. Igor has brought the missing downwards movement, the descent of Grace into my life by including the means of Shakti, the Divine Feminine, the forgotten half. The reverence to the Goddess, the surrender to life force taking over my will, unifies the calling for Truth with the answers of embodied unfolding.
It is the body’s call for the Soul and the Soul’s descent into the body.
Suddenly the potential of my Being has space to manifest before my eyes, and it is beautiful to witness the birth of the Soul’s destiny. Actually lived and experienced in this body.
I feel though, that walking this path requires a readiness, that is beyond our individual desire. The Soul’s readiness, echoing into our life as a sense of uncontainable, vital frustration and longing for stepping beyond veils, is what gives us the willingness and desire to burn. Becoming a Tantrika is a commitment to choosing Truth at every moment, as painful and ugly as its stares sometimes can feel. Only as ashes, we are transparent enough to let life’s subtle and yet powerful currents reach our senses, and recognize ourselves as that current itself. This is where the discovery of life begins.
As much this path reconciles us with the unknown, yet gifts us with love for territories of utter uncertainty, Igor is also a wellspring of deep cultivated knowledge and puts to rest every question the mind and heart could ever come up with. There is no part of me, no further question, that would remain untouched or left aside.
I know I am in the hands of a rare mystic of our century. The Gratitude and humbleness that this evokes is bottomless, as this blessing is out of this world and sometimes hard to believe. I know She has always been among us, patient like only a Mother can be. And this path is a
reconciling with the Divine Mother, due more than ever. Therefore, walking this path is not only healing the objectification that has established in our perception, and therefore brings suffering, but also the Planet and its lifeforms that have tremendously suffered from our loss of the inherent sense of Oneness.
~ Helena Zingarella