I LOOK INTO MY TEACHER’S EYES...
I look into my Teacher’s eyes (even a photograph on my altar) and am shaken by the palpable soul-stirring recognition: This is my very own Self shining out through those eyes! And this Self is only Love.
I have been a student of Igor Kufayev~Vamadeva for three years. I met him, miraculously in my own neighborhood. In a one-day workshop shortly thereafter, I felt my heart open; miracles happened, easily and through no effort at all of my own, in the form of immediate removal of obstacles and struggles I’d been having for years; friends and family noticed changes and told me I looked younger, more alive, happier than they’d seen me in some time.
There have been stages and phases along the way: In the beginning, passionate, obsessive, all-consuming love and longing. Then an intense “dark night of the soul,” the fruits of which, among many, were a maturing where I “saw” my Teacher in a fuller, more human view. Now, at this current moment, (October 2016) I experience this Teaching, even more than ever, as a priceless gift and also a challenge: Can I use and allow this Relationship, this undeniable knowing that this is my Teacher and this is my Path... still, can I use this as the support, the driver, the motivation to offer up, to let go of, all that obstructs and covers my own Self, my own Heart, into the fire that purifies and burns through to Essence? It is a painful process and requires faith, trust, courage; requires continual returning to, and resting in the Heart. And the Teacher is the Heart.
To live this Relationship to a Being who embodies the fully Conscious Self, who lives as Love and under all the demands as a householder, a family man, thus demonstrating what a fully realized, human life looks like, this is a gift not to be wasted! So I will throw my resistances, refusals, failings, obstructions into the fire and do it with gratitude and love!
From where I “sit” now, this Teaching is: Recognition of the Teacher; receiving his Love and his loving transmission of Grace; making my own offerings and sacrifices in grateful response which will allow growth and change, more light to shine through. Importantly, also, learning to live and embody love in human relationship through service to the Teacher, the sangha and, really, the entire human community.
May I learn surrender; may I, in gratitude, learn to offer back into the fire of this sacred relationship the accessories, attributes, clenchings and clingings of my dreaming self; that, through your reflecting truth, the gracious gift of your living presence here among us, I may awaken to the Real. In deep gratitude and Love.
Jai Guru Dev!
~ Karen Miller