Darkly Devotions

Posted on by

Lyric prose meditations that play with elements from evangelical Christianity, Buddhism, yoga, reiki, Tarot and “weird voodoo shit.”

~by Cindy Clem

***

Opening exercise: Sit on the floor in lotus position. (If you can’t achieve full lotus, simply remove your left leg and set it one side.) Bend forward until the crown of your head rests against your root chakra. Hold your hands behind your back in prayer position. Breathe in the center, your am-ness. Let go of all attachments.

Today’s passages:
“Ahamkara is the strong wave that declares ‘I am.’ [It] is the sense of ‘I-am-ness,’ the individual Ego, which feels itself to be a distinct, separate entity. It provides identity to our functioning, but Ahamkara also creates our feelings of separation, pain, and alienation.” http://www.swamij.com/fourfunctionsmind.htm#ahamkara

Exodus 3: 1-4; 13-14
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn.”

So when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

[several verses in which God commands Moses to rescue the Israelites from Egypt]

Then Moses said to God, “Indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they say to me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?”

And God said to Moses, “[choose from options below].”
A. I AM WHO I AM
B. What I am is what I am
C. I yam what I yam
D. I OM WHO I OM
E. Ni

And He said, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”

Explication:
I am sent me, said Moses. I am roared from a burning bush. I am was not the bush but the burning. I am was not the burning but the breath. The breath fanned the burn, which was the Angel of the Lord. Follow me?

Moral: The Importance of Intellectual Curiosity
If you were on your way home after a long day of flock and saw an unusual sight, would you glance at it and think, hmm, odd, and continue on your way, or would you walk over to examine it more closely?

To consider:
The Song of the Self/Atma-Shatakam / Nirvana Shatakam
I am not mind, nor intellect, nor ego,
nor the reflections of inner self.
I am not the five senses.
I am beyond that.
I am not the ether, nor the earth,
nor the fire, nor the wind.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

I am all pervasive.
I am without any attributes,
and without any form.
I have neither attachment to the world,
nor to liberation.
I have no wishes for anything
because I am everything,
everywhere,
every time,
always in equilibrium.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.
~Adi Shankara, 788-820 CE (first and last verse)

Closing Mantra:
“I will now open my mouth and repeat this great mantra as I walk, in my mind, toward the back of the desert: Ahamkara! Ahamkara. Ahamkara?”

Benediction:
Be still and know that you are God.

***

Cindy Clem received her MFA in poetry in 2005 and has been writing non-fiction ever since. Her poems and essays have appeared (magically!) in Mid-American Review, The Normal School, Prairie Schooner, Memoir (and), Superstition Review, The Interrobang, Spittoon, and Michigan Quarterly Review (forthcoming).