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I met my teacher Gangaji when I was 31 and my life was changed from that moment. I was watching a video of one of her satsang meetings and had an experience of the tone of her voice coming into my heart. She spoke four words that changed my life: "Be your natural self." It was the secret key to the door of freedom for me. It was as if a great fire was lit in the core of my heart and it had all of my attention. Yes, and I gave it my attention.
Within 3 years I was living in Bolinas, Ca, having left every thing to be near her and discover if it was indeed true that a human being is capable of real abiding love. What I have discovered in her presence is that it is so. That True Love is what we are. It is the driving force of our lives, all of our lives. How can this be in this world of violence and carelessness? What a perfect question to ask oneself "How do I turn from love?" She instructed me through her teacher Sri H.W.L. Poonja (Papaji), to stop. To lay down all of my "powers". To me that meant to give up my very name, the role of my gender, and the concepts of myself collected over a lifetime of coping; of being Lisa. In a moment, it was done, as she and the Masters of her lineage had shown. In less time than can be measured, it is possible to realize the truth of ones being. Ones true nature is inescapable. And the desire to question has been rare. So in this brief time I have given my life entirely. It is radical, and I will say I have given it to HER - but who is she? She is the Self Itself, as all is, as I am; naturally, effortlessly. Through her I have been opened to loving completely. The faults of this personality, the weakness of the physical body, the limitations of the mind are all what has been opened to loving, and all is included. Nothing is excluded. I have been blessed to meet my True Teacher and to be held fully as all the doubts were finally released. My life is a perfect conduit, as all life is, for the true light of love to express itself unfettered. I stand for this, for the Truth, and for all to awaken to their true nature. My life is given in support of this. There is nothing I love more than this. Gangaji is the beloved Master of my heart and soul, my True Guru, the one who showed me the light of consciousness, my own Self shining blessedly in All. She is the heart of my heart, the answer to a desperate prayer to know True Love. I have been by her side, drenched in devotion for over 16 years. I belong to Her alone, and She is discovered freshly, essentially, impeccably in each moment through this life of living Grace. I will never get up from this bow of gratitude. In the light of her presence I am seen. She is a blessing to the world and I love her with every fiber of my being, eternally. How does one speak of this??!! I am lived by this meeting, lived in love.
Right now my heart is so filled with the blessing of having true friends who reflect sweet loving silence to me, steady and true no matter what drama is unfolding in my life. I am so very grateful for stillness in the face of movement, unflinching honesty in the midst of the story, inclusion of it all with a welcome home to satsang at the center of the swirl of emotion or circumstances. I love the fullness of all that life brings, and that love finds its root in reality where stillness is the medicine - not indulgence. The times in my life where I have followed a story of suffering into a constructed "rabbit hole" of reality have been many - a habit which has used up its usefulness for myself as the teller in first person, or as the helper - another type of story altogether, becoming no less caught in the web of egoic desire to assist. I am free. I am the fullness of what is freedom itself - all arises here - and life itself is the devotion to this. I cannot begin to express my deep gratitude to the blessed friends whom I adore and cherish and who meet me here in the center of the center unfailingly, as True Love Itself, conscious and aware of itself - living. Thank you my Beloved Gangaji for pointing my life to this True meeting. Truly Yours, Lisa |
Lisa Schumacher
Is in love with what is true and good and real and her life is given to that. Archives
January 2017
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