Author: sharadadevi

I’m writing a book about my 24/7 twelve year marriage to Bhagavan Das.  

The memories are contained in me like how the icloud holds my poetry. In a huge ball in the sky I am imagining.

I need to free up some psychic space and tell a story that nobody on earth can tell but me. There is nobody who knows BD like I do. I literally hold his memories in my own mind. I know all his stories. Even now, wherever he is, he is always with me. Not the personality that pretends I no longer exist but the bigger thing I feel between us that neither of us can destroy. 

There have been a lot of movies he’s been in. There have been interviews. But he gave them BD,  not himself. He put on the show, it was an act. Nobody cared about the person, he didn’t even have one at a certain point. Deep inside he always feared everyone would find out the real truth about how insecure he really was and “not come to see him anymore.”  

All I’m saying is when I left him- I told the truth about why – and a lot of people didn’t like it and didn’t understand my behavior. It did disturb me – all the attempts to censor me, seeing the true colors of people I had known for years – and so I went away for a few years. But I have changed since then – and I just don’t care anymore about people and their opinions- like AT ALL anymore. I have nothing to lose by being myself whether others agree or not – because they obviously don’t know me – and they therefore don’t matter. I did not “destroy” his career. I stopped him from doing more harm to himself and others, especially women. Is it my job, in a way yes it was. In a way, no it isn’t. 

Nobody knows what I know. I think it’s ridiculous that people act like some sort of connection to him immediately bestows powers upon them. I was given every transmission possible by BD. He gave me everything he had (both good and bad)  It was very real and it came with a price, which I paid. He always said he was so relieved that he met me before he died because he had felt everyone he had ever known in America was a groupie except for me. I’m just telling you what he said. He would cry like a little child and tell me I was his “only friend in the whole world.” 

More than once I said to him, “God, you guys are all stuck in 1967 talking about “Be Here Now.” Don’t you think we should instead call it “Be Here Then?”

He laughed every time. 

(He always said, “if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.”)

I really know now what he meant by that. 
Sharada Devi

It’s your warped god, own it. 

THINK FOR YOURSELF.

LEARN FOR YOURSELF.

KNOW FOR YOURSELF.

Because, 

at some point in your quest for spiritually and politically correct perfection you’re going to have to say FUCK IT.

Otherwise implosion is immenent, who were you fooling anyway? 

If you knew what was really going on (or went on) behind the scenes of all these holy people you’re pumping and striving to become your intact ideas about life and where you might be headed would become a virtual wasteland. 

Sometimes, the fucking truth is too fucking much, but too bad. Own it, pump your SELF. FIND IT. Learn how to be your own spiritual quote, not somebody else’s.

It’s not written in stone. It changes. There is NO MAP but for the fire inside you. 

If they can they’ll get you in a corner and they’ll poke you, they’ll dissect you, they’ll course correct you, they’ll “pray” for you because of how much not like them you are.

Will you falter? My mantra is FUCK IT. Because you aren’t me. You weren’t married to Bhagavan Das for 12 years. You weren’t with him 24/7 like I was and you didn’t have the REAL truth about the delusions you’re living smeared in your face – about “holier” people than you. People who know the way BETTER than you. And I don’t mean just him, I mean EVERY single one I met. It was shocking – and the exact opposite of the enlightenment I was seeking from them. But I did see and now I do know. 

Am I “angry” ?? Oh my, god forbid I be fucking OVER IT. Role playing, charades, parades, screen faces. Stop adjusting, it’s useless. 

(No, I’m not angry. That wore off a long time ago.)

I found out I am on my own. I found out what “ignorance is bliss” really means.  And I want to say, God made you NOT TO BE LED BY SOMEBODY YOU IMAGINE TO BE BETTER THAN YOU- so that you quote them, stare at their dead picture, act like you are SO POSITIVE any of those stories actually even happened.  I used to tell BD “all you guys do is talk about 1967-1971 while preaching “be here now, be here now” don’t you think “be here then” would be better? It’s a joke, a scam. A career angle. I WAS THERE AND I KNOW THINGS THAT I CANT DENY.

Look at the facts, find them out for yourself rather than being too afraid of how bright the light can actually be.

I’m so used to people saying “who do you think you are?” Well I would like to ask you,

“Who do you think you are?” Do you even know? Has push come to shove yet? Did you find out that God is not 100% bright namaste’s?”

God isn’t anything but a gradient of awareness and acceptance. It’s not a contest or an exam of who walks the straightest line with the biggest stick stuck up their ass.

You might not believe me now. But when you’re lucky you’ll find out and you’ll be let out and you’ll be overwhelmed by the possibility that everything you were so sure of might just be wrong. It was just thoughts, fantasies, rules and regulations. Then, you’ll begin to see 

“oh my God, it’s me. “

Sharada Devi 

yes I am writing that book, “Be Here Then.” stay tuned…

I wrote this story about an ancient bird….

There is a mystical bird called a Phoenix.

This bird rises from pain into light.

Anyone can feel pain, but not everyone can be freed by that pain. As if suffering were the source of this bird’s salvation, this bird burns and burns and burns its earthy feathers away. For this bird, the sky isn’t high enough. The Phoenix must go through the sun to the other side where other Phoenix’s live. 

For this to happen, this bird needs wings made of flames and a body made of ice. 

For this to happen this bird must know that death is not the end but the answer to it’s  prayers.

This bird has been alone for a very long time. Not knowing, not remembering – just thinking maybe it was a hawk like the hawks who raised it. Because of that the Phoenix, before it’s memory is kindled, is one of the darkest birds known to man.  

You may ask how this bird finally remembers and enters the fire of salvation. 

When all of its attempts at being a black hawk are exhausted. When failure and rejection become its friends. When it has nothing left but a little spark in its heart to depend upon for light. That is when it goes to where the fire began. And the more pain it feels, the longer it stays. Burning burning burning the lie that was forged from the start of this baby bird cracking out of an egg (that wasn’t even real) Into a world of gray skies and predators.

What the Phoenix was taught by them wasn’t true. This lonely little bird had nothing in this world to remind it of who it was meant to become. To find it’s way back to its home it would need to rise up from ashes created by its very own body and go into the heart of the sun.

Who can do that all alone? Who can kill everything they know with only a vague memory of faith? 

The greatest bird ever born from the pit of death and suffering. That is who.

Because this mystical bird had no way to make light in the world of darkness but to offer its body to the hawks and give its heart to God. 

For in the end, there was no difference. 

And all the other Phoenix’s watched from a land beyond the sun- waiting for their ancient friend to fly through the portal and be free. 

Which it eventually did, because that’s how every Phoenix is born- covered in a rainbow of flames. 

The End 

Sharada Devi

I am nobody, just like God.

These thoughts of me I wear like clothes. They are not me.

I could be free from myself, there is no other bondage.

There is no name for God, or me. None of it is real. That’s why everyone’s looking and nobody sees – “God” or “me.”

There is a place here and yet it is secret. Where there is only space, light, love and peace.

Everyone, including who I used to be – is stuck in a parallel dimension searching for the light and yet there is only one way to enter the secret place – which is unique for each being but always the same is required – you can’t do it by being told or making a proclamation – you must be ready – to finally exist and disappear simultaneously.

To end the fantasy of you- who is a prison separating you from nothing – which is what you are. To be refined by the friction of karma and to be capable of processing in a way that changes the identification for good.

I had imagined I was cursed because it’s been so rough. But now I see the light and only because I am finally becoming nothing – and becoming more of a nobody every day.

I have no advice but what I know – it’s only the love that I can share by being less of my imaginary self and more like a hollow force of nature – just balancing daily on the edge of what I must endure to attain yoga. It’s not a joy ride. It’s not a gesture or a reaching, this love- it’s just a state of existence that’s impossible to embody as long as you are you. It’s not the same every day. It is like riding on the waves of the ocean where annihilation is a given sooner or later.

For a very few, there is no choice. Life is a message, a choice how to move. There is nothing more than that.

Sharada Devi

• 

Sometimes there’s just nothing left to say. Not on social media, not anywhere. Sometimes it gets too obvious that none of it’s real, that it’s all just rehearsed, contrived, or redundantly reactive. A little heart here, a thumbs up here…again and again. And nothing different is being said…or done really. It’s just loop after loop, day after day. Sometimes the picture is clear, and it’s terrifying. 

We will all be dead soon. It doesn’t seem like there’s much to do on planet earth. 

I have this recurring dream lately of my father who is a corpse following me everywhere I go, just like a shadow.

He doesn’t want anything, he just follows me. This dream has replaced my recurring and disturbing dreams about BD night after night…year after year. 

There is a shadow with a face living inside us all and it’s no joke. It is the crux of yoga, to integrate our projections. But to find out where we’re not seeing takes a lot of letting go. Which none of us want to do even though we feel and claim that we do want to see, want to know- our darkness. 

Then we speak of collective darkness and where does any of this end….

Sometimes there’s just nothing left to say, but to stop and to listen. This doesn’t have to be a pretty thing and when it’s close to home, it usually isn’t.

This will require some alone time. We all want to be liked and appreciated and given hearts and prayer hands. But at a certain point, it gets psychotic 

and sad.

Looking outside, reaching outside, even for God – is a mistake that only takes a little profound silence to understand. 

This world and all its groups is insanity and it always has been. If you want to be a yogi, first be a rock. If you want to be a saint, first be unimportant. If you just want to truly be you, first stop caring what others think, say and do.

If you want to be clear, first see that a shadow is following you. 

This life is about you, deep on the inside. What’s on the outside serves as a relief to escape ourselves but can only last so long. 

Then the question becomes – Where are you on the road and what will you do? 

Just you, all alone?

Sharada Devi 

• 

I wrote this for you the other day. It’s for me too.

*******************?*******************

When you feel defeated, change your shape.

When you feel weak, take your power back.

When you feel sad, cry. 

When you feel angry, dematerialize.

When you feel lost, look in the mirror.

When you feel alone, open your eyes.

When you feel frustrated, just sit back and listen.

When you feel like you might not matter,

don’t worry, nobody does!

This world is made of streams and we are inside of all of them. 

So just try the best you can. Because the best you can is good enough!

We cannot solve, resolve or make sense of most things. We don’t need to think so much but rather to go blank more often. Nothing needs to change. Create more space. Be a bigger vessel to hold it all.

Rather than talk, just be.

Rather than preach, just sing.

Because the truth, I have found –

isn’t a word, but a feeling. 

And,

that feeling is very big.

? Sharada Devi 

There was once a female child that had been left in the forest. Nobody knew how she got there. It was a fertile forest filled with mating and killing. The winters were long and cold and yet this child not only survived, but thrived. It was if the forest itself had become her mother. The only thing this little girl had from the outside world was the blanket that she had been left with. And on this blanket was stitched the name Freya. 

Freya was all alone with only the animals and Mother Nature. She had nobody to teach her to read or write, or even to speak. Yet she was a bright little girl and so she learned on her own, from the world around her. She had seen her reflection in the streams and ponds and so she knew she looked different. She also knew all the animals made different sounds to be with each other and also to scare each other away. Some days she would watch the sky for hours with its singing and soaring birds trying to understand who she was and where she came from. She knew some birds screamed as they swooped down to announce their kill. She also knew some birds sang just so they could be close to other birds. She would also listen to the wolves sing their songs late at night. She had a different feeling inside when the wolves sang. She wasn’t sure who she was and so she decided that for now she was something between a bird and a wolf. Although she knew she looked like neither a bird or a wolf. She, of course knew the fragile lightness of the birds as they hung and threaded through the sunlit skies. She had only an idea of the shape of a wolf as she had seen the shadowy silhouettes in the night beneath the far off trees. There was something mysterious and important about that shape she felt. Like if she knew what it meant it could take her into a place exactly the opposite of the sky. Maybe that place was under the deep water or below the roots of giant trees. She didn’t really know, it was only a feeling. Her feelings were all she had to make sense of a world where nobody looked like her or moved like she did. She did not want to be so different. She wanted to be a part of what they were. Here, together living and dying in the forest.

Freya did not know that she was probably the most beautiful creature here of all. Because she had come to be in such an unusual way an embodiment of all the distinctly sacred ways of both the plants and the animals. She was as swift as a deer and as sharp as a fox. She learned to dance just like a flower blowing in the wind. She would even cry like the sky when it rained. This is how she saw it all. That she was as big as that somehow. She didn’t cry very often but sometimes when she did she felt herself to be the raging storms that would blow through the forest with thunder and lightning and torrents of grief. It was because of the eyes she remembered. Eyes like hers that she never forgot. She would cry until her heart was empty and then she would be ok for awhile, then she would cry all over again. It was always in the calm after these storms that the stars seemed brightest and she noticed this. She wondered if they twinkled just for her or if she even mattered to them at all. She had to think it was for her, that someone just like her was listening far away and yet so close they could hear her aching heart. She didn’t know why she was so sad sometimes. She had grown older and wasn’t a child anymore. The forest had cared for her and taught her. It taught her that she was not alone but also that she was…totally alone.

She was a part of it all. But she remembered another place. And that is when she decided to sing. She would sing inside the storms of grief and loss until some strange invisible love would lift her- higher than even the birds could fly. To a place she imagined the eyes must be. The eyes just like hers.

And no, she could not speak like a human. The only singing she knew was from the birds and the wolves. Her voice was from a place in- between. Very loud and clear. For hours and sometimes throughout the entire night her bewitching sounds would haunt the deep forest. It’s not as if the sounds she made were entirely frightening – but they were a little. These sounds were also the sounds of a truth most humans could not bear to hear. The truth of a soul in the forest. The truth of aloneness. The truth of total togetherness. All at once she seemed to express this in the noises she made. Inside the storms she created as she called for the eyes she could barely remember. And it wasn’t just that the eyes had looked like her eyes and not the eyes of of the forest animals. It’s the way she remembered those eyes looking into hers.

Nobody had ever told Freya what love was. She did not even know of the word let alone its existence. But she felt it, inside herself and she pushed it out onto the world around her. Into the sky and the water and dirt. With these sounds she made because of her vague memory she felt less pain. She felt strangely enough that she was touching what she remembered and that was all she could do for now. 

The forest was huge and dangerous. Freya sat wrapped in her blanket possibly for years. Not yelping, not howling, not chirping. But making the sounds that only she could make. Her voice filled the air. Nobody will ever know how she ate or even if she slept. We do not know who left her there or if they will ever come back. We can only listen to her and try to understand the unbearable beauty of what falls from the stars or what flows inside the rivers. Secret things too wild and powerful for words. Delicate things too soft and light to be seen by mortal eyes.

Sharada Devi 

silence is golden. saying nothing can sometimes heal. words are sacred. use them wisely. you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to listen. so be wise. spiritual things are of an unspoken nature. thoughts are powerful,

yours and others. don’t worry about what their thoughts might be, about you. be silent and reflect upon yourself. listen to the subtle voice deep within you. the spirit communicates from above and the soul communicates from below.

for your silent presence to heal, your soul and your spirit must unite. this is a process that takes time and patience. you have no business with the business of others. we are in no position to judge unless we choose to pollute the silence with ignorance. words are magical creators. in the silence of presence all transmission occurs. that is why association is more powerful than people realize. paramahansa yogananda said if you want to advance spiritually you must only associate with those who are further along the path than you are, with people you aspire to become like. otherwise, he said- it holds you back and it brings you down. but when you are in the right association you will feel uplifted and inspired. you will be purified of worldliness. this is a relief to any lover of god. this is not by the words of anyone, this is by the purity and magnetic pull of their silence. silence is in the aura. it is a cultivated golden light some would call soma. i would call it god’s love. 

so there is nothing and nobody to conquer, not in actuality. there is only the silence to realize. the practices and the lifestyle needed to cultivate silence in the body mind and heart are only understood when our priorities are aligned with our dharma. to choose quality over quantity is a good beginning. to create space transforms silence into grace. 

sharada devi 

Summoning the muse takes the arousal of air and fire. She would like to make a grand entrance into your heart. She would like the words to rush forth as a river of light. She would like to ignite you with passion and inspiration. Until the muse is summoned, there is a dullness surrounding the aura. She is the brightness of our life, she is the wind that shifts us in a new direction. I speak of the muse who is a dragon and a Phoenix. I speak of the muse who hides behind clouds and isn’t easy to know. I speak of the muse who will make her presence known one way or another. Life itself is inherently destructive, which seems like a contradiction, but it isn’t. For the creativity of the muse to be realized, only the lingam should remain. The focus, the most important point. That is what the lingam is, the force of life. When things get in the way of this force, they must be destroyed for creation to be recognized. The muse is the lover of God, that creative force. She is the one who dances around him. She is also the dance. Without her calling constant attention to the glory of God, life isn’t life as life was meant to be. There are blockages, there are hang ups. The muse is living deep down inside as the intoxicating factor of mysticism. She is a mysterious feminine force that makes everything visible and audible. The lingam is the highest mountain top of her aspiration without which, her existence becomes warped. This is the reason for war and rape, this is the reason for depression and ignorance. The male and female forces of the universe are meant to unite. The level of consciousness at which they unite can be called Bhakti yoga or addiction to pornography. They can be determined in every outcome, the clarity of the intent being the determining factor. The summoning of the muse is the enchantment of life. The mystical outpouring of an unusual divinity. The uniqueness of every being is known especially by the voice of their muse. How well do you know her? Do you hear her in your head, in your heart, in the wind through the trees? Do you see her in the eyes of your cat, in the petal of a dying rose, in the smile of a child? Do you feel her in the suffering and the joy? Are you listening for how she will recreate you from every ending?

“Yoga” is so much more than assuming a posture, it is being the posture. It is in the act of creating and destroying. These moments happen every day- cosmically when the sun rises and sets and you cannot tell if it’s dusk or dawn. Is this birth or is this death? It’s hard to tell sometimes living on her edge. Those moments are cherished times of day for a reason. They are the most magical times when the light and the dark are entangled, embraced and either living or dying. The light and the dark take turns being on top. This happens to us, in our lives too. The muse is always there going up or going down, aware of the lingam that penetrates every moment of existence until time stands still.
Who we are is how well we know her. How she knows him within us. These are not men and women, these are yin and yang forces of nature. These forces have supreme intelligence. We personify them because “God” has made us “persons” for this very reason. To dance in the grace of infinity.

I think that’s why every encounter is an opportunity to see union and to be union. To create with all our heart, to breath as if our heart were the ocean. Inspiration and aspiration are the same as inhalation and exhalation when we understand how sacred the muse is. When we understand who we are so that when we summon her, we are her. 

When we create the space for the friendship with all our demons to occur, her creative essence may be startling. However, in that space redemption is possible. In that space duality is permeable and transparent. This is why we learn to move like an artist over the sea. There is beauty, there is love. First and foremost in everything. Beauty and love are like the ground we walk upon. Nothing can exist without them. It is up to us to perceive deeply with devotion and absolute self acceptance the simplicity of surrender. 

Life can be painful. I surrender to her art. Life can be joyful. I am her art. It works this way. Our purpose is to get clear, find her inside the clouds and let her part the sky for the light to shine on you (and in you.)

We are very important because we are the lingam. That is why she loves us so much.We are the point of creative activity she dances inside of. Always wanting us to remember her and to know her. Because when we do, we remember ourselves, not as little dying humans but as immortal forces of an unstoppable magnitude.

We can make every day profound just by perception alone. God needs the Devil to do his dirty work. The Devil needs God to clean up his mess. It’s a symbiotic relationship, one that – if it did not exist, neither would we. Neither would Michelangelo, neither would Van Gogh, neither would the Mona Lisa or Jesus Christ.

Everyone and everything is our soul friend one way or another. We are interchangeable and we are free to decide where we will take what we’ve been given. Meaning what will you do when you’ve found her? Where will you go to make God?

Love, Sharada Devi