I am following the path of bhakti to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo

Shall We Walk on Water? (Or, About Me): Several years ago, while a freshman in college in Lahore, Pakistan, my life changed dramatically when I stopped being an orthodox Muslim woman, and became an agnostic. Religion was too limiting and the God of religion too forbidding. I figured, even if such a God existed, I despised him. I felt stronger once I had gotten rid of the shackles of exoteric religion, and my skepticism felt liberating. Later on, still in college, I came out as a lesbian and had to deal with an abusive sexual experience. In healing from this experience, I went through what is known as a psychospiritual emergency in transpersonal psychology, which culminated in a kundalini awakening. In the years that have gone by since this experience happened, I have struggled to reconcile my newfound spirituality with my love for science and philosophy. It is easy to fall for the tricks of the ego-mind, which only wants to manipulate us and to change things to suit itself. My struggle as a mystic has been to try to silence the noise of the mind, and listen carefully to the quieter desires of the soul and become more grounded in it.

This does not, however, mean that I am anti-science or an anti-intellectual. I enjoy building up cognitive maps of reality that fit in with my own experiences and those of others, but I am careful to remind myself not to take these maps too seriously. My focus is on my own spiritual transformation, not on being intellectually “right” on all counts. Truth cannot ever be adequately expressed in words. Truth can only be lived — because we can never encompass Reality, only live in it. In other words, Truth encompasses us, not the other way around, and it is only our petty egos that think they ever possess Truth. I am following the path of bhakti to the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, whose philosophy I find to be very encompassing and inclusive of all others, including science. However, my devotion to them does not imply naive, cultic guru-worshipping. When I disagree with them, I gladly admit it. I merely see them as conduits to my own higher Self. Worshipping them would be just another religion, something they were both vehemently against. What is required is a healthy amount of skepticism with an openness to higher spiritual experiences.

the stumbling mystic God shall grow up . . . while the wise men talk and sleep

Each stumble and fall gets me one step closer. The spirit rises mightier after it has been defeated. The purpose of this blog is for me to teach myself humility, to quieten my mind and gently strip away its arrogant mental pretensions, and learn to see things as they really are and not as I would like them to be. And, also, to perhaps see the humour in life and stop taking myself so seriously!