My Initiation and Naming

07/09/2010 01:23 PM Filed in: yoga | Spiritual Practice

Introduction

I am writing this because I often think of this experience and relate it to people about my own gradual process of spiritual awakening.

Moving In

When I moved into the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in August 2005, I lived in a small ‘Tuff Shed’ (basically a garden shed) next to the Durga Temple. In this shed I lived for the majority of the time was at the ashram, excepting the time I was recovering from knee surgery. It had no electricity and no heat. I was told that I was to be ‘The Guardian’ of the eight-sided Durga Temple and I would go and sweep it out, spray off the leaves, pray, meditate and generally maintain the Durga statue (murti) which was installed there by Swami Vishnu-devananda 30 years earlier.

Apprehension

My initiation was to take place very soon after I arrived, on what was considered an auspicious day. What I remember most about this whole process of moving in and the initiation, learning about what the deities were (it’s all so confusing!) and so on was just how simultaneously open I was to everything going on then, and at the same time how overwhelming it was. As you can imagine, connecting to a vision of God was a challenge when my chosen form of God wasn’t very familiar to me then. 10-armed goddesses aren’t all that common in the Western World, and so it felt very foreign for me to consider my initiation properly.

In the West, we are raised on a steady diet of science and disdain for the myths we frankly don’t understand or grasp the depths of, and I, like many Westerners, therefore dismissed myth by turning it into some sort of simplistic “idol worship”. Still, I could feel my heart drawn toward this more complete and embracing vision of God, and I spent a lot of time at that Durga temple in quiet contemplation of my newfound deity.

Names and Forms

Swami Sita spent a lot of time informing me about the nature of each of the chosen forms, and I had a strong affiliation also (and this continues to this day) to Rama. I understand now that she considered Rama always in the context of a perfect marriage with Sita, and so I think she discouraged me from this path for that reason.

So, in the end, my spiritual name was to be Durgadas. Durga being my chosen form of God- or in this case ‘Goddess’- and ‘das’ indicating my relationship to her as a servant. During my many talks with Swami Sita about my name, she indicated that you could indeed have many relationships with God- mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, lover, servant and so on. I tried to consider which relationship I had with my newly expanded understandings and nothing seemed to fit quite right until I thought about the nature of service and soon it became clear to me.

My birth name is Regis, and at that time in my life, I have always felt somehow in a ‘kingly’ sort of position. As an antidote to this, I wanted to be given a more humbling status in the service of God. Therefore I asked to be given this name as a constant reminder of my status and position as a spiritual being.

The Lineage

What I didn’t understand during the period before and even after my initiation was the importance of having a lineage. Subsequently, I have found this same lack of understanding in most Western spiritual aspirants also. It’s a distinctly Western mentality to apply the ‘tyranny of choice’ that is placed upon us throughout our lives to a spiritual teacher, guru or spirituality in general, and I was VERY happy to leave that idea behind. Even though I later left the spiritual teacher who had initiated me, I still carry that experience with me inside. It was a truly special and unique experience as well as amazingly auspicious, but I get ahead of myself.

The Saraswati lineage was one of the ten monastic orders founded by Adi Sankara, the great Vedantic philosopher. Swami Sivananda is the main figure in this lineage in modern times, and I can find little on the internet regarding this lineage further back from him.

The Stress of ‘The Night Before’

So, all this confusion led to a really anxious feeling within myself. People kept talking to me about how great the initiation would be, and Swami Sita had spent so much time talking to me about it, and overall it seemed Very Important to everyone I met in my newly minted spiritual life. It was causing all this stress inside me, and I began to question why. Additionally, each night I was walking home in the dark in a strange place out in the country where I was surrounded by more wildlife, deer and while walking each night I imagined other more dangerous things. Spiritual life is a lonely life and I had been quite unsure of myself following my first spiritual teacher’s verbal abuse. That fear stayed with me while moving into this new place also. I was unsure if this rather unusual lifestyle choice was right for me or not. I had no cultural references other than hippies in the 60’s and 70’s who were often exploited or used to some selfish ends by their so-called ‘gurus’. All this left me with quite a bit of stress and uncertainty.

Plus, I was really connecting to the energy of Durga- who rides on a tiger, and there was some overheard talk of mountain lions seen in the area recently. The more I thought of Durga each night the more scared I became of attracting her energy and thus, I imagined, I would surely be eaten by a mountain lion on my walk back up to the shed, right?!

The Question Is Answered

Finally, I’d had enough. Halfway up my dark, lonely and scary walk to my new residence, I stopped right in the road, turned my head up to the sky and shouted, out loud:
“OK! I’ve had enough!”
“I want to know if this is the right choice for me to make or not!”, I demanded of the starry blackness.
“If it is, then you will show me something right this very second!”

And, just as sure as you get a response from someone you’re speaking with and know well, I GOT my answer.

A small meteorite flew right into the precise area I was looking- very clearly intended for me and exactly on time. Far from being amazed, I was still quite angry and stressed, so I just yelled “OK then!” and began stubbornly walking back up to my little hut. From that moment, I have never questioned my spiritual path, my choice of Durga as my ishta-devata (chosen form of God) or my preference for the yogic lifestyle.

Having set up all my gifts to the deity, emptied my bank account and repo’ed my car, I was fully committed. There was no going back.

The Auspicious Omens Begin

I woke the next morning very early and walked down to the ashram proper to shower, dress and retrieve my gift plate of flowers, money, etc. Another woman was to be initiated also- a daughter of another full-time devotee like myself, and her spiritual name was to be Krishnaprem, The Cosmic Lover of Krishna. Her initiation came first, and I was lucky enough to have the priest there with us, Krishnan Namboodiri. He explained why.

His appearance, he said, was quite auspicious and unexpected from the first moment he awoke- everything from his early wakening to the ability to get a car to bring up all the puja items he’d need to conduct the ceremony and so on. All this happened without him planning to attend in the first place. I sat amazed at all of it and trying to tune into the energy of the whole scene, but still feeling the same pensive feeling.

My awareness gradually expanded as I watched the fire ceremony unfold in front of me. I sat back far enough to see a gathering of blue damselflies appear more and more on the roof of the Durga Temple. I knew also that blue was the color of Krishna himself, so I was thinking that these were beautiful omens.

As I watched, I noticed a gap in the red-painted boards where a mouse came out, watched the ceremony for a few minutes, looked at me, and then we went away again. This happened several times throughout the initiation of Krishnaprem. Lord Ganesha’s ‘vehicle’ is a mouse, which is a very auspicious omen also and when I noted this to the priest, he became very serious.

What I was amazed about, truly, was that at the very moment of Krishnaprem’s receiving the kumkum powder on her ajna chakra (between the eyebrows), all the damselflies I had been watching gather descended upon her right arm and clung to her. She was so focused, she didn’t notice them, but I sure did!

Later, the priest and Swami Sita would discuss at some length the remarkable set of omens that presented themselves during this initiation.

The Initiation Itself

So, I had been listening to 3 hours of chants done by the priest, and I went through my ceremony, presenting the gifts and money, prostrating and so on before the Durga statue, and my mind had been fixed on her form throughout the process of Krishnaprem’s initiation. I felt very in tune with her and with my surroundings, but I was still feeling my apprehension! I was still worried that I hadn’t really felt like I thought I ‘should’ feel up to this point and even during the ceremony, something inside me was still holding back.

When it finally came time to get my spiritual name, it was what I had been told to expect (you don’t really CHOOSE your own spiritual name, although Swami Sita had been very good about letting me believe I was able to do so), and I inclined my head forward to receive the kumkum powder. Right at this moment of contact, which lingered for a moment, I experienced a feeling like cold water being poured suddenly over my head. From the top of my head to my feet this feeling went through me, and indeed I felt transformed- something special had happened, yet I had little idea of how to put it into context.

We were encouraged to spend a couple of hours without speaking to anyone and to think about what had happened. I did so, but afterward I still had little concept of what I had begun.

My Real Lineage Experience

Only later, after visiting the Sivananda Headquarters in Val Morin Canada, did I REALLY understand the nature of what ‘having a lineage’ meant. What happened was that I had a vision, while doing pranayama, of Swami Vishnu-devananda and Swami Sivananda as conduits for the spiritual energy contained in the thread that connects us. That thread, it seemed to me, was the lineage itself, and in a greater context, a connection to all. I could see and feel Swami Vishnu-devananda and Swami Sivananda flowing within me, and I could feel their nature as being vehicles that serve the spiritual fulfillment of everyone who they met and initiated.

So, my REAL initiation, in my mind, took place much later in a yoga hall in Val Morin, where Swami Vishnu-devananda’s energy remains to this day a a palpable experience to the devotee.

Throughout my experiences with initiation and the lineage, I have always run counter to the popular myth that in order to have a guru you have to ‘give up’ some part of yourself. Anyone who says that this is the case doesn’t really understand the energy of a lineage, spiritual apprenticeship or of initiation. It is not a limitation but rather you gain by taking on a teacher- in fact you gain a great deal.

There is nothing the REAL you has to give up at all. However, your ego has much to lose, and doesn’t like it when it’s told something that runs counter to it’s own self-arrogation.

Tags: initiation, lineage, sivananda