Journey of the Heart

The way before me is unclear and full of uncertainty… It seems like my search for truth and understanding into the nature of reality, of the Absolute, often brings me into places of obscure wilderness. It seems that the more I learn and discover the more I realize how very little I know about anything, including my own nature. There is a constant battle between what my intellect questions to be true and the direction my heart longs to pursue. I stumble and often fall. When I find myself back on the winding path that creeps its way along the mountainside I'm usually in familiar places already traversed. My heart sinks, as it appears very little progress if any has been made. One treasure that I have discovered along my journey's path is my mantra. The maha mantra, the Holy Names of Krishna, I have chanted for more than a year now nearly every day. There was only one dark period that lasted a couple of weeks where my intellect stubbornly denied me...

It seems one desire that is common to the human condition is our desire to be happy and to find peace… We look for it everywhere and oftentimes try to fill the emptiness within with all sorts of attractive things this world offers only to be left feeling even more dissatisfied and empty than before.   The restlessness our soul's experience, I feel, is a symptom of our natural longing to connect to God and realize our true natures.  For those of us who pursue truth and understanding into the reality of God, and our eternal natures, the journey we embark on can be laden with lush forests offering fruits heavy with refreshing eternal nectar. But the landscape can also become barren and dry, as well as tumultuous and unsteady, causing our hearts to be uncertain of what the truth really is. Making us doubt ourselves, and even the existence of God. In our searching we can enter into what the mystic's call "The Dark Night...

There is something so holy and precious  regarding the names of God… Upon every tongue in every corner of the world vibrations in praise of a God who is universal rise up in devotion.  The names might differ, but they are all directed towards the same reality: Recognition of the Eternal.  I have found that in my case the names of God found in the maha-mantra draw my heart deeper into a realization of God and His infinite nature and begin to connect me to His love and towards the desire to serve and surrender to Him. Like an arrow, my mantra has buried itself deep within me.    It's as if an underground spring of freshly flowing water from eternity itself has been struck and now passes through me, nourishing my parched soul with its transcendental nectar.  I wrote the following poem after I had chanted several rounds of my mantra on my japa mala beads and went outside to walk our border collie in the gently falling rai...

My name is Tadiya Dasi, and I've been on the path of bhakti yoga since I was seventeen....  I am 28 years old now. This poem came to me one morning, as I was rushing to work and it was raining, and I felt a million miles from my Guru and from God, too. Nothing in that grey morning felt inspiring or spiritual but as I was walking on the street suddenly this sweet feeling of wanting to sing God's Name came to me.  Later, wanting to capture that feeling, I wrote this poem. It's also about my spiritual path in general, my journey from despair to hope and faith. It's also about my teacher, about nature as guru, and ultimately about God's love. Thank you for providing us this beautiful forum in which to share our poems, Krishna Kanta dasi! Singing in the Rain by Tadiya Dasi My feelings are dripping like London's rain always and everyday I have no umbrella, no shield no shelter from the ...