I started studying Eastern religion with gusto. My first delving was during my slow morning shifts at a summer desk job in a Manhattan yoga studio. Back in college that fall I was nourished by a course in Sufi poetry and philosophy.  

I kept gaining momentum, reading Ram Dass' Be Here Now and starting Autobiography of a Yogi, which I have still yet to finish.

I'm sitting now in my room which has a high book shelf across the widest wall filled with my many books, most somehow related to Yoga. I love these books but lately it seems the brilliant insights of others are not enough, what I really crave is my own feeling. These words lead you there, inspire you, but you still must invest your own time to see where their words point to.

This morning I opened a book of quotations from the Hugging Mother Amma: 

"The Divine is Present in everyone,

in all beings, in everything.

Like space It is everywhere,

all pervading, all powerful, all knowing.

The Divine is the principle of life, 

the inner light of consciousness,

and pure bliss--

It is our very own Self"

Inviting insights, but let's make the next step and sit with them, allow the words to resonate and move us. What happens next? Not just letting the words drop like heavy matter, but following them as the drift and lift into other ideas and feelings.  What chords do those notes strike with in you? The words alone won't transform us, we must invest them with curiousity and interest to bring them alive for ourselves.  What does it mean to us? How do we know this in ourselves, so we aren't just parroting these lofty spiritual fantasies but we make some connection to what speaks to us now. 

At some point you have to use your own eye; use your own spark of your heart to see for yourself. How do you recognize yourself the Divine that is said to be everywhere? It takes a basic level of consciousness to hear the idea, but it takes another level of energy to plant it and water it and see what grows. 

We want the teaching to resonate within us, we want the seeds to sprout from within. Why keep planting seeds of knowledge? We have enough, at a certain point you just have to water them and nourish them to grow.

My friend Marjory was talking about New York as always growing Upwards and she craved to grow Horizontal, expand wider rather than just ascending from one point.  

Another Amma quote resonated with this:

"When huge trees are uprooted by a cyclone

and tall buildings collapse, the grass remains

unscathed-- such is the greatness of humility"

Her words keep pointing me back to my own simplicity. They don't satisfy the sensationalism of my intellect, don't promise mystic transcendance of the higher soul after a metamorphosis of the vital energy. No, these words point back to us, to what we have, to growing what we feel, our own spark of self knowledge. We already have spirituality, there is nothing to gain from the knowledge except the action of bringing the focus back inside.  

Shri Brahmananda Saraswati asks when will you stop speaking a foreign language? When will you come back to the language of the heart?

The teachings become less and less esoteric and you are brought to the issue of evaluating things for yourself, for taking responsibility and opening your life as your spiritual book. Investing it with the love and curiousity you have invested in the book and living examples, gurus, teachers, friends you have known and loved.  You must recognize your own spark and privelage it, bring it into highest reverence.