I just returned

I just returned from the land down under, underland, wonderland, where the coconuts grow like weeds, the air is soft and silky, and the true master resides. his small bamboo pole hut is barely big enough to sit in, the top wrapped like a hersheys kiss in an old tarp because this has been a very cold winter so far here in the unending summer. all day the breeze blows westward and the windmills like old propellers spin lazily in the sun. but there are no windmills in this old neighborhood, where we jump in the local lake down stairs of antiquity covered in slippery green algae and wash up before our meeting, our divine obeisance to the lord Ayya narayana, this ancient body dweller, his limbs weathered like old koa branches, sitting before his hut, with the eyes of a child/mystic/ancient seer, we do not see him at first, we sit in our dhoti and head scarves behind his camp. but he feels each one of us, some have come bearing large bags of rice and vegetables to cook for the days meals prepared for the villagers and devotees, others like ourselves have driven all night sleepless and bearing only a few bananas and sweets. yet our hearts beat together in the love for this divine soul who in a body still after 80 plus years is giving darshan this morning.and though he has not seen us yet nor us him, he calls to my friend and companion johti with a guttural command and then I am waved around the small enclosure to be served morning chai in coconut shells by the master himself. I cannot tell you the joy in this graceless body to be seen by his loving eyes full of merriment and curiosity and love, yet I feel my insides being turned inside out I fumble with my cloth and throw myself to the ground before him, forgetting what the correct kneeling and holding cups formally are, I am smiling like a silly schoolgirl and am covered in the sacred dirt that he sits upon. I drink my chai slowly looking in his kind face and form even as I am being signaled by the chief of the devotees to come back to the line, I rest my head upon the ground before him after I have enjoyed my few stolen moments and there is a heat a fire inside my skull and stomach that sends me into a nirvana of joy that I still to this moment am lost in. his soul is ageless and his heart so complete without condition or judgment, yet in me my soul my self this being within was somehow asking for liberation, from desire from self from any sense other than the eternal now and this freedom to not want to not need but to be eternally present and somehow this is being granted as the heat inside like an oven burns behind the eyes and in the solar plexus. for two days I sit and meditate and walk and exist in this wonderland of southern india and every moment I am in ayya's heartand feel his connection like a flame catching the limbs of my existence and I burning like a ghee lamp before the eternal soul preparing his morning chai. I cry like a baby given all he can drink and so wishing he could drink more of this nectar that he sends without restraint to hearts that truly and always are here to only be within a flames distance of his heart. in these two very short days that still linger like the taste of sweet chocolate I am transported to the great sense of bhakti and the surrender to a divinity within that is seen in physical form before me. to have travelled halfway around the world, to the density of the southern point of india where three oceans meet, to find in a small hut in a small village, the ancient one, still persisting in human form and to be recognized and smiled upon by him, who could not cry as the prodigal son does when mother wraps her arms around his weary shoulders and there is no other place to be. this heart this life all has been for these moments short they may seem, yet eternally touching every moment of every life that this soul has known, and truth like love has no restriction on when it comes or how it will look. I am this time so fully comprehending, experiencing and loving this small master that fills the universe with his gaze. tears like flames falling from a fire on the cliff, pour from my eyes and from my heart for this love, this life this moment that will never end