Falling Into Grace

By Kiara Windrider

I had always needed to live at the very edge of life. I remember thinking as a child that I wasn’t afraid to die; I was only afraid that after a whole lifetime of living I would discover that I hadn’t really lived.

I always felt that I needed to extract the last bit of experience from every situation. I had to make every moment count; every moment had to be extraordinary, exciting, unforgettable. I remember in my childhood that I was always off on some kind of fantasy adventure, whether it was exploring some far-off jungle where nobody else had been, or making a scientific discovery that would save the world or becoming a great yogi who could heal everybody with just a glance.

The worst thing in the world was to be ordinary. Ordinary meant being in a rut, ordinary meant becoming a robot, ordinary meant losing the very meaning of life.

Fortunately, in those days, there was no television, but needless to say, I was always reading adventure stories and fantasy novels, escaping into one wild daydream after another to take me out of the present moment.

The truth was, I needed to get out of myself because I felt so ordinary. I pushed myself to the very limits of my imagination, but outwardly I felt extremely bored and unfulfilled with my life. Ordinary meant I wasn’t seeing the truth of life. Ordinary meant not being truly seen by others. At the same time I was chasing windmills or fighting dragons in my mind, I felt caught up in a mundane existence of meaningless schoolwork, family chores, and routine existence. I screamed inside for deeper meaning in life.

During my high school years I attended an international school in the beautiful hill station of Kodaikanal, in south India. My mother had found a teaching job there, and so the kids got to go for free. Until then, we had lived in crowded cities and scorching climates with very little greenery and little access to nature. Now, suddenly I was in paradise! It was a dream come true!

It was like breaking out of a cage. All the pent-up energy inside me sought to be released, and I found myself going hiking every weekend I could, further and further out into the primal wilderness.

One day, with a group of friends, I was out on one of my favorite hikes, a beautiful mountain stream leading to a huge cascading waterfalls named Gundar Falls. We camped overnight at the stream, and early the next morning, I started downriver with one of my classmates. Jumping along from rock to rock at breakneck speed, we were at the Falls in record time. It was a glorious sunny day, and we relaxed, swam in the pools, and tossed huge logs over the edge to watch in fascination as they splintered into tiny bits hundreds of feet below.

Suddenly we decided to climb down the falls. No one else had ever done it before, and that’s all the reason we needed. We raced each other down, daring ourselves to go where nobody in their right minds would think to go.

All of a sudden my friend lost his grip and fell. In extreme horror, I watched as he tumbled down the steep cliffside, and disappeared from sight.

I have no recollection of what happened after that, but the next thing I knew, I was tumbling down the waterfalls myself, bouncing from rock to rock, desperately trying to find something to hold on to, and finally realizing there was nothing I could do to stop myself.

Like most young people, I had somehow assumed I would live forever. Now, suddenly, I realized that I was going to die. Curiously, after that first moment of terror, an immense clarity overwhelmed me as I hurtled towards my death. “Had I lived my life fully?” The question flashed through my mind. Equally swiftly, I heard myself say, “No, but it’s okay. It’s an interesting way to die”.

I surrendered to my death. The next thing I knew I was standing in waist deep water surrounded by rocks. I had fallen onto a ledge, and below me was another long drop as the waterfalls continued for another several hundred feet into the gorge below. My body was smashed up a bit, but I was alive. Equally astonishingly, so was my friend, who had landed in the same pool mere inches away. We climbed out together, dazed and shaken, and tremendously grateful for the gift we had just received.

That experience graphically portrayed my lifelong need to live life “at the edge”! What was it that drove me so desperately to test the outer limits of my existence? Why did I feel so unfulfilled with my ordinary existence? Why was I forever craving more experiences to prove to myself that I wasn’t so ordinary after all?

Over the next few years, the search for meaning in the outer world gradually yielded to a search for meaning in my inner world. My spiritual quest began in earnest. The only thing that mattered was enlightenment, not just for myself but for the entire messed up world we lived in. I spent time in ashrams, visited sacred sites, explored all the major world religions. I went to the US for college, became involved with the environmental movement, and became a peace activist. I got interested in psychology and later became a psychotherapist. I studied shamanism and the Native American path. I explored altered states of consciousness through breathwork, psychedelics, vision quests, and deep meditation practices. I learned all kinds of healing modalities, read every New Age book that I could find.

It was all very exciting. I was always running from one workshop to another, one spiritual event or teaching to another, one meditation practice to another. Somehow, I thought, if I could only gather up enough experiences, enough knowledge, enough goodness, I would become enlightened. I had this idea of enlightenment as a state of perfection, and that as I continued climbing my spiritual mountain I would eventually find enlightenment at the peak. I was constantly trying to move to the next level of perfection. But as soon as I thought I had reached the peak, there was another one even further beyond.

It was exhausting, but I couldn’t stop. Every time I stopped long enough to reflect, it was with the painful realization that I was no further along the path of enlightenment than I had been before. There were some good things in my life, and I was helping a lot of people, but it wasn’t enough. I had become identified with the search. I had to keep seeking, have more experiences, go deeper into myself, understand the totality of the universe.

Occasionally I would slow down, drop into my center, and enter the river of being. Still, I wasn’t happy with just being, I was always trying to become more than myself. I was happy as long as I was searching, because as long as I was searching I could continue to feed my fantasies of the ideal world. This ideal was always in the future. The present moment was never enough.

I don’t want to downplay my desire to seek more in life. I have led a useful, creative, varied, and even a fulfilling life in a lot of ways. I have received a lot of life’s gifts, a lot of love, a lot of beauty. As a peace activist, psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and writer, I have helped a lot of people and contributed to making a better world. But what it always came down to is that it wasn’t enough. Which also meant that I wasn’t enough – not good enough, not loving enough, not accomplished enough, not spiritual enough. If I just had that one more experience, one more tool in my spiritual toolkit…and the whole cycle would repeat itself.

Instead of recognizing the gifts I had already received, I was still focusing on my limitations. Instead of realizing the extraordinary nature of each ordinary moment, I was still trying to turn the seemingly ordinary moments into an extraordinary ideal. I was still seeking perfection.

I came back to India two years ago with the inner awareness that what I was seeking could not be found in the way I was seeking it. As I was talking with a close friend and spiritual brother one day, he felt a strong intuition that I would meet somebody in India who would help me take the final step into enlightenment. I felt the same.

After searching through many ashrams, many gurus, I eventually found my way to Kalki’s ashram, along with my wife, Grace, who had also had some extraordinary visions guiding her to come here. We were in Nemam for Amma’s birthday celebration when the first public mukti diksha was given.

Grace went through an extraordinary transformation, and a few days later, received her enlightenment. I had diksha at the same time, and later even went through a 5-day enlightenment process. Nothing happened.

Now I was really pissed off at the Universe. “How come Grace gets it, who wasn’t even looking for it, and I don’t, after all my efforts, all my seeking, all my meditating?” I could feel the Universe laughing at me, gently slipping in past all the noise in my mind, “Because she wasn’t seeking, she wasn’t trying, she was ready…”

Six months later I went through a “teacher’s process”. I finally acknowledged that all the long years of seeking were prompted by a sense of self that itself was an illusion! I understood the cosmic joke! The long search was over!

I understood the paradox of seeking. I realized that with all our seeking for enlightenment through the long millennia of human history, we had created a field of struggle around the experience of enlightenment. Now that Kalki and Amma’s grace is here, enlightenment is as simple as recognizing that there is no one to get enlightened. That’s all the teaching that is really necessary. Kalki’s diksha does the rest. In all of our efforts to do something, become worthy, pray some more, practice some more, we are simply contributing to this field of struggle, simply catering to this sense of self.

As another great Master once said, “Unless you become like a little child, you will not enter the Kingdom of God.” What does a child do? Is he busy running around trying to squeeze the last drop out of life? Is she desperately trying to change herself so she can fit into some ideal image of what she should or shouldn’t become? No, a child is simply being a child. There is no craving to become something other than what he or she already is.

We all experience jealousy, resentment, anger, hurt, and depression. We all struggle with feelings of worthlessness. We constantly experience judgment towards others and towards self, we are forever looking to others to define our sense of who we are, and we all wish to make ourselves look better than we think we are.

All this is simply the nature of the mind, a mind that we all share in common. Kalki tells us that our suffering comes not from having these feelings, but in trying to change them. Our suffering comes from creating an image of ourselves as good, kind, respectable, loving and selfless human beings, calling it our ‘self’, and then constantly fighting with aspects of ourselves that do not fit this image.

The more spiritual we think ourselves to be, the more we fight against everything that does not fit this ideal, assuming somehow that if we only try hard enough, pray enough, do more seva, earn more satkarma…maybe we can change ourselves. It is the same cycle of seeking. We perceive that life is dull and dreary, and are constantly seeking the extraordinary moments, the peak experiences. We perceive that somehow we are not spiritual enough to deserve grace or enlightenment, and constantly run around the treadmill of effort. Meanwhile, all of life is passing by, and we don’t even see it.

It all comes down to accepting who we are, all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is the gift that Kalki gives us. When we see that the self is an illusion, there is no more need to defend ourselves against our own or anybody else’s judgements. Then, the entire universe can flow through us!

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The following passage is excerpted from Kiara’s forthcoming book, “Enlightenment 2012: Kalki and the Golden Age:

“The mind is like a sewer,” said Dasaji, “and we cover it up with a golden lid. The stink comes through anyway, and fills the entire house, but we are busy admiring the golden lid. We do not know who we are. The lid is composed of other people’s concept of ourselves, which is the only way we know to refer to ourselves. We get attached to these images of ourselves.”

“Instead of cleaning out the sewer,” he continued, “we keep staring at the golden lid, which only takes us away from what we know ourselves to be, all the miserable, self-serving, loveless insecurities, comparisons, judgements, lusts, and pain that we try so desperately to cover up and mask. Someone tells us how helpful we’ve been, so we try and go around helping everybody, however empty we feel, just so we can feel good about ourselves. We believe we are nasty, so we project that out into the world around us, so people will treat us like we believe we deserve to be treated. We are always reinforcing our concepts about ourselves”….

“Cleaning out the sewers is simply a matter of honest observation. It is like peeling an onion. The onion is being peeled, but even when you get to the bottom the peelings are still there. Enlightenment doesn’t mean the onion disappears, it means there is no onion left to hide behind. We see our fears, but we are not ruled by them, we see our lusts but don’t cover up, we see our insecurities, but accept them”….

The first diksha was to be given that evening. Dasaji warned us again that the purpose of this diksha was to make us examine the sewers of our mind. “Until an alcoholic ‘hits bottom’ he cannot overcome his slavery to alcohol. Likewise, until we fully experience the extent of our slavery to mind, why would anyone seek liberation?”

After the diksha was given we were asked to go to our rooms and simply go into witness mode. In the altered state that followed, a great sense of uneasiness began to grow within me. My social persona began to dissolve, and I began to see in great detail the games I played with people in order to manipulate them and get my own way, all the while attempting to present an image of myself as kind, loving, wise, honest, and spiritual. I saw my judgments and comparisons, my jealousies and resentments, all the while desperately trying to convince myself I was spiritually evolved.

I watched my aggression and rage, then watched the suppression of my aggression and rage. I watched the conflicts within my mind as I struggled to forgive, still resentful on the outside, still plagued by guilt inside. I watched my need to be perfect, to be special, to be unique. I watched myself reacting defensively to any assault, real or imaginary, towards the cherished spiritual identity that I had so carefully built up over the years.

I began to witness with utter horror the immense ugliness and insanity of my mind, extending even to the most spiritual of motivations. Was I being good because I was conditioned to be good? Was I striving to impress someone by my saintliness? Was I helping because I was afraid to say no? Was I loving before I wanted to be loved back? Did I want to be recognized for being wise or wonderful? Was I feeling so empty inside that I had to run around from workshop to workshop filling myself up with every high that came my way? Did I talk about dying to self only to use it as yet another building block in my spiritual edifice? Did I want to be in total charge of my life, even when I stated I was in service to the Divine? Did I feel the need to even achieve enlightenment by my own efforts, finally placing the crown of enlightenment upon my own head?

I saw how needy and inauthentic my entire life had been. I saw that this wonderful personality that I thought myself to be was nothing but a mind-controlled robot. As I continued to observe, I noticed that over the years I had built a whole set of identities around myself. The spiritual identity was the worst one of them all. I was a spiritual teacher and a healer. I was sensitive and compassionate. I was a good person with a mission to help the world. I was deep. I saw that I had become so identified with this image of myself that these very identities became a mask. I found myself carefully protecting this image lest someone see through me into a place that was vulnerable or uncertain, angry or lustful, unloving or fearful, depressed or shy.

I saw my desperate needs for approval, for acceptance, for love. I noticed how I was eating up the world around me in order to survive. More is better, bigger is better. I noticed how true this was for me, whether this had to with a material identity or with spiritual experiences. I noticed how I was dressing up my vices to become virtues. My fear of others becomes my need for “solitude”. I cultivated “humility” because I didn’t have the courage to stand up to abuse. I “loved” because I was too afraid to be alone. I embarked on a mission to “save the world” because I was too afraid to be judged by my own soul. I couldn’t find any love anywhere. I recognized how unloving I really was, how fragile and hollow my ego was.

I realized that I didn’t really like people. I related to them for what they could give me, whether it was love, things, money, recognition, or opportunities for advancing myself. Perhaps they recognize my light or tell me some nice things about myself. Or perhaps it gives me a chance to tell myself I’m better, wiser, more advanced, more learned, more loving than they are. Or perhaps I get to feel touched and warmed by their light, because I really didn’t believe in my own.

I didn’t much like myself either. I saw that I was forever comparing myself to others, and my sense of self came from how I felt others perceived me, and whether I thought I was good enough or lovable enough or beautiful enough. And so of course I had to put on my best face at all times. I had lost my sense of spontaneity and childlike wonder. I had lost my ability to live from my soul. Indeed, I doubted if I had ever really known my soul. All I knew was a spiritual labyrinth of the mind….

Strangely, during the course of this diksha, I felt an enormous wave of relief each time a realization hit me. It was a relief to crawl out of my hole of self-pity and self-condemnation, it was a relief to take off the masks of spiritual ego, it was a relief to see the ugliness of my mind so that I no longer had to maintain the struggle. I saw that the struggle was only the ‘me’ trying to convince itself it was good as opposed to something else that was not ‘not me’ that I could identify as bad…

When I could see myself in all my ugliness I could finally come to terms with reality. I wasn’t frightened by it anymore. I no longer needed to resist it, or even to take it personally. I even became a bit bored of the whole drama. After all, it’s not even my own mind. “Strangely”, Dasaji had said, “when you see your ugliness clearly you no longer need to act it out. When you see your ugliness clearly, you no longer need to behave ugly”. When I gave up trying to look good, I noticed that the war with the universe was over.

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Kiara Windrider is the author of “Doorway to Eternity: A Guide to Planetary Ascension”, and is currently finishing a book on the Kalki Dharma, entitled, “Enlightenment 2012: Kalki and the Golden Age”. He and his wife, Grace, have both been empowered by Kalki to give healing and mukti dikshas to people. They feel it is their life’s calling to travel around the country and around the world, teaching and giving diksha wherever they are invited.