Dizzy Ecstasy: Guru Poornima at iii

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The Guru Poornima blow-out at iii went off in tremendous fashion Sunday. Apart from the 200 Anaadhi participants, another 200 meditators and visitors came for the celebration, with Sounds of Isha playing some great tunes that got us all dancing through the night under the coolness of the full moon.

Guru Poornima is an important day for people on the spiritual path; it is on this day that a method evolved where human beings could aspire to become something other than what nature has determined.  On this day Shiva, the Adi Yogi or the “first” yogi, also became the Adi Guru, and decided to impart his methods to the Saptarishis – the seven celestial sages. It took 84 years of hard-core sadhana for the Saptarishis to get Shiva’s attention, but after 84 years of intense preparatory work, Shiva found them to be true receptacles of knowing, so he transformed himself into a teacher.

We did not plan this, but somehow Sunday’s Guru Poornima also happened to be the 84th day of Anaadhi.  Probably never before, in this part of the world, have a group of people done the kind of sadhana that is happening here. I even tried to ignore them for the first few weeks while they underwent intense preparation. But these are determined people of all ages who want to master their own animal nature and become a different possibility than the past which rules them from within. And they are of all ages - one participant just had her 75th birthday and she did just as much as anybody else. I have to say they have done wonderfully well.

Adi Guru

Ascetics distance
The stoic stance

All this they bore
And He could not ignore

Seekers so intense
Broke his obstinate stance

Celestial sages seven
Strived not in search of Heaven

But to find a way for every human
To find a way beyond hell and heaven

They toiled for their race
He could not withhold his Grace

He turned his sacred face
To south to look upon their race

They not only beheld his divine face
But held the downpour of ultimate space

As the Beginningless One flowed
In knowing, seven sages overflowed

To release the world
From its crusted mold

To this day the sacred knowing flows
We will not rest until every vermin knows