#aradhana in other earth

[wishjacked]

it's CHRISTMASTIME and that means it's TIME FOR MY BABIESSSSS!!!!

[shinymoonbird]

Photo by DEV GOGOI

ARUNACHALA HILL

Each of the spiritual centers of India has its own character and line of tradition. Among them all it is Tiruvannamalai - Arunachala, that represents the most direct, the most formless and the least ritualistic of paths, the path of Self-enquiry, whose gateway is silent initiation. This is expressed in the old Tamil saying: “To see Chidambaram, to be born at Tiruvarur, to die at Banaras or even to think of Arunachala is to be assured of Liberation.” “Even to think of” because in the case of the direct path physical contact is not necessary. Hence, it was no accident that the Maharshi made Tiruvannamalai and its sacred Arunachala Mountain his home.

The Maharshi called Arunachala the spiritual Heart of the world. Aruna, which means ‘red, bright like fire’, does not signify the mere fire that gives off heat. Rather, it means Jnanagni, the Fire of Wisdom, which is neither hot nor cold. Achala signifies hill. Thus, Arunachala means ‘Hill of Wisdom’.

Tiruvannamalai, situated at the foot of Arunachala, is a town of medium size, 120 miles southwest of Chennai, an ancient village with a large and splendid temple. Certain yearly festivals draw large crowds of pilgrims to Tiruvannamalai from all over South India. This is especially so during Karthigai (also known as Deepam), which usually falls in November. On this occasion a beacon light of clarified butter (ghee) is lit at nightfall on the summit of the mountain. At Sri Ramanasramam, the greatest festivals are the anniversaries of the birth and passing of the Maharshi (Jayanti and Aradhana), which fall respectively at the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Lingodbhava Murthy Shiva at the Matrubhuteswara Temple in Sri Ramanasramam

There is a Puranic story about the origin of the hill. Once Vishnu and Brahma fell to disputing which of them was the greater. Their quarrel brought chaos on earth, so the Devas approached Siva and besought him to settle the dispute. Siva thereupon manifested himself as a column of light from which a voice issued declaring that whoever could find its upper or lower end was the greater. Vishnu took the form of a boar and burrowed down into the earth to find the base, while Brahma took the form of a swan and soared upwards to seek its summit. Vishnu failed to reach the base of the column but “beginning to see within himself the Supreme Light which dwells in the hearts of all, he became lost in meditation, oblivious to the physical body and even unaware of himself, the one who sought”. Brahma saw a Thazhampoo flower falling through the air and, thinking to win by deception, returned with it and declared he had plucked it from the summit.

Vishnu admitted his failure and turned to the Lord in praise and prayer: “You are Self-knowledge. You are OM. You are the beginning and the middle and the end of everything. You are everything and illuminate everything.” He was pronounced great while Brahma was exposed and confessed his fault.

In this legend, Vishnu represents the intellect and Brahma the ego, while Siva is Atma, the spirit.

The story continues that, because the lingam or column of light was too dazzling to behold, Siva manifested himself instead as the Arunachala hill, declaring: “As the moon derives its light from the sun, so other holy places shall derive their sanctity from Arunachala. This is the only place where I have taken this form for the benefit of those who wish to worship me and obtain illumination. Arunachala is OM itself. I will appear on the summit of this hill every year at Kartigai in the form of a peace-giving beacon.” This refers not only to the sanctity of Arunachala itself but also to the pre-eminence of the doctrine of Advaita and the path of Self-enquiry of which Arunachala is the center. One can understand this meaning in Sri Bhagavan’s saying, “In the end everyone must come to Arunachala.”

Om Namo Bhagavate Sri Ramanaya

Sri Ramanasramam

Photo by DEV GOGOI

[dear-saxifrage]

for the first time

for the first time, i am seeing myself through other people’s eyes. mentally. emotionally. and physically, perhaps the oddest and strangest part of it all. i am understanding how, exactly, i relate to them, and how i affect them. how i make up parts of their life and make them happy or see things, and oh my god, it’s so overwhelming. i am at that precarious, teetering balance of indulging my ego (is it anti-liberal of me to actually take something, even something as forgiving as mental space and credit?) and in recognizing the objective and abstracted effect i’ve had on people. i am finally realizing that people love me. they love ME! and it’s shocking. of course, i knew this, in the mundane and sweet way that we know that our dogs bring us gifts to say hello when we enter the house. i knew that people loved me in that simple way, that obvious way: they ask how you are doing, if you are thirsty, do you want to eat something special for dinner, shall we get the tab? i didn’t understand that people loved me, though, the way that i love them. and that is earth-shaking. i finally get it. i finally get and understand my importance to them. and i am seeing, as i look back and recount all the things i need to do and things i should have done with certain people, that people fucking love me in the exact same way that i love them, and they will miss me, and they will think of me all the time, and they might cry sometimes because they’ll miss our talks in the morning as i brew myself coffee and cook some random egg florentine. i can’t believe that i’m doing this to them! i can’t believe i am leaving them, that i am going to cause feelings of such intense and raw pain in them because of my physical absence. i can’t believe that i am a beautiful human to them. 

i knew i was loved. i just did not know that i was loved in the very same way that i love them. holy shit. they must have mountains. they must have loads to talk about. aradhana said she brought me up a lot while she was away in new orleans. i gave her sweetbitter yesterday morning. i woke her up and i said, “here, i felt bad because i didn’t give you a book to read while you were away.” she said it was okay because she had started to read the bell jar instead. i asked her why the fuck she was reading plath? she said because i recommended it to her and her other friend got it for her, which tells me that she brought up our interaction about my book rec to her with our other friend. she and my other housemate have been dropping really sweet one-liners to me lately. someone said, “oh! i forgot you didn’t go to work today. you’re home! i love when you’re home.” and it broke my heart but i couldn’t indulge how absolutely sweet that was because it might cause them to run away -- liking someone else’s vulnerability is tricky. you can’t look directly at the sun. then before they all left, there was a note left for me in the kitchen: “i put the grapes on table for you so you wouldn’t forget to eat them!” it’s just so fucking sweet and i am seeing that people notice, see, care, and perceive the things about me that i do to them, and it’s so touching. how am i ever going to live without you? do i want to? i don’t quite know. how will i live without the people in berkeley who make up my home? how will they live without me?

and that may just be the question of the night: how will you be without me? will you be okay? i was told a few months ago, by a peripheral friend (ok, short explanation time: lance and the friend group have been close for four years. all of them. i came into their lives a year ago and have grown very close to them. lance has a great perspective on my relationship with the friend group.) named lance this: “you have a remarkable ability to connect with people, and i think you are the glue for all of us.” i fucking remember. and he’s right. just tonight, i was out on the town with completely new friends, and i left the bar knowing that the woman i was talking to grew up poor in new zealand and had to miss school sometimes because she didn’t have any food in the house and she took six years to complete university on a part-time level. and holy shit? i realized that lance is right. i do have a remarkable ability to connect with others. i am extremely good at eliciting deep knowledge from people. i realized that i have a desire for apocalyptic intimacies: i crave this cavernous emotionality and i want it now and present and the rawness accompanying it. but that is how i live! we’re all dying -- all of us, now! we’re all dying at different rates and i don’t want to die without knowing the fullness of those around me. i want to know you so fucking deeply. i want to be close to you and i want to hold your fingers and look into your eyes and hug you and feel your heart on mine and know that you have a friend and companion in me, and my hands are not ice, and i can give you that strength you crave.

it is so fucking odd that i managed to convey this to the people i know and love. it is so fucking bizarre to me. i always thought i was as cold as ice. prickly. sad. and closed off. and perhaps i was. but somewhere, beating inside of me like some liquid core, my desire for genuine closeness has been conveyed, and i finally realized that the love that i feel from things -- human love, beautiful, soul-wrenching music -- is the love that people for me, too. of course, there are varying levels of expression and actual experience, but in their relative way, they feel for me this wondrous hunger called “love,” and they love me. they will miss me. someone on planet earth, right now, who is not bound to me by familial relation, wants me with them all of the time, and perhaps even right now. they want me to see their favorite views and to taste their favorite soups and candies and want to lie down next to me on a rock and look at our arm of the milky way. someone feels like that. because i feel like that about people right now, and i have shown my love very well lately. i guess it might be sightly augmented or resultant from my overall validation from achieving a huge dream of mine, but fuck, i am going to use this experience not as a resume-builder or sexy move toward credentials, but as something to remind myself that existence can be easy if i show my vulnerability and communicate my desire to love those around me, and that in doing this, i can achieve and have whatever i want. and i can make it happen. and i know this because i have already achieved the impossible: i have felt some of the fullest forms of love in my life, for i have realized that my friends and companions feel the love i feel, and i never in my life conceptualized or took seriously that some people could, and would, love me in that powerful, awe-inspiring way that i love them. 

here’s to finally seeing yourself through other people’s eyes for the first time, and truly realizing and seeing why you are important and lovable to them and to the planet at large. 

[wishjacked]

repostober day 9!! these are silly little style tests for my graphic novel project... when I eventually draw it for real I want the different chapters/scenes to have varied color and compositional styles, so each chapter feels a bit like its own special "episode"... I just think it'll make for a very fun and engaging book and I also think it fits well with the world of the story!! ALSO it's an alternate-reality book, and I want "Regular Earth" to be black and white but all the art in Regular Earth, which acts as a portal to "Other Earth", to be full color. So that's what's going on in the top panel. :)

[wishjacked]

repostober day 7!! side character designs for some of the kiddos from my graphic novel project 🥰... I love making up fantasy classmates they're so fun!! the tall kid is actually so interesting to me because I made him before ai became broadly familiar, and it's interesting that now I think characters with lots of extra fingers are starting to become culturally tied to ai art references??? but my guy ain't built for that he's just a tree kid HAHAHA

[wishjacked]

giraffes giraffes giraffes!!!

[wishjacked]

autumn is FOR THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

[wishjacked]

repostober day 8!! more kiddo monster classmate designs from my graphic novel project... these guys are both student body government and they're also both transfer students from Hell and I love that for them

[wishjacked]

there was that post going around twitter suggesting people draw their ocs wearing this outfit and of COURSE it’s exactly the kind of thing Manny and Aradhana would go ham over they are very into fashion

[wishjacked]

the babies 👧🏾 🐶 

[wishjacked]

this was already waiting in my queue but I decided to share it because this is their their birthday drawing from a year or two ago... feat. Manny doing his favorite thing (being nice to Aradhana) and Aradhana doing her least favorite thing (sitting down)

[wishjacked]

it’s aradhana’s OTHER dog!!!!!!!

[wishjacked]

just a girl and her dog 👧🏿🐶

[wishjacked]

art of the kids from earlier this year. I actually really like their gym clothes hahaha, it’s too bad they never once go to gym class in their actual graphic novel!!

[wishjacked]

I’m working on a graphic novel, so I made a lil banner for it for my Patreon!

[wishjacked]

manny and his sisters! they literally don’t do anything in the story but they’re important to him anyways hahaha