‘If you desire fame and wealth, God will give it to you, but you will not feel satisfied.
The kingdom of consciousness is a unit and until you experience it in its totality,
you will never be content.
God grants you a little bit of his joy at a time to keep you discontent alive,
for without that discontent you will not progress.
You, a child of immortality, can never feel at home in the realm of death,
nor will God allow you to remain here.
Remember that the heartache you experience is the beginning of an awakening in consciousness’.
(Shri Anandamayi Ma)

    With a little bit of reflection and fantasy we can replace the first sentence of this quotation ofShri Anandamayi Ma with a thousand other examples.
So for our contemplation we replace ‘fame and wealth’ with ‘partnership or solitude.’

DESIRE
    Is the desire, the longing to be with a partner build into our system? Probably so, when seen from a biological angle, we need a partner for procreation. It does not take a deep look to notice that all of existence is longing for its complementary component to bring itself forth. When we take time to look around with the empty eye, the eye of a child, which is full of awe and wonder, we are bound to get a clue of a tremendous intelligence. Just witness all that appears and disappears in all seasons, in all climates. Isn’t it far beyond our comprehension, this splendor of forms and shapes?

It all feeds itself upon itself in a endless cycle of rhythm and rhyme, one poem. All is married to all. It appears to be one large family all carrying the same family name: the family of God. We may call the members of that family by many names, God is ONE, consciousness is ONE, no matter how many names we invented for the appearance of all these different images. When we identify with a particular member of this One family, when we grab for an isolated idea, when we create a notion of separation, don’t we create instantly a heartache of ‘missing’ something or someone? Is it ever possible to find the whole in a-part? We have a concept of an ideal unity with a beloved ....
Once we are together, we will live happily and evermore as a couple/family.... we love the privacy as a family. Or we have a concept that we should stay out of an intimate relationship, we are very fond of our independence, we love freedom.... It is not possible to really be at peace when we make a distinction whatsoever. It is likely that we have emotional fits and discussions for hours in an attempt to match concepts, thus seeking peace, synchronicity and fulfillment.

ShantiMayi once said in an interview (while putting Her hand in front of Her eyes): “It is God pretending he doesn’t see”.
What is not seen, is that the ultimate marriage, this oneness, this ultimate and intimate love affair, is now here. Love is love, it is unconditional, inclusive, divorce is not possible. Isn’t it the longing that keeps God going? To rest in the arms of the Beloved as ONE
and dissolve in THAT, isn’t this the real longing? Home forever, the ever-lasting marriage. Oh, Beloved......

I AM HERE!
    “It is God pretending he doesn’t see". This sounds like the children’s game of ‘hide and seek'.It surely brings forth the idea of a play. It is the play in consciousness; ’hiding’ brings forth the dynamic of ‘seeking’. The idea of ‘the other’ is born for God’s sake of the play. The ‘we’ thought is born and ‘we’ forget God and the hand and think we see because we are not blind A skip from the One eye (‘I’) to the two eyes of the physical body, which can only see the multiversity of forms and shapes and discriminate. It is a turn of 180 degrees. It is a good set-up for the notion of a long lasting game of hide and seek.

    I am reminded of an occasion with one of my daughters when she was very young:
She stood in front of me with both hands over her eyes and proclaimed: “I am gone.”
I started to look all over the place calling her name: “Sacha, where are you?”
I looked in the plants, under the carpet, searched in every corner of the room. I even looked in her mouth. She was giggling, enjoying my search. When I pretended to become desperate I called out loud: “Oh God, I can not find you!” 
She unveiled her face and said: “I am HERE!”

DIVINE DISCONTENT
    Now, if we transform this little anecdote to our ‘adult’ way of playing the game, isn’t it in partnership or the opposite in solitude, that we search the most, that we long the most, that we miss the most? Our novels, songs, movies, the whole drama of attraction and rejection, it is good for a worldwide text with the bottom line: "Babe, I need your love". I remember one text that made me smile the most, it went: "I can’t get no satisfaction and I tried and I tried..." Well this is the build-in lucky part of the play in consciousness. We will never feel really at home as long as we look with the eyes of discrimination. Honeymoon might be beautiful, dinner by candlelight so romantic, sex so passionate, rejecting or avoiding relations so safe. Even our intense alliance with the cat or the dog might seem to be such a loyal companionship... We are set up for happiness and pain, therapy, divorce and the feeling of loneliness. Even the new car and the bigger house cannot fulfill.
It is called ‘divine discontent’; it keeps the search, the progress going.

‘You, a child of immortality, can never feel at home in the realm of death, 
nor will God allow you to remain here.’

By grace we get exhausted.
By grace we give up blaming ‘the other’ and the circumstances.
By grace we get the notion of circling, endlessly repeating the same drama’s over and over again.
By grace we really want to untie and let go....
Here the turn, the re-turn, is the turning point of the journey. What do we untie and let go?

'Remember that the heartache you experience
is the beginning of the awakening in consciousness'.

    There is an expression for the heartache we experience: ‘A broken heart’. When we look more closely, is it really the heart that breaks? Why does it surely feel that way? Because when life unfolds as it does, time after time we are invited to surrender our (oftentimes inherited) concepts. Concepts with the name of ‘love and friendship’, concepts with the name of ‘me and mine’, concepts that tell us how to succeed and when we are a failure, concepts including firm principles. Concepts are ripped from our thoughts, limitations are peeled off. It feels like saying good-bye to a known world, how it could have been, how it should be if only... Our ‘heart is broken’, we have lost control... These concepts may have seemed to be of service and may have felt save in particular times. In fact concepts are fixed ideas which prevent us from listening to the voice of the heart, from living according to life’s seasons as it appears, from living in ‘a let go’, new, fresh and open in the moment. It is right here in these times, when we get the notion of control being an error, that another voice can be heard, at first in a whisper: it is the voice of the God or consciousness.
Yes, the whole of consciousness is a permanent calling for awakening and we start to hear this call more and more clearly after the turning point. We are drawn back home, towards our True Love.

'Controversy belongs to the path, but actually everyone is in his own home. 
The same path is not for everyone. 
Even within a family, each child has different inclinations. 
Spiritual seekers are each molded in a unique way, 
but each will have to pass through the gate of truth'.
(Shri Anandamayi Ma)

OH BELOVED, WHERE ARE YOU?
    The question 'Who am I really' is bound to arise. We are ready to meet our Master, our Guru.By Grace we will.
The love of the Master is unconditional and boundless by nature and encourages us to slowly and gently take our hands from our eyes.

    A couple asked Guruji ShantiMayi for a wedding blessing.
A date and a place were set, a sacred site along the river Ganga, beautiful and romantic.Many people were involved in making the site even more beautiful. Colorful silk was spread out, lots of flowers decorated the scene. A huge mandala created with all different shapes and colored beans completed the set-up for the blessing ceremony. The whole atmosphere was breathing love and care. Dressed in a white silk sari, ShantiMayi’s presence appeared even more radiant than ever. We were all set in the perfect dreamlike mood.
For the moment of the actual Blessing, we made a circle around the mandala. The bride and groom were standing next to ShantiMayi. Then ShantiMayi turned towards the couple and spoke:

“I can not marry you. I can only marry you to God.
I wish she finds God in him and he finds God in her”.

We all picked up a slip of the sheet that was underlying the mandala, folding it towards the center, thus destroying its form, chanting the mantra: Om purnamadah purnamidam.... The huge and profound reminder that all is well and has always been well; all is perfect as it is, out of perfection only comes perfection.... We are One big family in Perfection. Nowhere to hide, nothing to seek, whatever appears to come and whatever appears to go...

'Emptiness flies upon the wings of Perfection.
You are Perfection,
Befriend emptiness'.
(ShantiMayi)

“Oh Beloved, where are you?”
“I am HERE!”