Self-Knowledge and Self-Realization

From a Facebook thread of Tijen Kino:


To the divine Feminine currently manifesting in many bodies: Tijen, Janet, Joan, Samantha, Ruby, Marcus, Deeya, Matthew:


Tijen, It is not a specific woman I seek, nor to be loved.  It is to find the "divine feminine" and to LOVE HER in all her incarnations.  I tasted deeply of emptiness, the Void from my first experiences in 1968, to the time in various Zen centers and temples, to my inital awakening in 1995.  Then there was almost continuous emptiness after that for another 11 years, until 2006, when I felt a movement in me to speak of my teacher, Robert Adams, and his path.

Later I began teaching online and then live satsangs in LA.

One day a miracle happened.  A student came to me filled with love for me and surrender to me.  She opened my heart to a love that was already there, but of which I was not conscious.  Gradually over a year the love grew for her, and surrender myself, and I felt the grace of God.  Divine winds of truth, love and passion began blowing through me.  My heart was on fire and continues.

My need is not to have the divine feminine love me, but to find those to whom I can give love.  It is 100% opposite of what you imagine.  I am love itself when I find someone open to it, and this openness to love is a feminine thing, I find mostly in women, but sometimes in a few rare men.  However, my homophobia is sometimes lit then.

I love you Tijen, and just want to give love to you, just as I do Joan, Janet, Deeya, and several others.  However, taking in love is usually harder for most than giving it, and it is a rare one who can tolerate all the love that can be had.  It ALWAYS requires that they love strongly and become very attached to me so that they can tolerate what arises in them from receiving love.

Janet could not tolerate too much.  She has run away 50 times. Joan often threatens to do so.  The things that come up:  Regression to being a 2 year old, a four year old, a teen-ager, and in me countertransferences and reactions to their reactions.  In each moment of giving love I feel enlivened, and my emptiness is filled with ecstatic energy that comes and goes, but also which others feel, especially in Satsang.

This dance of love can be quite painful, as much as it enlivens.  Even now Janet is writing a book about our love and our bhaktic awakenings from her point of view, and my every word is saturated with this new path which she opened for me.  You see, I have come to realize the path never ends.  The Zen Master Joshu lived to be 120 years old, and proclaimed that he had had 17 great awakenings (Satori) during a 60 year period, and thousands of small ones.  My own teacher, Robert Adams, had a final awakening experience during his last year of life at age 68.  Ramana too supposedly had a second great experience 30 years after the first.

Now I tread a bhaktic path of grace, surrender and love of the feminine.  I am filled with bliss when I see my students coming alive, feeling great, great pain of outgrowing their conditionings and concepts, and escaping the prison of their own minds, their sometime tyrannical spouses, etc.