Eleven days I have spent in the ashram of Swami Sri Kaleshwar, which is located in the small village of Penukonda near Bangalore, Southern India. I visited Guru Purnima there, a festival week that takes place every year at the time of the most important Indian full moon in June/July. Guru Purnima is celebrated euphorically by the entire Indian population, the ear-deafening music from the nearby Hindu temple could not be overheard in the ashram for 3 days. By the way, an ashram is a place of spiritual teaching and the place of living of a Swami (spiritual teacher); you can imagine it like a monastery where one can attend further education courses lead by an inspiring person. 

In Penukonda, the earth is magnetic...

...so the statement of Sri Kaleshwar, the Swami and miracle healer, who founded the Ashram in 1997 and went to Samadhi in 2012 (i.e. left his earthly body which means he died). Kaleshwar has been present as spiritual teacher all over the world (especially in the US, Germany and Japan) and is surprisingly little known in India. According to Sri Kaleshwar, the energetic vibrations in Penukonda are as high as only in a total of three selected places on planet Earth. 500 years ago, the great king and Saint Krishnadevaraya lived in Penukonda, who was the richest man in the world at this time and invited thousands of other saints from all over the world to Penukonda to perform spiritual rituals. Penukonda is also considered the birthplace of the goddess Kanaka Durga, she is the Divine Mother in Hinduism and stands for the quality of unconditional love. In Penukonda, it is said, she has appeared on earth for the first time in a concrete form. Kaleshwar's words about why Penukonda is the ideal place for spiritual practices and an excellent place for meditation: 

"If you want to hunt a tiger, you have to go to a tiger reserve. There you will find tigers. First and foremost, it was a great number of amazing and divine spirits and divine souls who came to Penukonda who practiced their spiritual rituals here. There are many Samadhis (burial sites) of supernatural saints here. Of course, you can draw the energy to you wherever you meditate in the cosmic energy, but it will be a little more difficult. Here in Penukonda, the vibrations are very powerful. Here the magnetic earth, the magnetic force is very present. The Shiva energy and the energy of the divine mother are extremely strong."

As crazy as it sounds, I can confirm this statement

In the sacred halls of the temple complex you get goosebumps although it is oppressively hot inside, your bio-organism is working as if you were digesting things that do not consist of food and your mind is so clear and deep as if you were taking a journey with psychedelic substances in your brain. I have meditated in many places in my life, in my apartment, in yoga studios, in meditation retreats in Austria and Southern Germany, in my sister's basement, but I never have had such profound meditation experiences like in Penukonda. After the time in Penukonda, I can confirm that it does play a role WHERE you meditate and that your meditative receptiveness is much higher on the top of a mountain than at home next to the buzzing refrigerator. However, Penukonda will be remembered by me forever especially for the fact that I was experiencing there how a number of complex wishes of mine have come true all while Guru Purnima.

In these eleven days, I made three great wishes during the ceremonies and temple rituals, which were performed in honor of the Divine Mother, in honor of Shirdi Sai Baba (another saint known and revered throughout India and Kaleshwa's teacher) and in honor of Sri Kaleshwar himself. The crazy thing: All three wishes have come true! My first and most complex wish was that I wanted to have a fundamentally deep and existentially formative experience of self-love. When we have experiences, the findings are engraved in the body and available forever, when you have a really profound experience, then it is forever an inner resource and reference point. If you have felt your own love for yourself at least once deep inside, you can remember it again and again and reconnect to this feeling. That’s exactly what I wanted.

So what happened?

On July 4th 2023, on the American Independence Day, on the last day of Guru Purnima and at Scarlett's birthday (an inspiring woman from Singapore who was also in the ashram), I was given a moment of enlightenment that I had been yearning for so long. In a ceremony lasting several hours in honour of Kanaka Durga, the priests prepared a wonderful Absishek (cleansing ceremony) for the statue with several CumCum washings under continuous chanting of mantras to increase the vibration in the room. Then, the Ashram visitors were allowed in groups of three to go into the sacred interior of the temple and briefly stay in this extremely pure energy. The ritual prescribed that when entering, you have to bow in front of the statue, touch the feet of the Holy Mother and then get up again, circle the statue three times and directly leave the temple room.

When I enter the room, the air is hot and heavy of wonderful jasmine scent and the smoke of the blazing oil flames. When it is my turn, I kneel down in front of Kanak Durga and touch her feet to express my wish, which I had memorized very well to not forget in the decisive moment: "Please give me the ability to experience deep self-love for myself." 

And now hold on tight!

In the fraction of a second, which seems like an entire era to me, a whole series of realizations happen in my head. Even before I am able to get back up, inside of me it goes like CLICK, CLICK, CLICK and finally in my mind it makes "AHA!" As I kneel in front of the statue, suddenly an amused voice speaks in my head. The first comment of this voice is that my wish is STUPID. I am surprised. A feeling spreads within me that I somehow have made a fool of myself. The voice tells me that it's not about training a skill, as if you wanted to acquire a new competency or strengthen a muscle so that you can win the self-love championship one day. The voice assures me that every person has the ability to love themselves since birth anyways.

The voice continues and says that it is more about lifting all veils that have obscured the view of one's own natural beauty and the value of one's own being. It is about taking off the filters through which we often perceive ourselves so unlovingly and thus also reject the divine in us. The divine is inherent in all living beings all the time and therefore we devalue it in an unbearably condescending way and pull it into the dirt. The voice makes it clear to me that I am part of her creation and that there is no question whether or not or how much I am valuable and lovable. Everything in her creation is valuable and endearing, every flower, every animal, every plant, every person and of course also me. And exactly in that second that I stand upright again in front of the statue, there they were, these words, crystal clear in my head, an answer, a mantra, an impressively simple essence:

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

The voice in my head speaks clearly and tells me a little strict in a commanding tone:

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

Instead of practicing something new, she gives me the instruction to not be blind and ignorant of my own value. 

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

Yes, damn, that's the key.

This experience has left a lasting impression on me. I experienced it in a fraction of a second and at the same time in epic width inside of me. No one can take this experience away from me anymore. Not even myself. Read these words carefully, because they come from an energetic channel through which I received a message that does not come from me. This wisdom applies not only to me, it applies to all of us. Let us all stop being blind to our own beauty, because we are part of this creation, and creation is perfect, and so are we. 

Lots of Love,

Your Salome