Hope Has Returned - Hari Dass Kaur

Two days after my birthday in 2011, before I became a mother for the third time and that birth along with subsequent events sent me into this bizarre realm of simultaneous excited joy and the personal space of death (I've not maintained spaghetti arms - LOL.), I received my spiritual name from the 3HO organization.  I read the name - Hari Dass Kaur, but I felt disconnected from it, disappointed even.  The email read:

You have been blessed to live as Hari Dass Kaur, which means the kind, creative and prosperous Princess who loves to serve God and who is God's Lioness.
 
Hari is a name of God.  Chanting the mantra Hari increases and awakens the flow of kindness, creativity and prosperity in your life.  Dass means service, one who loves to serve.  Kaur is a name that all women receive - the Princess/Lioness of God who walks with grace and strength throughout her life.  Yogi Bhajan taught that every woman has the potential to attain this divine state and encouraged all to manifest it.
 
Having the name Hari Dass Kaur means that your highest consciousness can be reached by serving God with great love.  God is within you, so serve there too.

Hari Dass Kaur, the very essence of it's meaning is vague.  The names are translated from  Gurbani (in most cases) - sacred language of the Sikhs- using the Gurmukhi alphabet - sacred alphabet of the Sikhs.  However, there aren't literal translating capabilities using the English alphabet, so it is tranlated in order to achieve the nadh, or the sound current of the name, which is the most important part.  This means it is more important that the name be pronounced correctly than spelled a certain way.  The names are meant to lead us more fully into our destiny as we adopt them as our legal name, a name we use, a personal mantra, a prayer, a meditation, or any combination of these.  The more we speak or hear this spiritual name, the more this destiny becomes our reality.

"Hari" is one of the many names of God (Source, Creator, Universe).  It is the aspect of God that actively creates or takes away and in taking away creates a new thing, being, or situation.  And, as the email said simply, Dass means "to serve."  I couldn't help but think, why else is anyone here?  We are here on the whim of the Divine no matter how we understand what the source of our existence is.  I closed the email and had looked at it only one other time until a new virtual friend of mine reminded me of the 3HO spiritual names and I remembered I had one.  

About two weeks ago, I opened that email again.  After all that I have gone through beginning with the triumphant birth of my Gweneth, and the sweet bliss that entering into the realms of death gave me...  My midwife being arrested and charged with murder when the birth of a baby she attended directly after mine ended tragically.  The case being drawn out for three years without a trial.  Her being on house arrest and in a county jail for 10 months.  Me conversing with those working on setting her free.  Opening my life up to these strangers.  The emotions involved.  My PTSD being triggered which was still very real from the first time I became a mother.  My realizing I had no business being a doula, birth advocate, or childbirth educator anymore as my thoughts on all of it were drastically changing and I had a ton of inner work to do.  This thing which had become my identity falling away much to my relief.  This resulting in a constrained sense of freedom that wanted to be expressed.  Extreme ups and downs as I fought against accepting and expressing the emotions that would lead me to this freedom.  Excessive amounts of physical and emotional pain that made me wish for death.  Pain like I wouldn't wish on the people I consider my worst personal enemies.  Working to fight this disease (Hashimoto's) that keeps trying to put me in a place of weakness.  Finding a way to begin speaking my truth.  Asking my husband to see and hear me again and also be present.  Knowing that I was strong enough to expect that because I deserve that.  More emotional extremes that made me feel like a lunatic.  Becoming a public affairs director for WMMT - a small community radio station.  Sending my daughters to a cottage school.  Moving into town rather than living off grid.  Exposing myself in so many ways to more people than I ever wanted to...  I understood that name, Hari Dass Kaur, for the first time.

Regardless of what your belief is in a Divine Intelligence or even that of a seemingly miraculous, but very explainable science, I think we'd agree that if we aren't living in our Truth (not being true to ourselves), what's the damn point?  Why even live at all if we don't allow ourselves the freedom to be the fullest expression of who we are?  If we aren't allowing this quintessence to be expressed, this embodiment of life force that is uniquely ours from the moment we opened our eyes/third eye in this life, we aren't only short changing ourselves but everyone else in our life.  Hari Dass Kaur (the kind, creative and prosperous Princess who loves to serve God and who is God's Lioness) might be the hardest thing I have left to express in this world.  I've learned to express emotion.  I can complain with the best of them.  I love words.  I love writing words.  I love the radio and making stories for the radio.  I adore art and making art.  Music pervades my soul.  I enjoy feeling anger and expressing that to anyone ready to listen when the time is right.  Expression isn't hard for me.  Allowing my Truth to be the expression of my life no matter what that means for me, my friends, or my family, that feels scary.

I am realizing as I am getting answers from the medical end of my health and emotional issues, that what I have been experiencing over the last four years, but very intensely since Spring of 2015, is a kundalini awakening.  If anyone clicks on that link, I'm running the risk of being seen as a "nut".  That's ok though, I don't care.  I'm used to being seen as a nut in most ways.  I fly my freak flag with pride and have since I was very young.  However, I'm also a serious person and hope to be taken seriously, not made fun of.  I know that someone will see this as beyond eccentric and into the silly.  I run the risk of friends, family, and colleagues seeing me as someone lost.  Kundalini awakening is true though.  I'm in this process right now, and it isn't at all simple (though not everyone experiences it the same way).  I hurt on many levels.  I long for things to feel balanced.  Until I realized that kundalini awakening was what I was experiencing, I was perfectly fine with death as a solution to what I was feeling, though I didn't want to inflict it upon myself.  I was tired and didn't want to try to overcome anymore.  I didn't want to fight.  I didn't want to cry alone, or whine to my friends on Facebook and embarrass myself.  I didn't want to experience anything but nothingness.  

Now, I feel I have a plan.  I have a way to exist.  I work on seeing this awakening process through and I become the expression of life that I was meant to be.  Through all of my struggles, sadness, fighting, winning, feeling, joy, pain, learning, I can be of service to the Most High.  That Higher Power that is in us all.  That Truth.  I can be there for others.  I can use my gifts and experiences to reflect back this Truth to others so that they too can see it in themselves, knowing they aren't alone.  The thing is, I don't worry about what this means.  I don't worry about more pain.  I don't worry about loss of any thing or person.  I'm not concerned about suffering.  For what I know is, I am complete and this life is a brief moment in the expanse of time and all that is given me is purposeful to an end goal.  This isn't just some meaningless accident of tragic chaos, suffering, and pain.  I'm capable of working through all this with the help of those the Universe will send me who want to support me through each stage of this journey.  I know I will find that place of peace.  Now, hope has returned in the name, Hari Dass Kaur.      

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