If you have never seen Amma, I hope my story will inspire you to go when or if she is in your area. However, many people are ready to travel far to see her.
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Recently I talked about destiny and how much control we have over our lives. Meeting Amma felt to me like it was destined and the whole Universe was vibrating with signs that something important is happening in my life.
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But first, let’s talk who’s Amma in case you never heard about her.
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Who is Amma
Amma or Mata Amritanandamayi Davi is Hindu a spiritual teacher or great guru (
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But Amma is the most known for her Darshans that she performs by hugging people. And you would think “what so special about that” until you realize how many devotees she has, sometimes it takes her more than 20 hours without interruptions to hug everyone.
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If you would like to know more about Amma check useful links at the end of the article.
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Photo: Marcello Ronfanti source oprah.com
My First Embrace
Now let’s get back to my story. I think the best will be to start one year before meeting Amma when the Universe started to prepare me for the concept of Divine Mother or Shakti, primal creative energy, and her representations.
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A couple of months ago topic started to dominate so much in my life that I decided to do a workshop on Divine Mother as part of my yoga teacher training. It didn’t come to life as I had some disagreement with my teachers on what should be covered in it, nevertheless preparing for the workshop helped me to expand my knowledge on the topic.
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Next important event happened around 8 weeks ago when Tarot drawing was made for me to determine my mission in this life. Honestly, I was a little bit worried beforehand as this drawing is done only once and do you like the ray of your mission or not it can’t be redrawn.
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Luckily, the result I got fit perfectly the understanding of myself and what I want to do in life. The card I got called The Empress and the name for the mission is Mother of the World. I won’t go into the lengthy explanation about the ray of the mission, but will only say that Amma was listed as an example of my ray’s leaders.
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If you think that I started to Google right away when Amma is coming to the area, I didn’t. But when two weeks later Facebook showed the ad about Amma coming to Detroit, I knew right away I must go.
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The day came, I took the day off from work and drove to Detroit in the early morning. Because it was my first time ever seeing Amma and I was fairly early I was sitting in the first row and among the very first ten who got Darshan (hug and blessing) from her.
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By the time I was in line for Darshan I had decided that I will ask for a blessing from her as a leader of my ray. However, when it was my turn to get a hug, I didn’t have an opportunity to speak to her or rather she didn’t listen to me and was quite disappointed with how everything went.
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After the first frustration faded away, I started to feel the warmth and tingling in my heart center, and within a half-hour, I was filled with love to the world and every single person around. And I was ready to cry from joy as that’s the feeling I experienced once before and was searching for the way to feel it again. And I finally found it. It made me so happy. After some hesitation from my mind and conversation with my soul, I decided to sign up for the weekend retreat with Amma, and see what it will bring into my life.
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It was very special a couple of days for me. A lot of good people surround her, and all of them are emanating good emotions around, creating a very uplifting atmosphere. I wasn’t able to attend every event in her retreat as they start at 6 am and end around 3 am the next day for 2.5 days. By day two, I was so exhausted from not having enough sleep previous night that I realized that I’m not enjoying it anymore.
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Luckily, I was able to listen to myself and went home to rest, despite that I didn’t want to miss a whole evening of events. But I realized that if I stayed, I wouldn’t have the energy to enjoy the next day too.
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The Brightest Moments of The Retreat Weekend
As I said, my sensations in the heart center started after Amma hugged me for the first time. Over the weekend I had an opportunity to get the embrace three more times. My heart was continuing vibrating with love, but over the course of three days, I had tingling and heat in most of my chakras. By the end of the retreat, all my chakral system was burning from all prana flowing up, to the point that I wanted to put my head into the bucket of ice-called water.
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One of the most prominent moments was Amma performing Bhajan (devotional singing). I felt that the more Amma sings, the deeper she goes into some kind of trans opening the energy channel with Divine Mother, she continues to sing making the channel wider and wider. The Bhajan peaked with her constantly calling the Divine Mother, repeating “Ma, Ma, Ma” and like a huge wave spilling that energy into the auditory. When the wave hit, I felt overwhelmed from emotions and strong heat in Manipura.
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I also had an opportunity to observe Amma embracing people and exactly how she’s doing it. She, first keep your head on her chest then whispers something in your ear (I honestly accepted it as it is without trying to understand, what does it mean) and releasing you with a little push. It looked to me as she’s pushing a little portion of her heart energy before releasing you.
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Accepting Amma as My Guru
If you’re following the spiritual path of Yoga, the general rule is that you must have a guru. And that you should be humble, respectful, let go all your I-am-ness and love your guru as you love God. And that’s really hard for me to let go my discretion and to accept everything a guru is telling me without personal evaluation and judgment. For that reason, I decided that I don’t need one guru and can learn from many.
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But the thing with Amma is that she doesn’t talk on complicated topics. Her message is simple – love and compassion in every moment of your life. She’s like the sun wrapping in warm light every person approaching her. And my ego simply can’t find anything to reject from what she’s teaching as she’s teaching not with words but with her love.
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You feel she loves you and you love her back. When you in love with somebody everything in them is loveable. The same with Amma, after being around her for several days, I feel the strong connection to her, I feel love and gratitude toward her. She looks beautiful to me; she sounds beautiful to me. And that’s exactly how you should feel about your guru.
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Despite that I will be still learning from all around, Amma will have a special place in my heart, her picture always will be on my altar, my daily meditation will start with a feeling of gratitude toward her and ending with chanting my personal mantra that I received from her.
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Be blessed and feel free to ask any question about my Amma experience.
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Useful links
- Video about Amma
- Connect with Amma through Facebook
- Wikipedia article about Amma
- Amma’s official website