This Thursday's Puja—as I chanted the customary mantras offered for Guru—
I spontaneously entered a long pause of reflection.
I became more acutely aware of how the devotion poured into my worship was stemming directly from my own original sense of devotion to my source and specifically to my significant preceptors: Guru, ancestors, elders, parents, guides, teachers.
I experienced the great degree to which my own full-bodied honoring of every one of my preceptors—inclusive of my limited perception of theirs and my limits—is an active influence on all my heart-felt actions, whether I am currently in active service to them or not.
Essentially, if original love for them has atrophied for whatever reason—then by law of correspondence—one's own actions originally conceived and guided in some way by them would also be affected.
In that quiet space—it dawned on me as if for the first time—that the love and gratitude I feel for my elders and teachers is and always was my responsibility to nurture. Clear as day I understood that it is me who is choosing to purify and align my word, thought and deed as I offer up and interact with our common source of being.
In that moment I bowed without thought in salty sweet acknowledgment of all those times I would now use as the perfect opportunity to just say, without attachment to anything in return:
I am thanking you. I am loving you.
As I do now and evermore.
Om Gum Gurubhyo Namaha