This poem by my beloved Guru changed my attitude toward my mother. In the past, it was difficult for me to read Gurumayi’s poems for Mother’s Day because my mother faced many challenges and was limited in what she could offer to me.
After reading this year’s poem, I focused on what my mother
did do for me instead of what she didn’t do. She taught me good manners and to believe in God. She sent me to ballet, art, and piano classes. She and my father loved nature and took our family camping, hiking, and backpacking. She shared her love of travel and of learning about other cultures. She encouraged me to study and make good grades in school. By working as a female journalist at a time this was an uncommon career choice for women, she showed me that I would have career choices too.
I’m grateful this year to treasure my mother’s gifts and to send blessings and love to her.
Washington, United States
I love this poem and listened to it over and over on Mother’s Day. I felt like Gurumayi was guiding me to let go of the ideas I have of my childhood. I focused on love for my mother and set aside the mental concepts I have carried. A few days later I received a letter from my mother. The difficult feelings I usually have were gone. It felt like reading a letter from a friend. This was such a gift.
Washington, United States
I am grateful to Gurumayi for gifting us once again with a Mother’s Day poem!
In our
sadhana circle, studying Gurumayi’s Mother’s Day poem is a highlight every year.
As I listened to Gurumayi’s words in this poem, I put her words into practice. I drew upon my courage to let go of the limiting beliefs I have of myself that I associate with my mother, and I jumped into her warm embracing love that I encountered at my birth.
With this poem, I got to know the mother that I trusted completely when I came into this world. I can feel how she felt like my first country. In this way, I regained a sense of loving trust in my existence. This has transformed how my nervous system functions; I feel a lot more settled and at ease.
Deggendorf, Germany
As I read Gurumayi’s poem, it felt as though my Guru was speaking specifically about my relationship with my own mother. Inspired by what I had read, I sat for a few minutes truly appreciating—perhaps for the first time in my life—my mother’s sacrifices and her greatness. Our physical time together ended when I was nineteen years old; she passed away at age forty-seven, some fifty years ago. As I continued to contemplate, I realized that although I have spent considerable energy shunning her from my life, my mother has been by my side all these years, quietly witnessing and offering guidance.
I feel her now palpably in my heart. I experience that she is quite contented and happy for me. Knowing now, after all these years, that we are journeying together toward our final attainments is bringing stillness and peace to my heart and my mind.
California, United States
I am so thankful to Gurumayi for helping me to focus on and experience my mother’s love rather than her shortcomings. Reading this poem has also enabled me to recall the tremendous sacrifices my mother made for her family. I am so grateful for this understanding. I pray for my mother’s soul to be free.
California, United States
This poem enters the depth of my heart. For me, Gurumayi’s words apply to all the mothers in my life. A child often takes love for granted without thinking about the mother’s effort. It is easy to find shelter in her country, but not so easy to truly follow her guidance. It is so great to hear her lullaby, be fed and cradled, and to relish her divine smile even in turbulent times.
As I mature, I am focusing on how I can let go of selfishness, senseless actions, tantrums, the notion of “mine,” and the desire to impress others. How can I really understand and acknowledge what it means that my mother’s breath entered me and what immense willpower this took? How can I really value the breath as God’s gift? The wish “May my child always be happy” goes deep into my heart. I receive this wish, and offer my wish in turn: “And may my mothers always be happy, very, very happy!”
Hindelang, Germany
After bathing in this poem, I was inspired to reread all of the past Mother’s Day poems Gurumayi has written. As the tears streamed down my cheeks, I offered gratitude to my mother, who has given her life to serving others out of pure love. She continues to teach me that with an open heart, love can be shared in many ways. Though I didn’t see it at the time, my mother prepared me to meet and to serve Baba and Gurumayi. For this, the greatest gift, I am eternally grateful.
Maine, United States
I offer my love and heartfelt
pranam to my mother, who sacrificed her life and was “tested in
agni-pariksha, in trial by fire,” for the sake of her children. The more I listen to Gurumayi’s poem, the more I appreciate my mother, who fed us with tears in her eyes, disguising her own pain, with a gentle smile on her face and steadfast faith in God.
She endowed my siblings and me with high moral standards, the path of
dharma, and priceless teachings unattainable by means of worldly prosperity or academic achievements.
My everyday sturdiness comes from her unwavering support, her warrior spirit to keep going in the face of shortcomings, and her constant reminder that I have a living Siddha Guru, so I must not worry about the outcome of my efforts because I am fully protected.
The Houghton, South Africa
I am so grateful for Gurumayi’s exquisite poem honoring motherhood.
My mother passed away a couple of years ago, but she still intimately dwells in my heart. Our closest years were toward the end of her life. When she passed, I had no regrets, for we had healed our relationship. It was Guru’s grace that had led me to see that it is never too late to heal a relationship, and grace supported my mother and me in doing so.
Today I honor my mother’s bounty and revere her memory.
Virginia, United States
Every line in Gurumayi’s poem resonates with what I know to be the truth of the heartfelt roller-coaster of motherhood. The poem reminds me to give thanks to my birth mother, but also my teacher-mothers, sister-mothers, friend-mothers, and all the others who have stepped into this challenging role for the benefit of those around them.
I thank them all from the bottom of my heart and pray that I may follow their loving, supportive examples.
Sainte Anne de Bellevue, Canada
What a beautiful poem by Gurumayi! Motherhood is indeed all-encompassing, and so I have learned that the sadhana of motherhood is one that requires strength, balance, and observant discrimination.
I am grateful to Gurumayi for all the grace she has showered upon me and my child so that we could walk side by side in this relationship.
Florida, United States
Gurumayi’s beautiful poem reminded me of the question my mother asked of me a few years before she died: “Are you happy?”
Thanks to the grace of the Guru and the Siddha Yoga practices, I was finally able to answer wholeheartedly, “Yes.” I could see the relief on my mother’s face.
We mothers only ever want our adult children to be happy. I am grateful to Gurumayi for putting my own precious experience into words.
Hurlstone Park, Australia
My mother’s presence and love for me and our family has been an eternal blessing. My loving heart thanks God for making me her daughter.
Gurumayi’s poem “Homage to a Mother” reminds me strongly of the time when I invited my mother to a satsang at the Siddha Yoga Ashram in Mexico City. Among the practices we carried out on that day, we were asked to write down on a sheet of paper some desire that our heart had at that moment, so that we could put it on our puja.
My mother had never participated in a satsang in this way before, and so she showed her paper to me, asking me to tell her if what she had written was right.
She had written on her paper, “I just want my children to be happy.”
Mexico City, Mexico
Of all the eloquent lines in this evocative poem, one that resonated extra strongly within me is the line in which Gurumayi affirms, “She is both a country and the leader of her country.” It encapsulates so much of a mother’s role and responsibilities!
In thinking beyond my own childhood to the countless mother-child interactions I have witnessed in my long life, Gurumayi’s words inspired me to recognize how similar a child’s early experiences are to those of a curious, appreciative visitor to a foreign country, where everything seems new and intriguing. As children, we learn from our mother her customs, her gestures and expressions, her way of laughing, her foods, her preferences—and her values. Yet it may take years before we recognize the invaluable lessons we also learned from her compassion, patience, kindness, dedication, and selflessness in raising us.
Gurumayi’s poem has deepened my gratitude for the blessings I’ve received from my own mother—and from the many others who have served as a loving mother to me, no matter my age!
Illinois, United States
My mother is my “true hero,” as Gurumayi says in her poem. When I think back to how I behaved in my younger years, my mother showed incredbile love and patience as I worked through the clumsiness of my youth. Countless nights she sacrificed her sleep letting me crawl into bed beside her because I was afraid of the dark. Knowing of my love of animals, she let me bring every creature companion into her house—from dogs to hamsters, from rabbits to snakes—and supported me in caring for them all.
I have been privileged to spend the past decade caring for my mother, who is now 103 years old. If I spent many more decades looking after her, it would not touch all that I have received, and continue to receive, from this extraordinary woman.
Because of my mother and the example she continues to set, I live every day as a celebration of Mother’s Day.
West Vancouver, Canada
My Guru knows everything that I have experienced in my eighty-two years of life—as a child, as a mother. While I have known her brilliance since my first Shaktipat Intensive, I continue to feel awe at her splendor, her magnificent knowledge. And I will always wonder why I was chosen to meet her, to know immediately that she had everything to teach me, that through her, I might someday experience God.
I want to thank Gurumayi for this perfectly beautiful poem, for every miracle in my life, and for letting me walk beside her, in my mind’s eye, every day.
California, United States
Every year in May, we read Gurumayi’s poem for Mother’s Day in the Sadhana Circle that I am a part of, and then contemplate its teachings. I have noticed that each year, we learn new meaning about the virtues present in our mothers.
I am so grateful to Shri Gurumayi ji for making Mother’s Day so special every year.
Jaipur, India
Once again Gurumayi has touched the soul of motherhood. Every year on Mother’s Day, I am amazed at Gurumayi’s eloquence in describing our universal experience on this earth. And though the veil has seemingly closed between us and our mothers no longer with us, yet they make their presence known again and again and yet again.
Connecticut, United States
When I saw the term
agni-pariksha in Gurumayi’s Mother’s Day poem, I was grateful to be able to find more about its meaning in the glossary on the Siddha Yoga path website. I understand from the poem and the glossary entry that the immense challenges a mother faces are examples of
agni-pariksha. And through this “trial by fire,” a mother’s heart becomes even stronger, even more luminous, with love for her child.
In this way, mothers set an example to everyone of how to face a challenge—even many challenges—without becoming weary, but instead becoming ever more resolute. Recognizing that
this is what a mother goes through deepens my awe, admiration, and reverence for mothers.
New York, United States
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