This is sort of a personal issue, but I consider you all a sort of digital extended family, and i respect so many of the members here and what goes on here, that I wanted to get some perspective on an issue that I have been wrestling with lately.

Backstory: When i was little (about 8), I told my parents that I wanted to grow up and be a monk. At the time, I meant a shao-lin monk, both for the "cool martial arts" and for the awesome trials they put themselves through. I picked up a book on buddhist monks from the highschool library, where my aunt worked. We would stay with her after school sometimes, it was right next to the grade school I was going to at the time. Well, I became fascinated with what I read, even though I didn't understand all the deeper concepts that were discussed - I was enthralled by the pictures, and by the idea of devoting every moment towards some kind of mystical lifestyle.

My parents were less than thrilled at the idea, and laughed it off. None the less, I would occaisionally dress up in a sheet, put mardi-gras style beads over my neck, and sit quietly on my bed pretending to meditate, imagining that I was a monk in a mountain monestary, saying (not yet chanting) AUM over and over again. I didn't have a lot of friends to play with until I was in highschool, when playing was a bit more carnal. A couple of times my mom caught me, and after a few instances I was taken to sunday school in a southern babtist church every sunday to teach me more about 'my own' religion.

When I was old enough to be talked to like a human being instead of trained like a pet, the call came again, this time with more intellectual understanding. I wanted to be a buddhist monk, even though I wasn't strictly buddhist - I wanted to learn, and shave my head, and the whole nine yards. This was shortly after my first explorations into mysticism, just before I became wiccan, I was about 12 or 13. My mother and step-father at the time, suggested that I attain greater aspirations in life than to sit around contemplating my navel for the rest of my life. So, I focused on school, eventually got into magick, and on I went into my late teens.

I got the call again when i was seventeen. I wanted to escape the life I was in, at that time, and also wanted to follow up on a dream still echoing from childhood. I had no plans, no aspirations, I wasn't close to my family, and at the time I was just beginning to be able to really feel the Force. The world was coming to life for me, after years of faith with only periodic experience. However, this time I was on my own. i didn't have the resources to get myself to a monastery of any faith, and was already caught up in a relationship which would last another two years, and had become caught up in the day to day affairs of living life. A job, a residence, friends who loved me, and while I wasn't close to my family yet, they still had hopes for me, and I for them. so, I told myself that I would live the first part of my life for myself.

Now, I am 22. And, all my life I've had this call, since I was 8 years old. And it's back again. But this time, I have the resources to go where I want, if I want to go there one way, and I have no attachments to keep me in any place - no one would suffer from my absence, at lease in any material way. I'm already practically monastic. I've got almost no social life, I'm now a total vegetarian, I meditate and practice devotion, yoga, and mindful living every day, morning and night, and I am making progress. Making the leap to total monasticism really isn't that much of a leap for me at this point. But, whereas before I have had no plans for life, no real great endeavors to prepare, for, at this point that isn't true.

Now, I have a nephew on the way, and based on readings, journey work, and geneology, he's going to be one very sensitive child. My sister (the mother) and I have already agreed that he'll be raised to be aware of his gifts, and that he'll be taught what we never got the chance to learn at such a young age - that it's natural to see the world like we used to and he will. Like, maybe, all children do. After he's seven or eight, the majority of that formal instruction rests with me - I'm good with kids. I already love him to death, and he's not even born yet. I've already accepted that I'll never have my own children, so in a way he's the only available recipient within my family of what my sister and I consider to be a way of life worth passing on. Beyond that, I have been planning to be an ever present uncle, having a family totally different from the kind that I had growing up (we were the black sheep no one talked to.) I have plans already in the making to open up a bookshop in a few years with the inheritance that is on it's way anytime in the next five or six years, just enough time to get the degrees I want to get and the knowledge that I need to have to start building from that a center for metaphysical development, and have been designing the framework for a whole system of education for parents and children in raising evolved children, and developing gifts naturally. For the past three or four years this has been what I want to do, and It's felt like what i was supposed to do.

Why do I feel the call again now? I've been getting into hinduism lately. The past six months or so, and for the past two i've become increasingly devout, not just philosophically, but experientially. And I've felt happy - something no religion has ever given me. I've developed psychically, philosophically, and morally, and have had mystical experiences far more fulfilling than any i've had before. And, around this past new years, I had a dream about a guru. He placed his hand on my heart and imparted something I have yet to fully comprehend, and it triggered an intensely lucid dream. I knelt and kissed his feet, and he said that he would be waiting.

I know it's sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't had this type of an experience before, I didn't readily believe it myself and it happened to me, but I found this guru's photo on a website for a monastery in Kuaui - a place that I acquired a random fascination with around a year ago. To compound that, I've had a recurring dream about this year, the year that I am 22, since I was fifteen, in which some vehicle I am in, a train, a plane, a bus, usually a car, riding with my friends and/or family, people close to me, has some kind of turbulent experience, and afterwards i'm alone, but not traumatized, even at peace. So, maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy to get all up in arms about a series of concurrences that happen to come across at this year in my life, but most of us here don't really believe in coincidence, and neither do I. What's more, I find upon some research into this Guru who I saw in a dream before I saw his image, ever - and that has never happened to me before - committed to being Sannyasin - a hindu renunciate monk - at the age of 22 - as did his Guru.

So, I am now more ambivalent and torn about this issue than I have been over any other issue in my life. Normally the answer is easy, I just relax into myself, and let the Force guide me. This time, it seems to be pulling me in both directions. I can't make sense of it, and my readings on the matter also show the same ambivalence. I've been contemplating the matter for a couple of weeks now, giving it more serious attention since I found Bodinatha's (the guru) image on the website. On the one hand, I would truly welcome the lifestyle, the devotional existence, of the sannyasin. On the other, I feel that I have the chance to make a significant impact on the world, at least on the local scale, that, who knows, could become something far greater. I realize I need more education in many matters before I can make these dreams reality, of course, but none the less - it's literally around the corner.

What really has me though, is a few things I have read concerning Union with Divinity, Sannyasin, and hinduism - most notably, the belief that only Sannyasin can ever truly achieve permanent liberation. It is said that ever being becomes monastic eventually, at the pinnacle of their spiritual evolution through many lives. This is a religious belief, now, not general philosophy. There is also the belief that ONLY a Guru can lead one to the initial stages of that liberation. I feel as though I'm very close to some deeper level of awareness, and have been for some time. Once in a while I get a taste of something far more vast and incredibly fulfilling than anything I've experienced before, but It is always just at the very limit of my awareness.

Now I have discovered for myself, experientially, a religion that is delivering what it promises. While I don't necessarily believe that just because some aspects of it, those which I've most thoroughly explored and experienced, have brought me these feelings, all of it must be strictly true, I have all of these other concurrences and experiences which seem to be drawing me down that path.

And if i don't? Can we indeed liberate ourselves without such a lifestyle? Is it possible to live the renunciate life, AND do these other things? The sannyasin has no assets - he turns them over to the order if he has them, but it is said that it is better if he has none in the first place - and he has no ties. If I commit myself to a monastery, i won't be visiting my nephew once a month. I won't be building a center which is not hindu - because the sannyasin is commited singly to his religion - and I do not want to open a religious center. I do believe that total detachment from the world and all it offers, is the only way to realize the Supreme Consciousness, to liberate oneself from the ego has always seemed to be the answer, and since I have followed these thoughts, they have made me better in all aspects of life. They tell me that only a Guru can lead one to awakening, that only Sannyasin will realize self, and yet in all that i've experienced, I feel as though I have been awakening already, without any Guru to show me the way. The only Guru I have ever known, whom I have spoken to only a handful of times, had the audacity to suggest that my awakening was false, that it was imagined. I am still on the rocks about Gurus in general because of that woman. What I have been experiencing for the past few years is strikingly similar to what I have read described in the vedic texts that I have been exploring lately, and mystical awareness aside, I can't look at some of these experiences and believe that such explosions of consciousness were within the scope of my imagination, even as creative as I am.

So what am I asking for? Why am I bringing this all up here? There are a lot of experienced people here, spiritualists who have had experience with their Self. Do you think it is within the scope of the individual path, above and beyond any spiritual 'guidance' to find one's own liberation? I used to believe ascension was completely personal, that not even Guru can really show you, only help you to break down what was there before to show you that the Guru is within yourself. Now, I'm conflicted. Insight from the hindu members of our boards would be especially appreciated. Rishi Brigu, any thoughts? Mystick? Aumnamahshivaya?

I cannot see, from where I am, how I can consolidate these two callings. I used to be comfortable and happy beyond words that seemed to have just one destiny, and now I feel as though I have two, and happy is not the word I would use to describe how I feel about it. I'm not asking anyone to make the decision for me, but I find that when all answers seem to fall short, more perspective is often just what is needed to inspire more.

peace, my friends.