In the past year, I have established a routine of making ghee most months on the full moon, as it is considered an auspicious day to do so, where Soma nectar is plentiful and is believed to imbibe its tremendous nourishing properties into the ghee.
In early July, we had the brightest full moon of the year, a luminous day celebrated as Guru Purṇimā, which one of my teachers, Kaya, described as “the day we honor the divine role of the teacher who guides us to remove and release all that obstructs the luminosity within”. On this extra luminous and auspicious of full moons, I planned to chant a mantra about leading from ignorance to truth and darkness to light during the entirety of my ghee making.
The day before Guru Purṇimā, a virus my daughter had come down with the week prior caught up with me, and I lost my voice pretty much entirely. On Guru Purṇimā, my voice was only partially back, and I wasn't sure how things would go with my plans to chant while making my ghee.
After only a sparse moment of habitual patterning of thinking, "I can't do this, I don't have a voice, it's ruined!", I caught myself and resolved to just start and see what happens, and allow things to shift as they needed to in the moment.
What a surprise and delight to find that as I chanted this mantra over and over for 40 minutes, my voice actually became stronger and fuller.
As I was making the ghee and chanting, I was watching the ghee and reveling in what an amazing process it is, how it goes from opaque and homogeneous, to cloudy and spotty, and then foams up a ton, and then subsides back to rolling clouds. Eventually, the cloudiness dissipates, and golden, luminous clarity starts to shine through. Cloudiness and foam come back a bit, and then it clears up again. Over and over, until the sound subsides, the foaming subsides, the solids at the bottom get slowly cooked until they are golden brown, and you are left with beautiful luminous clear ghee.
This nonlinear transition from cloudiness/untruth/darkness/ignorance to clear/light/luminosity/clarity in the ghee struck me as such an incredible example of how this happens in our lives. At one point, after the foam subsided for the first time, and it was becoming more clear, it suddenly started to foam like crazy again, almost foaming over the pot. I could have freaked out that things were going wrong, but I tended to the pot with love and devoted attention, slowly stirring to help the foam subside, and then underneath that was revealed such clear beautiful ghee.
I can't count how many times on this path of healing that I have felt things had become more clear, that I was making progress, and then WHAM! I get hit with the cloudiness again. My tendency in the past has been more on the freak out side - “OH NO! I'M NEVER GETTING BETTER!! It's going to be like this FOREVERRRR!!” Now I'm more able to see the cloudy spots as a transition and transformation point - it will come back around again, if I tend to my life with love and devoted attention, and on the other side of it, is even more luminous clarity.
Have you made ghee before? I’ve fully documented my ghee making process in this ghee recipe, including photos and a couple of short video clips so you can hear the transformation of the sound of the cooking ghee. Let me know how it goes!
Curious to know more about how Ayurveda can support the process of removing and releasing all that obstructs the luminosity within? Schedule a free short intro call with me!