I gave up everything in order to discover God!
Written down by Uriel
Nicoleta Maftei went to the edge; isolation of two years in the mountains, while taking a value of silence (Mauna), long fasts, and 24 h prayers. She told me in an interview about the states of expansion in which she became one with everything, and how the thoughts in her hear stopped completely.
Many of the spiritual seekers, aspire to attain the ultimate spiritual realization, some of them even work efficiently in order to attain this goal, but only very few are willing to give everything for it. Nicoleta Maftei is one of those rare human beings, and she choose in the age of 32 to leave everything and to move to small house at the edge of small village on the Carpatic mountains in Romania, and there to dedicate herself to isolation, to silence and stillness, to deep meditation and to burning prayer.
“I felt a strong longing for something”, she explains how such an extreme decision was crystallizing in her. “I felt I was never at home. I thought there is something that the adults hide from me, something that explains in a complete way what is the meaning of my life and how I can be happy for ever. This longing would go with me everywhere all the time, filling me with despair and sadness.”
I met Nicoleta in the Yoga summer camp in Costinesti on the shores of the black sea in Romania; she tells me that the first spiritual peak experience, appeared in her life somehow spontaneously when she was 16, following some intense physical effort. “I was in a summer camp of intensive sport”, she says “after finishing a fast race, I got away from the other runners and I lay down on the grass. The sharp movement from effort to rest was, probably, the trigger for an unfamiliar experience: in a few moments I felt how my body was expanding to all directions, I felt the earth and the view around me, as if they were in my body. The expansion grew more and more, it contained the sky and the infinite space, I do not remember what happened after.
When I came back to the body” she continues, “waves of joy overflowed in my entire being, head to toe, I became aware of the fact that I came back from deep inside of me, from GOD, to be a human being again. The desperation that I felt before disappeared and I felt a complete freedom, I knew in my heart that GOD exists. But the optimism and joy did not last very long. I wanted so much to go back to that place inside of me, but I could not, and this made me sad again.”
After this experience she lived an ordinary life, full of financial and domestic problems which appeared in her family. Seven years passed like this until a friend of hers asked her a simple question: “where you ever happy?” Nicoleta answered by telling her friend about her peak experience. Her friend told her then, that she is studying yoga and that though yoga she can surely go back to that place inside. After this talk Nicoleta stated to study yoga.
The beginning of her path in yoga was not easy. “I was raised in an orthodox Christian family”, she says, “And in the first two years I still had doubts, especially about the sexual openness in Tantra Yoga. These doubts grow so much in the second year that I could not continue like this. I prayed to GOD to tell me whether the Tantra Yoga brings me close to him or away from him. I was so desperate to find out the answer so I closed myself in my room for a few days. I was practicing yoga intensely and I was praying all the time.
Suddenly I felt like a rushing train was rising up my spin. It had an intensity that could not be described. When this immensity arrived to the head, I found again what I was looking for all these years. This time there was not a gradual expansion of consciousness, but a leap beyond time and space, I felt united with everything; I felt I was everything, it was supreme bliss. This sensation maintained somehow 5 months in my being, during that time I used to touch things and feel as if I touch myself, as if I am all the things around me.”
– After you discovered that yoga can give you what you were looking for, what place did you give it in your life?
“In that period I was working as a teacher for economy and as an accountant for a few hours every day, the rest of the time I dedicated to yoga and meditation, about 8 hours every day. Yoga filled my life, and gradually I could go back again and again and taste the spiritual ecstasy.”
– And this was not enough for you? Why did you feel the need to go on a retreat?
“I noticed during my vacations from work, in which I used to practice 16-20 hours of yoga and meditation every day that my spiritual evolution was much faster. My Lover came back then from 9 Months of Isolation in the mountains and I saw how much he had transformed and how much he had grown.”
-How did you acquire the resources for such a long retreat?
“I rented my apartment and with the money I bought a house in the mountains, but money for food and cloth I didn’t have at all. I prayed to GOD saying: «you promised that those who give themselves to Thee, all the rest shall be given on to them and that you will provide for them, I give myself to you, please take care of me». Since I got there I always received food and cloth, at periods I received so much that I had enough resources to take care of a few more village families there who were very poor. Not just people from the Yoga were giving donations, but also simple people which heard that there is someone who is praying all day in the mountains.”
The path toward spiritual libaration
– Let’s go back to the retreat, in what way did you prepare for it?
“In the beginning we were four partners on this road, we decided to leave everything and buy two houses in the mountains and live a life in a retreat there. The location was perfect; the houses are about half an hour walk from the nearest road, in a green pasture surrounded with great forests. The beauty of nature, the silence, the clear mountain air, and the fountain water were very suitable for spiritual practice and Isolation. We did not have running water or central heating it took us two months to clean and arrange the house before we could start.”
– Was it hard to leave everything?
“No, not at all, it was a bit difficult because my parents were worried that I renounce my carrier and that I am in a place in which I am exposed to extreme cold weather and to the treat of bears and wolves who live there in the mountains.”
– What did you want to accomplish in this retreat?
“I wanted to go all the way. I wanted to stay in a retreat until the I achieve the final spiritual liberation.”
-Why then did you stop after two years?
“A childhood friend of mine asked for my help, I asked my spiritual guide whether to help her or to continue with my retreat, and he adviced me to go and help her so I came out in order to give her the support she needed.”
-Which spiritual vows did you take during the retreat?
“I took a vow of silence; I did not talk at all, only notes when it was necessary. I used to fast a whole week, every second week. And I used to do the 24 hours prayer every second day. In these prayers I would not eat or sleep, for 24 hours just pray, meditate and practice yoga. The next day I used to rest and work in the house and in the garden.”
– How did you manage with so little food? Did you not feel weak in the difficult conditions of the mountains?
“Because of the spiritual presence I felt all the time full of energy, also on fasting days. In days when I would eat, I would usually be satisfied with some fresh milk and some fruits. I always felt happy and satisfied, when the hunger did appear I would identify it as a blind habit, as a lifeless pattern deriving from the subconscious.”
-How did you deal with the extreme cold weather?
“In the winter the temperature goes down to minus 20 degrees, and in order not to freeze we had to wake up at night every two hours and put more wood in the fire. Actually, these difficulties helped us because every time we would wake up, we would do a meditation at night and our communion with GOD would not suffer breaks which are too long.”
– The lack of sleep was not too hard on the body and on the soul?
“In one of the first periods in the retreat, I avoided sleep almost completely, I used to sleep very little in a meditations posture, I was afraid that during the sleep I might distant myself from GOD, out of lack of attention. I allowed myself to sleep maximum 20-30 minutes out of which only 5 minutes of real sleep, once every 2 hours. These conditions brought about a great spiritual intensity and an elevation beyond the spiritual levels that I was in my day to day life, in these levels I felt trapped, like a prisoner.
Eventually I arrived to an unsupportable limit of physical and psychical effort, due to the lack of deep sleep, so I slept a good and fulfilling sleep. When I woke up I found that it was alright because my soul was still celebrating also after the sleep. But during that day the spiritual presence disappeared.”
– How did that feel then?
“It was truly terrible, I felt I cannot breath, I got so used to breathing GOD with the air, and now the air appeared to be lifeless, I felt I was suffocating without GOD, my chest was in such pain, I thought I have some medical problems with my lungs. I prayed and I prayed desperately until the presence of GOD came back to me and I could breathe again normally.”
– What was the greatest challenge in the retreat?
“During the winter I spent a whole night, 12 hours in a cave, motionless in a temperature below zero degrees. The “door” of the cave was high and did not allow a safe exit during the night, so I was completely depending on GOD. I was a bit scared for my life but that very fear helped me to concentrate totally on the prayer. My prayer was burning and it heated my body, the intimacy with GOD grew gradually, until it appeared that the embrace with HIM expands and contains the forest the villages and the sky.
Around the middle of the night I heard some footsteps next to the cave, and I was wondering if I should look who is outside the cave. When I lost the concentration in the prayer and in the Divine presence, my breath moved from the center (from SUSHUMNA NADI) to the left nostril and the mystical heat, which was overflowing my body, stopped. The body cooled down fast, I was shaking and I had uncontrolled muscular seizures, it was so cold there. I moved my breath to the right nostril and I started praying again. When the communion with GOD returned it was like the sun came out, waves of warmth caressed and regenerated my body and melted my heart with great joy.”
-What was the happiest moment in the retreat?
“I went out to walk in the snow and I saw footprints of dears and rabbits. I was so focused on the empty space of the footsteps in the snow until my mind stopped, a whole hour I was walking in the snow until I got home. When I got home I felt so happy and then I thought to myself, something was different in that walk… then I realized that in my mind there was not one thought for a whole hour…”
The interview ended and it impregnated me with a state of exaltation and great hope. I know and feel that there are many spiritual seekers who wish to do in their own way, what Nicoleta did and is doing. Her life story can give inspiration and courage for all those who wish to walk, with verticality, in the unique path of his own soul and spirit.
To end this article I chose to translate a little segment of her diary which presents the sweet beauty of her heart: “Today I realized what a gift GOD gives me when he puts my thoughts in silence, which looks to me like an anesthesia of thoughts, but actually it is a state of being drawn within… this is a very good state for meditation and divine ecstasy, in this state it is enough to do a few minutes of meditation, pranayama or simply to keep quiet and look at the divine nature within, in order to bring to a Godly state of existence. It is surprising and divine to discover that you have such a simple and sure access to the inexpressible sweetness of the divine presence… I live in a fulfilled state of wonder, discovering GOD every time as being different, fascinating and giving. What a great mystery allows such an intimate relationship between GOD and every little creature in manifestation.”
yogaesoteric
May 28, 2014
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