Pray for the fierce love of a guru, a fire breathing, eyes blazing, śakti throwing one.

This is the most succinct way I can describe my guru, Swami Rudrananda. He was always breathing fire and his eyes were ablaze with śakti, which he was continually throwing, even without moving. His energetic fierceness expressed his relentless transmission of the power to liberate that flowed through him. It was relentless, and it was intentional.

It was impossible for Rudi to be any other way because there was nothing left of him: he was just an open channel, an agent of the śakti that moved through him. There was a wide range of dynamics with Rudi – his personality, his incessant requirement of discipline, his absolute, unconditional love for us – that was all delivered through this extraordinarily intense, embodied person. By being Rudi’s student, I learned that the very point of having a relationship with a guru is to receive the liberating power that is flowing through them, and to be freed b...