Jan 4, 2009 Journal
Trip Start
Oct 09, 2007
1
25
45
Trip End
Mar 10, 2008
Kolkata (Calcutta),
West Bengal,
India
Monday, January 5, 2009
A long quiet morning. Journal writing about my intentions for the coming year and the next four months in India, I slipped naturally into prayer and meditation. Flowing in the stream of grace and light as I have yearned to for so long, with the possibilities of the life of my soul reawakening, all of the hard and frustrating, seeming endless tasks and expensive complications of remodeling one home, moving temporarily, then remodeling a second home before I could finally move into it, melted away.
So I walked over to Baba's tonight with an open heart. When I arrived, KrishnapriyaMa and ShantiMa had guests, a mother and her 20 year old daughter, in her bedroom (a large room that comfortably serves her for receiving devotees). Baba and I stayed in the living room for about an hour before joining them.
I talked to Baba about how hard the moving process has been, how given to distraction I am. Yes, I am enjoying the house now, and I can be there for a while, being farther out of the city and more removed from all of my connections, I am not as able to get so completely caught up in everyone else's needs, and I am finding comfort and peace in the solitude and the simplicity that life affords me, even though finishing up the loose ends to the remodeling seems endless.
I am relieved to admit that my real practice has been one of distraction and over involvement in the lives and problems of others, rather than prayer, I sometimes wonder if I shouldn't just leave it all behind, walk away from it entirely, since, for whatever reason, I do so poorly at living a life of prayer in the west. So now, I find myself wondering again if I might come to live here in India, not right away, not just in Kolkata, because I couldn't bear the heat, but possibly in a few years, to simply sit in the field of his and Baba Lokenath's energy of grace and let them lead me toward a new kind of life, a new way of being.
This is a surprising thought for me, but one that has an open, an increasingly beckoning quality, despite the intensity of my reactivity last year to the often distasteful physicality of India. (The sweltering heat, the smells and seemingly ubiquitous filth, the pollution, the shockingly poor governance, and the powder-keg instability that is so prevalent here.) But I am 62 now, and I really could go through my entire life without ever having lived the life I most long for. Time is running out for me. Moving to India might be my only chance to live a simpler life, and leave all the old entrapments behind, whatever the inconveniences.
Julie and Aria, by grace, are secure in their sweet little nuclear family now that Julie and Joel are married. Lisa is completely focused on her writing and the women's movement she would like to help generate for Congo and Africa and to address atrocities in the world. My father will be gone soon, and Uncle Sam, my dear Uncle Sam, cannot wait to leave this earth. So God is emptying my life of my major relationships. I could go home each year to visit family and friends, but they don't really need me that much any more.
"I have lost so much, Baba. Whatever opening, whatever graces have been given to me, I always lose hold of, and fall into doing, doing, doing, distraction, distraction, distraction, feeling disconnected from myself, from life, and from all that is most precious to me. It has been painful to lose my connection, time and time again, to the deep inner life that has been opened to me. God has been kind and patient with me, but
time is running out and my sense of loss is deep."
"Time is precious. Time is precious to us all." Baba said.
Baba told the story of going to Kadrinath, Siva's mountain in the Himalayas, in the 80's with a friend. It was late April and still very, very cold, the wrong time to go, really. Snow was piled more than head high, much deeper than normally. The path up the mountain was steep and extremely narrow, barely large enough for two travelers staying very close together, with an immediate drop off that went all the way down to the river that was so far below it looked like a slender thread due to the elevation. They were not prepared for the cold. Baba only wore cotton clothes, cotton shoes. As long as he was walking, since the incline was so steep and involved so much effort, he didn't notice the cold. "Why does everyone talk about how cold it is," he thought to himself. But then, when he stopped for only a moment, he was freezing. They found a small place to stay for the night, just big enough to enter and lie down. The place was totally covered in snow. The owner lit a charcoal fire and gave them each 6 blankets and shut the door. The blankets were wet. It was like being wrapped in ice. But with the door closed, the charcoal fire going, and the house sealed in snow, the fire gave off a gas. Eventually Baba became overwhelmed with the need for oxygen. He couldn't breathe. So he threw off the blankets, jumped up, opened the door, and ran outside in the freezing cold of the night, but he didn't care about the cold at all, because he had to have air. Air, being able to breathe, was the only thing that mattered.
"You have not lost anything. You have not missed anything. It was always with you; it was always there. Every bit of that had to be lived. There was no avoiding it, not any of it.
"Development is a process. Your soul's evolution is a process. The mind can only go through its very personal process of evolving. The first thing to know is that you have lost nothing. Karma is so beautiful. It is your friend. Your karma gives you such clarity. You go through all these levels of sufferance that connect you, that bridge, to different levels of consciousness. Even your mistakes are part of the process. They are not mistakes. They are something you had to live through. The process is like melting gold. Gold is melted in the fire. It takes heat, heat, and more heat to burn away all the impurities. The fire is essential. Ultimately, it leaves only the gold.
"You had to experience all of this difficulty. As hard as it was, you were handling the physical aspect, getting things set up, so your life could be simpler. The basics are all in place now. All of this was a preparation. It has all brought you here, to this level of seriousness, to this clarity. Your karma has been heating, heating, heating things up, burning, burning away all that isn't real. It has been preparing you, bringing you to that point of urgency where you are ready to stop suffocating, to throw off the covers, and rush out into the air to breathe again.
"When you go north in February, you must go to the high Himalayas. Environment is an important factor in evolution. In the Himalayas, there are thousands upon thousands of Yogis who are still there, always there, in their energetic bodies, doing sadhana (spiritual practice). They never leave. They have been doing their sadhana for thousands of years. The environment is steeped in the energy of their prayers. That is why, the higher up you go in the Himalayas, the energy is so strong, so conducive to prayer, such an awakening to the soul. In the foothills, that energy is not there. In the high Himalayas, it is all there, permeating every molecule. All you have to do download it. Just be a recipient for what is already there.
You should go to Kadrinath some day. It is arduous, at 13,000 feet, the atmosphere is thin, but it is so worth the effort.
Once years ago, SueMa came to me. She asked, "How can I trust you?"
'Don't trust me,' I told her. 'There is no need to trust me. If you trust me, then a time will come when you don't trust me. Then you may or may not trust me again, and even if you do, it will go on like that, back and forth, again and again. So don't trust me. If you come to me, you don't need to trust me. Just come to me, sit with me, sit in my presence. Even when I am back in India, take a few moments each day to sit in my presence. Over time, being in my presence, you will discover whether your soul feels that connection to the Infinite. And if it does, trust will happen. Mistrust will melt away. Trust has to happen out of the truth of your experience. You cannot force it. You cannot manufacture it. So don't think about trust now.
"Everything irrelevant eventually melts away in the Presence of the Divine if you just sit in the Presence. Sit with an open heart. Be receptive. That is all you need to do. It is a natural process. There is no need to force anything. You cannot force yourself to trust. You cannot force yourself to be perfectly constant in your practice. You cannot force the consciousness you long for. You do what you can do for God, for your soul, for others. You sit, simply sit and receive. Eventually it will all bring you home. Trust will happen eventually, in its time. Trust in Life will happen. Trust in yourself will happen. Trust in the Divine unfolding will happen. It is a given. It is inevitable. It is your birthright. If it does not happen in this life, it will in another life. So relax, and sit in the Presence.
Baba got up, fixed himself a bowl of muri (hand-puffed rice), went back to KrishnapriyaMa's room, and called me to join them. KrishapriyaMa was glowing, playful as she spoke in Bengali to her guests. They would alternately break into peels of laughter and delight or close their eyes momentarily to savor some sweet realization.
Eventually the language switched to English and the topic came to traveling, the possibility of going to Brindaban (the town associated with Krishna, a Divine incarnation). I confessed that I didn't know much about Krishna despite my years of being associated with Eastern traditions. "I know he is special. I know there were a lot of gopis around him and that they liked to sing, that he played a flute, but that is about it, that is all I know ," I admitted. They all roared with laughter.
Ronen came in (he is the doctor for one of the slum health clinic vans; he comes each night to have dinner with Baba and Maa).
"We should take you to Brindaban. You have to go to Brindaban," Baba concluded, "You have to walk those street paths barefoot, the paths Krishna walked, you have to go to the gardens. They are the same gardens, the same streets that were there thousands of years ago. The gopis and Radha are still dancing there, still playing there. You have to experience the energy yourself. But you have to have the eyes to see, with ears to hear, you have to be open and sensitive to the energy.
"One thing, though, you will not hear the name of Krishna anywhere in Brindaban. You will only hear, "Radhe, Radhe, Radhe, Radhe." People chant to Radha, because you have to please Radha to get to Krishna. She is the veil covering the face of Krishna. No one knows Krishna without pleasing Radha. Only If she sees that your heart is pure, that you are sincere, will you experience Krishna."
KrishnapriyaMa beamed like a 5 year old child, almost jumping up and down with excitement, as she sat crosslegged on her bed talking about the prospect of traveling to Brindaban.
As the conversation meandered comfortably from topic to topic, from Bengali to English, at some point, Baba shared, "Yesterday, I had 2 young boys come to see me. They were beautiful boys, poets. They asked me, "Why don't we see God?"
"We do not see God!" I told them. God doesn't walk up to us one fine day, put out his hand for us to shake, saying, 'Hello there, I'm God, so nice to meet you.' No! No! No! God is experienced. We can only know God through experience. We don't see God."
We all dropped down into a quiet space, closed our eyes without anyone saying a word, and meditated together.
