Putting My Feet Somewhere ELSE

I had a realization this morning about perspective, which I always think of as where I put my feet.

If you’ve been involved in spiritual/psychological/emotional growth at any level, it may have occurred to you that fighting what you don’t want doesn’t do much for you. But stopping fighting is like that old saw about NOT thinking about the pink elephant in the room.

So: what is one to do? I know who I really am. I also know who I tend to believe I mistakenly am, when I think I’m less-than, or whatever. So, how to hold both? And then I “saw” that everything I “got” from my upbringing and life that was mistaken, I could put in a place outside of myself, as a visual image for the safety of my psyche, and stand/live in the what-I-know-and-who-I-truly-am, without denying the seeming reality of all of those fears, doubts, blah, blah, blah. Makes it easier to stand in the light places and invite in the darknesses to “take tea” and allow them to dissolve with the sugar…

I read some things recently that incited this insight (okay, I like word play. Sue me!). One of them was some Wise man’s saying that it always makes him laugh that the fish in the ocean (us) is running around looking for water (Spirit). And the other was something that Rev. Michael Beckwith said: that what we perceive is within our field of perception and is not wholly us – so, if I can perceive feelings/thoughts/beliefs in meditation, or simply noticing as I go through my day, those are not-me.

So, holding them gently but with the understanding that they are in their own little locale, and are not blocking my vision at every turn…

…priceless!

Small Empowerments, Big Power!

We spiritual types like to talk about empowerment. So do we socially conscious entrepreneurs. It struck me today that empowerment comes at all levels and in all ways.

I don’t have to wait to become a mega-powerful force in the biggest way possible before I declare myself “Empowered”!

What about when I realized years ago that I could actually find my own answers in as simple a tool as the dictionary, or online? How about when I learned to be brave enough and open enough to ask, to reveal my need for information?

How many other people – there are many, I know – are there who have come across something they didn’t know, and just rested there. Didn’t pursue the answer for themselves if someone else couldn’t answer it? Assumed that if they didn’t already know it, and someone else they already knew couldn’t answer it, that the answer was beyond them.

How many people have you known who asked a question of simple definition? Something like, “What does ‘plebian’ mean?”, and when the person opposite them didn’t know, simply shrugged and said, “Oh well, guess I won’t know”, instead of picking up a dictionary, or going to dictionary.com?

Many.

Right?

In my 20’s, when I was a secretary – back when they were called secretaries – when I discovered that if I just looked a little further, a little harder, with a little more “helloooooo? is anyone out there?”, I would/could find answers for myself, was a moment of huge empowerment that radiated and grew through my years, to the point where I find it difficult sometimes to remember what it was like to not be self-sufficient. My answer to any question for the last years has been Google and YouTube; with these giants in my life, I have come to the empowering realization that there is nothing I can’t learn! So when people say, “I don’t know how,” what I know is that all that is necessary – particularly in these powerful internet-driven times – is the will to learn, to be self-empowered, to ask, to persevere…and how to use the internet, and the community of one another’s help, consciousness, assistance and care.

With Google and YouTube, what can’t we know? With each other’s assistance – when we’re brave enough to ask and communicate – what can’t we be, do or have?!

We are limitless!

A Kid Again

Remember what it was like to be a kid? Let’s do it again. Right now. Right here.

When I was a kid, I didn’t worry about the future.

I didn’t say, “But, Mommy, how is it going to happen?” I just said, “It’s gonna happen?! WHOOPEE!”

I didn’t wonder if what I loved was the “right” thing to love; whether it would bring me what I needed. I just went on loving. And benefiting.

When I was a kid, I knew how big I was – how much a part of the unseen world I am – and I didn’t feel embarrassed about saying so, or feeling so. It was just my being!

I knew that when I spoke, something heard me. I was received. And I no longer felt alone.

Moving into being a kid again brings up the fear that I was taught to practice. But I can practice something else now: I can practice being a kid. Again.

And them I’m free.

I’m Freaking Out My Friends

It’s a good thing!

Vince called me this morning to say hi, and stopped suddenly and said, “Hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?” I said, “I just had an incredible meditation and affirmative prayer session, and you’re just not used to hearing me sound peaceful!”

Alrighty then!

Ya have to understand: it’s been a long and f***ed-up road. I mean, I was f***ed up. I lived in a lot of depression, a lot of confusion and frustration, and it wasn’t any fun.

What I’m getting now through my spiritual practices, through my new understandings of universal Truths-with-a-capital-T (not the truths that we wish we could get other people to just agree with us about), through my stubborn (finally! Stubbornness comes in handy!) intention to really take literally all of these spiritual truths and Truths that I have heard and resonated with, is FINALLY, truly transformational! Now don’t get nervous about the literal thing. I’m not talking about eye-for-an-eye stuff.

I’m talking about spiritual Truths like the one about Spirit/God being everywhere and in everything. That always sounded good to me. But I couldn’t quite figure out how to have that be a part of my life in any particularly active way, y’know? I mean, for a long time, God seemed awfully passive to me! Here I was, scrabbling around in my life, not feeling as fulfilled as I wanted, not feeling as joyous as I wanted, and so on. Why wasn’t God rescuing/helping me??? I mean, I was even calling out and begging and yelling and everything! And the weird part was that sometimes the yelling was even helpful! There’s a story about that, but I’ll save it for later.

Anyway, the literal aspect of spirituality is where the action is, I’m tellin’ you. One of the mightiest spiritual presences currently on the planet, Ammachi (a.k.a. The Hugging Saint), is quoted as saying, “Having faith in your self is the same as having faith in God.” 99 out of 100 people will read that and say, “Ahhhh…isn’t that fantastic?” Yep. It is. The 100th person – I’m one of those – is going to say: Hold the phone!!! I’m supposed to have faith in my SELF!!!!??? I screw up half the time! I don’t know what the heck I’m doing! Trust ME? And that’s supposed to be the same as trusting in God – uh, yeah, nice try.

But here’s what made that make sense to me: when I starting thinking about effecting those the Truths literally; when I started asking questions and reaching for stepping stones to help me put those literal Truths into action in my moments of thinking about spirituality and its connection to me, to my real life, to my ways of thinking, to my attitudes and outlooks, that’s when my life started to shift in major ways.

What ways? Well, here’s a real biggie. When I first lost my last job, I sat in my apartment for days really freaked out and terrified that at any moment the money I had left to live on was just going to fall away in days. Truthfully, unless I’d gone out and bought a really big-ticket item, that wasn’t going to happen, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I was like a frozen statue of fear. I was absolutely miserable, and no one could help raise my spirits.

Now, I’m more like a fawn than anything else, I guess: standing in my life on legs that trembled too much to hold me, to start with, but are getting steadier by the day, by the week, by the meditation. I’ve gone from a total lack of faith in life, to a very different understanding about what I am actually supported by, and how I activate and “invite” that energy to transform my days.

It’s a big honking deal. Just two years ago, I said to a friend that I needed a brain transplant because I was so freaked out and doubting of my ability to survive, much less thrive.

Then I started attending classes about the philosophy of New Thought – about the principles of spirituality, about the power of my word – and I started reading amazing books and really taking in the information and asking myself and anyone who would listen, “How do I make this information relevant and useful for me???”! Wow…I got the brain transplant! And I even got to keep the same brain!

Want some revolution, some transformation in your life? Anything by Joel S. Goldsmith’ll do it!

The book and movement Joel began.

Doesn’t he look like a sweetie? Wish I’d known him…

First book I read by him. Awesome!!!

Happy reading! Happy transformation!

Peace out!

Lori

Repeatable Magic – Solving Big Problems A Step At A Time

My 85-year-old friend Vince made a motorcycle – from the ground up! It’s a classic Honda cycle and it’s gorgeous. And we need to sell it. Why? Because we once purchased a timeshare that we ended up not using, and the monthly payments are not what we want to be investing in, particularly for something we’re not using!

We’ve been in a pickle for a long time here. Until today.

Vince’s kick-ass 1979 K-750 Honda

We were sitting at lunch and talking about how to get someone to buy it. Do you know how many people are trying to sell their timeshares??? It’s a lot.

As I sat there fuming a little about the injustice of it all – never mind that we bought into it all by myself; it’s so comforting sometimes to think, “it’s so unfair!” – I thought how badly I felt about palming it off on someone else who may discover that they have the same problem as we do now! Then I suddenly recalled my “I’m curious how Spirit is going to iron this out…” thing (see previous blog post a couple of days ago), and I said out loud, “Divine intelligence shows us the way to release this timeshare with divine right timing, in divine right ways.”

Vince looked at me with the blank stare that actually means, “I think you might be crazy.”

I don’t mind. Crazy might be the new sane. Anyway, I kept eating my lunch, and suddenly realized that we might be looking at the whole problem in the wrong way. I looked up and said, “Hey, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Maybe we should be looking at what we can do that’s fun – emphasis on fun, by the way – to raise the money to pay the thing off, and then just donate it to a place one of my Facebook friends found for me. Then we won’t even have to pay the membership fees! We’ll be done!”

I mentioned eBay, and first I thought of books. But ohmygod, I would have to sell 1,600 books to raise the money! That’s not going to be a quick undertaking. So I started explaining eBay to Vince – remember, he’s 85; a young 85, but still not a computer maven – and as I spoke, I said, “So, we need something to sell that is a higher-priced item that we won’t have to sell as many of, in order to get the money. Do you know what I mean?” Yep, he knew. I went on, “See, it’s like selling your motorcycle like we were talking about a few weeks ago – but I’m not talking about selling your motorcycle – if we have a bigger ticket item…” and he interrupted.

“But I do want to sell my motorcycle. I have a bad knee, and I can’t ride it right now, until and if I get that knee fixed, so why not be smart and sell it and take care of the timeshare like that?”

Why not indeed!

So I’m on it. I’m going to do a video of him and the motorcycle, post it on YouTube, get the word out on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook…and get it sold!

It’s a beauty. I’m sorry that he has to let it go. But he’s not sorry, he’s just determined, so there ya go.

Now…tell me that all of that isn’t from saying, “Divine intelligence shows us the way to release this timeshare with divine right timing, in divine right ways”! You can tell me, by the way, but I won’t be listenin’! And for those of you who don’t believe in this “stuff”, here is some real grounded real stuff for you: if I had continued to only worry about how it wasn’t going to happen – “we don’t have the money”, “we don’t know how it’s going to get paid off” – those new thoughts just wouldn’t have happened. Not during that lunch, anyway. And the problem would have still been on my mind. Ick.

You know what else strikes me about this? I didn’t have to be sitting in some meditational fervor, or even some meditational state of bliss for this to operate. I simply stated the truth. Why is that “truth”? Because it’s based on the principle that runs through every single, solitary religion that has ever been, which is that God/Spirit is ever-present, and always flowing its fix-it magic downhill. The practice of speaking the truth and letting it reveal itself, that’s the part that I’ve discovered through New Thought, and because it’s truth, it’s accessible in so many other non-New Thought ways! Woo-hoo!

Wait a minute. Could fixing all of my problems be just as simple as speaking the truth, and waiting in open expectation to see how it happens?

God, ain’t that worth a try??? Yuh-HUH!

Peace out! – Lori

Synchronicity and Meaning – or – Paging Mr. Poonja!

I have been having some interesting things happen regarding a spiritual teacher that I never heard of until three days ago.

it started with an email someone sent me advertising a talk I could listen to. The person being interviewed was a woman who is called Gangaji. I couldn’t have cared less, and so I ditched the email. The next day I’m watching television – cruising around looking at the titles of what was on, and what do I see? “Meeting With Gangaji”. Okay. This seems to be something to pay attention to. I put that channel on.

Watched her for a while, this California-girl-looking middle-aged, blonde woman with an exceptionally soft voice, looking for the bullshit factor – was she for real, or just really good at putting on the spiritual tone?

I decided that she seems to be honest and open and spiritually right-on about her advice and opinions. I wasn’t going to run right out and buy a book or a plane ticket to the next workshop, but I realllly appreciated some of the things she said.

In fact, two of them are worth repeating and paraphrasing here. (Emphasis on

paraphrasing

.) She said straight out that there’s a lot of nonsense amid spiritual seekers. As someone who has noticed this, and even participated in it in my mad scramble of a spiritual past – at the same time as I was questioning it! – I couldn’t agree more! She said that we smile and fake-it-til-we-make-it, and it’s all a lie! In fact, she said that this fight or flight approach to our own emotions just creates more internal war, and gets us nowhere. Now, this is exciting to me!

Why? First of all, I

always

feel better automatically when I’m being real – when I release the fight to “get better” from what I’m feeling. I mean, the fact is at when I can do that surrender gthing of just letting myself feel, without somehow “parking my car” in that emotional bog, even though I may be feeling something that isn’t pretty, I feel more at peace with letting it be…and letting it be changed eventually too.

Second, I am sick of false spirituality; sick of ideologies that excuse bad behavior by using spiritualisms from books, from talks, from teachers. I remember a man that I had known in the 1980’s when i lived in in Boston. I ran into him a couple of years later and he claimed to have become an Advaitist, which is someone who believes in non duality – no separation between the life of humans and the life of God. Problem was, he was being rude and dismissive and mocking to some of us who sat with him sharing a meal. I asked him why he felt he had to be so mean, and he said that there was no one there to be mean to: only God was there, so no one could really be hurt.

Excuse me???

Okay. Clearly that is, well, poppycock, to put it nicely. This is some of the nonsense Gangaji was referring to. And I appreciated it! A LOT! Because it took me so many damn years to figure out the bull from the Truths-with-a-capital-T and my personal truths. A lot of years, I was

so much

in seeking mode that I left my mind open to believe EVERYTHING until I could know or prove that it wasn’t so. Treating my mind like a garbage pail!

The other thing that Gangaji said was that we have to not fight nor run from our feelings, even those feelings of self-hate. That beneath that layer of self-loathing, or that feeling of simply not trusting ourselves, is the peace we seek.

That surrender thing again.

This is good stuff, and I felt glad that although I had started to record on my iPhone a new song I was writing, I had stopped singing to record eleven minutes of her talking! Good for e, I thought. Good choice!

Next day, I’m having lunch with a friend, and I’m freaking out about something, unnecessarily, and I say out loud, “Let it go, Lori. Just let it go! Let it GO.” I say to my friend, “I want to play something for you,” and I whip out my iPhone to play Gangaji for him. I turn on the recording and what do I hear in my ears? The first few words of my song that I’d recorded before letting Gangaji take up phone recording space. I hear myself singing, “Let it go. Let it goooooo. Let it gooooooo. Let it go.”

My friend asked me who this lady is, anyway; who did she study with, so I looked up Gangaji and found that she had an Indian teacher named H.W.L. Poonjia Apparently he didn’t mess around. She went to him looking to feel better, and he told her to stop running from herself. She had to sit and face her stuff and discovered lasting peace as a result.

Okay, I thought, I’m going to have to look this guy up! I’ll get to it in the next few days.

Then, today, I’m in a bookstore, and I pick up something written by a man named Andrew Cohen who dedicated his writings to … H.W.L. Poonja!

What. the. hell???

I…well, I surrender. I’ll listen to some more Gangaji and see what else is wanting to be revealed through that particular pathway. and I have to look up this Poonja character! I’m increasingly unwilling to live without what I

used

to call a brain transplant, and

now

call a change in consciousness or awareness, so wherever the clues come from which let me go deeper, I’m all in!

Sometimes I guess a message or three wants to come through a particular pipeline. Who am I to decline the invitation to listen?

Paging Mr. Poonja?

What Does Robocop Have To Do With Spirituality???

I saw this movie exactly once. I imagine everyone who saw it loved the scene at the end when he was given the order to remove his one-and-only blockage – arresting or harming, essentially, the bad guy – and he threw the bad guy out of the 190-millionth story window (if I remember correctly).

So, I was feeling into my feelings this morning – no touchy-feely here, y’all, there was some rough and tough stuff in there that I thought might do with a bit of light – and I realized something. I realized the truth of something that Gangaji had said: the necessity to not run from the icky stuff. That is the technical term, I believe – icky stuff? Okay, so some call it one’s “shadow side”, which I find offensive, actually, because I am not hiding in my own shadows waiting to ambush myself!

Anyway, in not running from this particular feeling I was having – but in not parking my car in the goo, either – I realized that I am now able to sit in a sort of semi-participatory witness state, to “be with” the feeling, without buying into thinking that it is an actual blockage that I have to fight with to remove. It is starting to get really exciting, this practice! I know from personal experience that when I don’t resist something while I don’t identify with it either, it just sort of brushes on by. So, what could be under this – or, rather, other than this – life-long sensation of a warrior stance, is exciting!

What does Robocop have to do with it, though?

Directive 4: Classified

Robocop has these Directives that he has to follow. He must Serve the Public Trust, Protect and Innocent, Uphold the Law, and there is a 4th Directive that is mysterious, and is not revealed until the final scene.

We have 4th Directives too, as well as 1st through 3rd, particularly when we are embarked upon the spiritual path (whatever that means – that’s a whole other subject in itself, come to think of it). See, the thing is, we frequently get onto this path by meeting someone who is a high spiritual teacher, or by reading a book that excites an opening of light and love within us, and we instantly identify with the effects we feel of that meeting. That’s not entirely a bad thing, because my experience and my intuition of Spirit/God is that It is light and love and compassion and divine right action and passion and all of those things, and that those are all my true identity as well. (Wow! I’m a Superheroine! No – Lori – you didn’t say “secret” identity. Shhh…I’m blogging here…)

The most prevalent 4th Directive that we all labor under – that I have labored under – is the equivalent of Be nice! And it’s a sticky thing that causes confusion and inaction, and when I’m in allegiance with it, keeps me from being real and authentic. Be nice!

“Be nice” just sucks! “Be nice” is the equivalent of “Be a good girl/boy.” Ptooey!

“Be nice” goes like this:

Don’t say no to that person who is being abusive – instead, be understanding and loving first! They’re in pain!
(Um…what about my pain?)
Don’t be angry with Mr. or Ms. X for telling you something rudely!
(Um…excuse me? Talk about being disempowered!)
Don’t question your spiritual teacher! She/He is always right, and you’re always wrong, because you’re the student!
(Um…then how come my most powerful spiritual teacher bows to me? Recognizes my high spiritual nature?)
Don’t have any feeling but bliss – everything but enlightenment and bliss just means you have more work to do!
(So, in the meantime, what am I supposed to do? Hate myself?)

I have removed my 4th Directive in a number of situations, but it’s not all gone yet. It’s such an important Directive to get rid of that I have even done some public speaking about it: about being empowered, authentic, self-expressive. Because without that power of being real – yes, without doing deliberate, reactive harm (again, another topic in itself) – we are hamstrung like Robocop. Unlike Robocop, we are not going in to slay bad guys, but to liberate the captives. Inevitably, I find, the captive is always me.

The Bridge From Struggle to Ahhhhh

I don’t want to (and couldn’t, anyway) lie about what I’m feeling or perceiving, so the question has always been: how do I simultaneously make room for what I’m feeling, while focusing on the ever presence of Spirit, and its nature of straightening everything out (because I haven’t straightened out much of anything, really, in my life, hard as I’ve tried)?

In fact, how do I focus on the straightening out, without getting engaged in the struggle again: this time, the struggle of “making things right”?

Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, Agape

I have a two-CD set of Michael Beckwith’s (Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, minister and founder of Agape Spiritual Community near Los Angeles) that I was insanely blessed to receive during a class at the Oakland Center for Spiritual Living that I attended. I listen to that set all the time, and every time I do I hear something that either supports me, or opens a door in my consciousness.

Two days ago the magic open door was his saying that people commonly make a mistake when doing “Affirmative Prayer” – what Wikipedia nicely defines this way: “Affirmative prayer is a form of prayer or a metaphysical technique that is focused on a positive outcome rather than a negative situation.”  With affirmative prayer, we affirm that God and its qualities are present, “in us, as us”, because God, or Spirit if you prefer, or the Life-Force Itself, can’t be anywhere but everywhere, and we are a part of everywhere. We affirm that those things that we resonate with, those things that are our heart’s desire (in my case, my successful acting career), are already here, and already done, already taken care of, already in the process of unfolding.

Again, this isn’t wishful thinking, but is based on principles of God’s not being able, really, to be anywhere else but here!

Dr. Beckwith said that the mistake people make is that they say all the right words, but then stay more interested in and focused on the problem than the solution. And basically, the problem doesn’t get solved because we’re all focused on the problem, on trying to solve it ourselves, rather than letting the Spirit itself unfold in perfect harmony.

Okay. I get that. But what I didn’t get was where is the bridge between acknowledging the pain or discomfort that is going on, and knowing that the answer is present??? And that question was progress, actually. My first question before that one, a few months ago, was how do I acknowledge that the feeling of fear or doubt or physical discomfort is present, and yet also affirm that God’s solutions are present, and do that with truthfulness?

So, when I started doing affirmative prayer a year ago, in order to be honest about both my feelings and God’s presence, I wielded the principles of God’s presence internally like a spiritual light saber, letting myself be aware of what was going on internally, either physically or mentally or both – stating the opposite Spirit-principle – and then watching/feeling the Truth affect the non-Truth, the fear or doubt or whatever. And it is a really cool and powerful thing to watch that, to have that happen. In other words, if I was frightened about money or lack of money, I would practice sitting with “knowing” that God is all the money that could ever, ever be, and that God is within me as me, so therefore I have lots of money, vibrationally, and I would watch the fear decrease. I would leave that prayer and meditation time feeling lighter. At least for a little while.

(Then, of course, I had to move on to studying Abraham Hicks (check YouTube if you haven’t met up with these really fun teachings), because Abraham is all about vibrational alignment. But I digress.)

Yesterday, I sat in meditation and prayer, and I arose from my contemplations not soothed at all, really. Got in my car, popped in Michael Beckwith’s CD’s for the umpteenth time and heard that thing about being more interested in the problem than the solution – the spirit’s solution, the energy’s solution, the solution of that flow that we call the Universe, or God, or Spirit, or The Thing Itself (Ernest Holmes, writer of The Science of Mind).

I understood suddenly in a real and immediate way that it is where I put my focus that is the real deal here. Michael said that when people put their focus on the problem rather than on God, it is “misplaced interest”. Okay. That’s nice, Michael, but how am I going to be able to do that??? Then I realized what would help, linguistically (because I understand things better with the right words): curiosity. I got the words “I’m curious”. I’m curious how God is going to bring money into my life in great big gobs! I’m curious how Spirit is going to unfold my successful acting career. This was a light going on, because this was something I had understood – had “tested” – a long time ago when my father was suffering from strokes and other illnesses, and I had to, for years, leave my consciousness open to both what was happening, and what might be possible. In those days, the word/concept of “possibilities” was the focus that kept me going. For example: Yes, my father was in the hospital with yet one more illness, AND I sort of left my attention open to what might also happen, positively, and my father who should have died at least three times in the first year of his illnesses, lived, and improved, and had a life of real quality before he died six years later. Yes, I think I had a real impact on what happened with my father – see Gregg Braden on YouTube…but I digress again!

So, this Beckwith-inspired opening is really more of a deepening. Very interesting.

I had the opportunity to put this to the test yesterday too. I was driving to an appointment scheduled for 1:30. I was nervous that I would be late. I was, frankly, freaking out. I’m good at it, sadly! I realized that I was focused on the problem rather than the solution, and I said to myself, I wonder how God’s gonna work this out so that I’m on time, and I know that I will be on time. Two minutes later, I pulled up in front of the building with four minutes to spare. Yes, I probably would have still made it there in two minutes. But I would have been a nervous wreck.

Also, I’m just metaphysical enough to wonder: would I have pulled up in front of the building that quickly if I hadn’t done that? Or would my nervous wreckitude have placed annoying situations like traffic jams in front of me?

I’m going to stick with this perception, and I’ll let you know what happens. But what I can tell you right now is that this kind of focus, even now, leaves my mind and body so much calmer, so much more open to receiving insight, intuition, and joy, where the fear and doubt that I have spent decades “perfecting” my focus on, just leaves me a nervous frickin’ wreck.

Really, which would you choose? You’d have to be a little nuts to choose to be a nervous frickin’ wreck! I kinow! I was nuts for a long, looong time!

So, curiosity, it seems is the bridge between awareness of my feelings and thoughts, and that metaphysical, magical, love-based thing, that reality, that “makes the crooked ways straight”.

I am really curious to see how this new practice unfolds! It feels good, though. Really, really good. I’m not denying anything that I’m walking through, situationally or emotionally, and I’m feeling hopeful, not wrecked!

Whew. What a relief…

Peace out!

Lori

What Does Julia Child Have To Do With Spirituality?

Well, nothing really, or maybe something I don’t know about. But the fact is that today I was watching the movie Julie and Julia, about the woman who wrote a blog about her Julia-Child-inspired exploits performed every single day for an entire year, and I got so inspired!

I thought: Why can’t I also write about my cooking? Not the cooking of food, but the cooking of my spiritual consciousness. Sound dry? It isn’t. I heard recently that at a nearby ashram, someone asked what he should do when he felt bored with his meditation.

The question threw me. How can one be bored, when what one confronts in meditation seems sometimes endlessly fabulous, and seems sometimes to be endlessly challenging???

Here’s another question that is a favorite of mine, because it throws others, as it is not generally questioned: What is faith? What are you having faith in?

And then there are seemingly obvious and commonly-used phrases used in spirituality that are so seemingly obvious that they are unquestioned and therefore unexplored and misunderstood. Phrases like “doing the work”, “the ego”, “stuff is up”, “we are all one”, “we are all doing our best”, and so on. To truly be opened requires serious internal deep-sea diving, and a simultaneous commitment to not drown in one’s own suffering. A neat trick, to say the least.

To me, there is no greater conversation than that which explores these kinds of spiritual matters – conversations which uncover and free our true selves.

So, I am writing. It’s what I do. And since I am in a place in my life where I am sitting, curiously waiting to see what Spirit-as-me is going to make of my gifted but up-to-now unfocused life, why not share the juiciness of what I discover? I have, after all, some really cool credentials!

I have been a devotee of the Indian saint, Ammachi, for some 26 years or so, and have some amazing stories to tell, and experiences that have moved and opened and frustrated me. I have met a number of saints, of teachers, and I am now a fervent student of New Thought Ancient Wisdom, which has distilled the essence of all religions and spiritual beliefs to those principles that are our collective truths of spirit/God/universe, and made them available to us for practice, alignment, and realization. And I am now on the Practitioner path of New Thought, because it has become clear to me that the real answers, the lasting answers, the answers that include the greatest impact on self and others – the greatest lasting impact – is from what some call spirituality, and what I have increasingly come to call “awakened consciousness”. Not woo-woo I-see-God consciousness, but the kind of consciousness shifts that actually make us behave better because we just have to. Make better choices because we suddenly understand that there is only one choice above the others that has any sanity and ease to it.

So I’m writing. I love to write. I love people. I am in love with spirituality. And I am ticked off with spiritual bypass, spiritual bullshit, and spiritual la-di-dah. I stumble. I trip. I fall. And I get the heck up again. No perfection here – just the perfection of opening the window to deep exploration of growth in the spiritual/awareness realm.

Can you hear the splash? I’m diving in.

Peace, Blessings, and Deep Sea Diving!

Lori

What Is It Like to Be In Ammachi’s Presence?

I met Ammachi (popularly known as “The Hugging Saint”) in 1988, in Boston. I wasn’t consciously looking for her, or for any guru. In fact, the word “guru” sounded like a cute joke to me: wasn’t that something that The Beatles had once gotten cool and groovy about?

I spent this last week and a 3-day retreat in the presence of my beloved mother (which is also the meaning of Ammachi) in San Ramon, California.

Amma’s San Ramon ashram is her first American ashram, built in the late 1980’s; the land was donated by a businessman who became a devotee, left his business and has lived with Amma year round for decades.

But all of that aside, what it means to spend time with Amma is a huge question. It has to be answered by each individual who encounters her, because she is us. So each of us perceives and receives individually.

A true story told at the this week’s retreat went like this: a reporter came to speak with Amma while she was giving darshan (which in Amma’s version of darshan means that she is hugging people and giving them her attention, advice, love, and energy of awakening). He asked her, “What is the deal here? All of these people sitting around you for hours at a time! Are you God? Are they worshipping you?” And she replied, without a moment’s hesitation, “I worship them.”

It is what she says at the start of each talk: “Mother bows down to all of those who are the embodiments of supreme consciousness and love.” It is factual. She does indeed bow down to all of us, because she knows that while we walk around thinking we are wounded or not awake and aware, or not divine, we in fact are divine. We are no other than Amma herself.

*sigh*

So, sitting with Amma is an adventure, a journey, a trial, a joy, a revelation, and an opportunity to awaken within one’s self. We are like the strings of an instrument and she is the tuning fork; we begin to exhibit a sympathetic vibration with her – we begin to awaken in joy and self-recognition. Amma is the highest tuning a human can achieve, and when we come into her presence, we too begin to attune our emotional and consciousness vibrations to hers. We can’t help it. When I come onto the land I can feel her. And I open to feeling her each and every day of my life; to know that she is my very essence, as me.

For years I  could not understand how I could love Amma so much, and still be someone who wanted a worldly life! Why did I not feel pulled to live in India with her, when everything she is and stands for is my highest yearning: for God, and to be of joyous service in the world! In her presence, last night, I cried for hours. I cried because I can feel her vibrations, her beauty, her truth within me, as me, and so I cried because what else can you do? I cried also because I was aware of the thoughts within me that don’t seem to want to accept that truth. I’m not special in any of this. This happens to so many and is a gift in itself.

A few days ago, I felt differently. I couldn’t wait for her to leave the Bay Area, because I was struggling with finding the balance between being in her presence and wanting to spend time at home – even just watching TV! This made me crazy! It always does! I mean, it’s like, “Hello! God is in town! Why should you be anywhere else?” Crazy-making stuff. And in the past, I would fight a hard and bitter fight in my own mind, and usually end up spending too much time with her so that I ended up confused rather than lifted. But this time, I had to be somewhere else besides at the ashram, because I’ve been having pain in my legs, and if I don’t take care of myself, I limp and I cause more trouble for my body.

I dared (that’s what it felt like; what can I say?) to pay attention to my body. I dared to claim the experience of her being “with me” even when I am not in her physical presence.

Pre-Retreat, I contacted the Reverend of the New Thought Spiritual Center I attend, and I asked for her help in disentangling the confusion that has come up for me around the ultimate beauty, service, inspiration, enlightenment, joy, and unadulterated divinity of a great being like Amma. She helped me disentangle the confusions for the first time in the 26 years I’ve known Amma.
Today, I feel clearer, and still no less close to my Amma! I am so grateful!

So, someone on Facebook asked me to tell about my experience, and I thought it boiled down to the question: What is it like to be in Amma’s presence?

Imagine this: A being whose very presence can be felt in your blood – a feeling like champagne. Literally. How about a feeling where your heart chakra opens and you feel your heartbeat in the center of your chest? Imaging watching a seeming human sit in a chair for hours and hours – up to 22! – without eating, sleeping, drinking, except for a very occasional one-sip of water, or a seed placed between her lips; and while she does this, she is hugging people, drying their tears, laughing with them, speaking to them, saying “My darling daughter!” or “My darling son!” into their ears; and then while she does this she is also answering questions that are coming from the line at the side of her chair, and she is aware of every little thing that is happening in the hall, so that one who is doing seva (selfless service, or volunteering) will suddenly get nudged by someone saying, “Mother wants you to go down to the daughter who is ill in the building down the hill and see how she is.” (when there is no usual way in which Mother could know where this person is!) Or one will be told, “Mother says don’t keep giving out Kleenex to wipe the faces of the people who are coming for her darshan, because it is not warm anymore, and we don’t need to use the Kleenex up.” The woman is handling devotees, Swamis, questions, and what is happening in the hall. She’s aware of Kleenex?

A woman in Germany came to see Amma recently. It was a great financial and timing hardship for this woman to come see Amma, because she had children that only she could see to, and she had not been working for some time. Her husband had deserted the family, and the woman did not know what to do; she could not work in a nearby big city because that took too much time away from her children, who were young. So she came to Amma. Amma told her to come back for the evening program and the woman said that she could not – she did not have more money to come back, and she had nowhere to stay until the evening program, and her children were at home alone. Amma was insistent that she return for an answer.

When the woman returned in the evening, and reached Amma’s side, Amma turned to a man who was sitting on her other side, visiting that evening, and she said, “I know that you work in this city [the city that the woman lived in], and that you own a company. This woman needs a job. Do you think that you could help her?” The man gave the woman a job, of course.

What is it like to sit with Amma?

It is like learning to walk. I have fallen down a lot. It is being given the only prize that ever really matters: the direct experience and knowing, however brief, that Spirit, God, The One is in one, as one.

It is difficult to take in, and that’s a heck of an understatement. It is tempting on a biblical scale to see Amma as the answer, and one’s self as flawed and striving to “become” as she is. But even Amma herself says that we are what she is: pure Spirit, pure consciousness. It is because we have wrong ideas in our heads that we don’t practice this truth. And because we don’t practice this truth, we rape the earth, and hurt one another. So sitting with Amma is to dare oneself to claim, accept and celebrate one’s very own God consciousness, because all of God is where we are, because God doesn’t get delivered in pieces. God is all, and God is all everywhere. So all of God is where each of us is, because there is only one being here, and it is called God. Amma simply demonstrates that truth in her being, for all of us.

What is it like to sit with Amma?

It is being reminded that, as Amma has said to me so many times over the years, “Mother is with you.”

It is being held in the arms of unconditional love, and feeling the softness of her breast against one’s cheek, or the vibration of her laughter, or hearing her husky voice above one’s head as she answers a question while never ever making you feel that she has for one moment lost sight of your precious being held against her precious body.

What is it like to sit with Amma?

Go see her. And then you can tell me: What is it like to sit with Amma? What is it like to experience one’s True Self?