A Human Process

A few people who read our email about the changes have asked to hear more about the human process involved. So here is a brief summary of the last five months of my journey.

Some time in Spring I had a dream with Ammachi (Amritanandamayi). Amma told me “You are brahma murti…you are a form of God in the world.” Then she showed me a statue representing myself as brahma murti. It was an image of Shiva and Parvati. Shiva was in the background holding and supporting Parvati, who sat with arms flung wide and head tilted back in joyous ecstasy and abandon. Amma then said to me, “Now you must be trained to take up your work as a divine form in the world. I will send teachers to train you.” Little did I guess at the time that the teachers were to be the beloved ones, Sadananda and Matrupriya.

At the end of June these two divinely appointed teachers set off for Albuquerque to see Amma and I was left behind for reasons  I didn’t quite understand…except that I could see that I had already received Amma’s darshan  in the dream.

When Sadananda returned and told me of the love that had developed between Matrupriya and himself and of his strong pull to be with her, naturally I was utterly devastated and shocked. I entered a two month journey of descent and dismemberment as I fathomed the depths of ancient fears of loss and abandonment. The little incubator baby part of me is utterly terrified of abandonment because I was taken away from my mother at birth and placed in an incubator. Although Sadananda’s conduct was not in reality abandoning, for he was there for the process of reconciliation and resolution, I was having the experience I was having and it was quite overwhelming. At times I cried so loudly in the night that neighbours were awakened. 

Then Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year arrived and with it a change of energy .A few days after Rosh Hashanah I was sitting on my bed talking to Sadananda when in ten seconds my entire reality shifted. Suddenly I saw clearly that everything was just a watermoon. And the phenomenon of wishing fell away. Everything became a boundless space permeated with the Four Immeasurables—loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. For the next two months I was completely unaffected by things that would normally be extremely distressing.

When the November New Moon arrived, and the Festival of Divali,   I was drawn to include the personal dimension as well as the transpersonal. It was time to return, in deeper way than before, to living in the union of personal and transpersonal.  I began including my small and young parts, which I pictured as a baby bunny rabbit and a little girl in a pink dress. But now I am working with the child parts in a new way—holding them in the heart as a presence of tenderness, vulnerability and spontaneity.  Everything has become unobstructed and I begin to understand the meaning of Shri Ramakrishna’s words, “the paramahansa is like a five year old child.” Just like a child, I have been experiencing a state that is emotionally transparent and spontaneous. I burst into tears one minute and laugh the next, because there is no obstruction.

Another New Moon rolled around and with it came a weekend of processing in Omaha with Matrupriya. It was really vulnerable at first for me to hear that Sadananda and Matrupriya were clear in their choice to be together. Perhaps you, dear reader, can understand that I felt “unchosen,” discarded and like a lone wolf.  Yet from those depths of heartbreak arose our new clarity of vision. I stepped out of the shower, stamped my foot and told the guru, “Look, if you want me to take sannyas, why don’t you just tell me so, instead of putting me through this torture.”  And I clearly heard Raghudas respond, “Take sannyas!” I would never have initiated these changes because I love Sadananda so much and I loved our life together in the ashram. Yet the divinely appointed teachers have come and the causes and conditions have been set in motion for me to embark on the journey of vasudev kutumbakum, “The whole world is my family.”

Is my heart broken—of course! A broken heart is the Holy Grail. It is the pinnacle of human experience to hold the broken heart tenderly in the expanse of boundlessness, without resistance or obstruction. Do I break down in tears during the tender process of recreating ‘our’ room as ‘my’ room, with all that entails?  Of course I do. Yet amid it all I experience that true happiness is within and can never be altered by circumstances. We are walking this journey together and in love and care. We have a sense of our direction and yet we are stepping out into the unknown and do not indeed know where we will be led. I pray that our path may illumine that of others.