 "A Nearly Invisible Satisfaction" ©2013 Rev. David Seacord 8" x 10" Acrylic on Canvas
Everyman's WEEKLY Journal #23
© 2013 Rev. David Seacord
May 5, 2013
A Journey Back to India…
I was wondering what I would be called to write about tonight (Saturday) when Mom came out to sit on her porch and began to read me the letter she'd been typing into her computer. (Mom's passion is a combination of genealogy and family history, so a lot of her time is occupied by her efforts to get all the relevant material that she's aware of into her computer files 'before she's gone, so the family will know about it, in the future'.)
(This is an aside, but…) Most of the time when she does this I am only partially present, either because I've 'heard the stories before' or I'm not really interested in a fresh recounting of the old injustices that the old letters reveal still live unforgiven within Mom. That's a bit of a tough one to get around, because I also know and see that the path to discharging the unforgivenness is via her receiving enough attention to activate a healing discharge. (This is a fundamental Re-evaluation Counseling principle.) So as a spiritual practitioner who is somewhat in resistance to providing that healing attention, I'm caught in a bit of a pickle here, which yes, I am working on. Because why else am I here, right? Well actually, there are dozens of good reasons I am here, but working out (surrendering) my resistance to Mom being the way that she is is definitely one of them. I think we both understand that progress is being made, simply because more and more love is present and palatable between us. (End of aside…)
This time though, the letter she started reading was from me, written to them (my parents and still at home family) at the age of 27 (think cusp of Saturn return, yes?), and it came to them from a me who was then in India. So tonight, as I listened to what I had written then to my parents about one of the most seminal spiritual pilgrimage/adventures of my life, a flooding of memories occurred, and I realized I had my subject for tonight. Now I am sitting here wondering how to frame it for you (and for me too), because frankly, it was such an impossibly huge experience that I am to this day nearly forty years later still living into the openings that originally occurred on that journey.
Of course I don't often see that. I don't carry around a detailed RAM awareness of where all the programs that I've chosen to setup and run inside me first got planted. All that stuff is usually just history on the hard drive (so to speak). But listening to Mom read certainly opened up a door to take a new look….
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Several months before the India trip I was experiencing a visit to Ananda Village, a central California Sierra-Nevada-surrounded well-known spiritual community led by Swami Kriyananda, a Parahamsa Yogananda devotee. Of course I had read "Autobiography of a Yogi" by then and thus was aware of a revered female saint he wrote about named Anandamayi Ma. I was in a devotee-filled kirtan hall chanting when a large picture of Anandamayi Ma on the wall suddenly changed. Instead of it being a photograph, it was her that was there in the frame, alive, looking at me. It was my first experience of a long-distance dashan (being in a holy presence) via a picture. Suddenly I was awake to this wonderful saint in a very important way. Somehow I knew she was calling me to India.
I went to India on a jumbo jet full of devotees, and as a devotee of the Siddha guru Baba Muktananda (there is a lot to write about him too, but later) and I stayed for the first several weeks in his Ashram in Ganeshpuri, north of Bombay (now Mumbai). One day I overhead a couple of other devotees talking about a distant spiritual festival call a Sanyan Sapta, and heard them say that Anandamayi Ma would be there. I knew immediately I had to go, and informed the Ashram (to their disappointment) that I would be leaving, and made the journey to the festival.
I was surprised to discover that westerners were not very welcome. I was not used to that… but this was authentic Indian spirituality, which was quite conservative compared to what we in the West had been making it into. No westerners were allowed to stay on site (we all got rooms in hotels etc), and there was no translation provided either, so it was hard to understand what was happening. Luckily I was befriended by a 'fallen' Braham (he had some addictions Braham caste members weren't supposed to have) who spoke English. Through him, I made a request for an interview with Anandamayi Ma. Also through him, I learned that this festival was a 7 day fast on the holy water of the great Ganges river. Even though I had scientific knowledge that the Ganges was a very polluted river, I decided to drink the water. I immediately became very ill, my body generating a very strong fever. I'd spent several days profusely sweating in my hotel under the care of my brahman friend when the message arrived that it was time for my interview with Anandamayi Ma. I was weak, but I went.
As I entered the audience room, she immediately raised her hand for me to stop. The translator barked "Stop! You are sick!" (Anandamayi Ma was at that time very old. This was in 1976--she died in 1982.) So from across the room, she asked, "Why have you come?" I answered, "I am a spiritual seeker." She asked back "You're a Christian, aren't you?" I answered without thought "Yes". She said "Then meditate upon the light in your third eye as Christ for a year, and report back to me", and indicated that the interview was over.
This exchange was followed immediately by intense confusion within me. My fever raged and my mind felt insane. I had said I was a Christian, for God's sake! I had not thought of myself that way for many many years… why had I said I was? What did it mean? Was I supposed to go become the Christian minister that my family had hoped I'd be? How could I do that--- I didn't believe most of it anymore! On and on my mind raged with both questions and fever. I was so hot! And it WAS so hot too--- just like Yuma gets-- where 100 feels like a cool down. The hotel I was in was a low mud building, by the way, and there were cots up on the roof for guests to sleep on (where you were cooled by the wind) when it was too hot to sleep in the rooms. In my delirium I went up to the roof to try to get cooler. The surrealism only intensified, as there was a tower next door that was the home of thousands and thousands of bats, who were all flying around under the full moon circling the tower and dropping fresh bat guano on me. I was so miserable, but so exhausted that I couldn't leave either. I just pulled my much-to-warm sleeping bag over my head for guano protection, and somehow fell asleep.
When I awoke it was early morning, my fever was gone AND I experienced an epiphany of realization that has never faded. It was: "in the presence of an embodiment of truth, what is true for you cannot be denied". This, I saw was the answer to why I had said I was a Christian. Because I saw that although for years I had studied with many teachers of many faiths, none of them so far had satisfied me completely. I realized that that was because I was a Christian--- in the sense that my early religiously-programed Christ-Ideal was 'my standard to be met'. In other words, as long as my teachers seemed to be 'Christ-like', I stayed. As soon as they didn't, I left and looked elsewhere. Even to this day, while I am much more tolerant of individual teachers modalities and methods than I was then, I still find a home in the modeling of the Master Jesus. As I learned in A Course In Miracles though, he is not to be worshipped as a God-state unattainable. Rather, he is to be respected and followed as a guide, that you/I may grow into his equal as a Christed (anointed) One ourselves.
Seeing these things, my confusion also disappeared, as I realized the message was not "you are guilty of abandoning the True Faith", now "go be a Christian Minister!" or anything like that. It was instead, 'awaken and recognize the influences that have made you who you are, and become responsible for them'. Beyond that challenge even, I have also seen that it was no accident that I was raised to 'follow in my father's footsteps'. In my lightwork today this background is invaluable in allowing me to access, create affinity with, and plant thoughtful seeds inside the minds of many faithful Christians--- not seeds to lead them away from their churches or communities, but rather, to a higher level of understanding and possibility within it.
In fact, one of my missions in life now is to openly encourage Christians to steal what is good from other religions (like New Thought churches are already doing), because a fundamental weakness has been caused inside Christianity by it's choice to superiorly isolate itself from the good that could be learned from other faiths. Take for example the practice of yoga. If it is seen as a Hindu practice, there is often a fear response to it within more conservative churches. Yet in practice, there is very little or any change of faith necessary, and it delivers great value to it's practitioners. I am so grateful to see it gradually expanding into Christian communities. Why? Simply because (most likely) these are the people I/we came from.
And that is the essence of personal dharma… to return wiser to the place of our roots, and give back more treasure than we took.
Enough for now....more 'in God's timing'. :-)
Namaste & Sat Nam,
David
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Rev. David Seacord
Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag
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