Never to Return: A Modern Quest For Eternal Truth, Chapter 13: "Destiny Calls"

NEVER TO RETURN:

A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH

A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

Chapter Thirteen

DESTINY CALLS

DURING THE WINTERS, our swami would travel to various locations, giving programs and workshops. The winter after our first meeting, he was staying in a Miami Beach hotel that had been transformed into a meditation center. I was taking a semester off from school, and drove to the Miami retreat with one of the Ann Arbor devotees for a two-week visit. It was amazing to get to experience the beautiful ocean, sunshine, and fresh breezes along with all the fantastic chants, hatha yoga courses, and evening programs with our teacher. This was way beyond Club Med – it was Club Meditation, plus much more.

One of the rare qualities of this swami and path is that it was an energy path – the initiation we’d receive was a tangible transfer of energy, and the full schedule of spiritual practices helped to direct and expand our inner energy. During the day, all the participants offered various kinds of service, which helped keep the ashram going, and also helped us learn many lessons in action about how to guide and channel all this new energy that would be pulsing through our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls. I’m not saying that every single person who spent time there would have that same exact description of the energy, but in general, I’ve heard thousands of stories over the years directly from other participants of this path who eperienced tremendous and often dramatic awakenings and experiences from the profound energy of this path.

My first service assignment in Miami was to type some correspondence from one of the teaching monks. Usually someone a little more known and involved with the organization would be assigned to that kind of service, but timing brought me to the service desk just as this pressing need arose, with none of the usual office workers available to type this correspondence up in time. After that project, it was on to housekeeping, and washing stairways. One of the stairways I got to wash was the one leading up to my guru’s living quarters. That meant I got to see all the “stars” of the path, those who worked most closely with the swami, coming up or down the stairs and acting more informally than they might during the evening programs. Some of them also paused to give a friendly smile as they saw me on my knees washing each step with great focus and care.

Next came an assignment for several days of seed-sorting service. Our task was to sort through various spices and seeds, such as cumin seeds, fenugreek, and other spices that were used in the delicious vegetarian meals we were served three times a day. I thought the supervisor seemed a little overly nervous and obesessed with the perfection of our tasks. Obviously, we had to pull out any twigs and stones from the seeds, but then the supervisor would meticulously inspect our final work to make sure that not a single speck of dust had been left in . I suppose in the sense of learning metaphysical principles from menial tasks, this experience of leaving no stone or speck unturned in cleaning the seeds might also be a metaphor in action of the need for perfect focus in purifying our minds, hearts, and souls of the twigs, stones, and specks of dust of old harmful habits and erroneous ideas.

Then came an intriguing new balancing adjunct to this lesson. After a couple days of this meticulous focus, a huge, unexpected batch of spices and seeds arrived at the ashram. All of them needed to be cleaned by our small crew before they could be properly packaged and stored. The pressure was on our supervisor to speed things up, and the next thing you knew, this woman who had been pacing through reminding us to catch every possible contaminant, was now instructing us to only take out the larger debris. “Small stones and specks of dirt should be left in – take out only the twigs and larger stones.” The supervisor’s demeanor even changed with this shift, as she became lighter, perhaps as a result of surrendering to giving up old rigid concepts and rules. This was also a helpful and tangible lesson for me, which I’ve remembered many times along my subsequent journeys. It was about being flexible and making decisions based on current needs rather than previous ways of doing things. Between all these lessons, my teacher’s enlightening lectures, all the interesting people, and the thrilling chants, I was enjoying quite a fruitful two-week stay at this Miami retreat, until a new challenge arose.

About a week into our stay, I was sitting outside one evening, enjoying the moonlight and cool ocean breezes, when my car-mate came by to give me some shocking news. He didn't think his car was in good enough shape to make it back to Michigan, and he had decided to stay in Miami through the spring. I looked at him in disbelief. I only had enough money to stay for two to three weeks.

Somehow, I felt surprisingly calm in spite of this new twist. Even though this seemed to be bad news, my warrior spirit surfaced. I also felt supported and empowered by the hefty schedule of spiritual practices of the previous week, and could sense that this may be the brink of another breakthrough. I had to be courageous and meet my destiny head on.

There was no use getting upset with this fellow, and there was no use crying about my fate. Why not stay in this amazing environment for a while anyway? I went out the next morning and found a waitress job at the Eden Roc hotel. The wages were sufficient to pay my room and board, with enough left over for the eventual trip back to Ann Arbor. My two-week visit expanded into about two months.

During this time, I experienced an intense contrast between the two worlds, inside and outside of the ashram walls. My days were spent in a frenzied restaurant environment, serving food at a Miami Beach hotel. All day long I was dealing with friendly people, grumpy people, and flirtatious people. Then I'd return to the ashram, just in time for the evening program. Walking through the front doors of this oceanside ashram was like stepping from the harsh desert heat into a cool breeze of sweet smells and refreshing energy. The contrast gave me a new appreciation for the palpable purity of this place.

One morning, I was standing on a sundeck with a few other devotees as we watched the sun rising over the ocean on one side of the deck, and our teacher standing on the roof and watching the sunrise on the other. The ashram's video crew came up to the sundeck, and were trying to capture all of this beauty with their cameras. But there was some problem, and their tape deck wouldn't roll. I had worked a bit with video in my college classes, but was no expert to be sure. However, I had learned a technical term: capstan servo. I knew it had something to do with the tape's turning in the deck.

I really don’t have an appropriate explanation for what made me walk over to the camera crew and ask them whether there might be a problem with the capstan servo. If I tried to come up with my motivation at the time, maybe I would have speculated that I was trying to show off. But that really wasn’t the case. Or maybe I was genuinely trying to help them fix the equipment. That's a nice thought, but I'm sure these professionals were far more capable of dealing with the problem than me with my two-bit vocabulary word.

No, it was destiny. The winds of karma blew through me in that moment, and wafted through the video crew as well. The department head looked up with a surprised expression. Perhaps he was impressed that a girl could come up with such a technical phrase. It probably made him think I knew a lot more about video than I really did. When this friendly fellow asked about my video experience, I was honest about what I had and hadn't done. Regardless of my lack of professional qualifications, this video department head invited me to come to the New York ashram and work in the video department during the upcoming summer retreat.

My mind stopped when I heard his offer. He said that if I could stay and pay room and board for at least two months, I would be able to work with the video department. This didn't seem possible, since I was still living from week to week on my restaurant wages, and had no savings whatsoever.

About to explain my situation, I happened to glance up toward the roof. Our teacher was standing in the distance as before, but now his finger was pointed directly toward us. In this gesture, I saw the metaphorical finger of fate, and immediately replied to the video department head, "I'll be there!"

I walked away, wondering how I was going to manage this financially, but also sensing a benevolent force supporting my commitment. It's not that I was expecting some miraculous boon or that I could think of any way to be able to fulfill these conditions, and yet, a soft note of faith was playing beneath my concerns.

That note turned into a symphony back in Ann Arbor. Someone I hardly knew recommended me for an incredible job, out of the blue. The job title was "consultant for City Hall." My task was to take a list of all the businesses in Ann Arbor and to make sure they were still there. I was given a shiny new Caprice Classic to drive, along with keys to the city's gas pumps. I had my own office in City Hall with a wooden desk and swivel leather chair, and was even allowed to hire one of my friends as an assistant. The job wold be ending three days before the summer retreat in New York was to begin, and it would pay exactly what I needed for my travel and lodging expenses.

Actually, something strange happened during this job. After receiving the list of businesses, I was able to check many of them off right at my desk, since I lived in the college town and had seen many of these businesses. My friend and I then began to drive around with the lists, carefully checking all the remaining businesses, and looking for new ones to add. We found the job surprisingly easy and quick. Within a few days, we were finished with nearly a third of the list. This was odd because the man who hired me said that it had taken three people three months to do this job the previous year. We would only have a month and a half, which would give me exactly the amount of money I'd need to spend the summer at the New York ashram, and the project would end three days before the first day of the retreat.

But there was one problem with this otherwise perfect scenario. My assistant and I were too fast at this job. It made me wonder at what pace those three employees the previous year had worked. Maybe they stopped to chat with each business, or maybe there had been extra elements involved with their project.

Either way, I needed this job and so did my assistant. We tried to slow down, but it was getting ridiculous. We were just wasting time. We were young and had a lot of energy. Neither of us felt right about trying to be lazy.

So we decided to paint the new building at the Ann Arbor center. It was a fairly large building with six rooms. We spent a full week prepping the walls and doing all the painting. Of course, we'd have to quickly clean up before returning back to City Hall with our business lists. We felt a little guilty for putting on a facade, but not enough to give up this blessed job. And now we felt extra good, because we were using the time to provide service to our spiritual community.

When grace descends, there is a natural desire to give back something in return, which of course then creates more good karma and brings more grace, inspiring even more gratitude and good karma – a great cycle to get on. However, the good karma of our service to the Ann Arbor center may have been somewhat mitigated by our being a bit dishonest in reporting the pace of our work.

Instead of hiding ourselves away, we became outlandish and flamboyant. We started coming to work wearing straw hats and shorts, while nearly everyone else working at City Hall wore very professional suits or skirts. We requested a big wall map of the city from the city hall office supplier, and began to hold daily, pseudo meetings. The walls separating all the offices were open at the top, so everybody could hear about our ambitious and tedious progress through this difficult task. Of course, we were actually completing this job as requested, and so it’s not that what we described was completely untrue – rather, our descriptions were embellished to stretch the project out to fit the expected time frame rather than the possible one. In-between stifled chuckles, we’d discuss all the streets we would hit the next day, and generally gave a really good impression of what phenomenal workers we were. Without seeing even a page of our work, the other office staff began to praise our great dedication and work ethics. I think for the most part they were amused to see us kids hopping around in City Hall with our straw hats and big smiles.

Our work was "miraculously" completed on the very last day of the month-and-a-half expected time period. Now it was time to take my next step on this amazing, unfolding journey, time to work in the video department at the upstate New York ashram.

I arrived at the ashram, or ashram , two days before the summer retreat was to officially begin, and learned that the video crew was doing an out-of-town film shoot for those two days. Someone suggested that I sign up for another service assignment until they returned. I felt somewhat resistant about this.

To be honest, I wasn't so excited about the idea of working for free, or of being assigned to do a particular task by someone at a desk handing out assignments. I didn't really understand the practice of seva , or selfless service, and especially didn't want to be given an unpleasant task to do. It was one thing to help out in the video department, and quite another to do things like housekeeping. What if they asked me to clean toilets?

Before the service time, there was an optional midmorning chant called Sri Rudram . Thinking this would be a good way to postpone my fate, I went to the meditation hall for this chant. The text was from the ancient Sanskrit Vedas , and the syllables, melody and pacing were so fast and complex that I don't think I managed to get a single word out right. It went on for nearly an hour. Ten minutes into the chant, I put the book down and closed my eyes.

I tried to calm down and prepare myself for the unknown work ahead of me. It may sound ridiculous to have been so worried about a few hours of work, but for some reason the situation had pushed some old buttons. I had been expecting to glide right into a fun service assignment in the video department, and now I'd have to spend two days doing God knows what. Perhaps due to the change of environment or the energy-charged environment, my emotional responses were magnified out of proportion to the problem. I'd heard quite a few spiritual lectures by this time, and started to mentally file through the teachings about service so I could bring myself back into a more surrendered and trusting state of mind.

I began to comfort myself with this internal dialogue, "Don't worry about what service you get. This place is a conscious field of energy. Whatever assignment you receive will be perfect for your spiritual growth. It will contain a significant message for you. It will be like a big fortune cookie. Remember that nothing here happens by chance. They say the entire ashram is the body of the guru - let's see what part of the guru's body I'll get to offer service through." As the chant ended, I was feeling a bit more inspired and rejuvenated from this inner discourse and the powerful mantras being chanted around me. I set off somewhat enthusiastically to the service assignment desk.

On the other side of this karma play was Shyamala, the woman working at the service assignment desk, who had a difficult situation on her hands. There was an unpleasant bit of work that needed to be done, but whenever someone came up to ask for an assignment, she just couldn't bring herself to give it to them. Finally, out of desperation, she decided that whoever came up next would be the one for this task, no matter who it was.

Right on cue, up walked the newly inspired and surrendered Kumuda, ready to find out what great message her service assignment would reveal. Shyamala asked me and the next fellow in line to wait near the lobby stairs for the project supervisor to arrive. Eventually a man came up to us carrying two buckets with mops, and greeting us with, "So you're the shit crew."

Our assignment was to go to a basement area right next to where our teacher lived. All of the monastic sewage had backed up into three rooms and a hallway. There were inches of raw, smelly slime all over the floor, including several large, soaked pieces of carpeting. The three of us were to clean all of this disgusting mess using the most primitive of tools - mops with not enough strands and a jug of bleach. I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't believe my nose.

I burst out laughing. What a funny cosmic joke. What part of the guru's body was this? Here I was awaiting a profound message about my life and I get rooms filled with shit? And I had been worried that I might have to clean a few toilet seats!

I was also bubbling with unexpected joy, because there was a perceptible, pulsating energy in these rooms. After all, they were right next to where our teacher lived. He had raised his personal energy through decades of intense spiritual and yogic practices, as was obvious whenever I was in his presence. Even here, in the general vicinity of his house, I could feel a distinct vibration strumming through the air.

I became totally ecstatic, giggling inwardly. Somebody was playing with me again! It was such an obvious punchline after my big lecture and my worries about the possibility of having to clean bathrooms. It just had to have been scripted by a higher intelligence. In this moment, a bond of friendship was established between the ashram and myself. I cleaned and cleaned with great love, wearing the only pair of shoes I had, not even worried that they were being destroyed by the mucky mess. Even the stench didn't bother me. "I guess this is one way to learn to be detached from the senses!" I thought, chuckling to myself in bliss. I couldn't recall when I had felt so free and giddy, and I certainly wouldn't have imagined the circumstances under which I would be feeling so light and happy. The three of us cleaned for hours, scooping up the sludge, rolling up soaked carpeting, scrubbing the walls, and finally polishing the floors. Soon, the rooms were sparkling clean, and I had tasted the secret nectar of selfless service.

On this day, there was an extra service-shift in the evening to prepare for a big workshop the next day. I went back to the desk for my next assignment. Shyamala apologized for having given me such a yukky task to do, and asked me if I liked to paint. "Oh yes," I replied, "I love to paint."

"Great," she said, "you'll like this assignment. Go across the street to the children's playhouse where they'll be painting the rooms tonight."

I skipped across the street. But as I arrived, the workers told me they would not be ready to paint until much later. "But we'd appreciate if you could help us with another project until we're ready," one of the supervisors requested. "There are several dogs living in this area, and there is dog doo all over the ground outside the children's house. Would you please go around with this tin can and collect all the mess?"

What could I do but smile and pick up all the doggie-doo with great gusto? I couldn't keep from chuckling while speaking mentally to this invisible consciousness that had suddenly become quite apparent through the events unfolding around me. "Okay, friend, I think I got the message!" On this day, my idea of what activities were and were not pleasurable was shattered.

This experience also helped to prepare me for the great surrender essential to monastic life. It cleared away a thick layer of my ego and concepts, giving me a taste of the divine as a conscious and even comedic being.

For the rest of the summer, I enjoyed an interesting job as a general assistant in the video department. I typed scripts, labeled tapes, researched quotes, and even had a chance to assist the video editor every now and then. The first time I worked with him, Luc was editing a talk by our teacher. The tape decks were failing to line up properly for the edit, and for nearly an hour we heard the exact same five-second pre-roll line over and over again. "Know the one who knows the mind. That one is true and that is the Self." It would play forwards, then backwards; fast-speed, slow-speed, normal-speed. I felt as though I was taking a bath in "Know the one who knows the mind. That one is true and that is the Self." As Luc became more and more frustrated with the broken equipment, I smiled to myself, wondering if the tape was planning to keep replaying the line until I finally got it! "Know the one who knows the mind. That one is true and that is the Self."

I thought, "This would be the best job in the world, editing videos of our guru and his teachings. You couldn't help but get it !" In that moment I made my first big wish within the walls of the ashram. I prayed and asked that I might have the opportunity to edit videos of our guru one day, even though I didn't really know how to edit yet.

The summer continued, with challenges and blessings around every corner. The predictability of the schedule created a rhythm of days that I was able to ride like waves of the ocean, flowing out with one wave and back in with the next -- moving effortlessly with the breath of God, with the rising and setting of the sun, with the easy times and the difficult tests. There was a sense of fitting into myself and this lifestyle, as if I were wearing clothes that fit perfectly, not too loose or too tight. The video department staff were a fun bunch, and we shared many light moments while reveling in this wonderful work of capturing our teacher's words and image on film.

As the summer began to wind down, it was nearly time for me to leave and return to college. My teacher and his staff were going to be traveling to Los Angeles for the winter. I thought about how wonderful it would be to join them there.

However, at this point, I was just about out of money. As it was, I was going to have to work hard and take out another student loan to pay for my fall semester of classes. In truth, my heart was no longer enthusiastic about going to college. I was confused at a major crossroads, and didn't know which way to turn. I needed guidance.

I finally got up the nerve to ask my teacher's secretary if I could have a private meeting with him, explaining that I wanted to discuss my alternatives of either going back to school or traveling with him, and to ask for his guidance and blessings. The secretary was very kind and open at the time, and said that if I composed a letter describing my situation, she would present it to him. I painstakingly wrote a three-page letter detailing the entire situation. Over the next few days I waited, excited to think I would be receiving a personal directive from my guru at any moment.

Finally, the call came. The secretary asked me to come down to her room. My heart was pounding with anticipation as I made my way to her office. She opened the door with a somewhat serious face, and handed my letter back to me with several red lines across the page. "I've decided not to show your letter to Baba. I've highlighted the main points you made. You can just ask your question during the public darshan."

I was appalled. I could have done that long ago! The reason I had gone through all of this trouble was because the situation was too complicated to be expressed in one or two sentences, in the midst of hundreds of people coming up in the darshan line. I tried to argue with her, but she was much tougher than I, a real hard-nose. She seemed to have no compassion or concern for my situation. I could see on her desk a stack of letters from other people like me. I was just a name on the list, a letter in the pile. Didn't she understand this was my life? Didn't she realize this was an important decision for me?

The secretary looked at me, impatient to get on with her work. I stormed away from her room and headed down the hall toward the stairway. I wasn't just mad at the way this woman treated me, I was mad at my teacher. I was furious with God. "Here I am ready to surrender and do whatever you say, and you won't even take five minutes to see me!"

Right by the stairway, there was a curtain which separated our teacher's living quarters from the rest of the building. As I stormed past the thick blue curtains, I saw that they were parted in the middle. There, standing all alone, was my teacher, looking right at me.

I was so angry, that even the shock of seeing him there wasn't enough to jar me out of my fury. I glared fiercely into his eyes thinking, "Why won't you let me see you?" I didn't say anything outloud since I didn't think he spoke English. But I stared into his eyes, fiercely.

The bolt of energy that came through my guru's eyes hit me so strongly that I turned and practically flew up the stairs. Before I hit even the tenth step, I cracked up. My insides filled with pure humor and joy. The energy pushed into my head, my eyes, my face, and my heart. There was a deep laughter bubbling through me that would have been extremely loud if I let it escape. I couldn't make so much noise in this peaceful, meditative atmosphere, and managed to hold in the sound. My body was physically doubled over, as I hugged my chest in an attempt to contain all the energy. In the midst of this explosive dance, I thought, "You won the staring contest!" and laughed some more.

I decided to return to college, including a Sanskrit class in the schedule to give myself some enthusiasm. Nevertheless, it had become evident that this kind of school was not teaching what I most wanted to learn.

On the third day of the semester, I went to the Art School for my new film class. We were going to learn how to cut film using a 16 millimeter editing flatbed. While the professor demonstrated the equipment, I stood against the door, thinking. I had returned to school, but was still unclear about my career goals. I had been registered as a double major in film/video and neurophysiology, and now wondered, "Where should I focus my energy? Should I become a scientist or an artist?"

On the intellectual path, my goal was to become a research scientist, to use all the information learned from age seven on to help move myself and society toward a bigger view of the mind and the nature of reality. Specifically, I wanted to explore the processes involved with multiple personality disorder. I believed this dysfunction could be a great doorway through which to explore the foundations of human personality and self-identity, even in people without the disorder. First, however, I'd probably have to spend at least a decade injecting frogs with some pharmaceutical drug before being trusted with a grant to fund my own research.

Then there was the artistic side. My creative work had always been very important to me. I stood there, watching the film professor go on about the mechanics of this editing flatbed, and made a decision. The people in my film classes were definitely more fun than the pre-med students. There was more laughter and enthusiasm, along with an inherent respect for the soul, the spark of creativity, and one's personal emotions and expressions. In that moment, I decided that the rest of my life would be more fun if I became a filmmaker. Suddenly, bright splotches filled my visual screen, and I passed out.

Right there in class, I fell completely unconscious, for no apparent reason. My classmates didn't know whether to laugh or be concerned, because a strange thing happened when I blacked out. I had been standing against the door, wearing a student's backpack. As I slid to the floor, the little piece of canvas sewed into the top of the pack hung itself neatly over the doorknob. I basically ended up hanging on the door. Most of the classmates didn't know me yet, and must have wondered if I was one of those kooky film students trying to be funny. We definitely had a few strange birds in the film department. I eventually regained consciousness, went downstairs to the student cafe for a cup of juice, and soon felt well enough to go home.

Still dazed, I checked my mailbox, and was surprised to find a letter from the video department in the New York ashram. At first, I was touched that they would think to write and let me know they remembered me. But when I opened the envelope, there was a letter inviting me to move into the upstate New York ashram for the winter.

The fellow who had previously agreed to take care of video distribution for a second year decided, at the last minute, that he couldn't bear the idea of another freezing, desolate winter out in the boonies. My teacher was going to be leaving in a few weeks, and if the video people didn't find someone willing to stay in this deserted, snowed-in building in the middle of the Catskill Mountains, then one of them would have to stay behind, missing all of the tour excitement of sunny southern California. It was a very emphatic invitation.

I was already in a state of shock from having passed out in class, and now this. I thought it was compassionate of the video crew to find a way for me to come back. They knew I hadn't wanted to leave the ashram. Of course, they had made a bit of an error in satisfying my desire. I wanted to go traveling with our teacher to Los Angeles, not stay in a freezing, desolate place in the Catskill Mountains, stuck with twenty-five people I didn't know!

Still, it was remarkable to get such a letter. I took it to my professor's house and showed it to him. His response came with a soft smile, "It's nice to be needed."

For my professor, this was a simple statement. For me, it was the universe speaking through his lips. In my narcissistic haze, it hadn't even occurred to me that anyone actually needed me to do this work. I assumed they were offering the position to do me a favor. This shifted things considerably. I was needed. It was time to take a leap, and I decided to do it. There was no logic behind this decision. I just knew I had to go. My warrior-spirit rose up to help me through the complex transition, as I canceled classes, informed my family and friends, and arranged the many details involved with the big move. It all went surprisingly smoothly.