Never to Return: A Modern Quest For Eternal Truth, Chapter 16: "This Karmic Dance"

NEVER TO RETURN:

A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH

A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis

In this world there are two forces: the sword and the spirit.
The spirit has always conquered the sword.

Chapter Sixteen

THIS KARMIC DANCE

IN THE RICH ENVIRONMENT of this ashram, I encountered all kinds of new ideas. When my teacher was in residence, he gave an extraordinary lecture almost every evening. In his natural manner, he would discourse on the most brilliant philosophies I had ever encountered. I was also grateful to have an opportunity to watch these talks again and again while duplicating the videotapes. After watching the same tape hundreds of times, I'd often glean deeper understandings from his words.

The ashram guests and residents were stimulating as well. In my home town, people seemed to fit more or less into fairly consistent, suburban parameters. However, the thousands of people who attended these summer retreats came from all over the world. Being open-minded enough to spend time with an Indian guru, they were some of the most interesting, colorful, and uniquely quirky people around. Some were knowledgeable about mysterious topics such as tarot card reading, astrology, and various healing and energy fields, long before the rest of the world became familiar with such esoteric ideas. Each person there added a new note to my symphony of experience. Some were sweet and loving, while others were tense and harsh. Yet in this environment, even the most obnoxious people provided fertile ground for interaction and contemplation.

Once someone asked my teacher how he was able to work on so many people's egos and purify so many karmas all at once. He answered that he didn't have to do anything. He just brought everyone together, and they worked on each other. We used to pass this line around in a humorous way, usually when someone was getting on our nerves. Nevertheless, this is what was really happening. Our teacher didn't have to tell this person to be difficult with that person, to purify that person's authority issues. We were so many pieces of this puzzle, this group trek toward eternal Truth.

It is noteworthy that many of my most memorable lessons from these years came through the steepest challenges or the most difficult people. As the correlation between challenges and inner breakthroughs became more clear to me, I gained a new respect for difficult circumstances. It seemed that a potential grace was hidden within every challenge. It's not that I sought out uncomfortable situations, but when they arose, I didn't despise them either. In the midst of even my most painful states of anger, frustration or grief there would be a soft whisper: "Go through this time... Learn from it... Welcome these flames of grace... " A new awareness was growing within me. The dualities of "good" and "bad," "attachment" and "aversion," were starting to look more like illusions. Something much bigger was going on here.

Purification would burst forth in explosion after explosion, outbursts of ecstasy and anger, pride and self-doubt. Lessons showered down on all our heads. Amazing synchronicities abounded. New insights lurked around every corner. Karmas were flying back and forth. People were acting out, being sensitive, forceful, benevolent, difficult, energized, exhausted, or filled with divine love.

You might imagine that people living in a spiritual place like this would all be very peaceful and friendly. This was not necessarily the case. It seems that spiritual growth isn't always a linear movement into increasingly sweeter and higher places. Each of us carries countless layers of past experience within our personality structures. Some of these layers involve deepseated emotions and belief systems. Before we can reach a space where there is true universal love and respect, we may first have to clear out the accumulated garbage. And having these patterns of anger, rejection, frustration, pride, and insecurity rooted out could be deeply distressing, both for us and the equally activated souls around us.

In this monastic environment, there was no escape from tension through drink, drugs, or even television. We had to process whatever came up. With thousands of people going through this intense, personal transformation at once, there was always a whirlwind of drama and growth. We had to learn to be in the flow, or we would encounter snags at every turn.

During my ten years in the ashram, I had several run-ins with various people in charge. Some were security guards. Although most of the guards were friendly and barely noticeable, some of them seemed to think their purpose in life was to keep everyone else in their place. One job of the security department was to keep overzealous devotees from lunging at our teacher's feet begging for initiation, although amusingly, the chief of security had done just that upon meeting him.

I think some of the security guards may have taken their jobs so seriously so they could clear up some of their own karmas, or to work out specific psychological issues that may have required a subjective experience of personal authority. One guard used to sit during the programs, looking out over his chanting book to eye the other devotees suspiciously. We were singing God's name, for goodness sake! Did he think we were going to steal the photos? Fake the words? Such silly, unnecessary behavior. And yet, I had an intuition that this man somehow needed to really get into that "security guard" mentality, to feel those feelings and think those thoughts, so that he could finally learn certain lessons about the nature of power and paranoia. Under normal circumstances, he might have had to spend his entire adult life developing a career path that could have ignited these particular issues for him. However in the ashram, we had the opportunity to live many lifestyles in one lifetime.

Here, we could be a secretary one day and our boss's boss the next. We might find ourselves planting flowers in the garden, hauling trash, milking cows, supervising crews, organizing records, managing departments, taking care of a room full of children, studying sacred texts, washing dishes, or answering people's questions at the information desk. It was even possible to find oneself doing several kinds of work with distinctly different groups of people in one day. Then you would go back to your six roommates. Then you would assume the role of a disciple, bowing down before the great master. Then you would sit during the chant, cringing with impatience at someone singing way off key next to you. Then your soul would be lifted to unimaginable vistas of bliss and ecstasy. There was never a dull moment in this place.

I had two particularly memorable security-guard experiences. The first took place in Miami.

One day, I found a mysterious key in my suitcase, right under my clothes. After checking to make sure it didn’t belong to one of my roommates, I had an idea to imagine it as a key to my heart, and to offer it to my teacher as a symbolic, devotional gesture to ask that he would use his magic key to open my heart.

That evening we had the darshan line, where each person could come up to be in the guru's presence for a moment. I handed him the key. He held it in his hand for a moment and looked at me. Maybe he was wondering what the key was for. Was there a new car waiting behind curtain number three? More likely, he could see the meaning of the gesture in my eyes.

Unable to bear the intensity of his glance, I bowed my head and was brushed powerfully with the wand of peacock feathers he'd use to bless people. I felt an influx of warm energy enter my upper back and fill my body.

I started to stand up, but realized I was completely intoxicated. In this drunken state, I was barely able to stagger back to my seat. I sat down and closed my eyes. An exquisite energy swirled around inside my body. It felt as though my aura was being bathed in brilliant light. As the darshan line ended, my teacher began to deliver his lecture.

He spoke about how young people are so hot-blooded and rebellious. I was touched by his words, because I'd been that way myself. I didn't listen to my parents or to other figures of authority. I was protecting something inside myself from the opinions of others, yet this something inside was subtle and difficult to capture. Listening to my teacher's words, I began to weep silently. While experiencing the effects of these released emotions, I was also witnessing the emotions moving through my body, mind, and heart from a more objective point of view. I wasn't particularly sad or upset on a personal level, yet emotional streams of tears flowed freely.

Toward the end of the program, we all meditated together for fifteen minutes. Something new inside myself had opened up. My mind was filled with beautiful inner visions, thoughts and feelings. I was lifted out of myself by this exciting and intoxicating sensation throughout the session. As the musical chords brought us out of meditation, I was still feeling euphoric. My service assignment at the time was to wash the dinner dishes, and I was supposed to leave the hall as soon as meditation ended, to have a quick dinner before my shift. I began to walk slowly to the door. My glasses were so stained with tears that I took them off. Also, the lighting in the hall was dim. Between the intoxication and my inability to see, I was focused intently on my path to avoid stepping on anyone.

As I neared the door, a security guard grabbed my arm and held me back, barking, "Wait!" At first, I didn't know why, but as I looked up, I saw that my teacher was also heading toward the door through a different aisle. In truth, he wasn't that close. I could have made it out the door well before he arrived. Who knows what karmic scenario this guard must have been playing out with such an assertive attitude. And who could have imagined how perfectly his lesson was orchestrated with my own.

I wasn't angry about being stopped, just surprised. Still in a daze from the sweet energy that was moving inside me and reveling in an inner innocence from being somewhat empty of thoughts, I watched as my teacher continued to walk toward the door.

But he did not walk out the door. Instead, he turned to the side and strolled over to where I was standing. He gently took my arm, and walked with me toward the exit. There, he leaned on my shoulder while putting on his shoes, and then guided me out the door in front of him. It was a beautiful and completely unexpected gesture.

Clearly, it had been his grace that had ultimately motivated the security guard's apparently aggressive actions. Maybe the guard had unknowingly been holding me back not to keep me from my teacher, but specifically for him.

It was notable that I hadn't become angry with the security guard. Whatever happened while I knelt before my teacher in darshan that day had left me clean and empty of ego distortions, at least for a while. There was nothing inside myself that wanted to fight. Maybe my teacher's respectful gesture was his way of acknowledging that an important personal shift had occurred within me this day. Perhaps he had already used the symbolic key to my heart.

A similar event took place the following summer in New York. I walked into one of the meditation rooms and was pleased to see my teacher walking right toward me. He was going to exit through the double doors behind me. I stood back against the wall to give him plenty of room to pass. Nevertheless, one of the security guards ran up and pulled me out of the way, hissing, "Baba doesn't want you to get so close to him!" My teacher walked through the doors and I was left in a state of confusion.

I wasn't really angry at the guard, though I certainly thought he had overreacted. But his statement concerned me, "Baba doesn't want you to get so close to him." During this time, I was exploring a space where the Consciousness I thought of as God and the manifestation of the world around me were no longer two separate arenas. I understood that the same quality that gives our dream worlds their rich depth of meaning was also present in my waking state. I recognized that events were symbolic and intertwined, that there was no such thing as meaningless experience.

By focusing on the teachings and practices of this path, I had developed a simple reverence for whatever appeared before me, no matter through whom it came. Its mere appearance on the screen of my consciousness gave it significance. If it was there, it was worthy of note. And here this security guard was telling me that my image of divinity didn't want me to get close to him.

What did it mean? Was it a message from my teacher? I contemplated this question all afternoon. The old rejection sentries from my past were standing at attention on the horizon of the present moment, waiting to have an unruly party in my mind and heart. These old tendencies pressured me to take the words at face value, hoping for the opportunity to play the "feel bad" game again. I tried to hold them at bay, focusing instead on what meaning might be hidden beneath the surface words. Maybe the deeper meaning was that I shouldn't get too close in terms of dependence on my teacher. Or maybe it was a message that I should keep a distance in my external relationship with him, so our subtle communion could remain unsullied by mundane expectations. I really didn't know what to make of these words. Regardless, I made an effort to feel less attached to my teacher, just in case that was the intended message behind this event.

At 5:00 pm, I went back to the same meditation hall for the afternoon chant. I played a big drum, while one of the monks waved a lamp of flames to the statue of our teacher's teacher. After putting the drum away, I stood near the back of the hall, chanting loudly. I had a resounding voice anyway, but the music people had specifically asked me to chant extra loud to help maintain the pace of this accapello chant.

I closed my eyes and focused completely on the pronunciation of each Sanskrit syllable. A few minutes into the chant, I felt someone brush up against me. That was no big deal, but they just stood right next to me, with their shoulder touching mine. I became disturbed by this. Why did this person have to stand so close to me? There was plenty of room in the hall. I kept my eyes closed, and tried to maintain my focus on the chant. I wasn't quite upset enough to move away from the person angrily, but it was irritating to have someone practically leaning against me. I've always liked to have a reasonable amount of personal space, and this person was definitely invading it.

After a while, I couldn't help but open my eyes a bit to see who could be so unconscious that they didn't even notice they were actually touching someone. I saw a flash of orange.

This was the first time I’d seen him even come to this particular chant. It was my teacher, my guru who had been standing so close to me! I lost my concentration and stumbled on the next few words. I was absolutely shocked. He looked at me with a mischievous half-smile, paused for a moment, and then turned and walked away.

I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't abruptly pulled myself from this "oblivious person" who had dared stand so close to me! If I hadn't been so humbled by the security guard's chastisement earlier that day, I might have responded in a way I would have later regretted. Thus the intricate dance played on.