Never to Return, Chapter 30: "Undo What You Have Done"

The autobiographical life adventures of Sharon Janis, author of Spirituality For Dummies, Secrets of Spiritual Happiness, and Breakthrough Consciousness.

Everything you do has a quality
which comes back to you in some way.
Every action takes a form in the invisible world,
which may be different from how you thought it would appear.
A crime is committed, and a gallows begins to be built.
One does not look like the other, but they correspond.
Accept the results of what you've done in anger,
or for greed, or to elevate your ego.
Don't blame fate!

Chapter Thirty

UNDO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

I HAD BEEN LIVING IN THE ashram for nearly ten years. As the summer began to wind down, my teacher told me it was time for me to leave. This decree did not come in an especially sweet or gentle form. In fact, the outer circumstances were so harsh that I wondered if they were specifically intended to make me more receptive to the idea of leaving.

The previous few months had been very difficult, both physically and emotionally. Our pavillion and garden projects had been heavy labor, and the work hours were long and exhausting. Even after our new pavilion was inaugurated, there were still so many rocks to move, trees to plant, gardens to maintain, and acres of sod to lay. Those of us on the garden staff often worked from morning till night, and usually ended up missing the wonderful evening programs. What had been a fairly pleasant romp through monastic life was quickly becoming boring and laborious. My life consisted of a very early morning chanting session with a couple other die-hard chanters, then a day full of pickaxing or planting until it was time to go to sleep. The woman in charge of the garden was a tough cookie who seemed to think that showing off how hard and long her crew could work would reflect positively on her in the eyes of someone higher up.

Along with all this physical challenge was the absence of an outlet for my rather abundant creative energies. I'd always had some channel for expression, whether music, painting, writing or filmmaking. With hard physical work filling each day, my creative juices were building inside like a pressure cooker.

To be fair, I have to say that this time was undoubtedly very helpful to my physical health in the long run. I’d been living quite a sedentary life during my many years of video work. Now, even though my body often was aching from the exertion, it was most definitely getting stronger and more in shape.

If other residents had experienced these circumstances, many of them might have simply requested a service assignment change. However, I had been specifically placed in this position by my guru, who passed by our labor camp scenes often enough to know what I was doing these days. Therefore, I was trying to maintain a state of good discipleship and trusting acceptance. Nevertheless, my surrender was not authentic. I was trying to be surrendered, but each day was getting more difficult.

During this time, I received a rare phone call from my family. They were going to be celebrating my grandmother’s eightieth birthday, and they wanted me to fly from the Catskill mountains to the Detroit area to join in the party. I had visited my family twice during the previous ten years. We seemed to have very little in common. My parents and grandmother were not thrilled that I was living in some strange religious place, but they didn't really care enough to take the trouble to find out what this place was about – for which I was actually grateful. This precious piece of my life was not up for my birth family’s opinions. Whenever they dared to mention anything about my living in this strange spiritual place, I'd confidently explain that I was happy there, and let that be the end of story.

While visiting my family for this birthday celebration, I was disheartened to find that I could no longer truly honestly say I was happy at the ashram. The words would not come out of me with conviction. It wasn't quite true anymore.

At one point my grandmother and I were speaking alone. With tears in her eyes, she asked what I was doing with my life. "How can you be digging holes in the earth? You should be a doctor! You should have servants doing that kind of work for you! They don't really care about you."

I didn't really pay much attention to her words, but after I arrived back at the ashram, my inner turmoil became worse. I couldn't bear it anymore – the long hours, the strenuous work, and the harshness of our supervisors. I found the work more and more unpleasant to do as the weeks rolled by, although I also did the inner work to try and keep my consciousness free from these challenges. Life challenges give us the chance to let go of easy surface experience, and when I let go during this time of challenge, I found myself in a tumultuous ocean of undigested emotions that had been previously fairly well-covered by my carefully constructed latticework of defense mechanisms and philosophical theories.

My emotional shell had finally been broken, and I was overwhelmed with crashing waves of emotion and vulnerability. If someone was kind to me, I would be overcome by waves of gratitude and sentimentality. If someone was unkind, I was hurt to the core. All the defense mechanisms that had protected me from my feelings seemed to be gone, and the flames of raw emotion leapt up at every turn. I didn't know what to do. I wanted to talk to my teacher about it, but what would I say?

Instead of speaking up, I withdrew into a deep depression, walking through each day in a state of burning unrest. It got to the point that I had to even ask my friends not to talk to me. I could no longer speak. The inner turmoil would not allow words to come through.

In the midst of all this, the core garden staff had a meeting to discuss the work each of us would be doing over the upcoming winter months. During this meeting, the reality of having this service assignment continue for the next year, throughout another freezing, icey upstate New York winter, hit full force. This glimpse into my upcoming destiny met with my inner turmoil, and brought me to the conclusion that I had to tell my guru about what I was feeling. I knew that bringing up something like this might have any result in my life -- from relief of the problematic situation to something worse, but I’d already crossed into some kind of inner emotional hell, and I needed her help. After all, I'd spent ten years living and serving in this ashram, without initiating many questions or conversations at all. Some people asked our guru questions upon questions about everything from ancient philosophy to whether they should get a divorce or get a haircut. On this path, different people had different relationships with our guru. I'd been more or less quiet during this decade, although I'd sent regular letters to my guru with news and poems and other thoughts. Now I needed to take this wild horse by the reins and bring it to her feet. Hopefully she would understand that the garden wasn't really working for me, and help choose another department that was better suited to my nature.

With trepidation, I walked up in the darshan line. There were so many people in the meditation hall. I wondered if I should postpone the encounter and think about this further, but my depression was too deep. Even if my guru became angry, I had to tell her what I was going through.

I moved close to her, face to face, and spoke softly, "Some things happened when I visited my family, and I'm experiencing a lot of turmoil." This was not how I’d planned to introduce the problem, but I was nervous, and my words didn't follow my plan.

My guru pointed to a spot next to her chair, and told me, "Go over there." Ralph was seated there, assisting with the flow of the darshan line.

He asked me to tell him what was going on with my family. I had only meant to use my family trip to place the turmoil in a timeline context, not to insinuate that the problem began there. But my words were not coming out the way I intended them to. "I visited my family recently, and some things happened. I've been experiencing a lot of turmoil and confusion, and I can't break out of it."

Ralph leaned over to tell my teacher what I had said. She asked, "What happened, did they beat you?" This seemed to be a strange question, until future contemplation revealed that this inner turmoil I was experiencing came, not just from the ongoing garden work, but also from all the undigested feelings from my childhood, which I had neatly packed away during this past decade of monastic life. Visiting my birth family during this vulnerable time seemed to have opened some kind of subconscious pandora’s box of undigested emotions, which I had brought back to the ashram and projected on the garden work.

Seated at the feet of my guru, I tried to put my current problem into words, but was overwhelmed by the intense energy that pulsated around her physical presence. My brain cells were being zapped, and all my rehearsals went down the tubes. Out came the words, "Well, one thing is that my grandmother talked to me, and it just raised these doubts."

What was I talking about? I watched as words came out that had nothing to do with what I had intended to say during this important and rare conversation with my guru.

She looked at me and shook her head, as if to say, "So, what’s the big deal about that!?!"

At this point, Ralph, who was still part of this conversation, interjected to ask, "What did she say?"

I couldn't find a way to backtrack from this uncontrollable path of conversation, and so I continued. "She asked me, 'What are you doing there all this time? You should go back to med school. They don't care about you.'"

Why was I saying all this? Why couldn't I just tell my guru that I was creatively stifled? Why couldn't I simply ask for a service-assignment change? Who was making my lips express all this information that wasn't even relevant to the problem? I hadn't thought my grandmother's words affected me. She had no concept of the world I lived in, and couldn't understand that my goals and aspirations were not based upon materialistic desires or long-term financial security. At the time, her words had slid right by me. So what was she doing here now, entering this conversation between my guru and me?

When I expressed that my grandmother had said, "They don't care about you," my guru’s concerned look turned fierce.

I was lost in this whirlpool of words, from which I couldn't free myself. Of course, I hadn't believed her. My guru had blessed me, fed me, clothed me, and given me an amazing place to live, work, and experience the essence of spiritual life. She had brought me on a trip to India, paid off my leftover student loan, sent me to video school in California, and gave me a chance to explore my artistic abilities and share the fruits with open hearted devotees around the world. Of course she cared about me. Why had I brought this statement to her? What subconscious agenda was trying to break through my intentions?

I replied, "No, I didn't believe her. But it created this turmoil inside of me."

My teacher’s sarcasm almost brought a smile through my fog of gloom. She paused while continuing to interact with the row of four to five people at a time that had been coming in front of her throughout our conversation, and then looked back at me, and said, "You should leave and go out to work."

Ralph was sitting next to me, and seemed genuinely concerned by my unusually somber demeanor and this dramatic twist of events. He whispered to me, "You should have talked to someone – a swami or someone – instead of just dumping this on her. She expects more from you after all this time."

I asked him if our guru was serious about telling me to go out to work. "I want to stay here. I just want to be happy again like I've been all these years."

Our guru turned back in my direction and said, "Maybe you just want attention, that's probably it. This grandmother thing – everybody uses their grandmother as an excuse for attention."

I bowed my head and walked away from what was surely one of the strangest conversations I'd ever experienced. What had just taken place?

I went into our beautiful temple, and sat against the wall. I wanted to contemplate this event, but every time I started to analyze what had happened, my mind would be drawn into a stillness that stopped my thoughts. If I started to think about what might happen in the future, my worries would also dissolve into this still space. It was as though I was impelled so effectively into the present moment that there was no room for thoughts about past or future. All I could do was to be in the moment, resting in the eye of this new life storm that was now swirling around me.

The next morning, I went to our gardening meeting as usual. There, I received a message to meet my guru in her Namaste meeting room. I had already been feeling the potency of the upcoming encounter all night and morning long. It was as though the upcoming event created ripples on the lake of time that became even more tangible as I walked toward the meeting room.

My guru was seated there, along with five or six other people. I bowed my head and sat before her. She looked at me sternly and instructed, "Tell them what you told me last night."

I was relieved to have an opportunity to try and say it the way I had intended. But as soon as I started choosing my words, she stopped me and directed, "Tell them what you said last night. You'll have your chance to speak."

I tried to become focused once again in the present moment. Part of me was concerned about the tone this meeting was taking, while another part was cheering the undeniable power of it all. Mostly, I was relieved that we were going to deal with the difficulties I had been going through. By this point, I was surrendered and willing to do whatever was asked of me. There was nothing to do but to let go and be carried by the waves of destiny.

After I repeated our discussion of the previous evening, my guru requested, "Tell your life history." This surprised me, because she had never before asked about my life circumstances. My mind moved into what felt almost like a trance state. It was powerful to be sitting right in front of my guru, with her her graceful glance focused on me and my current situation. The "dark night of the soul" I'd experienced for the past few weeks made it easier for me to let go of ego-consciousness as we moved forward with this dance of words. My guru added, “You can start at age twelve.” It didn't occur to me at the time that "Tell your life history" could be a command to one day write this memoir!

As I responded to my guru’s request, each word arose from this still inner space, and moved up through my heart and mind before being expressed outwardly as speech. It was not so much that I was thinking of what to say in describing my life history – rather, I was watching and witnessing, while certain long-forgotten highlights from my life were expressed through me.

I recited the fairly basic facts, as my guru watched me intently. I felt that her blessing energy was entering into each event I invoked, infusing my life history with grace. It was as though she was blessing my past from within the present moment. Here was this childhood and adolescence that I had blocked out of my mind, and she was walking through it with me.

My guru asked some of the people there what they thought my problem was. A well-known author suggested that maybe I was going through a dry spell. My guru replied, "No, it's not a dry spell. With a dry spell, you feel numb. She's in turmoil." Another man who didn't even know me suggested that maybe I was angry because I had been moved from a high prestige service like video editing, into the garden.

What could I say? The truth was that, even if I was angry, I probably wouldn't have known it. I had not been allowed to express anger throughout my childhood. That would have elicited more punishment or cruelty, whether from my family or the kids at school. From an early age, I had learned to put my emotions off to the side, where even I was unaware of them. So maybe my guru was right. Maybe I was angry.

Then, she brought up a somewhat familiar taunt. "I don't know why you would be angry about being moved out of video. Your videos were an embarrassment to the foundation."

During previous years, while working in the video department, I had received several letters from my guru, pressuring me to "make progress in the skill that you have got," because "So far, you have not produced anything that is close to being acceptable." In fact, it was these messages that had really spurred me on to improve my video skills.

My main motivation at that time came from wanting to follow my guru’s guidance and will as a reflection of the divine will. This is one of those mysterious aspects of the guru/disciple relationship that can't really be explained quickly, at least not in a way that won't sound strange or overly "cultish." However, those who have a strong relationship with a personal representation of God – whether in living physical form or as an icon or ethereal being such as Jesus, Allah, Krishna, or Buddha – can surely relate to how one’s personal image or form of the divine can become a gateway for the formless divinity that also lives in all forms.

As my guru brought up the topic of my video editing deficiencies once again during this intense meeting, I wanted to express something that had been a burden on my heart. I had tried so hard to make good videos for her, but clearly my efforts had failed. Because of this, I was out doing gardening work that I didn't particularly enjoy and wasn't naturally good at doing, instead of being able to offer service through my creative skills. I responded to her criticism of my editing abilities, "That's one reason I feel so bad. I feel like I let you down."

My teacher turned her head to the side. I felt that she didn't want me to see that my words had touched her. I whispered, "It's true."

She turned back and looked directly into my eyes. This part is difficult to describe, but I actually felt her conscious awareness entering through my eyes. I could feel it travel down into a deep core of my being. There, I could feel her looking into my soul. It was like a “souloscopy”. After a few moments, I sensed her consciousness moving back up through my body, and then exiting from my eyes once again.

With my mind in a state of surrender and shock, I let go of all the potential fear-based reactions to this monumental decree. I looked up into my guru’s face, bowed my head in gratitude for her grace in any and every form, and asked, "Where should I go, and what should I do?"

The last time my guru had told me to go out to work, it ended up being a short-term, local job that I worked at for a few months while continuing to live in the ashram. I didn't think I'd get off so easy this time, but anything was possible. In that moment, I let go of my deliberative, judging mind, and let go of my false sense of control over this world. In that moment, I was not even thinking about whether I hoped she would tell me to go to the east coast or the west coast, even though I certainly would have had my preferences in that area. My worrying, choosing ego, and hopes for one response over another were outshined by the bright light of grace, surrender, and intentional trust.

My guru looked at me very seriously and replied,"Go wherever you want and do whatever you want."

Instead of maintaining a full focus on the level of absolute faith and trust, my heart sunk a bit upon hearing her words. It sounded as though she didn't really care where I went or what I did. She was going to let me go, just like that, without any apparent concern about where I’d go and what I’d do. Instead of seeing this response as a guiding light on its own – a promise that the divine guidance would be found in following my bliss, in going where I wanted to go and doing what I wanted to do – I responded from a more ego-based level of attachment to her tangible guidance. I felt that she was pushing me away, off of some unknown cliff.

Then, she added a surprise. "You should pay back every penny that has been spent on you. That way when you die you won't have to die with a guilty conscience."

I can tell by some people’s response to my story that this must sound like an awful thing for her to say. In fact, I had never heard of her giving such an instruction to someone before, asking them to pay back their living expenses after serving on staff. Here I had worked so hard for ten years, and my guru was telling me to pay back my room and board?

But my response was not to think her request was unfair. I knew that her words had nothing to do with money. What would have sounded like a tough command to someone watching outwardly instead struck my heart with a deep love, and brought a smile into this very intense moment. I knew that this was her way of giving me the strength to go out there and do well. She was using my own devotion to inspire me to be successful in the next phase of my life. My guru believed in me, and now it was time for me to believe in myself. This simple command gave me the faith and incentive I needed to enter this next phase of my life with a positive and ambitious mindset.

I had no desire for money, success or fame. Perhaps if I’d just slipped out on my own, I would have ended up living a very frugal life doing some simple work, perhaps for a charitable or non-profit effort. However, this directive pushed me into a different route, the route of seeking to be successful. I was able to go out into “the world,” and do whatever I did as an offering to her. I wouldn't settle for less than she deserved. I wasn't so good at taking care of myself, but I had enough enthusiasm and devotion to do even the impossible for my beloved. I could even become successful for her, while remaining free from the bondage of worldly ambition.

I walked away from this meeting in a state of shock. My body was pulsing with adrenaline, but the turmoil I’d been going through had lifted. I had a new challenge to meet, a new command to fulfill, and I was back in warrior mode. My guru hadn't told me to leave right away, but I always tried to follow her directives promptly. This command was so intense that it felt as though I were holding a big ball of fire. I was going to have to face my fear of leaving, and I'd better do it quickly.

I made plans to leave for Los Angeles in ten days, on August 11th, 1989. One of the ashram’s summer guests kindly offered me the use of his little cottage in Santa Monica for a month. With just over one week left to prepare for this substantial move, I was busy. I had to make a demo reel of my video work, put together a resume, say goodbye to old friends, pack my belongings, and get advice about what to do once I arrived in Los Angeles. I was in red-hot, command-following mode. Still in a state of faith and surrender, I was just doing – no thinking, no worrying – just doing whatever was required to leave.

In the midst of all this, someone mentioned that they had seen a note for me pinned to the community message board. I went to the lobby and saw a tiny piece of paper tacked up on the board with my name typed on it. Typed? That was strange. Who would type a message on such a small piece of paper? I opened the paper and saw the sentence, "Praise Patrick."

What the hell was this? Who put this here? Was it Patrick? A friend of his? What was this all about? I was stunned – in the middle of all this flurry of activity, to get a cryptic message like this? Seeing this phrase re-triggered all the emotions I had gone through the previous winter in the cowshed. I didn't know what to do with this anonymous message. Was it from my teacher? How could I know?

I walked away from the board and managed to calm down enough to look more objectively at the evidence before me. Maybe this was a joke, or maybe it was a guru’s command. What would a good disciple do? Well, on the possibility that this was a message from my guru, I had to go for it.

Praise Patrick. I wondered, did that mean I should praise him in my mind? Nah, that would have been too easy. Clearly, I was to find him and praise him personally. I didn't know why, and I certainly didn't want to do it. But in that fraction of a moment, there was a shift of awareness and I had a breakthrough. I didn't care anymore about this battle or any other battle. In a few short days, I would be arriving in a whole new world, far from these walls I had grown to love. Why not praise him? What would it hurt?

Coincidentally, I happened to pass Patrick a few hours later while walking along our forest path to the dining hall. I felt that running into him out of the thousands of people staying there was a sign that indeed this was something I was meant to do. I was supposed to praise him. Even if that note on the board had been some kind of prank, still the universe itself was telling me, "Here he is. Do it!"

I walked up to him and smiled as I called his name. I told him that I was going to be moving to Los Angeles in a few days. And I reached into my heart and found words of praise for him that were true. I told him that I was sorry for being so sensitive and angry. I told him that I knew how devoted he was. I told him that he was really a very nice man at heart, and that it was a shame we hadn't gotten along. I also apologized for any trouble I might have caused him. This was really difficult, because I knew it wouldn't be enough just to pay him lip-service. I had to find a place inside myself that knew this man was worthy of praise. What a struggle that was! Only my devotion to my teacher and my dedication to the spiritual journey of transformation and freedom from ego could have motivated me to break through this one.

It also was a leap to apologize to Patrick without expecting any kind of admission in return. It didn't matter what he had done. That was not at issue here. My karmic job was to follow this directive and to work on my responses, not to judge someone else's. Nevertheless, Patrick gave me a very sweet smile, and said some kind words to me, as well. He also apologized, and we gave each other a long, loving hug. It really did feel good to hug an adversary. I felt as though we were both being rinsed clean of the cobwebs of anger and hatred that had formed around our hearts during the previous year.

Patrick gave me a big, toothy grin, and declared in that bellowing voice of his, "I give you my blessings!" We bowed our heads to one another, and I walked away feeling nearly moved to tears. It was a relief to have completed this challenging directive. Now I could get on with the pressing matters at hand.

Later that afternoon, I walked by the message board and noticed some typed messages for other people. I knew it was an invasion of privacy, but decided to open one to see if there was any indication of who may have sent it. It was in the same typed print as mine. I opened the message and saw that it was signed by one of my guru’s secretaries. So it had been from her.

Feeling confident about having passed this test, I jumped back into my preparations for leaving. But that evening, I passed by the message board once again, and couldn't help but glance.

Oh dear. My body got all hot and tensed. The adrenaline was flowing as I opened up this new command.

My heart sank into my stomach. Undo what I have done? At first, I felt a glimmer of outrage at this message, but it soon melted away into a deeper understanding of the cowshed period as a karmic lesson and test. I’d been put into a position of working with someone who had major anger issues, and what had I done? I had bad-mouthed Patrick everywhere. I had complained about him, judged him, and tattled on him. I had intentionally harmed his reputation.

According to some karmic philosophies, whenever we badmouth others, we are actually taking on their bad karmas and creating problems for ourselves in the future. This was not a karma I wanted hanging over my head, especially in Hollywood, a town known for its backbiting and rumors. With great internal effort, I rose above all my resistance to this upgraded pennance, and entered a higher perspective. “Undo what you have done. Praise Patrick to others.”

I did it. I threw away my ego and ran around trying to find anyone I might have spoken to about the cowshed situation in the past. One by one, I explained that I was going to be leaving for Los Angeles in a few days, and how I realized that those problems last year with Patrick had stemmed from my own hyper-sensitivity. Then I would give a whole list of all the good qualities I had seen in him. I'm sure some of these people wondered what I was babbling about. Most were probably so shocked by the news that I had been asked to leave the ashram, that the rest of my discourse went by unnoticed.

It helped that Patrick had been so kind to me that afternoon. For the next week, I praised him profusely, and more or less sincerely. I really tried to mean what I said. To fulfill this task properly, I had to move beyond my judgmental ideas of right and wrong. It's not that it was alright that this guy was mean to me or violent with the cows. That was not the point. I had focused on this man’s faults so intently that I had brought myself down into a low level of gossip and revenge.

It's like the story about a priest who lived across the street from a prostitute. The priest would peek out of his window every day, watching as each sleazy man entered the woman's sinful abode. He would shake his head and pray for her evil soul. He could only imagine all of the disgusting actions that must go on there. Now, in the meantime, the prostitute would also look out of her window.

Sometimes she would see the priest returning home from church. She imagined that he would go inside and pray to God. She admired him so for his pious life. One day, the priest and prostitute both died. As they knocked on the pearly gates, the doors opened for the prostitute, but remained closed for the priest. Feeling the heat of flames licking at his heels, the priest cried out. "Why? Why did this sinful woman make it into Heaven and I, who have given my entire life to God, am being sent to Hell!?! How can this be?"

A voice spoke through the ether. "Oh, priest. You spent so much time focusing on sin and evil. Your mind was filled with all kinds of degraded acts. This woman was in an unfortunate situation, yet day and night, she contemplated your goodness. In imagining your love for God, she thought of God more than you. While you obsessed over her sins, she was imagining how pure your thoughts must be. Therefore, it is just and fair that each of you reaps the fruits of your own thoughts."

Too bad they always seem to tell us these things when we're already at the pearly gates! But unlike the poor priest, I had been given a chance to change my destiny before it was too late.

I had to undo what I had done. Not only did I have to work to mend this man's reputation, but I had to change my vision to see his goodness. I had to see his divinity, his good heart, and his great qualities.

No book could ever have taught me so much about the repercussions of my actions. I gave my spiel to many people during that week.

Just two days before I was scheduled to leave for Los Angeles, the financial officer of the ashram found me outside the temple, and handed me an envelope, saying, "This is for you."

It was from my guru. I wondered if it contained another message, or perhaps a new challenge. Maybe it was an itemized bill from the last ten years?

With anticipation, I walked back to my room. I sat on the bed and closed my eyes, moving into a state of inner openness. Then, I carefully opened the envelope flap.

Inside were thirty of the most beautiful, crisp hundred-dollar bills I had ever seen. This currency seemed to shimmer with light. It was money that had been donated by devotees to support the work of the ashram, offered out of gratitude to God. I knew these bills would be a great blessing on my new journey.

I felt that it would be a great pleasure and honor to be able to pay back this holy place that had transformed my life, so that others would also be able to reap the benefits of monastic life.

Chapter Thirty

UNDO WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

Journal notes: A poem about leaving the ashram

Journal notes:
A poem about leaving the ashram