Never to Return, Chapter 32: "The Wish-Fulfilling Tree"

NEVER TO RETURN:

A MODERN QUEST FOR ETERNAL TRUTH

A Multimedia Spiritual Adventure Memoir
by Sharon Janis

Chapter Thirty-Two

THE WISH-FULFILLING TREE

AFTER TWO AND A HALF YEARS, I left Disney and had just been hired to edit and co-produce my first low-budget feature film, “Beretta’s Island” (trust me, you've never seen this movie, nor would I recommend seeing it!) The movie was being produced by Mr. Universe bodybuilder Franco Columbu, and his best friend Arnold was going to be in it.

In a few months, I would be spending Thanksgiving evening sipping peppermint schnapps while chatting about "mooovies" with the Terminator himself. But first I took the opportunity to visit the upstate New York ashram for five days.

This pilgrimage brought up some feelings of apprehension and anxiety. While living in the ashram environment, I had been used to meeting challenges from the peaceful space that comes with extensive spiritual practices. However, after living in Los Angeles for nearly three years, I was no longer keeping up the kind of discipline that had been so easy to maintain in the ashram. Nor was I as insecure and humble as I’d been during my ashram years. I was concerned that my new Hollywood-style persona would clash with the quiet monastic I used to be.

For the next five days, I would not be Emmy award-winner Sharon Janis, but Kumuda, the (supposedly) humble disciple. Could my ego shrink quickly enough to handle the lessons awaiting me there? Was my faith still strong enough to carry me through the challenges? My sense of anxiety continued to build during the crosscountry flight.

A shuttle service from the ashram came to pick another woman and me up from the New York City airport. The woman introduced herself as Robin. As we set off on our two to three hour drive, I tried to make small talk with her. She didn't seem too interested in chatting with me, though she wasn't blatantly impolite.

Under normal circumstances, I would probably have just sat quietly for the three hour drive, but on this day, I was already feeling anxious about the upcoming visit. Robin's lack of interest in chatting with me brought my feelings of insecurity to the surface. Because of this, there was a subtle flavor of bragging behind my words. I wanted her to know that I was somebody important. I wanted to see a look of admiration and interest in her eyes. I wanted her to believe that I was special, so that I could remember it myself.

However, Robin wasn't impressed and remained completely uninterested in interacting with me. I started to feel more insecure about myself. I felt that it was not a good omen for this visit that the one person I was traveling with didn't seem to like me.

Somewhere between mentioning that I was going to be starting my first feature film soon and tossing out a few Sanskrit terms, I moved the conversation into more daring territory. It is not that I was sitting there consciously trying to come up with ways to impress this woman, but, my subconscious insecurities were expressing themselves through me, guiding the conversation with their hidden motives. I told Robin that every time I came to visit the ashram, I always saw our teacher within the first ten minutes. I spoke these words as if challenging fate itself, as though I were so connected with the underlying forces of this universe that I could dare to declare something so unpredictable.

Robin still looked as though she thought I was odd, but finally there was a flicker of interest in her eyes. What if it were true? She certainly would like to see our guru as much as anyone. I had managed to elicit a glimmer of interest, though it wasn't anywhere near what would have given me the boost of confidence I was seeking.

When we arrived at the ashram doors, there was no guru in sight, so Robin and I went to our respective rooms to drop off our luggage. Then, I headed downstairs to visit the main temple. Robin did the same, and we both arrived in the shoeroom at the same time. As we took off our shoes, Robin smirked at me and said, "So where is Gurumayi? I thought you always see her within ten minutes?" It wasn't that Robin was a sarcastic person, but she had been listening to my obnoxious routine intermittently for the past three hours. I'm sure she wanted to teach me a lesson. It had been at least ten minutes since we’d arrived, and the guru was nowhere to be seen. I mumbled a discouraged response.

We had planned to kneel in reverence before the bronze statue of our grandfather guru, which sat inside the temple, however, the temple doors were locked, so we paid our respects from outside the glass doors. I arrived at the doors feeling like a real dolt. But as I knelt and touched my head to the ground, the magic of surrender began to enter me. I moved into a state of witness consciousness, where I could see that I had acted like an idiot, but I wasn't identifying with the part of myself that had acted like an idiot. From this experience of greater self, I also had compassion on myself. Once again, there was the awareness that everything was fine, and everything was perfect. There was no place for guilt or shame, and no need for embarrassment or fear. Whatever had happened was perfect, and whatever was going to happen would be perfect.

Through this posture of surrender, kneeling before an image which represented the Divine Force, I had taken refuge in the awareness that this Divine Force moves through all. I was able to let go of my insecurities and step back. While kneeling before the locked temple doors, layers of my defense mechanisms and wrong understandings opened up to reveal the light of understanding they had been obscuring from my sight. Feeling rejuvenated in spirit, I stood up and turned to go to the chanting hall. Robin stayed at the temple doors with her head bowed.

My heart leapt as I saw my guru heading in my direction. She stopped at the doorway of the meditation hall to look in on the chanting session for a moment. I stood off to the side, watching. She was walking with her secretary and one of the women swamis. As she turned, my guru looked at me with her deep, piercing eyes, gave a mischievous smile, and exclaimed, "Ah, it's the famous one!"

I was shocked to hear her call me this for several reasons. First of all, I had just been feeling pretty insecure about myself for the last few hours. And here was the one person whose opinion I most treasured, calling me famous. It was said with more of a friendly tone than sarcastic, although still with that mischievous smile.

It didn't even occur to me that she might be referring to the success I had already achieved during my few years in Hollywood. I wondered, "Does she think I want to be famous? Does she think I've got the ego of a famous person?" Or was she perhaps giving a concealed message to the higher consciousness that expresses through my life?

One of the Indian scriptures explains that even the mundane words of a great sage are mantras, potent declarations. I had previously understood this to mean that their teachings were powerful. But one week before my trip to the ashram, I'd experienced a new revelation into the depth of meaning in this statement.

After three years in Hollywood, I had recently been hired to co-produce and edit the feature film with Arnold Schwarzenegger's best friend. Here I was preparing to work on a feature film, having had no experience at all in editing dramatic shows of any kind (although I didn't quite tell the producer that!). There was no logical reason for me to have gotten this job. It is considered almost impossible for a news editor to move into film editing. I had never edited a single drama scene. I had never even read a script or heard of script notes. Nor had I ever used the kind of equipment I would be using to edit the film. Technically, there was no reason I should have this job.

A week before my trip, I had been lying in bed, mulling all this over in my head. Many events from the past few years became strung together, as I realized that so many of my wishes had been fulfilled!

I had come to Los Angeles hoping to get a job with Disney, and I got a job with Disney. I wished I could live in Santa Monica; there I was. I wished I could win an Emmy award, and I had. I wished I could edit a feature film. My eyes widened as I remembered a story my teacher used to tell about a man who sat under a "wish-fulfilling tree."

Walking through the wilderness alone one day, a poor man happened upon a large tree. Settling down into its cool shade, he closed his eyes and began to daydream. How nice it would be to have a beautiful woman sitting there beside him. . . . Suddenly, he felt a presence, and opened his eyes to find an exquisite woman sitting there, looking at him with big, beautiful eyes.

"Such a glorious woman," he thought. "If only we had fancy servants here to bring us delicious food and wine." Suddenly, they appeared.

The man sat with his beautiful new friend, eating, drinking and having a wonderful time, when he stopped to think. "I wished for a woman, and a woman appeared. I wished for servants, and servants appeared. I wished for delicious food, and there it was. There must be a demon around here!" And the demon appeared.

So I thought of how I now found myself in a similar position, that I seemed to have been sitting under a wish-fulfilling tree. Yes, I had put effort into all of the accomplishments that had come my way, but clearly these boons had also come from a place beyond my efforts. It seemed that my wishes were somehow being amplified into the world as it manifested around me.

Filled with gratitude, I began to hear inside myself the words my teacher had spoken several years earlier when she told me to leave the ashram. "Go wherever you want and do whatever you want."

I had originally heard these words as being said with impatience and indifference. I’d been hoping my guru would tell me exactly where to go and what to do, and felt a little sad to hear these words during our original meeting. I interpreted them to mean that my teacher didn't really care what happened to me anymore. But while lying in bed early that morning, I heard the same words being spoken in her sweet, loving voice, "Go wherever you want and do whatever you want." It was like a song – so beautiful – such a positive affirmation, a great blessing.

In subsequent years, I’ve also realized that these words offered a wonderful guidance in how to choose my paths in life. In a way, she was instructing me to follow my bliss, to choose where I went and what I did by my own wants. Of course, living just according to any old desires might not lead us to where we ultimately want to go. However, after ten years of intense practice, focus, study, and commitment, my desires had been purified and uplifted enough that I could trust them more than I might have been able to before such an all-encompassing immersion in spiritual life. Go wherever you want, and do whatever you want. Trust yourself. Be happy. Live in harmony with your inner guidance.

When my guru first gave this blessing, she had disguised it with a stern exterior, perhaps so my ego wouldn't grab onto it and ruin everything. Without deeper contemplation, perhaps my egoic nature would have risen up to think, "My guru said I can do whatever I want!" By wrapping her blessing in a serious tone, perhaps she was ensuring that my ego would be bypassed. Apparently, this blessing had found its place deeper in my soul, where it had been reflecting outwardly as these past three years of success and fulfilled wishes. Only now could I finally appreciate what had been given years earlier.

And so, as I arrived at the ashram one week later, here was my teacher walking toward me, saying, "Ah, it's the famous one." After my recent revelations, I was keenly aware of her words, and was struck deeply by this simple statment. She then joked with her secretary and the swami, asking if they knew how famous I had become. They certainly did! I stood there with a sheepish grin, not quite understanding what the point of this famous talk was, but knowing there was more going on beneath this conversation than I could currently comprehend.

At that point, Robin, the woman I had bragged to on the shuttle bus, turned the corner and stopped with a jolt as she saw us there. There we were, my guru and me, just as I had boasted to her earlier. "I always see her within ten minutes of arriving." Okay, so maybe it was fifteen minutes instead of ten – it was still impressive. After wallowing in, regretting, and then transcending my pettiness and insecurity, I had been vindicated and uplifted by the hand of fate, and with this I felt greatly blessed.