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SHARON JANIS

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Chapter Thirty-Eight

CARDIFF BY THE SEA

 

I'D RECENTLY RECEIVED this inner command to "share what you've learned," and assumed that part of fulfilling this command would be to get my book published so it could be shared, even though I wasn't sure exactly how to go about doing this.

I purchased an alphabetical list of spiritual and new age publishers, and skipped forward to the "B's." I choose five publishers from the list, and faxed my two-page book description to them.   One of these companies was Blue Dove Press: a small publisher of spiritual books by and about saints and sages of all traditions, along with other spiritual works.   The owner of this publishing company personally called me on the phone after receiving my query letter.   His name was Jeff.

"You know, I get about fifty query letters and submissions a week, but yours really stood out for me."   We ended up having a vibrant and enthusiastic phone conversation about my book and many other spiritual topics. Jeff offered to send me some of his books, one of which was In Quest of God, a spiritual autobiography by the Indian sage, Papa Ramdas.

Now, I hadn't read many books over the previous fifteen years, except for some study of ancient scriptures and writings by my gurus, however, when the Blue Dove Press package arrived, I picked up this book by Papa Ramdas, and began to read.   The stories were interesting and well written, since Ramdas was not only considered as an elevated saintly soul, but had also been a Shakespeare scholar in his youth. Even aside from the writing quality, something else began to happen inside of me as I read about Ramdas's adventures as a wandering spiritual seeker (and finder) in India.   His extraordinary faith in God and his vision of God in every single place he went and in every person he met became contagious to me, just by reading his words.   Ramdas's experiences were a tangible demonstration of the highest truths that my guru had taught - to see and experience God in everything and everyone, and to have the awareness of this entire universe as a play of divine, supreme, consciousness.  

Papa Ramdas had also been friends with my first guru and my guru's guru, and I found that reading his experiences and thoughts was helping to uplift my own awareness into new and expanded vistas of spiritual discipleship to the universal God, the universal Guru.   In the ashram, the teaching was also to see God in everything and everyone, however in practice, most devotees and disciples were focused mostly on the form of our Guru as a representation of God. Part of my growth experiences after leaving the ashram was to expand that higher vision and devotion to the Universal God, the Universal Guru, and this book by Papa Ramdas helped to lift me up to a new level of this awareness.

For Ramdas, every event was an opportunity to interact with his beloved Ram, which is a Sanskrit name for God.   If someone treated him badly, it was Ram testing him; if someone was kind toward him, it was God's very kindness expressing through and as that person.   (CLICK HERE to read a story about Papa Ramdas and a thief).

The power of this first person narrative helped to bring the teachings of my own guru alive for me in a new way.   I began to contemplate my own relationship to this universe, and started to pay more attention to my own inner dialogues and experiences of God.

I was about halfway through Papa Ramdas's book one evening, when I sat for meditation and very naturally settled deep inside myself.   Something broke open inside of my being, and within that broken shell was a new level of connection with the divine. As I sat in this meditative awareness, for the second time, I heard an inner command in the form of internally audible words.

"You should move to San Diego."  

This instruction was a bit of a surprise, since I'd only visited San Diego once for a few hours while Suze and I were producing our video and filming their local devotees singing the theme song in hot air balloons.   I had been thinking of moving from Los Angeles after the earthquake and since becoming ill, but San Diego hadn't been on my list.

Yet, the dialogue continued as clear as could be.   "You are to move to San Diego.   You'll find a great house.   A pet will come to you.   You should do some work with Jeff."

Jeff was pretty much the only person I knew in San Diego, and we'd only met on the phone a week earlier.   Not knowing how he would respond, I phoned Jeff the next day, and told him that I'd just had an inner command to move to San Diego and do some work with him.    Well, he was quite thrilled.   It turns out that he'd been inspired to start Blue Dove Press after spending two years on a somewhat fringe spiritual path, which consisted of walking around the country barefoot and wearing a white robe, as a penniless pilgrim.  

During Jeff's pilgrim journeys, he'd met John and Ann Rush, who ran the Peace Pilgrim foundation.   Peace had been a penniless wanderer for nearly thirty years, beginning in 1953 at age forty-four.   Jeff joined the Peace Pilgrim foundation as a live-in, volunteer worker.   The foundation published Peace's books and tapes, and offered everything to anyone without charge, relying on offered donations, as was in harmony with Peace Pilgrim's belief that spiritual wisdom should not be sold, but given.

While serving for four years at the Peace Pilgrim foundation, Jeff learned how to publish books, and decided to start his own publishing company to share wisdom of the saints and sages.  His first book had been the autobiography of Papa Ramdas that had affected my awareness so profoundly.   Jeff ran the publishing company out of his small apartment, and had published a batch of excellent books, but had reached a point where he was just about to give up on the dream of this saints and sages based publishing company.  

Jeff had moved to San Diego to start this company, and found himself alone and lonely.   He'd met some good spiritual folks, but they didn't really want to spend much social time with him, since he wasn't on the same wavelength as most people – which was something I could relate to.   Jeff actually had fewer social skills than I did.   I always chuckled over how hard God must have searched to find someone who dressed so badly that I would feel obliged to help him put together a new wardrobe.

When I gave Jeff the news about my inner command to move to San Diego, he was very happy, and offered to find a place for me to stay for a few days while I looked for a place to live.   The message had come on Tuesday night, and on Thursday morning, I drove down for a four-day weekend.  

The first place I went to was Jeff's office/apartment.   He opened the door, and we went right away for a walk to a nearby Indian restaurant.   In fact, it was a whole Indian mini-mall, and the location of San Diego's Shri Mandir Hindu temple.   So the first building I stepped into after receiving this inner command was this Hindu Temple.  

Out from a back door came a truly beautiful being - a Brahmin priest, Pandit Raghavendra (pandit is a term of respect for a spiritual scholar).   His whole demeanor spoke of someone with great spiritual attainment, peace, and kindness, and his face shown with a beautiful smile of welcome.   Within a few minutes, we were sitting together before the statues, chanting Vedic verses that I had learned by heart many years earlier during ashram life.   Pandit Raghavendra corrected a couple of my pronunciations, and I felt like I'd just entered a magical wonderland.   Talk about an auspicious beginning to my new life!  

I felt even more convinced of the divine origin of this inner command to move to San Diego.

That evening, Jeff showed me to the house I'd be staying at for the four days.   Lo and behold, it was the home of Prem and Sheela Trikannad.   Prem was the grandson of Papa Ramdas, who had written the book that had inspired this deep opening to communicating with God.   In fact, every Thursday evening for over thirty years, Prem and his wife would open their home and their large meditation room to the Indian community and lovers of the Indian community, who would gather informally but respectfully for an evening of chanting and devotional singing called "bhajan night."   Well, guess what day it was?   Yes, Thursday, which is also considered to be the day of the guru, the power that bestows grace.

Jeff and I arrived just before bhajan night was to begin, and when it did, I was treated to some of the most heartfelt singing I'd ever heard - from Prem, Papa Ramdas's grandson, who was the main singer.   He sounded like an angel; his voice almost quivering with devotion, as he sang these powerful and melodic songs of Indian saints - bhajans - that I'd so enjoyed learning and singing back in the ashram.   As soon as Prem sang the first song, my love for these bhajans was reawakened, and that love only grew stronger as time went on, with more and more Thursday evening bhajans to enjoy for many years to come before Prem and Sheela moved back to India.

 

I'd heard that the altar in the satsang meditation room was very powerful and that some had experienced great blessings while praying before it, so I sat in front of all these representations of saints and deities and asked the one God behind all these forms to help me find the right place to live.  

Then I spent four days looking, driving, and going through newspapers, magazines, and lists of rental properties, driving all around San Diego County.   Sometimes you have to go through a lot of effort just to create a space for grace to enter.

On my final day in San Diego, I began driving around looking at properties at 4:30 am, and then went to the meditation center for their Sunday morning chant.   There, I saw a couple that I'd first met on Friday, while asking if anyone knew of a good place to rent.   On Friday, the woman had said that their next-door neighbor had just told her that he was going to move out of his rented house.  But as soon as she told me this, but the woman's husband had shushed her and told me that the property was awful, and something I definitely wouldn't like.  So, I'd dropped the idea of that place and moved on with my search throughout the weekend.

Now, on Sunday, I was getting more desperate and told the couple that I'd like to look at this awful place anyway, just in case it would do, at least temporarily.   I followed the man's car into what could only be described as paradise - Cardiff by the Sea, a small surfing town north of San Diego, with beautiful lagoons, beaches, and rolling hills.   It was breathtaking to drive into this area, and just as exciting to see the sweet little house that was available for rent next door to this devotee couple.   It was just perfect.   In fact, when it was available for rent previously, there had been a waiting list of about one hundred people who wanted to rent it.  

I wondered why on earth this man would have described it as being so awful.   It turns out that this couple was friends with another couple who had apparently heard the negative rumors about me, and the man, who had never met me before, apparently didn't want me to be their next-door neighbor.   But his very sweet wife had offered up the information, and now he was stuck showing me the place.

Nobody was home at this small house, and the window shades were all drawn, but I decided without question that I would want to live in this little house if it were in my budget.   I left a note on the door, and soon after heard from the fellow living there.   John hadn't yet told the landlords that he was leaving, and we decided that he would also tell them that he had someone interested in renting the property.   As we spoke on the phone, I mentioned that his next-door neighbors had shown me the house, and he asked if I was into all that yoga and meditation stuff that they were into.   I said, "Yes," and John suggested that I might not want to let the landlords know about that because he thought they were right wing conservatives.   I replied, "Well, you know, I don't have to go to meet them chanting 'Hare Rama, Hare Krishna'!"

The house rental was within my budget and had not yet been advertised or rented.  It was the beginning of May, and as an act of faith, I gave thirty-days notice on my Hollywood rental.  Some manifestation teachers such as Florence Schovel Shinn, who taught in the early 20^th century, suggest that taking a step of faith like this can be very helpful in producing your desired effects. Of course, it can also leave you in a pickle.

Even though I understood the power of the mind to create, I wasn't really too into using manifestation techniques.  There just weren't that many thing I wanted wholeheartedly, and when there had been – such as my wish offer an Emmy award I'd won to my guru – then the universe in general seemed to be generous with me.

Along with my monastic ashram training of softening the desire-based will into a state of openness, trust, and surrender, the realization I'd first come upon during college stayed with me.  While exploring my consciousness in my university dorm room, I had come to the conclusion that my best course of action was to ask that my will be in harmony with the universal will, rather than the other way around.

But I did want this house very much and was willing to communicate that wish to the universe by giving notice on my current rental in Los Angeles.  Then I drove to Yorba Linda, a fairly conservative area of Southern California, to meet these people who would hopefully be my new landlords.  

A very nice woman opened the door, and I introduced myself.   She responded, "I'm Prem."  

My brain did a twist, because Prem is a Hindi word that means love.   It was also the same name as the grandson of Papa Ramdas, with whom I had been staying during the weekend when I found the house.   My mind was intrigued as I replied, "Oh, Prem. That means love."

Prem was surprised that I knew the origin and translation of her name, and invited me into her house for what was surely one of the most grace filled experiences I'd ever had, especially due to the surprise factor.   It seems that John had been quite wrong in his assessment of this family as extreme right wing conservatives.   Perhaps he had that idea because both husband and wife worked for the local school system, and he'd only lived in their house for six months, so hadn't gotten to know the landlords very well.   

It turns out that Prem's father, who had originally owned the rental house, was a spiritual teacher and philosopher from India, who had come to the United States in the early twentieth century to teach spiritual wisdom in the west.  

Manek Anklesaria was a close friend with many famous Indian spiritual and political figures.   Prem brought out a stash of autographed photos and signed letters to him from Paramahamsa Yogananda, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others.  

By now, I was swooning with the unexpected blessings - this rental home had been owned by a spiritual sage!   Then Prem's son came down with his set of India tabla drums, and Prem, who enthusiastically taught video courses for their local high-school, filmed me while I gave Adam a tabla lesson.   “The Gods” were surely smiling on all of us that day!

I did end up getting to rent the house, and moved in a few weeks later.   While awakening on my first day there and walking along the beach to Yogananda's beautiful hermitage and gardens - a beach officially called "Swami's Beach" — I just shook my head with amazement that I would get to live somewhere so breathtakingly beautiful, and with such a great spiritual energy.   I kept thinking, “I've died and gone to heaven,” although with the occasional R-rated expletive tossed in after “I've” for punctuation.

My mind was stunned by the grace of all that had unfolded since I received that inner command to move to San Diego just about one month earlier. Here I'd gone through a year of illness and so many other challenges, and now I got to live in this peaceful paradise.  This would be a perfect place to finish writing my book, and it was right down the block from where Yogananda penned the spiritual classic “Autobiography of a Yogi.”  

I happily settled into my new life in Cardiff by the Sea.

 

 

CLICK HERE to view more beautiful photos
of Cardiff by the Sea

 

 

On to Chapter Thirty-Nine

Back to The Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

                  Prologue

Chapter 1: Awakening

Chapter 2: Never to Return

Chapter 3: I Chose This?

Chapter 4: Through the Years

Chapter 5: Exploring the Unconscious

Chapter 6: Faith-Healer

Chapter 7: Hidden Persuaders

Chapter 8: The Threshold of Life

Chapter 9: When the Student is Ready

Chapter 10: Magical Meeting

Chapter 11: Toward the One

Chapter 12: Who is Shiva?

Chapter 13: Destiny Calls

Chapter 14: Winter Wonderland

Chapter 15: The Happy Pauper

Chapter 16: This Karmic Dance

Chapter 17: Stoking the Inner Fire

Chapter 18: The Fruits of Surrender

Chapter 19: That Gracious Glance

Chapter 20: How Could He Be Gone?

Chapter 21: From Heart to Heart

Chapter 22: Get a Job

Chapter 23: Smash the Idol

Chapter 24: Clothed in Devotion

Chapter 25: Nemesis

Chapter 26: Who Are You Calling Jad?

Chapter 27: A Perfect Mistake

Chapter 28: She Still Thinks She Did It!

Chapter 29: Taming the Beast

Chapter 30: Undo What You Have Done

Chapter 31: The Great Guiding Force

Chapter 32: The Wish Fulfilling Tree

Chapter 33: Where is the Key?

Chapter 34: The Hollywood Chronicles

Chapter 35: A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to Nirvana

Chapter 36: Love, Betrayal, and the Unseen Hand of God

Chapter 37: An Inner Command

Chapter 38: Cardiff by the Sea

Chapter 39: Miracles and Great Beings

Chapter 40: Shiva's Fiery Dance

Chapter 41: A Shifting Path

Chapter 42: Cheering up Nine Swamis

Chapter 43: Death Threat

Chapter 44: Spirituality For Dummies

Chapter 45: A Real Angel

Chapter 46: Send in the Clowns

Chapter 47: Dispassion and Death's Door

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy Additional Works by Sharon Janis as part of the
Night Lotus Offering of Multimedia Spiritual Resources

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(All but Spirituality For Dummies are available to enjoy online in their entirety):

 

 

 

Watch a short video about Sharon and Spirituality For Dummies