What may I pray for? Myself? Others? - Part 1

Part 1 - Stories

Admittedly, most "praying" people wouldn't think twice about praying for their own needs. After all, "there are no atheists in foxholes" as the saying goes. When in crises, even non-prayers find themselves praying--sometimes making promises if they can get rescued from their crises.

Reminds me of a joke about an Irishman who is desperately looking for a parking place because he's late for an important meeting. He prays, "Lord, if you can find me a parking place, I'll stop drinking." Suddenly, he sees a space opening up, and he prays, "Never mind, Lord, I found one!" (I think that as a child I probably reneged on a few prayers, too!)

My teacher, Swami Kriyananda (1926-2013) describes a kidney stone attack one Sunday morning. He was doubled over with pain but refused to pray for himself, but he was scheduled to give the Sunday morning homily. As the time for the Service approached, though shaking with pain and unable to move, he had the inspiration to pray, "Divine Mother, if you want me to give the Service and not disappoint those who have come today, you'll have to do something about this."

Suddenly and in a flash, the pain vanished. While formerly he was too much pain to even speak, he found that when he went to do the Service he was in too much bliss to speak! And, as he pointed out, it was not because the pain had gone but because of the joy of Divine Mother's caring response. Later he reflected that perhaps She approved of his prayer which was directed on behalf of others!

In his book, "Awaken to Superconsciousness," he tells this story but then adds that he wouldn't expect to hold most people to such a high standard in respect to their personal needs, fears, and desires. Once, when he was a young monk, he had the thought of "wouldn't it be nice" to taste one of those Swiss chocolates he remembered from his childhood growing up in Europe. (This was in the early 1950's when Swiss chocolate wasn't common in American stores.)

What was "sweet" was that on or around his birthday that year, a box of Swiss chocolates showed up from someone who could not have known it was both his birthday and his wish for them. With joy, he shared them with his fellow monks. When God rescues us from fatal harm, well, you can "kinda" expect that, but when a small desire is fulfilled in a way that only God could have known about and fulfilled, well, that's especially touching.

I have tried to live my life in this spirit, though I freely pray for liberation and freedom from delusion. This desire, too, must be fulfilled, Paramhansa Yogananda said! I also pray that if I must reincarnate again, that I find my guru and spiritual path quickly before delusion swallows me up again (or at least delays unnecessarily my journey to Self-realization).

There was a time in the early years of my life at Ananda Village in California, when I felt it was time to move on from the administrative work I was doing at the fledgling community. I wasn't sure what form the next step would take but I had reached the point where no opportunity for change was presenting itself. Given that, at the time, there wasn't anyone else obviously capable of taking my place, it seemed (to me) that I was stuck for a long time to come.

My dilemma was that I didn't want to "ask for myself" or to cause any hardship to the Community. In his famous Yoga Sutras, Patanjali says "what is ours will surely come to us." Thus I was hesitant to speak up for myself to anyone, feeling that if Divine Mother wants me to serve in administrative functions for the rest of my life, well, I guess I'd better embrace it and be happy about it!

Then one day in the 1980's when Padma and I had traveled to our center in Italy (we were with Swami Kriyananda, Ananda's founder, on Ananda business), I felt to share with him my feelings on the matter. We were having a quiet lunch together in Rome at a friend's house and were soon to part ways: we back to California and he on to another leg of a lecture tour. He nodded sympathetically and seemed to agree that a change was needed but nothing was decided or even put into motion as a result. But, interestingly, after that conversation, there soon appeared on the scene a new member who had the precise credentials needed! I had simply stated my case, as it were.

A year ago I had a sudden paralysis of my right hand. It was disconcerting at first. I didn't know what it was or whether it was short-term or permanent. After my initial shock, an inspiration came to me: "This must be my guru's grace!" An improbable thought, perhaps, but it was more than an affirmation: the thought rang with truth.

From that point forward and though I did all the exercises and therapies suggested to me, I let go of any expectation of recovery. It was no "mere" inconvenience. I do constant typing (emails, compositions, planning, etc.) but was limited to one finger typing which for me, as a lifelong very fast typist, was excruciating. Many ordinary tasks were impossible. With my limp hand I'd constantly send objects flying across the room. In my frequent classes I couldn't play the harmonium and had to ask for help. Yet help was there, without any need for me to seek it.

For weeks while struggling to carry on my ordinary activities and conceal, as best I could, my disability, I kept affirming "Guru's grace." Then after six weeks long weeks and only one day before my annual seclusion I found I could move my fingers sufficiently to play the harmonium once again. Within a week or two the paralysis disappeared!

Part 2 - Continued in the blog article: How to Pray for Your Self & Others

Swami Hrimananda....praying that you'll read the next one......:-)

Reflections on our Pilgrimage to Italy!

Padma and I sent this note to our friends and fellow pilgrims going in early October for two weeks to visit the shrines of St. Francis and other saints, visit Rome & Florence, and stay at the Ananda Center near Assisi.

Dear Fellow Pilgrims to Italy,

The time for our departure is soon. We encourage you to pace yourself this next ten or so days. You don't want to get on the airplane exhausted from getting everything in your life caught up or having packed merely the night before!

Make lists, pull out your luggage, start making piles of stuff! When you pack, leave behind a third of it!​​

Hopefully some of you have been reading up on the life of St. Francis and other things related to our travels.

One thought we'd like to share with you has to do with integrating what we experience with our own path. Almost every town in Italy has its patron saint whose body may be deemed incorruptible or whose relics have witnessed miraculous healings. Stories of these saints tell us of lives of great penances, martyrdom, or suffering.

Most of humanity (though not the true saints) during Kali Yuga considered the body as their only reality. Thus it was that the dogma/teaching of the resurrection of the physical body at the end of time made perfect, simple sense and was very appealing to them. The concept of future lives beyond the current one had little appeal to those without imagination, unless perhaps to grant more time to fulfill desires. It is no coincidence that Jesus' last great act was to resurrect his physical body. The deeper message of his resurrection (power of spirit over nature and the promise of our soul’s immortality in God) was simply lost on the Christians of medieval consciousness.

Not surprisingly, one of the most popular and ubiquitous divine graces given to saints of that era was the incorruptibility (after death) of their physical body. Another measure of sanctity (consistent with the consciousness of the times) was the degree of physical suffering. Again, it was no coincidence that Jesus, a great avatar with a dispensation for Kali Yuga, "suffered" on the cross "for our sins."

(Both suffering and incorruptibility found favor in India, too, during Kali Yuga, but India is not our cultural destination.)

How are we, on this upcoming pilgrimage, going to find inspiration from the saints of the medieval era? How can we relate to such lives, so distant not only in time, not only in culture, but in the very manifestation of divine consciousness? 

It is in the Festival of Light, which we read every Sunday, that we find our bridge: "For whereas in the past the coin of man's redemption was pain and suffering, for us, now, the payment has been exchanged for calm acceptance and joy."

Master teaches us and St. Francis showed this in his life, too, that joy in the midst of suffering is the measure of sanctity, not the suffering itself. This joy is not a denial of suffering, nor does it blot it out. But soul joy co-exists in our souls no matter what our body or ego may be experiencing in the realm of maya. Sister Gyanamata, at her death, sinking into the watchful state even as her body was wracked with pain, could only mutter, “Joy, joy, too much joy.”

In Swami Kriyananda’s life, too, we saw dynamically illustrated the co-existence of bliss with physical hardship and the victory of bliss over bodily limitations.

We can find that joy-space-presence as we live more and more in the eternal NOW. It’s like a football player who takes in stride the brutal effects of his sport while, if you or I were to go out in the field, we would be carried out of the game on a stretcher in the first play! The soul sees suffering first as maya and then as but the divine hand (perhaps well disguised).

Master said that evil, Satan, and suffering all play a role in helping us move, as we choose, toward God and toward the truth (that shall make us free). Even Jesus cautioned us not to seek suffering for its own sake: “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

All the true Christian saints illustrated this in their lives. Those whose lives demonstrated states of ecstatic inner communion (superconsciousness) are generally the ones we honor particularly as "in our line."

Even if Kali Yuga consciousness could relate only to the body and its comforts, we, on the threshold of Dwapara and disciples of a great guru, are not so limited.

Thus it is the shrines we will visit will tend to emphasize the miracles and/or the penances performed. As Master's own, we would do well to intuit and unearth the treasure of true joy of which St. Francis and other great saints of his time experienced. St. Francis, even as he was dying and seemingly in great pain, could not contain his joy. For this he was reprimanded by Brother Elias (as being an unseemly posture for a dying saint), the pompous administrator of the now large Franciscan Order. But Francis ignored him.

It is this divine presence that lingers at the shrines and relics of St. Francis, Sister Clare and so many others. Even the great works of art and architecture testify to the victory of Joy over suffering. Kali Yuga was truly a dark time for the average person, yet these saints and the marvels they inspired yet ring with transcendence: the soul of man reaching up to his Creator.

Blessings, Hriman and Padma

Fall 2014 Equinox : A Message of Faith

This evening, Saturday, September 20, 2014, I will share some words on the theme of the Fall Equinox. I write these notes as part of my preparation. My theme is faith.

I have long been struck by the subtle but tangible feeling of upliftment and general energy that surrounds the four points of the solar year which are the two equinoxes and two solstices. I had never noticed them before until 2001 when my wife Padma, inspired by the description in "Autobiography of a Yogi" (by Paramhansa Yogananda) of how his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, celebrated the equinox and solstices, proposed we start the tradition of holding these celebrations here as well (at Ananda in the greater Seattle, WA area).

At that first celebration, September 22, 2001, which took place at the Ananda Community in Lynnwood (a place very much off the beaten path and towards which many first-time visitors seem to get lost enroute), we were standing outside the meditation hall minutes before the celebration service was to begin and no one had arrived! So, a little deflated, we went inside to wait. By 6:10 p.m., the room was full! Ever since then we have found that these celebrations attract many people, often for the first time, or whom we never see throughout the year, otherwise.

In case you are unaware of it, these four points of the solar year represent the passing hours when the sun and earth hover in very specific relationships. Speaking of the northern hemisphere, the two solstices are the points when the sun is "highest" (June 21, summer) in the sky and the hours of daylight are at their height and the point (December 21, winter) when the sun is at its lowest point and daylight hours are the fewest. The Spring (March 21) and Fall (September 21) equinoxes are when the hours of day and night are equal.

On an energetic level and in respect to human consciousness, the summer solstice represents the height of our vitality and creative energies. We are filled with both energy and en-joy-ment as we work in hopeful expectation of "profitable" and "productive" results (come Fall). The Fall equinox, we are filled with gratitude for the harvest as we also introspect upon the fruits of our labor as to how to improve our efforts in the period to come. In the Fall, we know that the winter is coming and we must gather, store, and protect our harvest to sustain us through the dark months ahead. We draw upon our faith that by our efforts and by divine grace, we will be sustained as we endure challenges and difficulties.

The Winter solstice celebrates the fact that soon the sun will now begin its journey of return. In the darkness is born new life, in the darkness of the womb where the seed fertilizes the embryo, in the ground where seeds lie, seemingly infertile but awaiting the Spring, and in our hearts where, at the center of our trials and difficulties, there resides the light of truth and of love. It is in our hearts and in the midst of the darkness, that the Christ child of love and wisdom is reborn. In this universal love which is the essence of life, unseen and in the apparent darkness of non-material realities (consciousness, itself), we celebrate our fellowship, our families, and our kinship in God.

The Spring equinox is a celebration of hope in the most obvious way. The new buds of growth, the beautiful and fresh flowers, and the birth of new life offers to us the promise of redemption, rebirth, and hope for lasting happiness. Life is reborn for those who have planted seeds of hope, faith and goodness and who have nourished those seeds with the sunlight of wisdom and the water of love.

Each of these four celebrations affirms our kinship as children of God. Whether recumbent or active, whether hopeful or retiring, sensitive souls rejoice in the fellowship of all life which has sprung from the unseen but intuited divine presence which resides in all.

I intend to share a little of a remarkable life, that of Louis Zamperini. The book and soon-to-be released movie of the same name, "Unbroken," chronicles a life of great struggle which, endured with faith, hope and vitality, proved victorious. Louis, born in 1917, and against great odds, became an Olympic runner and met Adolph Hitler in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics. In World War II, his bomber crashed in the Pacific and he endured 47 days at sea, harassed constantly by sharks and strafed by Japanese warplanes, floating without food or water. Picked up near the Marshall Islands by the Japanese, he endured torture, beatings, starvation and indignities beyond imagination until the conclusion of that war. Hailed a hero upon his return to California, the toll of indignity and torture held him captive until, hearing Billy Graham one day in Los Angeles, the dark night of his prayers in captivity blossomed into flowers of forgiveness.

In October, 1950, he went to Japan to meet, once again, his (now imprisoned) tormentors and to offer forgiveness. He spent the rest of his life in service to others. In 1981, he carried the Olympic torch in Japan (quite near his former POW camp). He died last July 2, 2014. A movie, directed by Angelina Jolie, will be released this December.

Our lives are lives of privilege, compared to what Louie endured and that of many millions throughout world today. Our privilege grants us the opportunity to transcend comfort and to seek the "truth that shall make you free." I've often wondered how and why some people, "....one," Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, "out of a thousand," turn within, look up and seek God in truth and in right action. I think it is because the seed of faith has been planted in our hearts, nourished in our bosom, often silently, most likely in past lives, and then begins to sprout when conditions are right.

Jesus told the story that "in a field two are working, one is taken and the other left behind." By this he means, that among people, otherwise identical outwardly in appearance or activity, perhaps one will find his faith awakened and will "leave" the field (meaning leave his mundane existence, if not in actuality, then in spirit). We never know the time or the place when God, "like a thief in the night," will call us from within.

Fall is an excellent time to go on retreat; to take personal and private seclusion: even, if, just for day when no one else is around. Take the time to reflect upon the harvest of your life, the seeds you have planted in this life: what blossoms and fruits will they bear? Is this fruit what you seek? Pray for the inspiration to be guided and the strength to be lead by faith from within.

Perhaps I see you this evening!

Blessings,

Hriman