Random Thoughts on Meher Baba

Mostly Away from the Computer

2012-01-13T14:29:00.000-08:00

I've been away from the computer recently, after getting a part-time job that requires I use the computer all morning.

The Baba dreams continue -- sometimes about Baba, sometimes about the Meher Spiritual Center. Odd though, that I never dream about Meherabad or Meherazad. However, in the last dream I had about the Meher Spiritual Center, Bhau was living in an attic room in a building there, and I went up and visited him, and we talked about when we first met in 1984. In that dream, the Original Kitchen was high up on a hill, and the lake seemed far, far below. It was almost like looking down a bowl in the high mountains, to a little mountain lake. There were some children down in the lake, and I saw one go under water, and I was concerned that the other children were trying to drown him, but then I relaxed thinking, "that kind of bullying doesn't happen here." There was also some confusion about the room my wife and I were staying in. Someone else was already there. That's all I remember of that dream.

In the last dream I remember having of Baba, he was alive and in a room like an elementary school cafeteria. He was signing books, though not with his regular signature; he was just swiping the pen across the page. I thought, "cool, I can get a book signed by Meher Baba!" But he looked over at me with a suffering, pleading look that said, "no, please don't" It's the only dream I've had of him where he really seemed to be in pain, and I was very startled and concerned, even in the dream, and I sat back down and stayed where I was.

It so happens that I had been keeping an eye out for Meher Baba items on Ebay through a saved search. I would get excited on the rare occasion that a signed copy of God Speaks came up for sale, though, given my limited budget, I was never even able to come close in the bidding. After that dream, I deleted my saved search, and I haven't searched for Meher Baba items on Ebay since. It's not about sadras, sandals, and signatures after all. Chances are, the dream had nothing to do with my Ebay searching, but just in case it was a direct order to lay off, or even worse that such searching for artifacts was creating some sort of suffering, I thought I should discontinue. It's not often that I get the chance to feel like I may be obeying a direct request from Baba.

Framing Photographs

2011-06-28T09:33:00.000-07:00

We are back from our trip to the Meher Spiritual Center. It was so nice to be there again. The bliss of being at the place is impossible to describe, so I'm not even going to try. We saw many old friends, including Jeff Wolverton and Bryan West, and made some new ones. I also met Bill Le Page and enjoyed his talks in the Original Kitchen, and one nice formal talk in the Meeting Place.

One thing that's been haunting me since our trip to India is the grief involved with Love -- at least with our trying to love. I saw that with Bill when he was describing how they really didn't know how great Baba's suffering was from those accidents and how great Baba's Love was to bring him all the way out to Australia for a handful of lovers. I saw it in India in Mehera's room, in the spot where she stood looking out the window toward the Umar tree. And I saw it very forcefully in the stone on Merwan's floor, where he pounded his head to relieve him from the suffering involved in coming back into creation. It was also there in Eruch's voice, in a video we saw at Meherabad, when he speaks of his failure to really love Baba as he should be loved. (At the end of a story about how he got upset with Baba for trying to get into some sort of medicine for his stomach after Eruch told him to wait). Eruch, in the video, pointed at Mohammed, walking with his body bent at a ninety degree angle, and said, "there is a real lover of God."

So I continue to feel drawn into this grief, though I don't fully understand it.

While there, we also spent a small fortune -- at least for us -- at Sheriar Books. I've always loved the picture of Baba sitting on the steps of the Manzil e Meem in 1922. They've never been able to track down a small photo for me, so on this trip I purchased the 20" by 24" print of it. It arrived yesterday. I planned to go down to Hobby Lobby or somewhere and buy a frame for it, but it came with so many warnings about archival this and that from Hermes, that I started researching the proper framing of photographs online and learned enough to know that I should hand it over to a professional. I bicycled it over to Frontier Frames here in Santa Fe this morning. In the process, I learned that archival quality framing does not come cheap, but I believe the end result will be worth it.

Thanks to everyone at the Meher Spiritual Center for keeping Baba's Home in the West as such a wonderful place to stay. We all hope to return soon.

Beloved

2011-06-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

Beloved,
You are the monster
Under the bed
And you are the comforting angel
I am still
Just a child.

The Awakener Video

2011-05-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

The Awakener, which has been up in its entirety on Google Video for a while, has made its way over to YouTube. I don't know whether it is up with permission of the producers of the film or not, though I believe they must be aware of it, if they aren't also the ones who put it out there for free.

The Universal Work Unfolding

2011-05-11T08:32:00.001-07:00

I've always had a feeling that what Paul Hawken describes in his many presentations is the result of Meher Baba's Universal Work, though perhaps these stirrings of it on the gross plane is the just the tip of the iceberg. I heard him speak, on the radio, of a great awakening taking place in the world comparable to the great peace that occurred after Jesus' advent. I even sent him a copy of Charles Haynes's book The Awakener, though it was never acknowledged.

Barely-Remembered Dream

2011-04-29T08:04:00.001-07:00

I was traveling with Baba. He turned to me and asked me about something embarrassing, some secret sexual desire or something along those lines. I told him, because what could I do? He knew it all already, and he nodded his head and waved his hand as if to say, "Don't worry about it." I had a feeling that not only was it all a dream, but it was Baba's dream, and I really didn't need to worry.

Later on in the dream, I was trying to do something like locate someone Baba had known in the twenties or thirties. I had tracked him down, but he had a different name. Somehow the identification was linked to a set of possessions -- all I can remember is an old Vespa-type scooter. I kept trying to make the connection between the person Baba used to know and the person I had located. I knew Baba would be pleased to see this person again, and I wanted to bring him into Baba's presence, (I have the sense it was still the same dream, and I was still traveling with Baba, and he was nearby), but somehow the identification of the person was proving difficult, and I was struggling to put the pieces together. I almost felt, after I woke up, that I was like a Tibetan Lama trying to identify a Tulku. The possessions were in my mind both like a film of the person with Baba in the past, and laid out on a piece of paper like an inventory of images.

Dream of Tukaram

2011-04-24T06:09:00.000-07:00

I feel somewhat apologetic that I'm using this blog as a repository of dreams. It doesn't make very interesting reading for Baba lovers in general, but I want someplace to put these because I forget them so quickly.

Last night, I had very complex dream, but in the middle of it, there was a giant enthroned in a tribal community of some sort. Everyone was terrified. He looked like the type of giant who would reach down and eat someone in one bite, and he was flanked by bodyguards who, while not as large as him, were giants in their own right.

I walked up to the throne and said, "Jai Baba" to the giant. The giant transformed into a handsome man in a white turban and descended the steps from the throne.

"I am Tukaram," he said, "and we were friends in ages past."

We embraced awkwardly.

That portion of the dream was in the midst of some great mytho-poetic epic. Tukaram was the third of a series of three giants that I was trying to deal with. I had an elder/guide/teacher, but he had been trapped in a dungeon during most of my journey, and at one point, I was trying to explain to him all that had happened, and how I thought it connected to some sort of prophecy -- none of which I can remember at this point.

And the whole thing was at the center of a series of very silly dreams -- I was camping with my son, but I kept forgetting the tent and sleeping bag. I was feeding pickles to something that lived under a compost pile. I also had books for sale, but they were also buried in the compost pile. People kept coming to the cave where I was sitting, digging them out of the compost, and giving me money for them. (Zorba the Greek was the only book I specifically remember being purchased).

Why would I dream of Tukaram? What role does he play down there in my unconscious? I hardly know anything about him. I certainly don't believe it was a divine visitation from an old friend -- that's sort of like the joke that people who claim to remember their past lives were always someone famous, never a sewer worker of a rag picker. But it's a curious dream none-the-less.

Dream about Bhau

2011-04-13T07:02:00.001-07:00

Last night I dreamed that I was sitting on an outdoor stairwell of an apartment complex with Bhau. For some reason, I was supposed to be helping Bhau with his English, (which is strange, because Bhau’s English is fine, though my kids struggle with his accent). I didn’t have anything to say. “I’m sorry Bhau,” I said, “I’m just not a talkative person.” A man and his wife came out of an apartment, and the man was speaking so fast, his words became a stream of sound. “I guess I could be like that,” I said.

We got up suddenly and moved to another stairwell. “Like a pair of ravens,” I said, “we move from place to place for no reason at all.”

“Sometimes when you have a thorn in your skin,” Bhau replied, “you have to use another thorn to draw it out.”

I was closing my eyes and imagining Baba — more bright afterimages. I was going to remark to Bhau that I felt that Baba was everywhere, but I knew that was a nonsense statement. Baba IS everywhere. There is no reason to say it, though it’s frustrating, it’s like air, trying to see air. It’s all around us, it moves in us and is part of us. Trying to see God is like straining with all your might to see air.

At some point, my family was with us, and Zeb found a Budgerigar on the ground. We moved up to another set of steps. The budgie said, “hello Mygy!” I remembered an ad in the paper that Mygy was lost. I was happy that we had found him, but my son was sad that we had to call his owner.

And that was all for that dream.

One of My Favorite Spiritual Songs

2011-03-31T07:11:00.000-07:00

Life of Brian Dream

2011-03-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

Here's a short one, and a funny one. In a dream last night, someone had told me that I was the Avatar. I was trying to get away from everyone. "I can't possibly be the Avatar," I was telling someone, "I only experience being this person. I have no direct perception of spirituality at all. I would not even be able to begin the Universal Work." I remember walking down a hill to a playground and wandering around looking for Eruch. I thought that maybe he would tell me what I should do about the situation.

It's a very odd dream. The only trigger I could think of for having it was I've been thinking about how overwhelmed Merwan must have been with that kiss, and how does the reintegration with creation happens. I'm intrigued by Meher Baba's conditional phrasing in messages such as "The Highest of the High." "If I am the Highest of the High, my will is law, my wish governs the law, and my Love sustains the universe."

I do not think that conditional "if" is there because of any self-doubt on Baba's part, but I also think the dual experience of being both an individual man and simulataneously consciously one with everything, and pile on top of that having the role of Avatar, must be completely overwhelming in a way. The state of a Perfect Master must be like a bright flare burning between the worlds, and the maintenance of that state must take a great deal of the divine power, though the three worlds themselves are nothing but divine imagination... But of course, I'm just guessing about things of which I have no idea. It's overwhelming even to consider.

Trip to India Part 5, Amritapuri to Mumbai

2011-03-26T10:22:00.001-07:00

It's time to get back to the thread of my story before I forget too many things. There Zeb and I are at Amritapuri, wandering around bored, and trying not to complain about the blaring of the bhajans. They are, after all, spiritual songs, but I found I liked them about like reggae: one song a day.

Zeb’s mood spiraled down. At one point, the Arabian Sea was very storm-tossed. A few waves overreached the sea wall and flooded the area around the Ayurveda building, and word came down from Amma that there was a Tsunami warning and everyone housed in the Ayurveda building had to move, so we switched from our room to a room in one of the towers. We liked that room better, and the excitement provided some diversion. I kept asking if it was a *real* tsunami warning or *just* a warning from Amma. No one seemed to know. I was also the only one around there who wasn’t an Amma follower, and since my obedience is bound to Meher Baba, I was more frustrated about the move than those around me.

I never did find out if there was an actual warning, but the flooding never materialized. Though we only had another two nights left at the ashram, we were required to move back to our old room. It seems that Amma keeps people jumping around as much as Baba used to.

The last day, I decided to do something special with Zeb. I needed, specifically, to get out of our pattern of his begging for chocolate and soda and my getting frustrated with him. I also thought it would be nice for Laura to spend the last day at the ashram without her bored men shuffling around. A friend of ours, Krishnan Venkatesh, had spent part of his sabbatical at Amma’s ashram, and he suggested to me in an email that we visit Kayamkulam Palace. That didn’t sound exactly like a lively day with a nine-year-old, but it was the best I had to go on. Laura decided that she would go along with us, and that meant that Sadie would have to go too. She was disgruntled because she wanted to spend the last day with her friend.

We crossed the bridge to the rickshaws and got a ride to the Palace.

It was closed on Tuesday.

The driver, who didn’t speak particularly good English, said something about taking us to a temple of Shiva. He drove us to a clearing in the center of a town, but there didn’t seem to be a temple there. We weren’t sure what we were supposed to see, or what we were supposed to be doing. We looked at the driver, and he looked back at us.

“I take you,” he said, searching for the words, “boat ride. Clean water. Not motors. Monkeys.”

That sounded OK. There is a photograph in our guidebook of a boat ride through Keralan backwaters. A man is poling a boat down a dark, narrow stream. I imagined such a stream overarched by trees, with monkeys playing in the branches.

“How far?” I asked him.

“Twenty-five kilometers,” he answered.

“That’s only about fifteen miles,” I thought to myself. That can’t take long.

We took off in the auto-rickshaw, the four of us crammed together in the back seat.

The ride went on and on. We were plunging deeper and deeper into the unknown. I kept looking off to the side of the road for some indication that we were going to be near a place that might have boats, but I saw no water.

Finally, we pull through a town and park by a temple. We unfold ourselves from the back seat and stare about in confusion. The rickshaw driver motions us to the temple. It is a very impressive, open-air affair. To the right, is a pavilion with one person singing into a microphone. In the center, there is a small building. We follow the driver around the building. He looks for a moment, and then points.

Yes, there is a monkey. Someone has been cracking coconuts, and the monkey is eating one. There are also a couple of monkeys in a tree.

“Where are the boats?” we are thinking.

We stand, for a long time, contemplating the monkeys.

“Boats!” the driver remarks and waves us along after him.

We follow him down a long set of stairs. Zeb starts to worry about his shoes, left behind at the entrance to the temple area.

At the bottom of the stairs we find, not a scenic Keralan Backwater, but a large lake. We theorize it is a reservoir. Maybe that is why it is so clean, and there are no motors. Two covered boats rest on the shore. The driver talks to the boatman. Three-hundred rupees for an hour.

We’ve come this far. We get in the boats. The boatman pulls slowly away from shore, propelling his boat with oars that look as if they have ping-pong paddles lashed onto the end. There’s not much surface there to propel the craft.

We move very slowly out onto this large expanse of water. Sadie’s bored. Zeb is hungry.

“Look! look over there,” I shout. “It’s a duck!”

We all watch the duck.

We move farther out onto the water all wondering the same thing: how long is this going to last?

The boat launch slowly recedes from us. About forty-five minutes into trip, it looks like we are going to disappear around a bend in the shore. Thankfully, the boatmen turns the boat and begins to head back.

Then the wind comes up. We are moving more slowly than the cows that are tethered along the shoreline.

“Tell me a story,” Zeb asks.

So I tell the story of creation from God Speaks. We go from the original whim, through all the stages of gas, stone, vegetable, worm, fish, bird, animal, to man. We go through involution. We talk about the first master, and the Avatar’s descent. We talk about Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and Meher Baba. I exhaust myself talking.

“Tell it to me again,” he asks.

Finally, we approach the shore. A few men are washing their elephant. That provides us with a distraction for the last twenty minutes of the boat ride.

“Six-hundred rupees,” the rickshaw driver says, “he says he took you out for two hours.”

I can’t really argue with that.

Our shoes are still waiting for us at the temple entrance. We begin the ride back, and the rickshaw driver pulls over frequently to ask directions. We feel nervous, but the ride back is much shorter. He must have been lost on the way to the boat ride.

I have no idea what temple it was we visited, nor what that body of water was that we traveled on for those two hours. It is all in the hands of God.

That night, Zeb has a complete meltdown. We’re back in our old room in the Ayurveda building. Zeb has had enough. He packs his bag. “You don’t care about me,” he screams. “I’m just going to leave.” However, he continues to shout and cry. The ceilings are open at the top. Laura keeps whispering, “everyone can hear you.” “I don’t care,” he shouts.

Somehow, I cajole him out of the building with his packed backpack. We go down toward the seawall, and I sit under a palm tree. At first, Zeb is just angry, then he begins to sob. The pressure of traveling in India has just been too much for this sensitive nine-year-old. (Remarkably, he frequently talks about going back now, “but only to Meherabad.”) “There’s nothing for kids to do here,” he complains between sobs.

“I took you to do something special just today,” I retort.

“That was boring,” he wails.

“Yes it was,” I reply and laugh.

I begin to retell the story of the whole trip, as I set it out above, complete with pantomime. Soon we are both laughing. We’re laughing so hard that tears are running down our cheeks when Laura comes out to find us.

Zeb shoulders his pack and comes back to the room to sleep one last night in Amritapuri.

The train ride back to Mumbai went straight up the coast. I wished that we could stop and see the famous beaches of Goa. This time, we are seated across the aisle from each other, Zeb and I in a set of four seats and Laura and Sadie in the set of two. It’s not a good combination. Sadie and Zeb hang out in the top bunks and fight across the aisle with each other. Zeb’s constantly hungry and doesn’t want to eat the train food. I buy lots of Cheetoes at the railway platforms to try to keep him from complaining about being hungry the whole time. There is also a fried, donut shaped, cornmeal and peppers thing that he likes. Laura and I try to swallow our embarrassment at our ill-behaved children and enjoy the scenery. I wonder if the kids would have had a better time in the cheaper compartments, where there were more children. Maybe the 2AC compartments just aren’t convivial enough for young children.

One of our seat mates is a young man with a short beard and is carrying a long cardboard tube. I wonder if he is an architect or an artist. He sees me reading Meher Baba’s discourses and asks who he is. We talk a while about Baba, and he borrows my book and reads the discourse on Love. He gets off the train at Goa.

“God bless you,” he says, getting off the train. I get the definite impression that he is thinking of our struggles to keep our children happy, or at least quiet, when he says it.

The scenery along the coast is amazing. We pass along the tops of the mountains, and we go through long tunnels. Off in the distance there are waterfalls tumbling down incredible heights. All of the water from the monsoons is pouring toward the sea. We are held up for several hours in one small station as they clear a landslide from the tracks.

It is late at night when we arrive in Mumbai.

Living

2011-03-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

Waking one morning in tears:
"I must do whatever the Beloved asks."
"The Beloved," came the answer,
"Only asks that you live this life."
It is this living
Without you
That is so hard.

More dreaming.

2011-03-05T14:12:00.000-08:00

In the middle of another dream last night, I dreamed that I saw Baba in front of me constantly, like a blue image burned on my retina, the way one sees an after-image of the sun.

June Myrtle Beach Visit

2011-02-14T07:57:00.000-08:00

We've managed to clear up all the residual debts from traveling to India, and it looks like we will be able to head east by train this June and come by the Meher Spiritual Center for a few days. It will be good to return. Since my first visit in 1984, I have always longed to be there. Hopefully, Zeb will be a little more mature and a little more quiet when it is appropriate to be so than last time. Plus, my wife will be with me this time, so I will have more of an opportunity to reflect and attend events without being the sole shusher and entertainer of the children. Zebediah, by the way, frequently remarks how much he misses Meherabad and wants to return there. I don't know if we'll ever be able to put the money together again to return to India, but his desire to return motivates me as a parent to try to return to India at some point.

Amartithi

2011-01-30T19:30:00.000-08:00

I've been watching a little bit of the live streaming from Amartithi. Thank you to everyone who makes that possible. I may try to stay awake to watch the fifteen minutes of silence, though I'm usually sound asleep by then.

Dreams on the past two nights: I dreamed I had twelve rod shaped things -- no idea whatsoever as to what they could be or represent, even within the dream itself -- Baba took nine of them and left me with three. "Why did you leave these three for me Baba? What am I supposed to do with them?"

Last night I dreamed I had a Facebook message from someone worried about the apocalypse. I was trying to write him back not to worry. "You just need to read God Speaks," I was trying to let him know, but I was also traveling around on a bus at the same time. I had not payed my fare, and I was very confused, so I was finding it difficult to send my message.

I started rereading God Speaks myself this afternoon because of the dream, and I also spotted Kazantzakis's Last Temptation of Christ on my bookshelf. I've never read it. The copy belongs to my wife, so I'm reading that as well. Kazantzakis's St. Francis is one of my favourite books.

More on Buddhism

2011-01-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

I continue to ponder the relationship between my Buddhist practice and my core spirituality as a Baba Lover. I'm probably repeating myself here, but I enjoy having a Sangha, and I like having a spiritual community for my children -- the Tushita Buddhist Center's "Dharma for Kids" program. The monk who teaches the program, Kelsang Jorlam, is a wonderful friend and teacher.

Meher Baba advised people to continue in their individual spiritual practice. I grew up in a Southern Baptist family, but Buddhism is the first thing that felt like "home" to me, so I consider that to be more my childhood religion than Christianity. Finding out about Baba in my late teens gave that home a heart and gave me an intuitive grasp of the reality I was striving for.

It is easy for me to see Meher Baba as both Avatar and Buddha. Since the main thrust of Buddhist meditation is aimed at calming the mind and abandoning ego attachment, I see it as an opportunity to focus on Baba and His love while apprehending my preoccupations and worries for what they are, patterns of energy flowing out from the original explosion of the divine whim.

But, as I have said before, belonging to the community involves a certain amount of holding back on my part. I always want to jump up and down and shout "listen! Meher Baba IS the Buddha!" My heart is just so full of Baba. I keep wanting to "correct" the monks on their cosmology. I don't know how Elizabeth Patterson was able to go to church every week without jumping up and down and shouting "Meher Baba IS the Christ!"

At the suggestion of a monk friend, I've been watching video of the founder of the New Kadampa Tradition, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, speaking on the NKT website. To me he appears to be a very fragile bird in a beautiful golden cage. In one video, when he speaks about suffering, he speaks about how the entire world needs to hear about the Buddha Dharma, and everyone, regardless of their religion, needs to practice it in order to end suffering and bring peace to the world. I felt so much sorrow for him when I heard those words. What a terrible burden. I am certain that his good work in bringing a small part of Buddhism to the West is part of the Avataric unfolding, but he does not see the big picture, that the Buddha in the form of Meher Baba is working in the world through His infinite love, bringing relief to thirsty hearts whether those hearts are Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi, Christian, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and right on down the line. Seeing video of Geshe Kelsang Gyatso speak reminds me of the whole metaphor of the finger pointing to the moon. The dharma only points the way. It is not the goal. Geshela seems to have his gentle fist closed tightly around the dharma. As he is part of my sangha, I wish I could free him from his attachment to Buddhist ritual. I am only in his tradition of Buddhism because they happened to be offering a children's class. I am sure Meher Baba has a reason for putting me there, but I don't think it is to send a copy of God Speaks to the head of the order. Perhaps just my connection to the order helps bring in the energy of Baba's manifestation to the organization.

I am not sure how much to say of this to my monk friend who suggested I watch the videos. He knows that I am not only a Buddhist, but also and primarily a Baba Lover. I know that I should just remark what a lovely man the head of the New Kadampa Tradition is, but I want to say so much more.

Avatar Meher Baba Ki Jai!

Another Poem

2011-01-19T09:46:00.000-08:00

I'm having trouble getting out of the house and attending to my duties because I can't pull myself away from thinking about Baba this morning. (I've been rewatching bits of Irwin Luck's movie.) I wrote a poem to put a coda to this motionlessness. I'm supposed to be out buying groceries. My apologies to the real ghazal writers:

Beloved, I lift up my inner eyes to see you
Standing on the road in front of my house
And tears come to my eyes.

The life of the tree, the life of the grasses
The life of the bird, the life of the stones
I feel in them Your love.

And inside me is Your silence
And the revolution of stars
Without end.

Oh Meher, Why did You give me such imagination
I sit her and struggle to make my sight become so
To see you as you really are.

Oh Meher, I envy the masts their mad state
For thus they drew you to them.
I sit.

And wait for you while imagining you everywhere
Little movements, the feel of your hand
on my shoulder.

Oh Meher, how can I bear this separation?

Feeling myself to be the ocean
And knowing myself to be a boat
When it really should be the opposite.

Happy Birthday Bhau!

2011-01-13T07:27:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday Bhau Kalchuri! You have done more than anyone to document the history of Avatar Meher Baba's advent. I hope your recovery is going well. My love and prayers are with you. Both of my children send their love.

Recurring Dream

2010-12-22T06:24:00.001-08:00

I have a recurring dream of the Meher Spiritual Center, but it is not the actual center. It's very bizarre, at least the consistency between dreams is. There's a road through an area that's like a desert, and then there is a long low building to check in at, and various levels of residences heading toward the center. Last night I dreamed I was checking out because my initial time was up -- the inner area consisted of apartment type buildings -- and I thought I could book into the dorms constructed of plywood located further out from the center, but someone told me that they were filled because people were pouring in. I saw one friend of mine, who is a Baba Lover, walk by with tears in his eyes. I asked him what was wrong, but he ignored me and kept walking. I then ran into a girl I knew in third grade, and she was now married. This dream Meher Spiritual Center seems to be constructed of rings, or levels.

That reminds me of a dream I had years ago, but I remember it because I was fond of it. I dreamed I was walking around a lake high in the mountains. It was the highest of a series of seven lakes, and it was full of water. Looking down from where I was hiking on the mountain above the lake, I could see the lower six lakes were completely dry, and it seemed that I had to find a way to release the water so the other lakes would fill. I'm still working on that one!

Sorry I haven't been writing. It's been one thing after another. Sick children, allergies and asthma, activities, and now it's Christmas.

Celebrated, of course, a couple of months early by my reckoning.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Another Quick Dream

2010-11-23T08:09:00.000-08:00

I've been neglecting this blog and haven't managed to make it back to my story of our trip in India. Since our return, I've had an odd feeling of being exceedingly busy without actually having that much more to do. I have phone calls from friends that I need to return that are now several weeks in the past. Maybe it's just the settling in for winter. I've always had a bit of a bear's sense of needing to hibernate when it turns cold and the days begin to shorten.

Here's my last Baba dream. I'm excerpting this directly out of an email I sent my friend Ben, who told me about Baba back in the early eighties. Baba, by the way, looked resplendent sitting on my back porch in my dream, and I've been feeling like I really should get back there and straighten things up. Even if the visits are only dream visits, I should still keep things a little bit cleaner for the Avatar!

I had a neat dream about Baba recently. I was dreaming of him fairly regularly in the past year, but I haven't dreamed of him since we departed for India until now.

My teeth seem to be falling apart in my mid-forties. Why, I don't know. And I seem to be developing a resistance to novocaine, so dental work is indescribably painful for me. My dentist filled a cavity in a wisdom tooth that ended up being a deeper cavity than he thought. The tooth was in intense pain after the filling for a little over a week. One night, I dreamed that Baba was sitting on my back porch in one of his high-backed upholstered chairs. He was holding a weed that grows in a park near here, and he was gesturing. The gist of what I thought he was saying was "You have no idea how important these seeds are."

The next day, I went to the grocery store, and when I came out, I found the bicycle had a flat. I was going to take the bus back closer to the house, but when I looked up, the bus went past, and I didn't want to wait for the next one. So, I had no choice but to walk home through the park where those plants grew. (If there had been any seeds, I probably would have eaten them, but the parks crew had mowed all the weeds down.) By the time I was out the other side, my tooth felt better, and by the next day, the pain was gone.

It's good to know He's looking out for me.

Train, Amritapuri, Train Part 1, (Trip to India Pt. 4)

2010-10-25T11:26:00.000-07:00

Amritapuri

I had hopped online the day train tickets went on sale assuming if I booked train tickets early enough, we would all be seated together in a group of four seats/four beds in the 2AC sleeper.

Alas, that was not to be. Two of us were seated in an area of four seats, and two were seated in the little bank of two across the aisle and a little further down the train.

I was a little put out by the computer's having split us up like that, but I vented about it on the IndiaMike travel forum and were reassured by a few people that Indians love families and would go out of their way to rearrange themselves so that we could sit together.

When we boarded the train for Kayamkullan Junction, it was almost as if we were invisible. I, being a shy and retiring sort, did not make any effort to rearrange everyone in the train, so we just sat where our tickets told us to sit. Zebediah and I found ourselves in a group of four seats with a man I assume was a Brahmin. He was a rather dignified man with a beard and the forehead mark. Laura and Sadie sat in the bank of two seats further down. The train rolled off, and we began our 37 hour jaunt down to Kerala.

Many things that I had read led me to believe that the people in India would be very interested in us. As an introvert, I was dreading talking to all these curious people, but on the train, no one really spoke to us. I sat across from the Brahman, and he sat across from me for many hours before we began speaking.

I was reading Bal Natu's book on the Samadhi, or maybe it was some other Baba book.

When I put it down, the Brahmin picked it up and started looking through it.

"Who is this Meher Baba?" he asked. I launched into the short diplomatic answer about his being my spiritual master and how I had come to India to go to his Samadhi, etc. The Brahman took darshan from the book, seemingly scraping the blessings right off the back and touching his forehead. I was a little surprised at that given how generally careful I am to heed Meher Baba's warning to keep digging in one spot until I hit pure water. Every picture and prayer I showed him he would take darshan from. I guess people in India are much more open-hearted about avatars and spiritual masters than say, Southern Baptists in my childhood home state of South Carolina.

I shared the Universal Prayer with him, and a few other things, and he seemed very satisfied with Baba. During the course of our time on the train, we had many short conversations about diet and detachment and spirituality, and it was a pleasure riding along with him.

Zebediah, however, did not like riding along in the train. He did not like the food on the train. (We mainly ate the veg Biriyani). He was a little put out about his privacy and felt that people were staring at him, so he ringed his upper bunk with blankets and mainly stayed sequestered up there throughout the thirty-seven hours, and during that time, his mood steadily deteriorated. Such is the risk you take traveling through India with an eight-year-old boy.

At some point during the first night, a family got on board, one of whom had the bottom bunk opposite the Brahmin. When I woke up in the morning, his whole family was sitting with him. That left me in an awkward position. I stayed up in my upper bunk and stewed about not being able to see out the window as we rolled through India. When the ridiculousness of doing so became too apparent to ignore, I got down and went over to the two-seat area that Laura and Sadie occupied. I spent most of my time sitting with Laura while Sadie rode in her upper bunk reading and Zeb stayed in his upper bunk listening to books on tape and hiding behind his wall of blankets. At some point, the family got off the train, and we were able to use that space again. And very late in the ride, I lost my Brahmin friend, and we all shifted over into the bank of four seats.

We got off the train at Kayankullam Junction and took two rickshaws to Amma's ashram, Amritapuri.

What follows is my own personal experience of Amritapuri. I have a great respect for Amma and for the work she is doing, both from what I can see of her work, and as my wife's guru. I was somewhat disappointed that I didn't get a chance to meet her. As I have explained elsewhere, I made the decision not to go to Amma for darshan because Baba is my master, and I feel no need to have Amma's darshan, and it is also, by my interpretation, contrary to Baba's wishes as expressed in the "Final Warning" or whatever it was called. There really was no opportunity to meet with Amma other than in a darshan setting. I had hoped I would get a little better feel for who she is, but she remained a distant figure to me during our visit. Laura enjoyed being there, and went for darshan, and said that the feeling she got there was similar to the one she felt at Meherabad.

My experience of the ashram, given that I was not there for Amma's darshan, was pretty dismal.

When we arrived, the person at the foreign visitor's window told us to come back later because he was going to breakfast. We were tired and exhausted from our train ride, so that wasn't a particularly good welcome. For some reason -- maybe the look on our face -- he began to look up our reservation anyway. Then our friend Gretchen arrived and continued to book us in. They both, however, said that we would have to leave early in the morning on our departure day because someone else had the room. Whatever.

We walked over to the room in the Ayurvedic building, and it was long and narrow with a couple of mats to sleep on. We found a cot shoved on top of a metal closet. The closet we couldn't open. There was also a cabinet that was locked. It wasn't immediately clear where we were supposed to hang our clothes. We walked back over to the office later to see if we were supposed to have a key, and they told us that someone owned the room and that was where they locked their stuff while they were gone. So we really didn't have a place to store our stuff. We lived out of our backpacks and hung stuff up to dry on a line that was strung across the middle of the room. Even Laura commented that we had started out with the best accommodations in India at the Meher Pilgrim Center, and we were slowly moving down the scale. We were also tired and a little snappy from traveling. I got the feeling Baba would have kicked me off the New Life early in the proceedings based on how well I was doing after thirty-seven hours with my family on a train.

It's time for a "to be fair." To be fair, Amritapuri is a spiritual retreat that hosts thousands of people at a time. The amount they charge for daily accommodations is about a third of that of the Meher Pilgrim Center. I was there with my children, my wife who has taken Amma on as her guru, but with no real personal connection to Amma myself, no matter how much I respect her work. So, with the "to be fair" in place, I'll continue.

Zeb, in particular, was angry. That was to continue with only brief reprieves, for the next five days.

We also quickly found that there are a lot of money-making operations at Amritapuri. I'm not condemning them, but it made the stay with Zeb incredibly difficult. (Sadie found a wonderful best friend and basically disappeared for five days, so there isn't much to relate about her. I don't mean to leave her out. Just imagine her playing happily and occasionally showing up for money for a grilled cheese sandwich).

We had planned to eat only the free food that came with the donation. That food was basically bad. The one meal we ate was rice, and something that was not quite dal and not quite soup dumped on top of the rice. Sadie and Zeb refused to eat it. I ate it my first day there, but then I became very sick for a day, with stomach cramps and a little you-know-what. We ate at the cafe for most of the rest of the visit, and at the cafe, they charged for stuff. They were also open most of the day, so there were not regular meal times. That meant that Zeb constantly complained that he was hungry and that he wanted a soda or chocolate or some other sugary thing that I wouldn't normally let him eat on a daily basis.

At Meherabad, for him, there was at least the playground. And there were daily activities -- the movies, the trips to Meherazad, the talks with Sam Kerawalla. He may not have liked them, but they kept him busy. (Even if he did spend Sam's talk chasing bats around with dusters outside with the maintenance workers).

Amritapuri has a children's library. It is open from ten until one every day. Zeb liked going to the library, but other than that, we stood around and argued about whether we were going to buy more food or not. I tried to focus on Baba and to focus on not losing my temper, and I held in my heart the happiness I had received from the old man who had slipped his hand into mine on the Pune train platform. That old man really saw me through, whoever he was.

To be continued...

Short Dream of Narayan Maharaj

2010-10-17T17:14:00.001-07:00

Last night, in a very still time before more dreams started, (dreaming, for example, that Santa Fe was only a four hour bicycle ride from Portland, and spending some time wandering through a grocery store by the side of the road), I dreamed that I was sitting with three other people in a circle with Narayan Maharaj. I kept meeting his gaze and holding it, and then I felt that it was perhaps disrespectful or dangerous to hold the gaze of a perfect master, and I would lower my eyes. Narayan Maharaj did not look much like himself, but appeared as a large, muscular man. His gaze was steady and unblinking. The other three people I was sitting with were absorbed in meditation. I felt out of place in the group with my vascillation between meeting his gaze and avoiding it.

It was strange that I dreamed of Narayan Maharaj. I have never felt any particular affinity with him.

Pune -- Trip to India Part 4

2010-09-29T07:17:00.001-07:00

At the Guruprasad MemorialPune was a different world from Meherabad. Riding in the car I had stubbornly planned to grab our backpacks from the car to avoid the issue of porters. In India, you pretty much don't stand a chance with that strategy. We arrived at the Hotel Aurora Towers, and the porters had our bags before we were barely out of the car. We checked in and the porters carried our bags up and stood around looking at me giving the little head wobble. As I said before, tipping is the one thing that I never got the hang of. Some books say not to tip. Some say give a small tip before you receive service to insure good service. At the time, I didn't have any reasonable amount of rupees with which to tip. I had a few 500 and 1000 rupee notes, and I also had a few 1 and 2 rupee coins. Feeling embarrassed, I offered the rupee coins to the porters, but they just looked at them with scorn and left. Later, I went down to the reception desk and procured some change, and I tipped the gentlemen who brought our passports up to us, though that didn't seem to require a tip.

The Hotel Aurora Towers was nice, but it had some drawbacks. When I made the reservations months ago, we reserved an extra bed for an additional 600 rupees a night. There were two double beds, but no extra bed, and I didn't remember that we had already put an extra bed on the reservation. Sadie and Laura slept in one bed, and I tried to sleep with Zeb in the other, but I was crowded, so I ended up sleeping on the marble floor. I slept surprisingly well. The next day, I asked about an extra bed, and they told me it would be an extra 600 rupees, (I still did not remember that our reservation included that charge). Zeb had pushed two chairs together to sleep on, so I decided to forgo the extra charge. The next day, before we checked out, I looked at the printout of the reservation I had made and saw the extra charge. I pointed out at checkout that we had been charged for the extra bed but did not receive it, and they said "No, no, that is for the extra person". I didn't argue. They had given us a discount for being Baba Lovers, but I didn't leave a tip with the payment either.

In Pune, we had to face the prospect of crossing the street. For most of the first afternoon, we simply hid in our hotel room and ate in the hotel. We watched the traffic from our window and saw small school children step boldly out into the swirling traffic, and the traffic parted around them as they crossed. It seemed to work, but it didn't look safe from the perspective of people trained to wait for traffic signals or empty streets before crossing.

A restaurant called "The Sizzler" was just down the street from the hotel and was listed in the Lonely Planet guide book. We plunged out of the hotel and walked down there to eat dinner, but it was so early in the day that they were closed. On that first venture out into big-city India, we walked around the block and explored the shops that occupied a warren of passageways under the buildings on the block. While there were families living on the street, and a few people begging, I found that I was not disturbed by it. No one seemed horribly poor, and by that I mean people who are starving to the extent that they have almost lost their humanity. I hope I don't seem cold-hearted in my assessment of the street people of Pune, but I have lived in a variety of "alternative" situations throughout my twenties, including just hauling my sleeping bag up into the mountains to sleep, and I think that experience, though it was, to some extent, voluntary -- and that makes all the difference -- allows me to see basic necessities as more basic than most people in the U.S. might imagine. The families who were living on the street seemed to be going about their lives, and they seemed to love each other, and I felt at home with them. It was the general pace of the foot traffic and the traffic that was confusing. I felt that we needed to keep moving, and we didn't have any clue as to what we should stop and look at. How do you behave as a tourist when you are just on a regular business street in Pune? We had no idea, and the children were very overwhelmed, and the general consensus was that we should just hole up in the hotel.

I was determined to get out and get to know the streets. I believe, if I was alone, I would have wandered in larger and larger circles until I was comfortable with the area. I felt a little claustrophobic in the hotel room with the children watching Hindi cartoons on the television. But our adventures out into the streets were focussed and brief. The next day, we ate breakfast in a restaurant called simply, "The Coffee Shop", down the street from the hotel. I ordered dosas, and dosas come with a little bowl of soup. I wasn't sure what the soup was, so I poured it onto my dosa which made a soggy mess. Surreptitiously I observed the people around us, and they ate their soup with a spoon. So much for trying to blend in. Zeb ordered bake beans on toast, which seems to be a standard breakfast in that part of India. When that is what arrived, however, he was grossed out by it and didn't eat it. Sadie simply had toast and jam.

Breakfast didn't take very long. I handed the leftover toast and beans to a woman on the street who seemed to want them, and we headed in the direction of Baba's childhood home. (We had the map of Baba places in Pune put together by Bif and sold in Meher Darbar down the road from Meherabad). We successfully crossed one little street and ducked into the J.J. Garden to rest from the stress of moving a few hundred yards through Pune's rush of vehicles and foot traffic. Admission to the gardens was a rupee each. I had never encountered a pay per use park before, so the charge was a surprise, but I finally had a use for the rupee coins that had been scorned by the porters.

We found Baba's childhood home, but it was still not visiting hours. Relatives of Baba still live in the house, but keep his room open for visitors. Across the alley from his childhood home is the Pumpkin House, where he also lived as a boy. It was odd to see it, with the pumpkin-shaped rock, just sitting there after seeing so many photographs of it. "There it is," I thought.

Since the house was not open yet, we made the big push down the street to Babajan's samadhi. Crossing the street required determination and timing. Occasionally, Zeb and I would make it across only to find that we had left Laura and Sadie behind. Laura later adopted holding on to my shoulder like a blind person, and we would move through the street in a little clump. A big man wearing a sari tried to tell us something quite enthusiastically, but we couldn't understand what he was saying.

Babajan's samadhi rests right against the street. The stump of the neem tree is there, painted silver. We removed our shoes, and I bowed down to Babajan. The tomb attendant thwacked me on the back with his feather duster. I wasn't too worried. He appeared to be thwacking everyone. I left a donation in the donation box, and we started to go. One of the other people who seemed to be helping at the samadhi, however, saw the kids' Baba buttons. "Meher Baba, Meher Baba," he called excitedly. I went back, and he started telling me how Meher Baba came to Babajan too. "Yes, yes," I said. There was also someone who had been sweeping who was trying to beg from us. Most books say not to give money to beggars. I was confused whether that advice extended to sweepers at samadhis as well, but we smiled and nodded and plunged back into the traffic.

The time for visiting Baba's house had come when we had returned to the doorstep, but it wasn't clear to us what we should do as we stood on the doorstep. A neighbor sitting on her porch shouted out to us, "just ring the bell." Baba's room was very small, and there were a few of his possessions in glass cases. Baba's hair and Baba's sandals seem to be a common item on display. The rock that protrudes from the floor where he hit has forehead was much larger than I imagined. Throughout the trip, I was reminded of the Avatar's suffering, and even Mehera's suffering after Meher Baba dropped his body. For some of the trip, I felt a deep sense of grief for the suffering, and being in Baba's room was one of those times.

The next day, we checked out of the hotel at noon, but our train did not depart until 7:35. We hired a car for the afternoon, planning to visit the other Baba places on Bif's map. The car driver did not seem to know what to think of us at first. "I take you to Agha Kahn palace," he said, "to see the Gandhi Memorial." "We want to see these Meher Baba places," I told him, showing him the map. He didn't know exactly where anything was. We found that to be generally true of drivers in India. We would often get into a taxi, they would drive to the approximate location, and then they would start asking people on the streets where to find what we were looking for.

We visited the Pataleshwar Cave and Jangli Maharaj's Mandir. The cave was incredible, and there were people meditating inside, so we didn't take any photographs. It seemed inappropriate to photograph active shrines. We walked around the Mandir. I didn't feel that we should take our shoes off and enter the shrine, though Laura pointed out that there was a shelf for shoes further back toward the street, so maybe we should have had our shoes off anyway. I'm sure we made countless etiquette blunders on our trip through India. Both places were quiet oases in the middle of the city. From there, we headed to the Guruprasad Memorial. We ran into a person leaving who wanted to talk about Meherabad for a moment. Once inside, I bowed down to Baba's chair. The attendant at the memorial was a wiry elderly man who was simply delightful. After I bowed down, he put a carpet down on the floor for everyone else to kneel on. He lit incense and handed it to the children and Laura too I believe. (It wasn't clear what we were supposed to do with the incense, so the entire encounter had a somewhat comic feel to it). Zeb kneeled on the carpet, and the attendant grabbed him by the back of the head and touched his forehead to the chair while Zeb struggled in confusion. (I was always careful not to touch Baba's stuff. I think Indians have a different relationship to holy objects than Westerners, because they would put their head down on the foot of his bed, or touch his chair or place their forehead on it.) I signed the guest register, and then saw that people were leaving donations, so I left a donation, and then the attendant had me sign another register that seemed to be associated with donations. While I was signing, he popped a huge piece of rock candy prasad in my mouth. I felt like dancing around laughing with him. He gave the kids prasad, and then insisted on our taking a picture, so that's why I have a slightly startled look on my face in the photo associated with this post. The visit was short, but many things took place during it.

We had planned to spend the bulk of the afternoon in the Bund Gardens and then go to the Avatar Meher Baba Pune Center, but when we arrived at the Bund Gardens, we found they were closed for the afternoon. Since we did not have anything to do for several hours before the Baba Center was open, we finally consented to the driver's taking us to the Gandhi Memorial. Given how important Gandhi is to India, his memorial is unimpressive. Just a few rooms of the Aga Kahn palace have been set aside with a few old photographs and posters, and some of Gandhi's possessions.

Still with hours to go, the driver took us to the hotel St. Laurn for an early dinner. It was a lovely place with a nice buffet, and we had some food boxed up for the train ride as well.

We were still early at the Baba Center, and we had planned to wait, but the driver shouted to a man who was standing outside, and he unlocked it and let us in. I was very impressed and touched by the place. I had not been expecting much, but the big hall with the photos of Baba ringing the walls deeply touched me. The driver, his curiousity finally getting the best of him I believe, got out of his car and talked for a long time with the man who was there at the center, and walked around looking at the pictures of Baba himself.

From there we went to the train station. We were three hours early. It was crowded and busy. A woman who was missing the fingers on one hand came by to beg from us. Laura said that she felt something really powerful about her, and was going to say if she came back a third time, we should give money to her. With three hours to go, we were trying not to begin handing out money to beggars. That could have led to a very crowded wait.

With about forty minutes to go, we moved over to our platform. The excrement on the tracks stank. I was not bothered by it, but everyone else in the family, particularly Zeb, were a little sickened by the smell.

While we waited, the strangest and most wonderful thing of the entire trip happened. I was standing there when suddenly I felt a very rough hand slip into mine. "Oh great," I thought, "it's probably another beggar." I looked down, and there was a little old man looking up at me with an absolutely radiant expression on his face. He looked as if he was incredibly happy to see me, as if he had been waiting for me for years and was very happy that I was finally there. His happiness was infectious, and I felt incredibly happy, and we stood there on the platform for a few moments gazing into each other's eyes. It felt as if time stood still for a moment, and then he released my hand and shuffled off.

It was very strange. There was no indication that the man was anyone spiritual, but the emotional impact of that meeting was incredible and unexpected. In some way, I'm almost disappointed that I did not feel a similar surge of emotion at Meherabad. I have come to realize that, not only do I have no idea who that old man was, but it is also very true that I have no real idea who I am. I love Baba, and I believe he is the Avatar, but I am filled with all sorts of preconceived notions and intellectual musings about Baba. Perhaps this old man, about whom I know nothing and from whom I certainly have no expectations, startled me with his happiness into a moment of timelessness there on the train platform. I still simply do not know what to say. I would like to think that Baba was greeting me through that man, and given that everything IS Baba, that is certainly one way I could see it, but I don't want to read more into a chance encounter than was really there. Nevertheless, I will treasure the memory of that particular encounter.

Some more Photos from Meherabad/Meherazad

2010-09-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

The photos are, from the top: Me and Meherwan Jessawalla at Meherazad. The photo is a little blurry because the person taking the photograph didn't want to focus my film camera and so had me focus for her. The distance must have changed slightly when she took over the camera. The second photo is Laura and the kids with Ellen VanAllen from California. She and Bif where the people we ate with most often in the dining hall, and we often ended up talking to Ellen on the bus down to Lower Meherabad or to Meherazad. It was a pleasure getting to know her. The last photo is me, Zeb and Sadie in front of Gilori Shah's tomb. Here's the story of Gilori Shah from the Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Trust web site:

Gilori Shah was a saint in Ahmednagar who had been a cook in Queen Victoria's kitchen in England. Legend has it that when he decided to return to India, the Queen gave him a bag full of treasure. But somewhere along the way on his return journey to India, he threw the bag into a body of water. After settling in Ahmednagar, his followers referred to him as "Maula Baba." Gulmai and her family also befriended the reclusive saint. Just after Kaikushru had obtained the property in a debt repayment deal, Gilori Shah requested Gulmai to give him a small plot of this land on which his tomb could be built, but Kaikushru was reluctant. Gulmai also tried to discourage the saint, knowing what trouble it would bring her from their orthodox Zoroastrian community.

Then one night early in 1923, Gulmai dreamt that Gilori Shah was a baby in her arms, pleading with her, “Mother, you still haven't given me my place to rest.” The very next day, Gilori Shah came to Arangaon with some of his devotees and pointed to the spot where he wanted his tomb to be built. They questioned him about choosing such a desolate distant place, when some of his wealthy Muslim followers had offered much nicer sites near the city. He replied, “You are like children. You know nothing! In a short time, this place will turn into a garden of pilgrimage. A great one will come here, and this land will one day belong to the people of the world! Only then will you understand why I am buried here.” (Lord Meher p. 482)

These experiences convinced Gulmai and Kaikushru that they should give the saint what he wanted. Gilori Shah told them that Meher Baba would be coming soon, and he wanted his tomb to be ready by then. Meher Baba had begun to refer to Gulmai as his spiritual mother. In February of 1923, she attended the birthday celebration for Baba at Manzil-e-Meem in Bombay. On the following day, the engagement of her son was finalized there; Rustom would marry Freny, the sister of Mehera, who would become Baba's dearest disciple. Afterwards, Baba mentioned to Gulmai that he was planning to leave Bombay for some quiet place, which would be more suitable for the ashram. She told him about Gilori Shah and their property near Arangaon, and urged him to stay there.

A few weeks before Rustom and Freny's wedding on May 9th 1923, Meher Baba came to Ahmednagar with some of His mandali. They stayed at Kaikushru and Gulmai's family quarters, then known as Khushru Quarters. It is now the Trust Compound, known as “Meher Nazar.”

As the number of guests arriving for Rustom and Freny's wedding increased, so did the tension and the criticism of Meher Baba behind His back. By the morning of May 4th, He had enough and abruptly walked away, with His mandali hurrying to catch up. Without explaining anything, He passed the railway station at the end of town and continued leading them towards the south.

As they came within sight of the village of Arangaon, Baba sat down on a masonry parapet, which surrounded a neem tree on the east side of the road. He admired the quiet atmosphere of the place and pointed out the ready but unoccupied tomb of Gilori Shah. (Gilori Shah dropped his body in January of 1924.)

Meherabad -- Trip to India, Part 3

2010-09-22T07:05:00.001-07:00

Our stay at Meherabad passed all too quickly. We enjoyed Sam Kerawalla's stories both at Meherazad and Old Meherabad. Shera was visiting the Pilgrim Center, and we heard her singing her beautiful songs. I had a wonderful conversation with a man who was visiting from a certain country where there is quite a bit of religious suppression. ("Since Baba said to stick with your religion, when they ask us if we are Muslim, we say yes. They aren't sure what to do about us.") His stories reminded me of how the early Christians met in secret.

We gave ourselves a tour of Old Meherabad. I often felt like I should just stop and sit on the ground for the day. It truly felt like holy ground, but with the children along for the journey, we had to keep moving. They loved riding in the auto rickshaws.

We visited Meherazad mid-week, and Sadie and Meheru enjoyed each other's company. We were planning to leave on Sunday, the day of the next Meherazad visit, without going there again. However, Sadie was so in love with the place, and with sitting on the porch listening to Meheru's stories about Baba's animals, that we arranged for our driver to take us by Meherazad on the way to Pune.

We took the opportunity to walk up Seclusion Hill. To get there, we had to pass through a heard of goats. The herding dogs were very disturbed by our passing through and snarling at our heels, chased us up the hill.

Zeb remembers Meherabad as his favourite part of the trip to India. By the end of the trip, he was issuing edicts that we were never to leave the United States again. Now, he is already talking about returning to Meherabad.

Sadie Waking to Meher Baba's Samadhi

2010-09-10T08:54:00.001-07:00

Sadie walking to the Samadhi

It was so remarkably beautiful in Meherabad. The feeling there was very similar to the feeling I get at the Meher Spiritual Center. When we were there, a cool breeze blew across the hill on most days. It was heaven.

Trip to India Part 2

2010-09-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

Jal Dastur, Honey the dog, Sadie and Zeb

One of the most interesting things about India was the degree to which I felt at home there. I had expected some sense of foreignness, especially since I have never traveled from North America before, though since I have begun to think about it, I’m not sure what I mean by foreignness. The only thing that I just couldn’t grasp was the traffic. I’m forever searching for the place that has no motorized traffic. India seems to have more -- more chaos to the motorized traffic at least.

Passing through Arangaon made me feel right at home. “Hey,” I wanted to shout, “we have chickens too. And we had goats for a while, but they pulled our laundry down from the line and jumped around on the chicken run so much that it now leans at a forty-five degree angle so we had to give the goats away.” Seeing all the goats made me want to plop myself down by the side of the road and watch them all day. I always loved the image of the shepherd keeping watch over his flock by night in the bible, and I even toyed with the idea of becoming a shepherd at one point, though that’s one of those things that’s hard to figure out how to become if you’ve fast-tracked it right through graduate school. The bullocks and the bullock carts and the random cows all made me feel joyful. I told Dolly that maybe I would be reborn in Arangaon in my next life, and she said, “no, you wouldn’t want that.” But except for the constant swarm of motorcycles and scooters, to some extent Arangaon looked like my dream of America -- the way I feel this country should move to be more self-sufficient and more closely tied with the land. It felt like a place I could live without any sense of being a foreigner while living there if that makes any sense.

And toilets. People always snicker about the toilets. There were western toilets at the Meher Pilgrim Center, but I loved the Indian toilets. And as for the absence of toilet paper, you wash back there when you take a shower don’t you? How is it any different? The only question that remains for me is this: if you pour water in your left hand, and then pass it between your legs, you run the risk of getting your pants wet, since they’re bunched down there around your ankles. (And I had a comic fear of falling forward onto my head). If you pour water into your left hand and swing it around your left side, you splash water all over the bathroom floor. Since the floors of the bathrooms were tile, I chose the around the left side with the left hand method, though I admit I’m prudish enough that I didn’t have a discussion with anyone about the various methods and which one was best.

And bucket baths are a real joy. If I ever build a house, I’m installing an Indian toilet and a tile room with a drain so I can splash myself with buckets of water.

We quickly fell into the MPC routine. Up before six to make it to morning chai. Down the path to the samadhi for seven o’clock arti. Breakfast. Some sort of activity. Lunch. Zipping around with the kids to keep them occupied during quiet time. Arti again, and then dinner.

We met someone named Jay from California. He invited us to sit with him, but my kids always got their food first and sat down somewhere else, and Jay and his group were ensconced in their own corner of the dining hall, so they never sat down with the kids. Plus, Zeb found a flute in the stack of games and played it constantly for a couple of days, until Jay walked over and asked us to get him to stop. (I was relieved myself. It’s echoey in that dining hall). Bif, whom we met the first morning, liked Zeb’s flute playing and sat with us. And we also became friends with Ellen from California.

Jal Dastur befriended Sadie and Zeb right away. He gave them Baba buttons, and they helped him feed the dogs near the Samadhi every day. The kids loved Jal, and they loved the dogs there. Dolly invited us over to tea at their house when we were riding with her on the bus to Meherazad, and so we had a very pleasant tea with Dolly, Jal, and a couple of other Baba Lovers. (One younger man from North Carolina I believe, and a younger woman from Australia). Sorry, but I’m terrible with names.

Sadie and the cat she called "the Yowler"

Sadie and Zeb also loved the cats near the dining hall, which also became a problem once the cats decided they would try to dart through the doors when people were going in for meals. After the second day, we had to curtail the playing with the cats.

But in general, the kids did great in Meherabad, and Zeb remembers it as the best part of the trip.

I did end up spending most of my time shepherding my children, but I was prepared beforehand for that task. Laura did watch them a couple of afternoons to give me time alone at the Samadhi. I had hoped that it would be slow enough that I could sit inside the Samadhi without occupying a space needed by someone else who wanted to sit inside, but there was a fairly constant trickle of people throughout the day. I would bow down to Baba and then sit to the side in meditation, but soon, I would become aware of a stream of people bowing down and other people sitting and getting up and being replaced by other people. The Samadhi seems like such a private, personal -- though Universal -- deeply spiritual place. You don’t sit yourself down right next to someone who is pouring his heart out to his beloved! I did not feel right sitting in there as if it was necessary to be within jumper cable length of Baba’s physical form to recharge my spiritual being. It seemed more important to me to respect the private nature of each person’s moment in the Samadhi.

So most of the time, I just sat outside. Then there was the question of whether it was proper for me to gaze into the Samadhi when someone was in there. So I kind of focussed on Baba and just absorbed all that was going on.

And that was the only time I was really caught culturally off guard in India, (if you discount my confusion over tipping). I was watching a young Indian father in the Samadhi trying to get his son to place his hands together. It reminded me so much of Baba encouraging the boy to place his hands together at the end of the “You Alone Exist” video, that I couldn’t help watching and feeling deeply the love that was there. Then the father came out of the doorway, knelt down in front of me, touched both my feet with both his hands, and then touched his forehead. I was so startled that I felt a surge of electricity go through my legs, and they twitched like the legs of one of Galvani’s frogs.

I knew that touching someone’s feet was a way to show respect in India, but I thought it was generally reserved for elders or persons deserving of respect. I never expected that level of respect to be shown to me, especially by a complete stranger. I felt like saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa buddy, I think you have me confused with someone else.” I really did not know how to respond. I was, however, deeply touched by the act, and I have realized since returning, that no one has really shown me that level of respect in my entire life, at least certainly not in that way. I have since read that it is customary to bless someone who touches your feet. I don’t know that a blessing from me counts for much, nor do I have any idea, really, what a blessing is or how to give one, but what blessings I have to give to that young father I pray for Baba to deliver.

Trip to India, Part 1

2010-09-09T11:36:00.000-07:00

Here we are at the bus stop near our house waiting to catch the bus to catch the train to Albuquerque to wait in the hotel overnight until our flight out. For us, being carfree, all travel begins with a walk to the bus stop. It's a nice easy way to begin a trip.

The flight to India, though long, was not as difficult as I had imagined, either for us -- the adults -- or for the children. The seatback entertainment kept us all busy watching movies. Laura, my wife, slept quite a bit on the flights. I was too busy watching our progress on the flight tracker, (we’re going over Greenland to get to India!?), to sleep. We flew from Albuquerque to Denver, from Denver to Frankfurt, and from Frankfurt to Mumbai.

For some reason, I have a horror of red tape and paperwork, but all the immigration folderol went fine. I was warned by one friend who had just traveled to Pune for work that there was a person at the end who wanted the little slip of paper left over from the whole process. There didn’t seem to be anyone at the end! It is, in fact, that man who is sitting behind a little desk against the wall at the end of the hallway. I had already given up on finding a person to collect the little chit of paper and tried to walk past him.

We had planned to get money out of an ATM to pay our driver, who was from Travel Spirit, and to have some extra money on hand. We walked through the airport with an increasing sense of panic because there didn’t seem to be an ATM in sight. Finally, I found one past all the money changers and past the exit from the airport. I withdrew 10,000 rupees, and we headed out into India. I had a little side pouch from Pacsafe that I wore over my shoulder that contained our passports, debit cards, and a few other odds and ends. In a hidden belt pouch, I had $400 cash and a credit card. I had meant to put a copy of our passports in there as well, but I never got around to it. I waver between travel paranoia and an outright disregard for feeling that anyone around me would be less than trustworthy.

India, at 2:30 in the morning, was much less chaotic and confusing than I imagined it would be. Our driver was easily spotted, and he led us to the garage where his car was parked and had us stand by while he went to retrieve it.

Being waited on was one of the most difficult things about India. I would have been happy to walk with him to the car. I don’t like for porters to carry my bags up to my hotel room. I’d usually rather walk, take a bus, or ride a bicycle rather than hire a driver. Some of it seemed a little too bourgeois to me, though more at issue, probably, is my desire to feel that I am in control.

Indian traffic was a shocker. My wife thoroughly enjoyed traveling through Indian traffic. I did not. Our driver to Meherabad probably spent the majority of his time in the oncoming lane, blowing his horn, and dodging trucks and buses. In America you blow your horn either because you are overcome with road rage or you sense that you are in an “oh-my-God-I’m-about-to-die moment.” So it took me a while to come to terms with the fact that a) our driver was not overcome with rage and b) we weren’t about to die. Horns are just a means of communication in Indian traffic. Consequently, Indian traffic is loud.

My favourite sign on the way in read “Observe Lane Discipline.” There is no lane discipline. In places, on some highways, there are concrete barriers down the middle to prevent cars from driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Where those dividers don’t exist, drivers seem to feel completely at ease using the entire road. I have long advocated for the implementation of the Scandinavian Woonerf in Santa Fe, where you get rid of traffic signs, lane markings, and blend the road and the sidewalk. The idea is to create a zone where all manner of traffic blends together. When drivers do not know what to expect, they drive more cautiously, and the roads are generally safer for all users. That, at least, is the theory. I had always assumed that such an arrangement would lead to much slower traffic speeds as well. India seems to operate on that principle, but the traffic is not slow. There are goatherds and bicycles and water buffalo and stray dogs and pedestrians in the roads, but the drivers still speed along at a great rate. I have to admit that it seemed to work OK. We never saw an accident and never heard any sirens. The only victims of the roads seemed to be stray dogs. We would see two or three dead dogs whenever we would travel on the roads.

The monsoon rains where pouring down for most of our drive, and we went over some range of mountains that had beautiful cascades of water pouring off the rocks. Both of the kids were asleep for most of this part of the adventure. I asked if Mahabaleshwar was nearby, but either the driver did not understand me, or I did not understand his answer. I had been led to believe that most people in India were talkative and would be inquisitive about us. We found that not to be true. Most of them were just going about their lives. We were never pursued or singled out for conversation. I seldom felt that I did not have enough personal space while I was there. Our driver was completely silent for the drive from Mumbai to Meherabad, and I didn’t want to strike up a conversation with him for fear of distracting him.

We arrived in Lower Meherabad. I pulled out all of our packs before the driver stepped out of the car and told us that he would also be giving us a ride up to the Meher Pilgrim Center. I piled all the bags back in. We went into the Lower Meherabad office and filled out paperwork, much of which involved copying out our passport and visa information. We were to find that, in India, we would spend a lot of time copying out our passport and visa information, or, alternatively in the hotels, they would keep our passports for a time. I assume so that they could copy the information. This trip was my first off the North American continent. I found all the passport and visa business annoying. On the way to the Meher Pilgrim Center, we stopped by the Travel Spirit Office in Arangaon to pay for the car. When he finally dropped us off, I tipped him 300 rupees. Whether to tip, what to tip, and when to tip was the one thing that I never got used to. I had the feeling, even as I was tipping him, that I shouldn’t be tipping the driver, but he had just waited up half the night for us and then made, what seemed to me, a death defying drive through the pouring rain and had deposited us at the Meher Pilgrim Center hours earlier than we were told it would take.

They locked our little daypacks, which is what we were using for luggage, except Laura, who had a small expedition backpack, into a shed, and we walked up to the office. Scott got us checked in, and the lobby man gave us our keys. I started to walk the hundred yards or so down to the shed to retrieve our packs, but I was waved back and two people went down with a handcart to bring our packs up to us.

The rooms were lovely. Zeb and I were in a room with four beds, but we were the only people in there. Laura and Sadie had their own rooms in the women’s wing. Everything about the Meher Pilgrim Center was very welcoming. At that point, we had been traveling for almost thirty hours, so much of that day is a blur. I was eager to get down to Baba’s Samadhi. I was torn between wanting to clean up a bit and wanting to rush down there. I believe we held out until the 7:00 arti and spent the afternoon settling into our rooms and going to 4:00 tea.

Arriving at the Samadhi felt like the culmination of my life’s journey in some ways. Of course, there was a little bit of “Well, here I am. What now?”, but the feeling of deep connection to the place overrode that feeling. I did feel somewhat awkward arriving in the midst of all these people who seemed to know what they were doing. Why do people touch the entry of the Samadhi with their hands? Why do some people also touch the top of the doorway? I was a little self-conscious of wanting to show proper respect, not so much to please Baba. I felt Baba would be just as pleased if I cartwheeled into his Samadhi. He knows my heart. But I wanted to be respectful of the other Baba Lovers around me and not act like some oaf from the west who doesn’t know how to do things properly, so I touched the entranceway to the Samadhi as well, though I still have not researched the meaning of that gesture.

I could only think one thing as I bowed before the Samadhi: “Beloved”, with maybe a little bit of “Well Baba, here I am”, thrown in. It’s hard not to walk into the Samadhi without some sort of expectation, but I felt that I should try to do just that. That was my desire in going to Baba’s Samadhi, simply to offer myself at the feet of my beloved. I felt that anything I expected, to some degree, I would find. That if I expected to feel great joy, I would feel great joy. That if I expected to feel a great wave of love, I would feel a great wave of love, but I did not want to present myself with those expectations and then to wonder if my expectation generated the feeling, so I just tried to present myself as empty, and the feeling I got, as I said before was, “Yes, I am always with you, but now you are here with me, and there truly is no need to worry.” Yes, my tears flowed in the Samadhi at that thought, as they flow now while I am recalling it. It was if a great circle had been connected, and I was indeed back home.

Jay and Shireen Bonner where are you?

2010-09-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

Everyone in Meherabad, including Shireen's cousin Dara, told us that we should get in touch with Jay and Shireen since they live in this area. However, Jay and Shireen have an unlisted number, and they are not on the list of people to contact that the Gateway at Meher Spiritual Center provides. If anyone knows Jay and Shireen, pass my hello on to them, and, if they want, they can look us up in the Santa Fe phone book. I have not seen any Baba Lovers in Santa Fe since I moved out here in 1986, (though Judith Shotwell did reply to my email). I'm sort of like a little stray Baba satellite out here.

On the Porch at Meherazad

2010-09-02T14:33:00.001-07:00

I'm still not sufficiently recovered from the trip and caught up on my beekeeping to write a long post about our sojourn in India, but here is a photo of me, Sadie and Laura on the porch at Meherazad with Meheru.

2010-08-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Here I am on the porch of the dining area in the Meher Pilgrim Center enjoying 6 am Chai. I cannot say enough good things about the Meher Pilgrim Center.

Meherabad

2010-08-23T12:14:00.001-07:00

I'll try to write a longer post about our trip to India when I recover from my jetlag and get all my bee hives back in order. (I've gone from having no honey in the hives to being overburdened with it).

As I have said before, I never felt a strong compulsion to go to India until the past couple of years because I truly felt that Baba was everywhere and was everything. Why would one place be any more significant than another.

The sense I got from being at the Samadhi was this -- "It is true I am always with you, but now you are also here with me. Now you truly have no reason to worry."

That feeling was much stronger and more compelling than I can express in words.

Meher Baba: Avatar of the Age: The Human Side of God -- A Quick Movie Review

2010-07-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Being a frugal person on a limited budget, I debated about this movie for several months before finally caving in and ordering it from Sheriar Books. Over those months, I kept looking for reviews, film clips, and descriptions of the film without much luck. (No pun intended). There is an account of the film's run in San Francisco here. The official website for the movie is here.

Any film of Baba is priceless, and I find I spend a great deal of time watching video of Him. And however corny this might sound, I use the images from the films to help me imagine Baba with me throughout the day. When I am walking somewhere, and I do a lot of walking, I imagine Baba walking beside me. Sometimes, as a little bit of humor with myself, I speed up to catch up to him. I know He is with me, but not being on the spiritual planes where I can be face to face with God, the best I can do is surround myself with him in my imagination. Yesterday, as I was walking "with" Baba, I was reminded of that cryptic verse from Genesis in the midst of the genealogy: "And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." I wondered if Enoch was a Perfect Master.

Irwin Luck's film is a treasure. I have only one real criticism of it. He states at the beginning that all the narration is taken from quotes of Meher Baba, and that simply is not true. Many of the quotes are from The Wayfarers, particularly statements made by Masts about Meher Baba. The first time one occurred in the film, it was a little jarring, and I found myself thinking "Surely Baba didn't quote the Mast's statements about him," and I quickly realized that the narration was quoting from the book and not from Baba. It would be easy enough for Irwin Luck to leave the statement about the narration out of the beginning of the film.

I did not know that Deshmukh's film was so hazy, though I should have guessed it. Since it had been shown on the big screen in San Francisco, I had imagined it to be sharper for some reason, but once you get used to the fact that it is, basically, a home video, it does not distract from the beauty of the film.

Irwin also stretched out the length of the film by repeating segments of it, sometimes panning in, and at times, it seems as if the film is reversed for a moment, giving it a comic, double-take feel. I had not been expecting that, but that, also, was something that just took a little getting used to, though even on the third watching, I find myself wondering at places if, indeed, the film is being reversed, or is that just part of the natural flow of the scene.

My only other small criticism is that the opening text goes on for too long. I'm impatient to see Baba. That's true with other films: You Alone Exist comes to mind.

Both the soundtrack and the narration are beautiful and well-done. I always imagine it is difficult for people, in this case Henry Kashouty, to give voice to Baba's words. Henry does an excellent job, though all such narration is, to me, a reminder of Baba's silence.

Once I got past the surprises -- that's not a Baba quote; did the film just reverse? It's hazy -- the film is incomparably beautiful. I've never met Irwin Luck, (to my knowledge), but I send him my heartfelt thanks for preserving Deshmukh's film and providing the world with such a beautiful record of the Avatar, particularly of his work with the Masts.

Irwin Luck is at work on a new film about Meher Baba and Mehera. Details about it are here. All those who are in a position to help support Irwin's work should do so. These visual records should not be lost.

Favorite Childhood Poem

2010-07-23T06:12:00.000-07:00

This really has nothing to do about Baba, except in the way that all things have to do with Baba, but it is the first poem I really remember loving as a little boy, and it is the first poem I memorized. (I think Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" was the second). I spent a lot of time alone in the woods across the street from my house when I was young, and I was naturally drawn to this poem.

It's interesting to me, that it seemed so comforting when I was a boy, to "Be left in peace, be lying thus/For days, for years, for centuries yet,/Unshaven and anonymous" and the only poem I have memorized in my adult life is one of Hafiz's by Daniel Ladinsky which runs "...begging Love/To never again let me hear from any world/The sound of my own name/Not even from the voice of divine thought"

There must be something appealing to me about anonymity.

The Return
By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down.

Earth cannot count the sons she bore:
The wounded lynx, the wounded man
Come trailing blood unto her door;
She shelters both as best she can.

But she is early up and out,
To trim the year or strip its bones;
She has no time to stand about
Talking of him in undertones

Who has no aim but to forget
Be left in peace, be lying thus
For days, for years, for centuries yet,
Unshaven and anonymous;

Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,
Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:
Comfort that does not comprehend.

Of course Baba is Comfort that DOES comprehend.

A Long Personal Ramble

2010-07-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

I may have mentioned before that I feel like I'm a little bit outside of the loop in the Baba world, though I imagine there are many people like me. Living in Santa Fe, I rarely see other Baba Lovers, except when Chris Wilson and Charles Haynes come through town. There are a few about, but they haven't been meeting, and so far, I haven't met them. Occasionally, I look around for other blogs about Meher Baba to see how other people are -- well, just how they ARE. But there don’t seem to be that many Baba blogs out there. I am always happy to see new posts on the blogs out there, though I don't often comment on them.

Since Baba demanded honesty above all things -- “If you speak what you feel to be true, you have the force of truth to make others accept truth” -- I occasionally review how I feel about Baba and never have I reached the point where I do not feel Baba to be the Avatar or feel that I am not drawn to him by Love. I am not, however, ignorant of the fact that my saying “I feel Baba to be the Avatar” is tantamount to making a nonsensical statement. I understand, intellectually, what the Avatar is, which perhaps, is to say, not at all. What I want to guard against in doing so is a sense of a self-constructed identity as a Baba Lover, of reaching sort of a falsely blissful state where I am still separated out from the rest of creation by the very act of having a separate spiritual belief. I don't think I'm explaining that very well.

My heart, I believe, experiences no conflict or tension whatsoever, but my intellect is continually trying to find the right balance. Part of that, I am sure, is from growing up in a Southern Baptist household. I fervently tried to love Jesus when I was a boy, though I had a particular attraction to St. Francis. (Maybe I would have been better off a Catholic). By the time I reached my teens, however, and had embraced Buddhism, I had developed the sort of disdain for fundamental Christianity that young intellectuals develop for their own religions. By my teens, I was more interested in the individual search for Truth than in religion. I wanted to KNOW. The Christian religion, and in particular the Southern Baptist branch seemed to have a good deal of Love, but also a strange degree of hatred and exclusivity. When I hear fundamentalists speak of their “personal relationship to Jesus Christ” I perceive more of their exclusivity and hatred than their love for God, though that is probably unfairly judgmental on my part.

I do, however, feel I have a personal relationship to Meher Baba, though I don’t frame it as such in conversation because of the background I come from. And I realize that there are probably many who have a personal relationship with Jesus that easily surpasses my own relationship to the Avatar, and that it is probably all a part of Baba breathing life into the old spiritual channels. My relationship with Baba is probably certainly informed by my Christian upbringing, and I have difficulty with the Christian aspects of my relationship to Baba since I abandoned Christianity for Buddhism in my early teens, and I still feel a much greater affinity for Buddhism than for Christianity. There is no doubt that Baba bridges, and surpasses, the two religions. Perhaps the question is, how was I wounded as a young boy by the Christian religion that I turned from it with such finality.

I knew a Baba couple when I was a teenager -- I regret that I do not remember their names -- and the husband, (Stefan maybe?), of the couple would not say the Prayer of Repentance because it reminded him too much of his Catholic upbringing, so I think this baggage we bring in to being a Baba Lover from our childhood religions is probably common.

I also go back and forth about “being spiritual.” I generally think I’m not very, and I wonder why Baba bestowed the grace of my knowing of Him to me. Sometimes I try harder than other times, reciting the Prayer of Repentance and the Master’s Prayer every night, trying to cut back a little on the ice cream and beer, but it’s clear to me, in a way, that all those things are children’s games compared with surrender to the Master.

Sexuality has always been a big conundrum. I was dating, (in a sexually active way), one girl in high school when I heard about Baba. That relationship fizzled out after high school, and I was living with someone else after my freshman year of college. I was contemplating the Discourses one day, and I felt compelled to be celibate. That was OK with the girl I was living with at the time, but I had a conversation with another Baba Lover who told me that lust was one of the last things to go, and I shouldn’t try so hard but leave it to Baba. That was enough for me to rethink a lifetime of celibacy. I went through a series of relationships between that point and my marriage, and sometimes, looking back, I feel that yes, Baba probably would have appreciated I remain celibate rather than have a series of sexual relationships, no matter how dedicated I felt about the relationships at the time I had them. I’ve probably earned myself a passel of additional lives to work out all that extra karmic entanglement, but I can’t go back and change what I have already done, nor do I live a life of renunciation, but I certainly don’t think that Love for Baba is a panacea that excuses bad behavior and not putting in the effort.

I try to be happy, but the older I get, the more I see that happiness requires a great deal of effort. “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is not just a zippy little saying. It’s an admonishment if I ever heard one. As I get older, the heights of my happiness and the depths of my depression seem to widen. I’ve been an at-home-dad for ten years now, and I’m struggling with what-to-do-now. I have some writing in progress, but nothing that will pay the bills. When I get back from India, I want to start casting around for jobs, but I’ve been having serious “What color is my rainbow” issues. My master’s degree is in Eastern Classics. There just aren’t that many jobs for Buddhist scholars in my neighborhood. I wonder what Baba means for me to do, and I’ve come to the conclusion that Baba means for me to reach a state of total confusion about who I am and what I am to do. Could a mid-life identity crisis lead straight to God-realization? Even my beekeeping has gone downhill. Three years ago, I produced 330 pounds of honey from six hives. I sell it for eight dollars a pound at the local Farmer’s Market, so I made over $2600 in honey that year. Last year, I expanded to twelve hives, thinking I would make $5200, but it was a bad year. I only made a few hundred dollars. This year is even worse. I’ve sold 13 pounds of honey this summer. I keep thinking of Baba’s saying that he is going to slowly cut off the supply of air, only in my case, He is slowly cutting off my supply of honey. It’s hard not to get depressed going through the hives and finding no extra honey, week after week. The bees themselves have plenty, and I’m thankful that my colonies are healthy given the collapse of the bee population worldwide. But what would Baba have me learn from all this? I work on thinking of it as all His. I’m going through the motions prescribed to me by Baba. I need to let go of identifying with them, but I’m often confused as to which motions I should go through at this point in my life.

I have something of a split personality relationship with my spirituality. On the one hand, I can almost see myself as a renunciate, eating simply and living in a simple hut. In fact, throughout my twenties, I lived in a variety of alternative housing situations -- a wall tent in a friend’s driveway, a primitive cabin up on another friend’s property, an old school bus. When I dream of future houses, they’re always small, solar heated, and outfitted with a composting toilet. But I drink beer and wine, get frustrated with my children, lose my temper at the dogs when they bark at night, waste time on the internet. I work on those things, but I also have a sense of letting them run their course. Who knows, maybe I was a sanyassin in a past life, and I have all these sanskaras that I need to burn off that I was supressing. I struggle to let go, to not worry about whether I am doing the right thing or not.

I think all the time about Baba. How do I love Him? When Baba refers to His Lovers in the statements He makes, does that also refer to me, or does that refer to the lovers that were with Him while He was in His body? If I speak his name when I breathe my last, does His promise that I will come to Him stand? (I’ll do my best to do so whether or not).

I repeat His name often silently to myself, though I feel silly doing so. Why would repeating God’s name mean anything? But I do it because He said so. I find it particularly nice to repeat “Meher Baba” while I’m bicycling or walking. Will doing so alter my fate? I have no idea.

The same applies to my upcoming visit to the Samadhi. Is it really the same as coming into His physical presence? I have no idea. I am coming because He said it was so, just as he said "You say I am the Avatar because I tell you I am the Avatar." Even as a somewhat non-spiritual person, I feel that it is supremely important that I make the visit, and that feeling has been pressing down on me with more and more force for the past three or four years. Finally, it was just time to stop complaining that I was too poor to travel, that God was everywhere so why go to India, and just put some plane tickets on a credit card. I look forward to the trip with great anticipation. Baba will see to it, I am sure, that I spend my five days in Meherabad trying to make sure my children are happy and everyone is entertained.

I still have a strong pull toward St. Francis from my childhood. (My childhood impression of Francis came largely from Zeferelli's film, Brother Sun, Sister Moon. In my young adulthood, I loved Kazantzakis's novel St. Francis). There’s something about Francis’s example that makes me feel like my life is all veneer, and it does not matter so much whether I drink beer or drink water, as long as “I” am still drinking, I am not one with God, and a more painful state of affairs could not possibly exist. It is this feeling that drives me to hold on to Baba’s daaman as tightly as possible, to see the Truth in His gaze through all the fog of intellectualism that has settled around me.

I like to think that I do my best, though I am never sure if I am doing well or not. It is, though, all His doing after all.

Almost Ready to Go

2010-07-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

We're less than two weeks away from our trip to India, and I'm very excited. I had one anxiety dream last night. I was at Meherabad and went into the Samadhi, but it didn't look like any pictures of the Samadhi I had ever seen. There were a lot of people sitting along the wall, and it seemed more like an elderly person's house, full of bric-a-brac and dusty furniture. I went to bow down before the marble slab, but it was covered with an old dusty cloth, and someone put a strip of tissue on my forehead before I bowed down, and I kept thinking, "What am I doing here? This is nothing like I imagined it! Who are all these people? What am I doing here?" Suddenly, someone in white was standing before me, and he said, "Meher Baba is gathering his honeybees, and he has just captured you."

We've booked a ride with Travel Spirit. We land at 1:00 am, and they're going to take us to the Leela Kempinski coffee shop. I hope we four can keep ourselves entertained until we depart for Meherabad at 5:30. It's going to be more traveling than any of us has ever done.

We'll be at Meherabad from August 3-8, and then we move on to Pune. Does anyone have directions from the Hotel Aurora Towers to Hazrat Babajan's samadhi? We're staying in Pune for a couple of days to see places connected with Baba there.

The minutes are ticking away!

Accidents Happen

2010-05-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I always get a little nervous when I'm out on my bicycle on May 24th. Who can say when Baba might show his love for me by allowing me to share in his suffering by having a car plow into me on the anniversary of his accident? It is, of course, a ridiculous thing to think, and I went out yesterday on a thirty mile bike ride along I-25 and thought of Baba and the suffering he went through in Oklahoma. Monday went by without a hitch, and I figured I could put my superstitious musings to rest.

Today, I fell on my bicycle in front of a commuter train. It was sheer stupidity on my part. There's a short stretch of sidewalk between bike paths -- one of the only places I take a sidewalk -- and the RR tracks cut across it at a pretty bad angle. I normally put my feet down and carefully guide the bike at right angles to the track. Today, I saw the train was slowly chugging along about a quarter mile away. "I should stop," I thought, but then I decided to hurry on across. Because I was in a hurry, I didn't angle my bike across the tracks right, and I fell over quite suddenly, onto my right side, and my helmeted head smacked onto the raised curb. It was good I had my helmet on. I tore a couple of holes in the travel clothes I had just purchased two days ago to wear on our trip to India in August, and I scraped up my thumb. It looks like I'll arrive in India my normal scruffy self. I was sprawled next to the track with drivers in cars hopping out to see if I was alright, and the train, when I looked up, was much closer. I was able to get up and scurry out of the way before they had to put on their brakes.

On the one hand, it is true that everything that happens is Baba's will. On the other hand, it was just a moment of stupidity on my part. I know better than try to hurry across an angled track like that. I'm a cycling instructor. Still, maybe next year, I will spend less time contemplating Baba's accident, and I'll bicycle a little more carefully.

May 24th

2010-05-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, May 24th, is the day of Baba's accident in Oklahoma. I've had the privilege of visiting both the accident site and the Heartland Center. I have a dandelion from the side of the road pressed into my journal. Michael Ivey took me on a tour of the hospital. The room where Baba stayed is now an office, and as it was the weekend, Michael expected the door to be locked, but he tried the handle, the door opened, and there on the wall was a picture of Baba. I was overjoyed to see it there.

I know much has been written about the significance of the accident, and how he shattered one side during the accident in the U.S. and how he shattered the other in India -- I can easily get caught up in all the intellectual speculation. We, of course, haven't the slightest Real importance or impact of Baba's sacrifice. It is difficult enough pondering how God, who is both inside and outside of time, experiences this dream of illusion. The past, present and future must get pretty crammed together from a universal perspective. As Baba occasionally represented things as a circle, I also think of time as a circle, with God at the center, and we stand at one point, but we can't see very far at all one way or the other because of the curvature of the circle. The Avatars are arrayed around the circle, like beacons, and God, at the center, is aware of the entirety of it. When the entire circle is illusion, is anything ever lost?

The metaphor breaks down if you pick it apart too much, but too my mind, the sacrifice is continually being made, just as God-realization is continually being achieved.

I'll be remembering Baba tomorrow. His sacrifice flows out to us all.

Quick Visa Question for Those Who Have Been Through the Process

2010-03-11T11:48:00.001-08:00

I'm listing the places we are going to visit as "Meherabad, Pune, Amritapuri, and Mumbai."

Should I list Meherabad and Amritapuri as places, or should I list Ahmednagar and whatever town Amma's ashram is as the places we are going to visit?

I'm also using the Avatar Meher Baba Trust as my reference inside of India. I assume that will be fine, though we will be traveling further afield than Meherabad.

I'm nervous about all this visa application stuff.

Trip to India is Coming Together

2010-03-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

I've had a round of immunizations and received a prescription for malaria drugs, oral typhoid vaccine, and an antibiotic from my doctor. The kids have also had one hepatitis A shot, and they will be getting more vaccinations next week.

I'm still trying to visualize how the trip will be. How big is Meherabad? How many Baba Lovers are there in August? Are there things to keep my children entertained? Is it worth while to go into Ahmednagar? I'm the Baba Lover in the family. My wife is interested in Meher Baba, but she is a devotee of Amma. And my kids? Well, they're just kids. Laura will probably spend more of her time in Meherabad keeping an eye on the kids so I can concentrate on Baba as much as possible while we're there, and I can take over as the primary kid-watcher when we have moved on down to Amma's ashram. (I have to say that I would really like to just stay there near Baba's samadhi, but that's also my own ego-involvement in a way. Family is service, and helping my wife with her spiritual path is a reminder to me that all paths lead to God. Dealing with my egoistic arrogance about Baba is an interesting struggle. "Well, Baba IS the highest of the high!" Even without a formal religion around it, that's quite a big anchor for the ego to wrap itself around. "I" am a Baba Lover. Talk about divine humor. Time to wrestle with that "I" for a while.)

We arrive in Mumbai on the 3rd, and we will hire a car to Meherabad. I'm thinking we'll stay until the eighth, spend the night in Pune, (so that I can try to find Hazrat Babajan's samadhi), and then take the train down to Amma's ashram. It's a 36 hour train ride. I'm sure it will be a little weird being a Baba Lover in Amma's ashram, and I am cognizant of Baba's injunction not to go seeking elsewhere once you have caught hold of his damaan -- "These false saints cannot give you anything, while Walis and Pirs of the fifth and sixth plane can raise you to a higher state with just one look. But that is not the Perfect state, as these advanced souls are not Perfect. At times, even Perfect Masters cannot help those caught in these nets. Therefore, except for the Perfect Ones, do not even be beguiled by the advanced souls of the fifth and sixth planes. Stick to the Emperor and don't leave him for any reason" -- but I'm not going there as a seeker but as a husband. Even if Amma were a perfect master, I don't feel I would have any need of her help. I feel fully embraced by Baba.

I have to say that I'm not quite sure what to think of Amma. I haven't even looked into her work very far, though I have been cooking for the homeless with my wife and other people from the local Amma group. She does seem to be doing a lot of good work. She's known as the "hugging saint," and she does seem saint-like. Many of her followers do seem to think of her as a divine incarnation, though I do not know what sense of "divine" is meant. I think in terms of Baba's descriptions of things, naturally, and while I think of Baba as divine, I can accept that such is just my subjective spiritual belief. But, by Baba's description, if Amma does heal illness with her hugs, then she must be on one of the first four planes, if she is on the path. My understanding is that saints of the fifth and the sixth plane are unable to perform miracles because they have left the powers of the subtle world behind. Because I am steeped in Baba's life story, Amma does not strike me as a Perfect Master. She's just not as quirky as Hazrat Babajan, Tajuddin Baba, Sai Baba, Narayan Maharaj, or Upasni Maharaj. But, God can do anything, IS everything, and I am in no position to make judgments about spiritual status -- no position at all. Baba struck me as True. I feel love for and from Baba, even with him absent in his physical form. That is all I know.

But I will be in a large ashram surrounded by people who believe Amma IS enlightened, though I've heard Amma herself does not encourage people to think so. I hope that won't be too weird for me, or being at Meherabad will be too weird for my wife.

It will certainly be an adventure.

Going to India

2009-11-23T13:31:00.000-08:00

The birthday secret is out. For my wife's fortieth birthday, I bought plane tickets for all of us to go to India. It was a little bit of an impulse purchase. We haven't carried a balance on a credit card in a long time, but it seemed like it was time to go, so I charged it.

We're flying out on August 1st, and we'll be flying back on August 21. Since my wife is a devotee of Amma, we're going to split the time between Meherabad and Amma's ashram.

Charles Haynes was kind enough to point out to me that our travel period is during the monsoon season. Does it rain so very much during the monsoon? We'll be taking the train from Pune down to Kerala, and then from Kerala back up to Mumbai for our flight home.

I'm an anxious traveler under the best of circumstances. I've never been off this continent. I've been to Mexico twice. The first time a taxi driver ripped me off big time when I caught a cab from the border to the bus station, charging me about five times the amount he should have.

My biggest concern right now is that we arrive in Mumbai at one in the morning. Will the car services that drive people out to Meherabad pick us up at that late hour? Should we just wander out into Mumbai and look for a hotel? Should we just hunker down in the airport until morning?

Then I worry that we won't have enough money. We have a friend who lives part of each year in India with his wife and young daughter, and he says that you can live quite comfortably in India for two dollars a day. That seems to be stretching it, plus, his father is from India. He probably looks less like a confused tourist. I need to figure out a good per diem budget and start saving. It's going to be a struggle to both pay for the airline tickets and save money for maintaining ourselves during the trip.

But, as all things happen with Baba, as soon as I started worrying about it, a part time job fell into my lap that will probably address most of those worries.

Should I learn Hindi? Should I learn Urdu? Will my children eat enough in India given that they make faces and refuse to eat every time I make rice and dal?

There's so many things to figure out between now and August.

A Short Dream

2009-11-01T15:32:00.000-08:00

In the middle of another dream last night, Meher Baba showed up and said -- though I think silently in this case -- "Now we need to repair the end of your seventh chakra," and he leaned his forehead against my head. I could feel the weight of his forehead in my dream, and I was surprised, because my dreams are not usually tactile. I was deeply touched and reached up to touch Baba's cheek. Then he said that he had to be somewhere else at a specific time and left, and the dream I had been dreaming continued.

Speaking in Dreams

2009-10-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

I had a rather chaotic, strange dream. I had come across Meher Baba and Abdullah, (I've been reading about the Prem Ashram in Lord Meher). The setting was originally indistinct. There was something I wanted to ask Abdullah. I began talking to them, and then Baba began speaking an explanation to me. "Baba," I said in surprise, "You spoke." He smiled at me and said, "Of course." His voice was a little raspy, as if through long disuse, but he spoke very clear English. I believe this dream is the first I have had where Baba was not silent in the dream. I wish I remembered what my question and his answer was! Then we were in a house with other people. Baba tried to pin something up on the wall -- a group of objects pinned together somehow. It fell out of the wall, and he handed it to me telling me, "You do it." There were seven objects, so I assumed they represented the seven planes. Somehow, I got them to all stick together, but I couldn't keep them all in a straight line. By grouping some of them together, I managed to get them to stick to the wall. Then Baba had a big book of laminated maps. The book was opened to a map of Mumbai, and he handed it to me telling me, "make sure not to lose the place." I stuck my thumb in the book to make sure I wouldn't, but after he handed it to me, I looked down, and the page was blank. "See how hard it is to obey my instructions," he said. I flipped through the book until I found Mumbai. Baba said "that's it." In the meantime, everything was a flurry of activity. Baba was serving people food from the refrigerator -- just random food. I remember some of it was leftover pizza. Someone else was watching music videos on an old TV. I thought Peter Townshend was playing, but it was someone else with the same profile. Baba said, "you have watched TV enough" to the person. The room reminded me slightly of my childhood kitchen/dining room in Columbia. Then the dream shifted to another dream where I was homeless and living on the side of the mountain the way I did when I was a Sophomore in college, (by choice not necessity), and I woke soon after that.

It was a very odd dream. Baba was much more active than in past dreams, and he was speaking and doling out tasks. Before, in earlier dreams, he has just been sitting, or standing, or riding in vehicles. (At least as far as I recall. I should look back on the other dreams I have recorded here to make sure I'm not contradicting myself.)

Mah Nods ib Stobbed Ub.

2009-09-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

My allergies have been killing me for the second half of the summer. I can't sleep, so I'm tired and cranky. I keep saying to Baba, "Baba, how can a person be spiritual and stuff when they're sneezing all day?" My wife is finished with her massage school, and she's opened an office here in Santa Fe doing Reiki and energy work, so she's been working on me, but I'm still miserable.

"Baba," I start to say, but then I remember that all this suffering is a gift. I've been sleeping on the porch because my daughter likes to sleep next to my wife. Last night, I woke up in my sleeping bag, and my nose was actually painful. No matter what I did I couldn't get back to sleep, but it was only two in the morning, which is too early even for me to wake up.

I meditated on Baba for while, breathing through my mouth, thinking, in spite of my best intentions not to complain, "Baba, this is ridiculous, I'm breathing through my mouth when I've been trained to focus on my nose when I meditate."

Finally, I got back to sleep, and I had some sort of dream about Baba in the wee hours that I don't remember, but it was a great comfort that he was there, (and is here).

That's pretty much what's been going on with me. There's not much to report from Santa Fe.

My heart goes out to Heather and Eric Nadel as they recover from the attack. Being so far out of the loop, I have no idea who they are, but I do feel the love pouring in on them, and I add mine.

Looking at Photographs

2009-07-20T12:19:00.000-07:00

Beloved Meher
I know you.
I know you
Closer than breath.
Why do these tears fall?
I have lost all words
And you have refused
to utter any
And so you have made
Me an equal in this silence.
I bow down deeply
Between Nothing and Nothing
Straining my heart
For the sound
Of your one word.

A Striking Moment

2009-07-08T09:17:00.000-07:00

I don't want to read too much into this, but it was a very striking moment nevertheless.

We were all downtown to watch a circus performance a friend of ours was in. It had been raining, so the performance was delayed. Not having anything to do, we began walking through the railyard park, but then my wife felt hungry, so we turned around and headed back toward the bikes, where we had our food stashed.

Coming across the road toward us was a tall Native American, wearing a hat. He was possibly drunk, and at any rate, he was behaving erratically and made some comment to a couple of teenage girls who rode past him on their bikes.

I was dreading passing him. I hate conflict. I also am very easily drawn into conversations by homeless and drunk people that I have difficulty extracting myself from. I was getting myself worked up. What if he says something lewd to my daughter or my wife? That sort of thing.

"I'll just think of Baba." I thought. Somewhere, in something I read, Baba said, "wear me like a coat." And I do visualize Baba sort of superimposed over my body, dwelling within me and looking out through my eyes, while my thoughts and ego buzz around like the unquiet mosquitoes they are. I concentrated on Baba, and I felt my body straightening up, and my mind calm.

At that moment, the Native American took off his hat, placed it over his heart, and bowed deeply to me. I felt my body involuntarily incline toward him. It was just a split second, but it felt as if time stopped for a moment, and then we walked past each other. No one commented on what had happened.

Who knows what had just happened, but to me, it felt like a rare mirroring in the outer world of inner life. So often, spiritual matters seem unconnected to the gross plane. That bow felt like an outer recognition of my inner concentration on Baba.

I'm grateful for the moment whatever it was.

Short Dream

2009-07-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

I know I'm kind of making much of this blog a dream journal, which is probably of not much interest to people, but I want to keep a record of my dreams, and this blog is the best place for me to put them.

I had a short dream last night that I had to go on a plane ride. I don't know where I was going. I found out that my ticket placed me in a seat next to Baba. I was awestruck. I knew that it must be Baba's will, and I was amazed that he had hung around, (paradoxically -- it was a dream after all), in his body for forty years after he dropped his body, so that I could be next to him on the plane.

That's all I remember of the dream. It was much longer, but I don't remember much of it.

Baba's Hair: A Dilemma

2009-06-24T15:26:00.000-07:00

When I was back east this spring, a dear friend of mine gave me four strands of Baba's hair, (one for each member of my family). Evidently, the mandali kept the hair from the brush they used. Each strand is sealed in a small plastic bag. It is a beautiful, wonderful gift, and I am constantly in awe that I have four strands of hair from the Beloved. It almost seems that it makes it that much more of a divine romance.

Here's the dilemma. I don't know what to do with it. I've been looking for a locket, and I would prefer one with Meher Baba's photo on the outside. (I did find Radiant Heart Jewelry on the internet, but I would rather have a small photo than a relief of Baba's face in gold). I found an "Om" locket here in Santa Fe at the Ark Bookstore, but it was small. And do I dare take the hair out of the plastic? The thought terrifies me. It would be so easy to lose. Yet cramming a big wad of plastic into a little locket isn't too appealing either.

As it is, I have the four strands of hair tucked into a little pink envelope that Chris had that says "Beloved Avatar Meher Baba" on it, and this envelope is tucked in my wallet behind my Meher Spiritual Center membership card. I'm carrying the Avatar's hair around in my wallet like some sort of spiritual credit card! It seems ridiculous. What if someone steals my wallet? My wallet isn't exactly a reliquary either. I think of putting it behind one of Baba's pictures in my house, or on my little shrine with its strange combination of Buddhist statues and pictures of Baba, but I find that I want to keep Baba's hair close to me. I can't stand the thought of leaving it behind in the house when I leave.

It all feels like part of the divine humor. I have always tried to keep Baba in mind throughout the day. With this dilemma of what to do with these strands of hair, I think about him even more. He is always with me, both as my innermost being and as this physical remembrance of him.

Funny Dream about Baba

2009-06-13T07:21:00.001-07:00

I dreamed last night that I was watching an old movie about Baba, and someone was getting ready to have a swimming contest with him. When the contest started, Baba jumped on the water and started gliding about as if he was barefoot water skiing. I thought maybe someone was towing him from poolside, but I could see the pool was too small for that to be a possibility. He was just gliding along on his own. Then he would sit and glide along, and cavort in the water like a porpoise, grabbing people and diving over them and generally having a good time.

I woke up thinking Baba must be deadly serious about "Don't worry. Be happy."

Poem for Bhau

2009-05-27T17:48:00.001-07:00

I also wrote a poem for Bhau. The little bit of his chats I did hear entailed a lot of talk about the three-quarters destruction and the fate of America. (Note: I don't want to imply that I really think Bhau is worried. It's just a poem).

Oh Meher, can Bhau be worried?
"Three quarters destruction.
No water, no green."

Oh Meher, all this green
Is just the stubble
On your sacred cheek.

Shave it if you will
And let your face shine
For your creation.

I feel the infinity of your love
In the smooth stone in my palm
As much as in the tree that shades me.

My experience of time is so limited
But even I know
Your beard will always grow back.

Oh Paul, I will leave you just enough water
That you can sing of the Real thirst.
The pain of your Real hunger
Will sustain you when there's nothing to eat.

A visit to the Meher Center after all these years.

2009-05-27T08:05:00.001-07:00

I made a visit to the Meher Spiritual Center for the first time after all these years. I have not been there since I left South Carolina in 1986. It was wonderful to be there again. It was also difficult with my son there. He is karmically incapable of maintaining quiet. He is also demanding. I like to think Baba sent him to me in order to train me to be one of the mandali in a future life. At least I think of it that way because otherwise I lose my temper easily. I have a palpable need for a quiet, organized life. He begins demanding things as soon as he is awake, "Papa, Papa, Papa!" My mother said she could put me in a corner with a box of crayons and some paper, and I would silently color all afternoon. For my son EVERYTHING is a group activity. I have to continually pull myself out of who I feel I am in order to meet his needs. So I just try to imagine each "Papa" from my son is the equivalent of Baba clapping his hands to summon the mandali. Of course, I also have to make sure I teach my son to respect boundaries. Parenting is a complicated business.

Our visit happened to coincide with Bhau's visit. I tried to go to some of the chats, but I had to keep running out with Zeb because he couldn't sit still. He made friends with a boy, Soroush, whose mother wanted me to bring my kids to the internet chat at Richard Blum's house so they could play outside during the chat, but it was pouring rain. We ended up on the second floor of the house. I tried to listen to Bhau from the balcony, but Soroush, Zeb, and my daughter Sadie were giggling in the hallway. I had to keep walking down the hall to shush them.

I had planned to skip Bhau's last chat in the barn, because I felt I had put my kids through enough shushing, and we were leaving that morning anyway. My kids, however, were heartbroken about leaving without saying goodbye to Soroush, so we went to the barn. Sadie and Zeb held the door open for Bhau as he entered, and then all three of the kids slipped outside. I kept an eye on them through the door. I thought, perhaps, they would play quietly outside, and I could listen to Bhau. You think I would of learned my lesson by now.

The prayers started with three repetitions of "Om." In between repetitions, I could hear Zeb screaming "Soda Pop" outside and giggling. I didn't want to dart out in the middle of the prayer, but somebody else did and shooed the kids away from the barn.

After she came back in and the Persian Arti ended, I went out to take my noisy kids -- and it's mostly my son who is noisy -- away.

I couldn't help but think of poor Bhau having to keep silence around Baba while he was on watch. Trying to lovingly suppress the natural noise that bubbles out of people is a most difficult job. It would have been nice if I could have had a quiet visit without this constant tension in trying to keep Zeb's volume level down, but it's all Baba's will. Baba often said that sitting and listening to discourses is not real spiritual work. For me, for the weekend, the work was my struggle not to feel angry at my son while trying to keep him quiet. I certainly wasn't 100% successful, and I apologize to anyone we might have annoyed.

Someday, I'll get to come back to the Meher Spiritual Center, and then I will do what "I" want to do. I wanted to read in the library. My kids wanted to hang out on the beach. I wanted to talk in the Refectory. My kids wanted to play on the playground. I wanted them to sit quietly during Bhau's chats. They wanted to go back to the Refectory to eat. My ego is still monumental enough that I felt annoyed, very annoyed in some cases. Baba's trying to tell me, "Paul, even your spiritual aspirations are an expression of your limited ego. Don't worry. Be happy. Take care of your kids. Leave your spirituality to me."

I did learn there are some other Baba Lovers in Santa Fe. Baba's siter-in-law Freiny and niece Shireen live here, and there were a few other people whose names I forget, but there are no Baba meetings here. Several people told me I should call Shireen and Freiny, but I don't like to call people out of the blue. If Baba wants me to run into them, I will.

Thanks to all the people at the Meher Spiritual Center who made the visit wonderful. I saw some old friends and made some new ones. I hope it's not another 23 years before I return again.

We Repent for Every Lie

2009-04-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

I got caught, thanks to a bit of recklessness in my other blog, in a lie I hadn't even thought of as a lie. I think it's a good bit of teaching on the part of Baba working behind the scenes with me.

I planned my first long bicycle tour with my kids this spring, and found out the night before that the campground we were planning to stay in was closed.

Rather than just scrap the whole thing, I thought we would just go anyway and maybe they would let us camp or maybe we would just have to find another place.

We got there, I said, "I thought the campground was open on February 2," which had been my original understanding. It was a true statement, but it had been superceded the night before by my new understanding that it was indeed closed until February 26. I could have said, "we had been planning this trip, and then we found the campground was closed, but we thought we would come anyway and see what could be worked out." I didn't say that though. I lied. And what is frightening is that it was quite natural for me to tell that lie, and I didn't even think of it as such.

The Park Officer let us stay in the campground for the first night, and then we got backcountry permits.

Later, he found the full story on my blog, and he's charging me with the misdemeanor crime of Lying to A Federal Officer.

I've been spluttering along in indignation on my other blog, but, I have to admit. Yes, it was a lie. It's made wonder -- me who prides himself on his truthfulness -- how many other little half-truths and lies I let slip without really thinking about it. No wonder the prayer of repentance then follows, "for all hypocrisy."

Baba really beat me up on this one. I deserved it.

Oh Baba

2009-03-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

Oh my, Baba, how close you are to me
My breath is a million miles away
My heart beats in the next universe
compared to you!

Oh Baba, my mind buzzes
like a hive of bees
in a lion's carcass
Ages Ago.

My hands reach across
the span of the Milky Way
Compared to the closeness
of You.

Still, I have to pull
Myself together, take care
Of the children
Eat something

It's so difficult Baba
When I'm absorbed
In thoughts of you
To fry eggs or cook rice.

Oh Baba, you need to
Whack me upside the head
With a frying pan
To make me focus on the work ahead.

All the Fishes Come Home to Roost and Another Dream

2009-03-21T09:51:00.000-07:00

Quite by accident, I came across Rachel Brown’s All the Fishes Come Home to Roost. I thoroughly enjoyed her writing and the story. I like her description that some people have Baba magnets inside them, and she just didn’t happen to have one. I, however, evidently do have one. It must have been truly difficult to grow up around people who talked about Baba all the time, and to be a child expected to appreciate the gift of a situation that was distasteful to her.

It made me think about my own Baba-loving ways. Neither of my children are particularly interested in Baba, and I feel no need to push them in that direction. My nine-year-old daughter is very enamored of Buddhism. Years ago, we had some fundamentalist Christian neighbors, and their daughters always asked our children to go to Sunday school with them. We found an add for a Dharma for Kids class at the local Kadampa Buddhist temple. My daughter has managed to talk her way into the adult study groups, and she is considered quite a Buddhist prodigy. My son, however, doesn’t seem to have a great deal of interest in spirituality, and that’s fine too.

What is of interest to me, is that my relationship with Baba is largely silent and internal. I think to myself, and even feel, deep inside of me, that it is Baba’s will that my daughter study Buddhism, or that my son have an interest in science. When I became a hobbyist beekeeper, expecting to have only one hive of bees, and my bees mysteriously started reproducing like crazy, so now I am a small-scale honey producer, I said to myself, “huh, I guess that Baba wants me to be a beekeeper.” And, as per his instructions, I think, when I am sick, that Baba wants me to be sick, and when I am well, Baba wants me to be well.

But for me, it’s an internal belief and an internal experience. I rarely remark on Baba out loud, and I really don’t think that is much motivated by a fear of appearing silly, though there is a smidgeon of that fear there, (to be perfectly honest). Having grown up in a Christian household, with a little bit of the “it’s God’s will” floating around, I entered my adolescence with the feeling that the outward expression of that belief was a little bit offensive. If there is great suffering in the world, or even in our own families, it falls upon us to try to empathize with that suffering and alleviate that suffering, not to try to write it off as God’s will or Baba’s will. Baba made it clear in his directives that we are to work tirelessly for others, not luxuriate around in the fact that it is all His will.

I fear that I sound as if I’m coming off a little preachy here, and given my on-the-fringes relationship to the Baba community, I apologize if I give any offense, either here or anywhere in the blog. I’m struggling, personally, to deal with the issue of how you treat everyone with love, and “love all because all are One” while living within the banks of your spiritual belief. Inside the world of being a Baba Lover, it is tempting to say that Baba-loving is a spiritual channel without any shores, since Baba is the shoreless ocean. But Baba himself, his particular advent, is still, to our limited understanding, one relational occurrence within the stream of time. Baba is All for us Baba Lovers. Jesus is All, or at least The Way to the Father, for Christians. Intelligent action is All for secular humanists, and so on down the line. As I’ve noted in my attempt to reconcile my Baba loving to my friend’s belief in Ba’hai, it’s hard to skip right over these apparent, illusory differences. The monk in my kids’ Buddhism class talks about the dangers of taking a lower birth. I want to pull him aside and say, “look, the only danger after attaining the human form comes when crossing the fourth plane. Then, you might get zapped right back to the stone stage, but please don’t tell my kids that if they are selfish, they might be reborn as pigs. It’s just not true because Baba says.”

When I find myself thinking that, I realize that I’m making a religion out of Baba, and that was definitely not what he was here for. He didn’t say, “I have come to revitalize the existing religions and correct all their factual mistakes.” And that feeling of smugness I get? That, oh well, I've read God Speaks? That smugness is definitely the wrong thing to feel, and it is what I disliked about organized religion when I was younger, and what I still find distasteful about it. But having any kind of belief, even atheism, lends itself to smugness I suppose. What's the difference between smugness and feeling firm in your belief?

So the question for each of us, or for me at least, is how to be in the world yet hold to Baba’s daaman. For me it is to keep a very intense inner relationship to Baba yet to keep largely silent. (Sometimes, you just have to let it out). I try to support those I love according to what they seem to need. Perhaps Rachel’s mistake was in keeping her mouth shut for so long about her true beliefs. If she had piped up when she was eleven and said, “listen, I don’t believe all this Baba bullshit,” how would her life have been different? I would like to say that I am sure the Baba community around her would have been supportive of her feelings, though even uttering that it is Baba’s will that she not believe in him would be crossing the line. Would the mandali and the other people around her have kept that sort of commentary up? Would they have respected her atheism and indulged her interest in forts? To be fair, I didn't share my childhood metaphysical musings with my mother. I decided early on that there couldn't be a physical heaven or hell to which our souls swooshed off after death, and the idea of God directing things from up there like some sort of heavenly conductor was ludicrous. If I had told my mother that, she would have told me I was going to go to Hell if I didn't believe what the bible said. As it is, I understand Baba's description of the Universe in a sort of spiritual physics way, with the Avatar and the spiritual hierarchy turning a few dials and flipping a few switches to keep everything flowing smoothly, which is basically what I arrived at before I heard of Baba, having combined Buddhism with speculations of what existed before the Big Bang, and other bits of physics, combined yet again with Nietzsche's descriptions of relativistic morality in Beyond Good and Evil and his descriptions of the Apollinian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy. I didn't mention any of this to my family, or to my friends for that matter. It's just not the type of thing you discuss much when you're fifteen and living in the deep South. My mother, for her part, was very worried when my brother -- who died from ALS -- decided to be cremated, because he's supposed to rise bodily from the grave during the rapture. So, given my mother's literal interpretation of the bible, I still keep my musings to myself when I visit her, which is not very often at all.

I have to note, as well, that Rachel's parents never seemed to turn to her and say, "Rachel, what do you believe in?" Maybe we're all so guilty of our egotistical involvement in our own inner paths -- and I do note that my review of her book is mostly about what I feel -- that we don't stop to recognize the beauty of other's gardens. I like Baba's description in Sparks of Truth of God being at the center of the circle, and the gross world being the circumference of the circle, and all the world's religions being spokes radiating out from the center. At the edge, everything seems vastly different, even diametrically opposed, but as we draw toward the center, everything draws together, and the differences begin to vanish. I've begun to visualize it as we're all walking down our separate garden paths toward one central fountain.

My daughter, the other day, told me that she just wasn’t interested in Baba. “I mean, he’s a nice man and all, but I’m just not that interested. I’m interested in Buddhism instead.” I’m glad that I’m the type of parent, and she’s the type of daughter, that she feels secure saying that to me at nine years of age.

At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed All the Fishes Come Home to Roost, (though the Harry Conway episode was disturbing). I felt it was respectful of the Baba community in its honesty, and I look forward to more of Rachel Brown's writing. Coincidently, my wife has been contemplating renting our house and moving with our family to India, though her idea is to live on Amma's ashram for an extended period. I love Amma's work, but I would probably feel like a fish out of water on her ashram. I think Baba might have tossed All the Fishes ... my way as a cautionary tale. I also find it interesting from the perspective of someone who is closer to Rachel's than her parents' generation. I was born in '66. It sounds like Rachel was born in '73. I really don't know of many Baba-Lover's my age. (There's Chris Wilson, whom I went to school with from 3rd grade through high school). I have to admit that I carry a lot of post-sixties cynicism around with me. I certainly don't call myself a Baba-lover except in the company of other Baba-lovers. I have that post-disco intellectual cynicism that comes with people my age. (I notice I used "cynicism" twice. Is it possible to be a Baba Lover and to be a cynic? I like Walt Whitman's quote: "Do I contradict myself? Well then, I contradict myself. I am immense. I contain multitudes.") TM ended up being, at least partly, a money-making scheme. Cults ended up being vast power-grab conspiracies, and brainwashing and deprogramming was part of what I saw on the news when I was a little boy. That I believe Baba to be the Avatar in spite of all the negative media about Eastern gurus during my childhood is something of a miracle in itself, and I think that I still try to present myself as an intellectual and writer with a Master's degree in Eastern classics rather than a starry-eyed idolizer of an Eastern guru. Of course, internally, I just think that's Baba's plan for me. I admit that, while I am heartbroken I did not get to meet him in this incarnation, (who knows if I spent time with him in the last), I'm secretly happy he's not around to order me to do anything too out of the ordinary. I think I still need the next 660 years to prepare for that.

I had another interesting dream, though not particularly Baba related. However, I seem to be putting dreams in this blog, and I somehow doubt I have a large crowd of people following my writing on Baba.

I dreamed that I was in my room, in a house, and it seemed to be related to my childhood room, though it was not that exact room. Someone in another room of the house released a three headed dragon — sort of like a very large, three-headed komodo dragon. I was standing with my back to my bedroom door, trying to keep it out. I rearranged some of the furniture with my feet to brace against, and I kept looking at the other objects in the room wondering how I could get them in place to help me block the door, but I couldn’t leave the door to get to them. The door kept bulging out at the bottom, and I kept straining to keep it closed. Suddenly, I looked down, and it wasn’t the dragon trying to get in, it was the snout of one of our dogs. I looked around, and there was a window in the door, and outside in the hallway were about a dozen people trying to get in to escape from the dragon themselves. I opened the door and let them through. They began trying to hold the door shut. Meanwhile, the room had turned into a meadow with a stream running through it. I left them to guard the door and began walking up stream. As I was walking, I noticed two policeman near the stream draw their guns and head to the door to shoot the dragon, but the door dissolved and a towering, giant, three-headed fanged god towered up from where the dragon had been. I continued upstream and woke up.

I’ll have to look up three-headed Hindu deities. I know Ravanna had ten. Shiva had only one, or I would assume it was Shiva again. He shows up in my dreams from time to time.

(I'd like to add at the end, that my conception of "spiritual physics" is not as cut and dried, and impersonal, as I might have made it sound. I don't mean that I don't believe there can't be such a thing as a personal relationship to Baba, or that Baba can't be consciously involved in a person's life and vice versa. But, in general, karma and the structure of the universe seem pretty deterministic. By what means spiritual linkages are made and maintained between masters and ordinary seekers I don't know, but the mass of the material world seems to be headed down pathways that are determined both by what we understand as ordinary physics and the pendulum swing of karmic action and reaction. It seems like it is probably a pretty massive job for someone of advanced spiritual development to reach into that mass of determinism and try to help someone onto the path. Free will is something else altogether, and I don't want to write about it now.)

On Being a Spiritual Curmudgeon

2009-03-18T09:58:00.000-07:00

I'm sending a version of this question off to Bhau, though I don't know if he has time to answer mail. (Kitty told me long ago, that if I had a question, to write Bhau, Eruch, or Bal Natu).

As I have mentioned earlier, I find myself in the midst of people who are undergoing amazing spiritual transformations, and I find it delightful, and I attribute it all to Baba's Universal Work taking form.

But that leaves me feeling a little isolated and curmudgeonly. My wife, and a few of our friends, have become devotees of Amma. Amma is certainly an amazing person, and she is doing amazing work. My wife wants me to go meet her this summer when she is going to be visiting New Mexico. I'm not sure how I feel about that, (somehow, my wife construed that answer as a "yes"). I certainly feel she is doing amazing work, and I recognize that she is most probably a saint. Sometimes I wonder if she could be one of the current crop of five Perfect Masters, though I would think not since, historically at least, they do not seem to jet around the world holding large gatherings. But what do I know? I only know Baba. My understanding of his Avatarhood has been very direct and personal from the moment I laid eyes on him. When I look at a photo of Amma, I see a very loving Indian woman.

While I don't object to Amma in the least, I feel no need to meet her. I feel a little odd going to meet her when I see her work as being part of the fulfillment of Baba's. Is that egotistical? It certainly feels that way whenever I'm around people talking about Amma, or Ba'hai, or Buddhism. I always want to jump in with, "Yeah, well, Baba this and Baba that." I don't because I am deeply moved by Baba's working through all these diverse avenues. Still, I feel a little like an outsider in the many spiritual communities to which I am tangentially related, (my mother is a Southern Baptist, my best friend is a Ba'hai, my children go to a Dharma for Kids class at a Kadampa Buddhist temple, my wife and friends are Amma devotees).

The very fact of this spiritual kaleidoscope surrounding me makes me think of Baba getting his work done.

I'm never sure how much to say to other people. If I meet Amma, while she's hugging me, should I whisper in her ear, "I'm a Baba Lover you know." I keep thinking of giving the Buddhist monk who teaches my kids a copy of the Ancient One video. I've been having my Ba'hai friend read the first volume of Lord Meher while I read the Dawnbreakers. And man, I have to tell you, doing so is giving me some serious insight into how uninspiring another person's spiritual beliefs can be. The Ba'hai story is interesting, and I have great respect for their optimism for world peace, but their history is a little steeped in violence and rallying around "the Cause." I have yet to reach a passage that explains exactly what the message of the Cause is. I should keep all that in mind when I feel like babbling about Baba to someone who believes something else entirely. I should take Baba's silence as a good example.

I don't really feel as egotistical as I might be presenting here. I love my friends. I love Baba. I want to share that love. But I think the best way to share it is to let Baba unfold his plan in their lives in the way that is best for them.

I'm not sure where that leaves me. I feel a bit like a spiritual curmudgeon or like one of those men who sit in church with earphones on so they can listen to the radio, though in my case the radio station is Baba. I sit with my kids in the Buddhist temple and think of Baba. I think of Baba while my friend is talking about Baha'u'llah. I think of Baba when I hear all the good work Amma is doing.

I'm just waiting for someone to say "hey, what are you thinking?"

No one ever does. For the most part, it's just me and Baba.

Another Dream

2009-01-28T06:34:00.000-08:00

Here's a typical convoluted dream of the type I've been having. I have a friend who moved to Mississippi quite a while ago and began playing in a blues band based in Clarksdale. (He now runs a great guide business leading canoe trips down the Mississippi river). Last night, I dreamed the band had a bad van accident, and most of the members were badly injured. Then, I went back in time. They were in Santa Fe, and they were playing a wedding here. On their ride back to Mississippi is when the accident occurred, or was to occur. Meher Baba was with them, and he too was to be injured in the accident. I kept thinking, "I have come back in time. I should warn them. They outcome of the accident is devastating, and I am the only one who knows about it." I kept looking at these beautiful friends of mine and feeling horrified at what was about to happen to them. I kept trying to get to Baba to ask him if I could warn them, but I couldn't get alone with Baba, and I kept hearing the quote, "What has happened has happened. What has to happen will happen. There is no way out except through my coming into your midst." (I don't know if that's the exact quote. I'm not taking the time to look it up here.) I felt that it was not my place to interfere with the flow of events, that I was outside of the flow of time, but I didn't know why I was back there at the start of the trip that led to the accident, and I also thought, "these things happen over and over again. Nothing ever truly goes away. All events are here for all time."

Then the dream ended.

Dreaming of Baba

2009-01-18T15:55:00.000-08:00

I've been dreaming of Baba almost every night for days now. I don't know what brought on this sudden flood of dreams, and while Baba said not to put too much weight on dream experiences, it's still nice to know that my individual/illusory relationship with Meher Baba is not only operating on a conscious level but on an unconscious one. One of my favourite, and least convoluted, dreams consisted of my sitting in a group of people around Baba. I was gazing at him, and I closed my eyes, telling myself that I needed to look for him inside of me, not outside. It's a simple message, but it is nice to know it's one that's being worked on even while I sleep.

By the Way . . .

2008-12-10T14:49:00.000-08:00

While I'm thinking of this blog -- I know I don't post here often -- I thought I would point out that I did successfully relocate all the mice away from the house without personally killing any of them.

Now, I have a nest of yellow jackets in my wall by the front door. They leak into the house occasionally, probably around a window frame, and I have to chauffeur them back outside. To make matters worse, they are eating my honeybees and have just about cleaned out my observation hive. I hope my other hives are overwintering well.

I hope that I can seal up the holes they are entering through, around a viga, in late winter, without causing the death of too many of them. The population should ebb over the winter because they don't store food in the same way honeybees do.

AvatarMeherBaba.org RSS Feed stopped

2008-12-10T09:34:00.001-08:00

I've been enjoying the daily RSS feed from AvatarMeherBaba.org. However, a few weeks ago, it stopped. I hope everything there is OK. I can't seem to get through to the webmaster.

I've also been reading Bhau's biography of Meher Baba. It's a fascinating work. I met Bhau once at the Meher Spiritual Center. He seemed so calm, quiet and kind. If I were working on such massive projects, I would be a nervous wreck. I probably have many lifetimes to pass through before I reach such a state of equanamity.

Both my children have decided to be homeschooled, and I'm doing my best to keep my cool. I'm introverted to the point that I describe myself as slightly autistic. Uninvited interruptions are hard for me, and when I say, "I just need a few minutes to myself," and then I'm interrupted in the middle of trying to read for a few moments, I can respond quite angrily. (And my son, in particular, is always, always talking. He's lovely, but he drives me up the wall.) I've already threatened to leave for the day in response to their bickering between themselves as soon as I sat down with my first cup of coffee.

I get the feeling Baba would have sent me home very quickly if I had attempted to be one of the mandali. It's easy, when sitting in a comfortable house reading about it, to think, "why didn't he respond immediately to Baba like he had promised to do?" And then to feel all superior, "well I would have dropped everything." I'm sure Baba would have kept picking away at me until I blew up: "Jesus Christ Baba," -- which would have been an interesting choice of expletive -- "I haven't been able to sit down and have one single cup of coffee since I met up with you!!!!" And there I'd be standing in the dirt with my bags thrown out after me.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel a little sheepish about saying the Prayer of Repentance. I feel exactly like I'm five years old and have been caught doing something I shouldn't, and I feel defiant about it.

So, as far as I am able, I pretend that my children are a standin for Baba. After all, someday, they too, are headed for the supreme goal. When I find myself saying, "If you two are just going to bicker, I'm leaving for the day. You can teach yourselves. Why should I waste my time?" I try to stop myself. I should waste my time because they, too, are Baba. By serving them, I am serving him. At least that's how I look at it.

God and Mice

2008-09-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

This issue is not particularly Baba related. It's also an issue with my leanings toward Buddhism, and what I understand Buddha's teachings to be. (Admittedly, the teaching can be seen as singular).

Baba said, in "How to Love God":

If we understand and feel that the greatest act of devotion and worship to God is not to hurt or harm any of His beings, we are loving God.

My natural tendency is toward love for all creatures to begin with. I probably feel greater guilt over slapping a mosquito than many people, and Baba even said that killing mosquitos was OK, though given that was in India, it probably had more to do with halting the spread of disease. The mosquitos here don't carry disease -- or at least they didn't before the Avian flu reached here -- so I try to brush them away rather than kill them.

Our house, however, often gets overrun by mice. We have chickens, dogs, a rabbit, and a parrot, (named Pegu after Baba's cat), so there is a lot of food that attracts mice. Mice live under the shed and under the house. I strongly suspect mice live somewhere in the house, but I haven't found their location.

The mice here have become almost tame, to the extent that they peer at me from the kitchen counter or from the lumber pile as if they expect me to feed them a little tidbit.

For the most part, I try to use live traps, and then I bicycle them down to the arroyo and release them. I read somewhere on the internet that doing so is stupid. House mice are house mice, and if you release them in the wild, they are going to be eaten by something or otherwise die some other wilderness related death.

But many times, they just don't seem lured by the live traps. I have a feeling the captured mice must release some panic pheromone in the live traps that warn other mice off.

Every morning, I have to get up and sweep the mice droppings off the kitchen counters, and then I wipe them down with a bleach-based cleaner. Last year, (the issue is worse in the winter), I got so sick of cleaning the counter, I resorted to the traditional, smash-the-mouse-with-a-steel-wire trap. To me, it was horrible. It did, however, quickly take care of the problem, at least to the extent that there were not that many droppings, and I no longer heard the mice chewing in the walls.

Part of the big issue for me is New Mexico is both the land of the Bubonic Plague and Hantavirus, both of which are transmitted by mice.

This year, I have been trying to buy bigger and better live traps, but the mice already seem to be multiplying, and they seem, generally, to be ignoring the live traps. So I am faced, once again, with the harrowing prospect of killing the mice.

Most people I know, even very spiritually inclined people, think I'm stupid to worry over the issue, and I should go ahead and kill the mice. After all, I'm responsible for protecting both my house and the health of my family.

But ultimately, the mice have the same value-weight in the universe as myself and my family. We are all God's. If we all die from the plague, that death is just a physical change, and just as much nothing has happened as when I kill the mice. By killing the mice, though, I am expressing an intent to protect what's mine, which amounts to a false assertion of ego, though it could be argued that by trapping and releasing them, I am doing the same.

I'll also admit to a seed of childlike faith in God in relation to my actions toward the mice. Because of the love I bear the mice, God would not allow them to chew through my wiring and burn my house down. Because of the love I bear the mice, we are not going to be struck by some mouse-carried diesease. In reality, however, Baba said he is not the one to give, he is the one to take, and the greatest blessing is to be robbed of all our attachments that separate us from the divine. That really puts the story of Job into perspective. I have a certain measure of fear in my relationship to Baba -- a fear that if my love for Him grows strong enough, I'll suddenly find myself as blessed as Job. I'll suddenly be shaken from my complacent, North American life, to having lost my family to horrible deaths, and I'll find myself rolling down the street with my arms and legs amputated. (I did lose my brother to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and that was difficult enough). I know that ultimately, I will lose everything, and my physical, subtle, and mental bodies as well as everything I consider mine is just a shadow play. I try to practice detachment, but I certainly don't want to invite suffering.

In high school, I became a Buddhist because I didn't feel that God was personally involved in the lives of the individuals in the world. The impersonal model of Buddhism seemed more accurate to me than Christianity, and I thought it was funny when I heard people say things like, "I prayed to Jesus for a new car, and the next day my Dad bought me one." And yes, people in the South, where I grew up, do say such things.

So, it is with some humor that I found myself with a personal God. One which I have photographs of. Still, it is unclear to me how the spinning out of individual karma is related to Baba's "Universal Work," or how changes in my intent and behavior are related to the larger plan. I do not ask Baba for any help in day to day issues like mice or illnesses. I accept everything as a blessing, though my ego-existence would be much happier without mice, asthma, allergies, mosquitoes, etc.

Googling "Meher Baba and mice," doesn't bring up any results. I know Baba specifically did not like the harming of ants -- though he did have them killed for that one darshan -- and that Baba did condone the killing of mosquitoes. I have not run across any specific instructions regarding mice, so I'm pretty much on my own here. Maybe the killing of mice falls under the same instructions regarding violence in self-defense. Unless you really experience God as the self in both you and your enemy, not defending yourself when attacked amounts to cowardice, and Baba said that's not good. Philosophically speaking, I consider the inner self of the mice to be a little spark of the divine. When I look at them, however, I do see mice. I see beautiful mice with bright sentient eyes. I do not see horrible vermin. But if I am not blessed with being able to trap and relocate them, I am afraid that the karma of some of those mice might be guiding them to a more violent trap. I pray to the saints, siddhis, yogis, and Bodhisattvas that they will guide the mice to a less violent end. And I pray to Baba to see that the sparks of the divine associated with my mice have a speedy evolution and involution.

It's all beyond my comprehension.

I try to be compassionate as I can.

Karma, Free Will, and Divine Will

2008-09-17T14:15:00.000-07:00

I've been pondering imponderables. Everything is the outcome of Divine Will, or course, to the extent that everything is an expression of divinity. However, what really happens when I am presented with a choice, and I choose one option over another? I'm even curious about relatively minor, seemingly random, events, such as where I stand when I am waiting for my children to get out of school, the individual rocks I happen to be standing on, the people I meet on the street.

I was taking a shower this morning, and there was a mosquito on the shower's wall, and I said "Jai Baba," to the mosquito, (because what else are you going to say to a mosquito, and it was a little intimate and awkward sharing that space with a complete stranger like that, however small). I noted how it raised its front legs, and then I said something else to it, and then it flew over near the shower's faucet handle.

Now in the first place, it's all part of the world of illusion: me, the mosquito, the shower, the air around us, and on and on. How do Sanskaras operate so that we find ourselves in the gross world in such particular situations? Each moment we reach is the result of a series of choices, and those choices are determined by our sanskaras. But when we break out of a pattern of behavior, what is that? Let's say, every time my child opens the refrigerator, I shout, "It's almost dinnertime! Get out of the fridge!" That pops out of my mouth each time, no matter how much I tell myself that I won't raise my voice, that I need to consider my child's feelings, etc. That's clearly sanskaric conditioning at play. (At least as far as my meagre understanding). One day, I think, that's enough, and I say something kind and considerate. Does that mean in that instance I have exercised free will in spite of my sanskaras? And if I become so aware of my thoughts and tendencies from moment to moment that I can curb those tendencies that are not kind, etc. am I exercising my will, or is that still just a sanskaric outcome?

If Baba were around, and I had the leisure to ask him trivial questions, and he had the inclination to answer them, the full spectrum of choice, free will, and future outcomes would certainly be something I would quiz him on. Since God is the knower of the past, the present and future, it would seem the future is set. However, we do try to perfect our behavior and develop an awareness of our thoughts so to behave in the kindest way possible. Without the idea of free will, what would be the point in trying to behave as Baba would want us?

But still, sometimes it seems to me that everything may be set. I may have been destined by my sanskaras since before my birth to share a shower with that mosquito. Decades ago, events may have been running in such a way that I would be standing on a particular grain of sand as I waited for my children to get out of school this day.

In Life at Its Best Baba says:

The act of a Perfect Master is not repetitive. It is not merely the re-doing of something previously experienced in the context of a new setting. It is the doing of something that can not be done within the restrictions of the experiences of duality. It is a creation of the utterly new, a descent of the Truth into the false. Hence its creativity is infinite. The redeeming act of a Perfect Master is a flash of the Eternal in the midst of what is otherwise nothing but rigidly determined causation. This is the mystery of divine grace bestowed by the Perfect Master.

Rigidly determined causation. It's something to think about.

I have always felt that each moment we arrive at is the result of rigidly determined causation, but in each moment, we have the choice to follow our sanskaric tendencies and continue down the same old road, or we can choose something utterly different. Perhaps it is only a divine strength of will that can truly steer away from a karmic course.

I subscribe to the Meher Baba RSS feed from avatarmeherbaba.org. Recently, this quote from Mani came up:

The following is what Mani had to say on free will and Divine will.

"You see, it's like a train journey. Once the journey begins, you are stuck with whatever baggage you have. This baggage represents your sanskaras. Divine will represents the route. You can't alter the route of the journey. The train takes a fixed route to its destination. Your free will is only restricted to what you can do on the train. Either you can look out of the window, play cards, chat with your fellow passengers, and go to sleep or read a book. Although the options are many and the activity you do on the train may give you a sense that you can alter your journey, yet it is not the case. Your life, the beginning and the end and the route that it takes, is fixed by the Divine will. What you do on the fixed route is your free will. How you accept the events in your life, the people who are supposed to meet you, how you interact with them, that is your free will. It is this free will that will decide your next journey and the baggage that you will carry on it.

"So you see there is very little one can do to avoid the major events, whether they are mishaps or successes, from happening. These have already been ordained for you based on your past sanskaras or action of your past life. However, there is one thing you can do — accept these events joyfully and gracefully, filling up every moment with Baba's remembrance. If you do this successfully, not only will His remembrance soften the impact of the mishaps or other bad events that are meant to occur in your life, but eventually it will finish off your journey once and for all. It will take you to the final goal of all journeys, after which you have to journey no more."

THE REAL TREASURE - II, pp. 28-29, Rustom B. Falahati

That doesn't particularly answer my questions either.

It's the old conundrum of fate. Trying to avoid a bad fate always brings its predetermined end about.

Sometimes I don't wear my bicycle helmet. I feel that doing so portrays cycling as a dangerous activity and is actually counterproductive to encouraging people to bicycle rather than drive. "Besides," I think to myself, "I will drop this body when my sanskaras have begun to wear out." That does not mean that my death will not be the result of a bicycle accident. But would wearing a helmet change anything?

Oh, it's all very confusing. I dump it all in Baba's lap. It's just easier to let it be Baba's will.

Still, we each have to shoulder some sort of responsibility, don't we?

A Blessing from the Avatar?

2008-08-18T07:56:00.000-07:00

I spent the summer offline. Readers of my other blog will already know that I have a love/hate relationship with technology. As an at-home-parent, I wanted to focus only on my children during the summer and not lose myself in chasing all my various interests across Google.

I've been thinking for quite a long while about personal identity. I've never felt that I had a particularly strong sense of self. In answer to the question, "What color is your parachute?" I have always replied, "what parachute?" Lately, I've been wondering what exactly I should be doing. My childhood dream was to become a writer. I loved Hemingway, Faulkner, Kazantzakis, Henry Miller, Kerouac, Brautigan, Fitzgerald. My desire to be a writer was fueled not so much by a love of story-telling, but by a desire to live a certain, auteur-sytle life. I wanted a flat in Paris and a small house on a Greek island. All that fantasy desire has been ebbing in my adult life. I still want to write, but I don't see myself as a famous, man-of-the-world, author. I went through St. John's College, with its Great Books Course. I'm well-versed in everything from Euclid to Einstein and Plato to Nietzsche. At one time, I thought I would be a professor somewhere. My master's is in Eastern Classics, (also from St. John's). I was going to apply for a PhD program in Chinese Classics, but I got diverted along the way. At one time, I was going to apply for the program in Existential Psychology at Duquesnes, but I ended up teaching high school instead.

Which, I didn't enjoy so much. Being faced with 128 combative teenagers a day left me with ulcers.

So now, I'm an at-home-dad. I enjoy being an at-home-dad. I'm not wildly successful in my estimation, but I'm not bad. My fantasy for at-home-parenting is pulled directly from The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I always imagined myself like the professor, reading in his study and occasionally resolving some dispute among the children, but otherwise undisturbed. A warning to potential at-home-parents -- that scenario is not realistic.

I'm also a beekeeper. A friend of mine laughed and said, "that's great! Every bee a "b" for Baba." I didn't mean to become so much of a beekeeper. To me, it's obviously Baba's little joke. I wanted to have one hive, but that hive swarmed, and the swarms swarmed, and I was kept up many nights that first year building hives to house bees. Now, three years into it, I have seventeen hives, (and I have probably sold about as many), all from the same three-pound package of bees. From those thirteen hives, I harvest about forty pounds of honey a week. A beekeeper friend of mine who went through my hives while we were away on vacation said that they produce the equivalent of thirty hives. No wonder I feel so busy.

But I don't really think of myself as a beekeeper either.

Sometimes I feel a little lost. What exactly am I supposed to be doing? But the fact that I don't have a firm identity may be a blessing in disguise. It is easy for me to think that it is all Baba. As I read somewhere in Baba's writing, I try to wear Baba like a coat. I have an image of him, in my imagination, with me at most times.

I'd like to feel more at home in my life. Even when I was a child, I didn't feel at home in my life. But lately, I've started to think I should just not worry so much about it. It's not my life to begin with. It's God's life in illusion.

Don't Worry, Be Happy indeed.

More Random Thoughts

2008-04-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

I find that I have a hard time writing about all the things that take place in my mind and in my heart. Me and Baba, well that's personal! What is of interest to me, though, is the difficulty of being a Western Devotee. My own duststorm of an ego is very much a secular humanist. (Though I should probably look that term up before I use it so freely). I came out of a Southern Baptist family, and I was happy to escape that type of fundamentalism. I suppose that I saw it is a self-aggrandizing, exclusive tradition. "Jesus loves me, but boy, if you don't accept him as your savior, you're going straight to hell." Of course, as a Baba Lover, I accept that Jesus was ALSO the savior. Naturally, at the core, Meher Baba is fundamental. God alone exists. I can feel that, I can intellectually visualize this entire construct of the spinning universe as one big play of sanskaric influences, I can love Baba at my very core, though that love is difficult to describe, but I cannot return to that type of fundamental expression of the will of God and the love of Jesus that I grew up with.

As Baba instructs his lovers, when I am sick, I think "Baba wants me to be sick. It is Baba's will," and when I am well, I think, "Baba wants me to be well. It is Baba's will." I do, in some sense, lay my activities, thoughts, and feelings, at his feet. But my outer presentation of myself does not particularly reflect that. When I am sick, I do not say to my wife, "Baba wants me to be sick. It's OK that I'm sick. It would be fine if I died tonight. It is all Baba's will, and this gross world is just the tip of the iceberg anyway." For one thing, my wife, who is not a Baba Lover, and who is very interested in healing traditions, and is going to train to be a healer, would not accept that from me. When I am sick. She wants me to be well. It would probably make her think poorly of Meher Baba if I said, "Baba wants me to be sick." She wants so much for me to be well if I feel sick, so I take the Yin Xiao she gives me with love, remembering that her expressions of love and concern are reflections of the divine love.

That raises all sorts of questions that I'm not sure how to discuss. Is it wrong to give everything over to God while acting like a secular humanist? Is that some betrayal of Baba's will? Or would taking some ego-stance in being a Baba Lover be even worse? This shell of an ego that whirls the separate-in-illusion "me" along is also nothing but God. To some extent, I feel like I just give that to Baba as well. "Here Baba. Here's this ego. In this life it doesn't much like to talk about the will of God. It just is what it is, and it doesn't count for much beyond being yours." My son has been fond of saying lately, "You get what you get, so don't throw a fit." The "I" I have, or that has me, this go round is not particularly spiritual, or religious. My heart can turn everything over to Baba. My ego grumbles and protests to my heart. "Oh, you can do that, you can, but I'm not going to say a damn thing about it. You might want me to be a beautiful, spiritual ego, but I'm NOT going to do it!" So, my current attitude, is that I just let the ego bluster along. Baba has mercy on me in that he allows my ego to burn itself out without sending me out on Mast tours or anything like that. Those Mandali were lucky to be near him, but man, what a tough row to hoe.

You get what you get so don't throw a fit.

Don't worry, Be happy.

Avatar Meher Baba Heartland Center

2008-04-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

For my children's spring break, we rented a car and drove out to Mississippi to canoe with my friend John down the Mississippi River. On the way home, we dropped by the Avatar Meher Baba Heartland Center. Michael Ivey, the center's caretaker, met us and gave us a thorough tour of Dr. Burleson's house. It is a very beautiful place of retreat, and I felt at peace there. Michael told us that the room in the Prague Community Hospital that Meher Baba recovered in was usually locked on the weekends, and if he had known far enough in advance that we were dropping by, he could have acquired the key. At first, I declined walking over to the hospital, (my six-year-old son is a little impatient with all things spiritual), but finally, I decided we should go over there. We came to the door of Baba's room and found that the door had "accidentally" been left unlocked for the weekend. Generally, I have a hard time imagining the physical world, particularly the immediate physical environment, being micro-managed from the spiritual planes, but it did seem a bit of a miracle that the door should be open to us. Baba's room is now an office for one of the administrators of the hospital, but they allow the Heartland Center to keep a large portrait of Meher Baba just inside the door. I was very moved that there should be so much support for Baba there in the heart of the Bible Belt. Of course, fundamentalism is a very sincere form of love for God, but such openess to other forms of spirituality is usually not one of its touchstones.

On the way out of town, we stopped at the accident site. My children did not want to get out of the car, so I only spent a moment on the spot, reciting a little prayer, and picking a dandelion from where Baba's body had come to rest to press in my journal.

I have been pondering the accident quite a bit. As I may have said before, I am good with the illusory aspect of the temporal/spatial world. The miracle is not that its existence is illusory, but that it carries so much weight in terms of the Avatar's intervention. That God, having achieved consciousness, does care about what goes on here makes the world seem more like a precious jewel and less like a set of conditions to be transcended. Judging from God Speaks, we are all progressing toward the same end. The mechanics of the Universe, and of the gross world and of the seven planes, seem well-oiled. The progression away from ego-consciousness and toward God-realization seems automatic in an almost cold way. Our Sanskaras begin to lose their force, and the process of involution begins.

The Avatar sees Himself at the center of our illusion-bound selves. What then of the superfluous gathering of thoughts, words, and deeds which constitute the limited ego? What of the impressions that constitute the laws of physics and govern the unfolding of the physical aspects of the universe? There is nothing to my limited self but habits of mind, cold physics. What is divine in me has always been the same and will always be the same. Baba says that "there is no way out except by my coming into your midst," but why, when the journey and the way out is illusory does the Avatar come into our midst? I am both joyful that the Avatar, that God, has Love for me, and aware that what I perceive as my existence is false both in the act of perception and what is perceived. There is no me that is loved but what is divine already.

Well, no wonder we need the Grace of God.

My only understanding of the suffering of God in human form is that by consciously suffering as man and God, God dignifies the suffering we go through in our limited selves. What seems to be a cold karmic bouncing back and forth between opposites is acknowledged and lifted up by the Love consciously shown creation through the advent of the Avatar. Spiritually, I am sure there is much more to the bodily suffering of Baba, and the power of the blood spilled on both continents probably goes far deeper than any of us can understand, but that is the extent to which I understand it.

The Odd Thing About Faith . . .

2008-03-13T08:51:00.001-07:00

The odd thing about faith is its intuitive aspect. When I first saw a photograph of Meher Baba, and read his universal message, that was it. This person, and what he represented, was the culmination of what I had been looking for. The feeling is more of an emotional response than the adoption of a belief system. My intellect is all over the oddness of what my heart takes for granted. There is certainly a part of me that feels that all anyone needs to do is look at a picture of Meher Baba, and they will KNOW. That, of course, is not true. My wife finds him interesting, but is baffled by his silence, and by the fact that he seemed to take so much work on his own spiritual shoulders rather than teaching meditation techniques or something like that.

And it works in all directions. I have a good friend who is a Baha'i. I have great respect for his faith and send my daughter along with him to Baha'i Sunday school. But when I read about the Baha'i faith, I just, somehow, don't get it. I'm not moved by it.

I grew up in the Christian church, and I used to try to whip up some sort of feeling of love and gratitude that Jesus gave his life for my sins and was then whipped bodily up into heaven after death, but it just didn't capture my imagination. Why would Jesus want to haul his earthly body along? And it was clear to me that there couldn't be a physical heaven in which a physical body could be accommodated. My mother, on the other hand, is still worried about what will happen to my brother's cremated body when the rapture comes. "Well," she says, "I guess the Lord will know how to put him back together." I have great respect for my mother's faith, but I just don't know how to respond to it. So much for Christianity as represented by the church.

It's important that we hold each other in esteem, and when someone believes strongly in their spiritual truth, to honor that. How can we break through the exclusivity of faith? I think that's why we tend to keep our rational life in the world so separate from our spiritual practices. A belief is not open to argument, yet it is so important to the individual, it is natural to vehemently argue your own. Just look at the crusades. Maybe it's best not to be too open. We need more peace and love on this planet, with less martyrdom and fewer crusades.

Full Text of "You Alone Exist"

2008-03-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

I became aware that the video clip is only part of the video. The full video can be ordered from Sheriar Books. And the full text of "You Alone Exist" can be found here.

You Alone Exist

2008-03-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'm starting this blog because I'm being drawn back toward Meher Baba after being, as I like to call it, Baba Lite, for quite a while. I came to Baba while I was in my late teens, during the mid-eighties, and was fairly devout, but over the years, I guess that I got tired of feeling like such a freak. Whenever I started dating, there would come that point where I was faced with saying, "and oh yes, there's this little fact that I love an Indian spiritual master who dropped his body in 1969 whom I am convinced is the Avatar of our age."

Now I know that you're not required to tell everyone you meet what you believe, but I fell into not telling anyone and not being sure what I believed anyway. Except, except that I never felt that Baba was anything but the Avatar, and that I should hold on to him in this incarnation. It's all been a great bother in some ways, and it's practically driven to drink.

Oh Meher, why do you leave me abandoned in the Western World?
Can't you see that I sound like a madman over here?

If Hazrat Babajan set herself up under a tree in Western Traffic,
She would have been hauled off to the crazy place.

I talk about God being on film, of the wave of love cresting over me
And my intellect screams at me to get a real job.

Oh Meher, how can your love be universal?
I want to be reborn in India.

Oh Paul, your embarrassment is my comedic relief
When I turn off the projector, you will be with me!