Faith and Masters

Friday, June 19th

A few days ago I read my mothers memoir.

She had not intended to cover her entire life, she had been interested in writing down the steps and the stages that had brought her to the place of faith she is in today. She wanted to record the unusual, mysterious and sometimes unsettling experiences she has had, to put it all together in one place... I believe mostly to give to my siblings, because I imagine she thought in writing these things down they can be taken in and digested at a time when my sister and my brother would be ready to do so.

I think you could call my mother a Christian mystic of sorts. She hasn't always been that, but has been led very clearly and very steadily into this direction for decades.

None of the experiences she describes were new to me. She had always been eager to share with me what was going on and valued the welcome, the understanding and the feedback she got in return, I was in fact one of the few people she could talk to. So while the stories were not new, it was new to read them all at once, in one fell swoop, to get an overview of their entire map... and when I was finished I felt something almost like envy... that this path had been so clear for her. That there had never been a question which religion to follow. It was always the Christian faith and increasingly the Christian mystical path that she was here to walk.

I have never experienced that kind of clarity in my life.

I look at other people, other friends like that Lilia and her love for her teacher Tai Situ Rinpoche and her faith in Buddhism, Uwe my yoga teacher and his faith in the Yogic tradition and his master Guru Mai, and Martha, who was probably the first person I encountered who had a master, who already then did meditation daily... Stefanie and Adnan Sarhan. Eileen and Valerie and my friend Joan, who are all connected to the same master form India: Maharishi. Even more recently Annabel found Traleg Rinpoche. I had always been curious about a master, been curious about meeting someone in whose presence I would feel something like a calling, a place of home maybe, a trust, a knowing, a sense that this is "my teacher", this is "my guide"...and... it has eluded me.

I am recalling now the many places I have looked for this experience.

I remember as a teenager - still living in Hamburg - I went to an Indian master, or healer once, I don't even remember how I heard about him, don't even remember what I went to him for, but somebody told me, somehow I knew he was there, and somehow I ended up going. It was in the eastern part of town, Klein Flottbek maybe? An undistincive place, not a church... someones home, or maybe a center of some sort... in a low, modern, one story building. I remember waiting in line and I remember entering the room where this master was sitting and I guess I must have told him my request, and then I remember being taken aback by something ... by a lack of response, a lack of connection, a lack of understanding, a lack of significance really... I think I was struck by the brevity and simplicity by what this person was doing... and thinking "this might all be a fraud" "this person might not have any healing powers after all, might not be what he had been advertised as"... that must have been my first encounter of that sort.

In America, after I had moved there in my twenties, I got caught in a group around another master... I met these people at some convention I think, a woman in particular, I now don't remember her name, she was in a booth with some other people at this fair... and I remember making a connection with her, she seemed to reflect something back to me about who I was. I recall words like:"you are such a bright spirit, such a bright light, such a this, or such a that " Fairly flattering. I think I felt recognized, I felt called maybe, and curious too, and so I got instructions on how to work with this master. There was a certain ritual you had to do. There was a photograph, there was a candle and you had to sit and and look at the eyes in the photograph... and meditate with open eyes... and recite something... I don't actually remember the details.

I even went to a gathering where this master showed up and people were all excited about her arrival. They were talking about the wave of energy that would flow through the room when the master would enter . A lot of people: hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands - it was somewhere on the upper west side - and... I didn't feel anything. She walked into the room and down the aisle, not far, past the row I was sitting in, and... I didn't feel all that much, it left me disconnected. At some point I thought it odd to be looking at somebody's face and into their eyes, almost as if I was being hypnotized by a photograph. It began to feel a little cultish to me... at the time, and I stopped doing it.

Then for a while I had been to the Daoist center on 22nd St. During my last years in the city. Greg had been going there and they served a nice lunch. Sophia and Anina were still very small and I could bring them along. And again the people there praised me for the quick learning of the meditation style and my consistency in showing up and my progress. After a fairly short time they offered to do a ritual with me that would release me from the chain of reincarnation, that would set me on a path to... as I recall... complete my life in this lifetime. It seemed like an honor to do be asked to do that, it seemed like it would be adventageous to not have to return into a cycle of suffering, and... so I did that. I still have a certificate somewhere I believe. Did I feel different afterwards? I can't tell you. Maybe. Maybe not.

After I moved to the country, there were the years I went to weekly Sufi classes in Great Barrington with Stefanie and to some longer workshops with her master Adnan. I loved the classes, and the workshops even more. Those were my first experiences of deep meditation, maybe even transcendence, and connection to a larger energy. But no feeling of connection with him either. Lise, who was also going there for a while, described it very accurately: "When you hug him, it feels like you're hugging a rock."

Then there was Yoga with Uwe and his path and very clear communication about choosing a master. Not entering into a path of enlightenment without a guide. He would talk about that repeatedly in his classes. The huge difference it makes being connected to an enlightened master. And here too I was waiting for a sign to go to the Ashram, to see Guru Mai. And somehow that sign didn't come. Somehow I didn't feel the call.

Now there's been the time with Lilia and studying Buddhism. Which initially I did out of curiosity, out of fascination. I also did it because Lilia was so blunt in her description that yes, she was here to reach enlightenment, in this lifetime, on this earth. I had never heard anybody say this so boldly. And I admired that. I admired her dedication and her clarity and her path and I loved to go to her house once a week to meditate and to study some Buddhist scripture.

There are some things within Buddhism that don't connect for me, that leave me sceptical, or distant, and so I had never felt the urge to take the first step and take refuge with one of the masters, or one of the teachers. It is only now that I am contemplating to do this on my retreat next week. Maybe I will.