Gangaji – Thanks for the tuning

I wasn’t planning to post again this week, but I went to a public event of Gangaji’s last night, whom I had not seen in several years, and feel compelled to share some of what transpired. If you are not familiar with Gangaji, you can check out the profile I wrote of her for the Heroes of Healing project, or her own website.

For the cynics among you, I feel compelled to say that I am not a ’student’ of Gangaji’s (she doesn’t really structure her programs that way anyway), and in fact haven’t seen her in five years. At one time I did attend many of her public events and a five-day retreat with her, but there were many people at these and she wouldn’t know me from Adam. This is all to say that I have no vested interest in marketing Gangaji, and am not a Gangaji ‘groupie’, if there is such a thing.

But at this point in my own spiritual path and teaching, she is by-far the best living example of ‘truth’ and ’silent awareness’ (words she likes to use) that I have found (and frankly, I have seen most of the big-name spiritual teachers out there.) Simply being in her presence provides a ‘tuning’, because the purity of her state of awareness throws any resistance in my own awareness into sharp relief. Much like a piano-tuner tunes a piano by striking his tuning fork and then hitting a piano key to compare, Gangaji provides a pure example for me to assess my own awareness by. She is my tuning fork (sorry I couldn’t come up with a more poetic metaphor.)

She is also excellent at what she does. And what she does is invite people to sit with her on stage to share experiences or ask her a question. Through her own questions and transmission, she then takes them deeper and deeper into their own being. The transformations that often take place are beautiful to watch. And while it is easy to sit in the audience and pass judgment on each person that goes up, the real value is in seeing yourself in each person, or rather, seeing your own habits of mind reflected in them. Then every transformation is your own too.

So here are some of my favorite lines from the night, all things Gangaji said to individuals on stage, and what they meant to me:

- While the first person was on stage with her, practically gushing devotion and joy, which made many people uncomfortable, Gangaji said to the audience, “As an experiment” (one of her favorite phrases), “try dropping the narrative going on in your own head, the ‘what does this have to do with me’, or ‘what is she talking about’…just as an experiment try dropping all that…not because it is the right thing to do, or a good thing, or a holy thing, but just as an experiment for yourself.“…This is the essence of spiritual practices for me – they are experiments and tools to help us realize ourselves. It isn’t about ‘beliefs’ and ’shoulds’, which too often only clutter (and confuse) the mind.

- “You have to be able to receive in order to give.” We often equate spirituality with giving – with compassion and service. But to be able to give, we have to be open to receiving. We can’t give love unless we are open to receiving it. We can’t transmit peace unless we are open to receiving it. And truly receiving is much harder than we often realize, because it means allowing ourselves to be vulnerable – vulnerable to potential pain, or difficulty, or whatever may come.

- “So are you going to add to that suffering or do something different? You always have a choice.” This was to a woman who described how sensitive she had become to suffering recently (after 15 years of spiritual ’self-absorption’ by her own account). She described watching a movie on torture in Afghanistan and not being able to sleep for a week. As Gangaji said, that is not what opening your heart is about – it is not about taking the suffering into your own mind and body so that you become miserable too. Guilt can often lead us to take that path, and patterns of emotional indulgence. But we can, as Gangaji put it, ‘open ourselves to the pain of the world, not deny it, and yet allow it to go through us, without taking us down with it.’ If we do that, there is a chance we can do something about it, at least in our own awareness, and hopefully even beyond that.

- The woman she was speaking to then said, “There is this story in India of a saint, and of how when his cow bled, he would bleed too, out of compassion”. Gangaji replied (in my favorite line of the night), “I wish I had met that saint…he might still be with us!”

- A woman came up who was experiencing a great spiritual shift in her life, but she doubted its validity because her external life was a mess. As she said, she was expecting some sort of alignment between her inner and outer life. “Not necessarily”, said Gangaji, “this isn’t about perfecting your life, or perfecting yourself, or perfecting the world. And thank goodness, or we’d all be waiting forever. This is about finding that presence, that you are feeling right now, all the time, regardless of what else is going on.” I think this exchange is particularly helpful considering how popular teachings related to the law of attraction have become in the last few years. While I believe these teachings have tremendous value for healing, and attaining goals, and all that, none of that has anything to do with discovering who we really are. That peace, that presence, is always with us, regardless of the state of our external lives.

- “Now, what are you going to do with all that power?” Gangaji said this almost under her breath, as one woman stopped on the front of the stage before sitting down, to gaze out at everyone in the crowd. While Gangaji had asked several individuals to gaze like this while sitting with her, what this woman did was different  – she thought she was connecting with the audience, but on an energy level she was thriving on the focus. This is not a judgment, just an observation, and it was a potent example of the power of our ego, and its insatiable drive for attention. All of us spend a lot of time and focus collecting power of different types, almost out of habit, and Gangaji’s question is a great one – now, what are we going to do with it?

- One young woman started her exchange with the statement, “I am just at the beginning of being spiritual’, to which Gangaji replied, “STOP. Stop right there! Stay at the beginning! Don’t go any further. The beginning is where it is all at. The problems start as soon as you think you know something, or have something, or had something you have to get back.”

- “Who says you have to be calm and happy to be at peace?” You could substitute almost anything we think we need for the words ‘calm and happy’ – healthy, wealthy, in love, married, divorced, parents, childless, working, not working, travelling, in a cave…you name it. We all start our spiritual journey with projections and ideas about how it is going to improve us or our lives. We all want things, whether material, situational, or experiential. And there are lots of teaching out there to help us get them. But, what does that have to do with being at peace? If your peace is conditional, what good is it? Just find peace now, be peace now, and forget the rest.

For another Gangaji inspired post, try Form and Emptiness, Spirituality and Politics.

Book Review: Deepak Chopra’s Jesus – Christianity as a Path to Enlightenment

I have to admit, Deepak Chopra had me at the subtitle of his novel Jesus, officially out today. The subtitle is ‘A Story of Enlightenment’ – the same subtitle he used for his novel of the Buddha’s life, released last year. Since my entire approach to spirituality is cross-denominational, and I believe the mystic branches of all the world religions are paths to spiritual enlightenment, I was predisposed to like Chopra’s version of the lost years of Jesus’ life. And in his preface Chopra is very straightforward about his purpose in writing this book, saying “[there is] a Jesus left out of the New Testament – the enlightened Jesus. His absence, in my view, has profoundly crippled the Christian faith, for…making [Jesus] the one and only Son of God leaves the rest of humankind stranded…What if Jesus wanted his followers – and us – to reach the same unity with God that he had reached?”

‘Crippled’ is a strong word, and this book will undoubtedly anger many. Yet Chopra’s Jesus maintains the divinity at the heart of mainstream Christianity – he is not just some average Joe who happens upon God. Nor is he simply a spiritual teacher or ‘guru’, as other Eastern teachers have characterized him. From a young age others recognize a special quality in Chopra’s Jesus, and this separates him in a way that both fuels and challenges his spiritual faith. The novel mostly covers the years of Jesus’ life left out of the Bible – the years in which he transforms from a serious and insightful young man into the son of God – and throughout that period he is surrounded by signs of his future divinity.

Jesus himself is not comfortable with these signs, but they draw others to him. The early part of Jesus’ spiritual journey is dominated by his relationships with Mary Magdelene and Judas – both of whom of course feature prominently in the later part of his life, as told in the New Testament. Chopra’s earlier versions of these figures each have delusions about Jesus, and want to possess him for their own purposes. Judas wants to use Jesus to inspire his own band of Jewish followers in their rebel fight against the Romans, and Mary wants him for personal love and fulfillment. Jesus struggles to understand what each wants from him, and is tempted by what they have to offer. It is through them that he comes to understand the human condition, and the forces – both external and internal – that prevent many from pursuing a deeper relationship with God.

Ultimately, Jesus comes to see the spiritual power in ego surrender, telling Judas “We’ve both struggled to be first…Now we’ve been shown the way out…How can we discover God’s will unless we give up our own?” Soon after, Jesus leaves his early companions, and ventures to the Essenes, a mystic Jewish religious community now believed by many to have authored the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jesus stays with the Essenes for five years, revered by them as the Jewish Messiah. But ultimately Jesus disappoints them also, as he will not conform to their view of him. He insists that God wishes to save all, not just the Jews, and tells the Essenes “All you’ve ever wanted from me is to save the Jews. The Jews cannot be saved as long as the world is what it is. We need a new world, nothing less.”

After leaving the Essenes, Jesus travels to a mysterious holy man in distant mountains, also the story’s narrator. Although the teacher is left unnamed, he clearly calls to mind classic Himalayan spiritual masters and hermits, and it is here that the path of Chopra’s Jesus most closely resembles that of his Buddha. Both struggle with their concepts of good and evil, and both are tempted by demons with promises of greatness. They both come to understand they must abandon all concepts and personal identity to truly allow God to work through them. As Jesus’ mysterious teacher tells him, “Only someone who can see the demons as part of God is free. Good and evil dissolve. The veil drops away, and all you see is divine light – inside, outside, everywhere…Your soul is the world’s soul. In your resurrection will be the resurection of the world.”

Jesus’ awakening is powerfully told, and the new Jesus returns to his homeland as an agent of enlightenment. Encountering Judas and Mary once again, he transmits a grace that literally wipes away their past. Or, as Mary puts it when asked ‘what has he done to me’ by others who receive Jesus’ grace, “He killed who you were, so that who you are can be reborn.”

Chopra’s Jesus is not a perfect book. Scenes change rapidly, and many conversations seem stunted in a way that occasionally left me disoriented. But it conveys a profound message in an accessible and passionate voice (something I can’t always say about Chopra’s nonfiction.) If you are interested in considering a new vision of Christianity, and of all religions, give it a read, and consider reading Buddha as well.

You can purchase this book on Amazon, or for more book reviews, go to the Books page. To learn more about Deepak Chopra, try the Heroes of Healing site, an online directory of contemporary spiritual teachers, healers, and authors.

If You Think You’re Enlightened, Have Kids

Spiritual teacher Ram Dass reportedly once said, ‘If you think you’re enlightened, spend a weekend with your parents.’ I would like to modify that to ‘have kids.’ Of course, having kids is a much bigger time commitment than spending a weekend with your parents. Instead, you get YEARS of weekends in which birthday parties, G-rated movies, and Chuckie Cheese’s qualify as high excitement. But that isn’t really what makes having kids such a spiritual reality check. The value is that you have a built in test of your ego and self-awareness on every front.

I know alot of women who were sure before they had kids that they were nothing like their own mothers, and would parent their own kids very differently. They had worked through their own issues, read all the latest parenting books, and would not nag/yell/bribe/criticize/control/threaten [insert parential sin of your choice here] their own kids. And yet when confronted with the day-in and day-out emotional challenge that parenting can often be, they found themselves issuing some phrase right out of their own mom’s playbook. A friend of mine recently called to bemoan the fact that she had desperately yelled ‘you just wait until your father gets home’ at her children, a threat from her own childhood she had vowed she would never use.

It’s easy to be peaceful in a spiritual ivory tower, where your ego is unchecked and little occurs to trigger anger, frustration, or any latent negative emotional patterns. For this reason, some Buddhist monasteries require their monks to rotate between three-month shifts within the monastery walls and out in the ‘real world’ employed in service-oriented labor. With time, anyone can learn to quiet their mind and pacify their emotions while living a controlled, serene life. But this is really just a skill, it doesn’t necessarily mean any true self-awareness or growth has occurred. I have met alot of people that could meditate quite well, calming their minds and beings on retreat, but when confronted with a true life challenge, lost it entirely, and fell back on old, often destructive, emotional habits.

So this is the spiritual value of kids (or part of it anyway, as there is so much to be mined from it I think.)  On a daily basis they help us see ourselves, our emotional patterns, and our internal blocks to spiritual light and freedom very clearly. And they provide us with an eighteen year (give or take a few years) intensive to work on them! Of course the issue for many of us is that we feel like there isn’t enough time in our lives to process what we learn, or to center ourselves enough to change our habitual reactions. This is part of the value of fitting some regular meditation or contemplation time into our lives. It gives us a reference point, and helps us build our ‘peaceful’ muscles. To me, meditating and parenting are together the perfect modern version of the Buddhist monastery/service rotation cycle. We ‘mommy mystics’ just do it every day, instead of every three months.

Book Review: Enlightenment for Idiots

I love when I come across a good book accidentally – or by all appearances accidentally anyway. I found a copy of Anne Cushman’s Enlightenment for Idiots at my local library, while browsing cookbooks of all things (it was on the next shelf over, in New Fiction.) This book is the perfect summer read for those spiritually inclined, interested in yoga, or all things India. It is Ms. Cushman’s first novel, although she has co-authored a nonfiction book on spiritual travel to India, as well as many magazine articles and essays (you can read more about her at http://www.enlightenmentforidiots.com/pages/bio.html.) In any case, on the spiritual front, she has clearly walked the walk.

This novel chronicles a year or so in the life of Amanda, an almost thirty, somewhat yoga-obssessed, romantically-challenged writer living in San Francisco. She is commissioned to travel to India and write a guidebook for spiritual seekers entitled – you guessed it – Enlightenment for Idiots (with all the commercialization of spirituality these days, it’s hard to believe this book hasn’t actually been written!) She spends 6 months there, and encounters a dozen or so different spiritual teachers, covering virtually every major spiritual tradition of India. From hot yoga, to Buddhist Vipassana, to tantric sexuality, to complete renunciation, she has it covered. With a quick wit and an adorable, quirly sidekick named Devi Das, she comments on everything and everyone she meets with insight and affection.

What I really love about the book (and the reason I have recommended it to my own meditation students) is that it offers a real education on all of the Indian spiritual traditions in an easy to read context. The book reads like your standard chick-lit summer fare, but in the end, the concepts it is covering are more than a little sophisticated. It affectionately paradies many of the most famous (or infamous) contemporary spiritual teachers, such as Amma, Sai Baba, and Gangaji, and some of their more over-the-top devotees (all of whom I think I have met!) It manages to do this in a way that doesn’t diminish these teacher’s spiritual lessons, but does pose important questions about what true faith and spiritual inquiry is.

All of this is within the context of Amanda’s more personal story, which is fraught with the usual chick-lit romantic issues, and a larger twist that I won’t reveal, so that you can discover it for yourself. Overall, I highly recommend giving it a try. You can read more about the book at http://www.enlightenmentforidiots.com/pages/about.html, and read a guest post from the author at http://www.annemini.com/?p=976 .

For other book reviews on this site, go to the Book category.