Month: May 2021

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Mother, we thank you!

Today we recorded backing tracks for our next Ananda Worldwide Virtual Choir project. We’re stepping it up a notch and doing the wonderful song, “Channels.”

“Channels” is more challenging than our previous virtual choir songs; mainly because there are six parts (representing the nature channels of birds, trees, stars, flowers, mountains, and rivers).

Even though doing backing tracks is always more work than I expect, I end up feeling grateful for the way it “forces” me to go deeper into the words and consciousness of the song and, in this instance, reflecting more profoundly on all that Divine Mother is constantly giving us.

I especially love the chorus:
“Mother, we thank You, Your joy shines in ev’rything!
Open these channels that the world once more may sing.”

I wonder…? What if I made a point of singing this to Divine Mother every single day?!?

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Summer has arrived!

Hard to believe that Sunday service a week ago saw us bundled up in sweaters and scarves. Today felt like full summer in the amphitheater!

The heat definitely sapped our energy and we ended up enjoying a fairly relaxed, minimally productive afternoon and evening.

Tomorrow’s supposed to be even hotter. Wherever you are, do your best to stay cool. 🌊

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Heaviness

Don’t know if it’s astrological or something in mass consciousness, but I’ve been feeling heavy and slow and vaguely out of sorts all day long!

At first I thought I was just tired. After all, it was a fairly intense week. But as the hours passed I started to think it was something more, because I did get plenty of sleep and yet I wasn’t able to snap out of it.

It’s like when there’s a storm brewing and you’re aware of a heavy energy weighing everything down. That’s how it’s been throughout this entire day, but I have faith that it will pass.

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Revolutionary thought

Maybe I’ve shared this before, but I’m really feeling it this evening!

As a naturally optimistic and cheerful sort of person, I’ve struggled with this all my life.

Somewhere I got the idea that I should be okay all the time. So then I learned the skill of denial, so the things that actually were bothering me wouldn’t get in the way of my “being okay-ness.”

Now I’m much more comfortable sharing myself — warts and all — with people. It’s taken me well into my sixties to get there, but as they say: better late than never!

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Spiritual longing

Reading this brought to mind the profound experience I had while visiting Wales on spiritual pilgrimage to the British Isles.

I had a deep connection with Ireland already, and with my love of PG Wodehouse, Georgette Heyer, and Jane Austen I fully expected to love England. But Wales was a surprise. I felt a profound draw to the forests, the mountains, and the castles.

And in several places — most notably Tintern Abbey on the River Wye — I quite literally felt an “echo of the lost places of my soul’s past.” It was rather disorienting, as if I was walking both in the present and in the past at the same moment.

I also relate to the “grief” mentioned in the definition above. For many years I would walk for hours along the coast feeling that I didn’t fully belong here but not knowing where I did belong. But it helped to be with the wind, and the rocks, and the waves.

Music awakens a similar spiritual longing in me. Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, Puccini — all of them have repeatedly brought me to tears of such intense yearning for…. something. Something that’s indefinable and beyond words, yet ineffably beautiful.

My theory is that these great composers were in touch with the divine, and that their music awakened and then fanned the flames of my spiritual longing — my inner yearning to seek, to know, to experience the divine for myself.

I’m convinced this was a big part of what set me on my spiritual path and helped determine my ministry.

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Swamiji and the tamboura

I recently saw this photo of a young Swamiji playing the tamboura and it reminded me of a special moment during a long ago concert. I shared this story in the book Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him by Asha Praver (now Asha Nayaswami); it’s a beautiful book, filled with many wonderful stories about Swamiji.

Taming a Tamboura

It was the middle of a concert when Swamiji picked up the tamboura to accompany himself while he sang. A tamboura is an Indian instrument that easily goes out of tune. It was dreadfully off-pitch and no matter how much Swamiji tried, he couldn’t tune it. Finally he gave up and began to play it as it was.

I was near him on the stage and every time his fingers went across the strings I cringed at the dissonance. With his sensitive ear, I don’t know how he kept singing, but he did. Gradually, the dissonance waned. By the time Swamiji was half way through the song, the tamboura was perfectly in tune and it stayed that way for the rest of the concert.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras describe the practice of ahimsa. ”Non-violence” is how it is usually translated. Swamiji calls it ”harmlessness” and has dedicated himself to that practice. The fruit for one who practices ahimsa perfectly, Patanjali says, is that in his presence, no disharmony can arise. Wild animals are tamed, ferocious criminals subdued.

Some people may disagree, but I have been playing musical instruments since I was a child and I know they have personalities that respond to human consciousness. I think, in the presence of Swamiji’s ahimsa, the tamboura simply couldn’t hold on to its disharmonious ”attitude.” Swamiji’s harmonious vibrations tamed it.

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Swamiji’s laughter

Swamiji laughing (Ananda Assisi)

One of the things I loved most about Swami Kriyananda was his laugh. It was so warm and infectious, with so much joy flowing through it.

I also loved how much he loved to laugh!

When I was living in Assisi and becoming better friends with Ramesha (he was still Fabio then, of course), I realized that one of the things I was coming to love about him was his laugh.

In fact, the first gift I gave Ramesha was a photo of Swamiji in Palo Alto — laughing!

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Forever and no time at all

Seeing my dad and sister today was so interesting. It felt like it had been absolutely forever and yet it also felt like it had been no time at all.

I feel that having a chance to visit, reconnect, and hug them somehow re-stabilized my psyche and my world. What a relief!

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At long last…!

This pic of Dad and my baby sister, Cathy, was taken when we went to visit her in Pensacola. That was a number of years ago now!

…I get to see my dad and my sis tomorrow! It’s been way too long.

I’ll keep this short because I hope to get an early start on the drive down to Sacto. 😊

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Here we go again…

It seems that all it takes is a few days of anxiously working late, which leads to eating dinner late, which leads to writing my blog right about the time I would like to be going to bed….and the next thing I know I’m getting to bed well past midnight (as in 1:30am!), which then makes it harder and harder to get up to meditate and walk early in the morning.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that my 28-day challenges include getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, so now I really feel it if I try to get up after sleeping only five hours.

Maybe I need to call on the Sandman, that mythical character in European folklore who puts people to sleep by sprinkling magical sand into their eyes!