Sumangali.org: In The Spirit Of Serendipity

I have always steered clear of the meme format for blog posts, as I considered it self-indulgent, but if a meme catches on, it ends up being more about other people than oneself, so here goes.

John Gillespie over at SensitivityToThings.com has started something with his finely crafted Six Childhood Facts post, and you can read a highly entertaining 6 from Pavitrata Taylor in From Out of the Ether a Golden Egg.

Just for fun I tried to think of a few, but only got to 5. If you think of some of your own, you can add them at the end of this post, or leave a link to a post on your own site. I realise now that the things one has grown up with, and which thus seem ‘normal’ can be amusing and interesting when viewed from adulthood, especially through the eyes of others.

If you’d rather skip the facts about me as a child, you can go straight to the dessert, a bonus feature: Age Does Not Matter. It doesn’t though does it, really?

Some Childhood Facts

1. Tutankhamun
   I would not say a word until I knew I could deliver it perfectly, so I spent most of my time silently listening, and the rest sounding like a 50s newsreader. My mother spoke to me constantly like a friend rather than a baby, so I randomly picked up long words which made me sound cleverer than I was. I nearly gave an old man a seizure in a Sussex railway station when, tottering in a knitted dress and lace-covered nappy, I pointed up at a poster for an exhibition in London and said “Tutankhamun” with newsreaderly gravity and archaeological grandeur.
2. Mastermind
   My mother and I used to be able to read each other’s minds, which might be why I have never really learned how to lie; there would have been no point. We used to play a game called Mastermind, where you have to guess the opponent’s choice of 4 coloured pegs, and the order in which they are placed. There were 6 different colours, and we used to play hardball in that one colour could be repeated up to 4 times. The games never lasted long, in fact they would often be over in one guess, but we used to play for hours.
3. Fillings
   I would eat only junk food after about the age of 9. I hated fruit and vegetables. I ate copious amounts of sweets every day but I was wraithly thin and I have still never had a filling in my teeth.
4. Cheese
   I became a vegetarian at age 13, due to my love of animals. It was rather alarming for my mother, especially as nourishing me was already so difficult, but she took it very well. In the early 80s it was not so easy to buy vegetarian food. Had I been from one of those grow-your-own-muesli, knit-your-own-yoghurt families it might have been easier, but I was not. Anyway, as I said, I would only eat junk food. In those days being vegetarian was all about cheese.
5. Magic
   I used to think I had magical powers because if I held one finger up to my eye I could see through it. It took me many years to work out that it is possible to look at one thing with one eye, and one with the other, so the two images are superimposed. Precocious in some fields; woefully retarded in others. (I’ve never told anybody about that).

Age Does Not Matter (A More Recent Anecdote)

“You wasn’t born in seventy.”

He was huge. Even his shining shaven head seemed muscular, his eyes steady and piercing like an archer’s. I was dried up and dizzy from flying all day, and then even my breath stopped. The hall echoed with an unreal uncomfortable sterility. His huge hand was on the precious little red book that has let me travel everywhere. The stare did not break. How would I prove that I am in that photo booth snap? It was all I had to show that I am me.

CHUG. The rubber stamp came down. He did not betray an ounce of mirth. But after half an instant, in which my world dissolved and hurriedly reconstituted itself, I realised he was making a joke for us both… and paying me a large compliment into the bargain. A joke and a compliment were yet more welcome in that lonely sterile world than they could have been in any other place, made funnier and kinder still by the deadpan delivery.

I yelped a strange laugh with what breath I could draw, and felt the immigration hall at JFK turn to look. Sudden sounds, especially merry ones, are not so common there. I stopped short of skipping my way to Baggage Claim.

If I didn’t seem like I was nearly thirty-seven, that is a victory for my meditation teacher, Sri Chinmoy.

Thirty-seven. I have to laugh. Other people laugh too, when I can remember (or work out) how old I really am. (Nearly 38 now!)

Yesterday I was remembering some of the “records” I used to listen to in my teens. Sometimes I do things like that just to amuse myself; it’s so staggeringly long ago it’s almost as if it must have happened to someone else. I daren’t show you a picture of me then, that would be too staggering. I look older than I do now, in fact I look older than I am now. I carried the weight of so many imagined worries.

It’s not that I don’t worry now, I do, but nowhere near as much. As the saying goes: You can’t push the river, it flows by itself. Meditating every day shows me that is so. I don’t care less; in fact by worrying less I have more with which to care.

As Sri Chinmoy says:

“Age does not matter,
Unless you replace
Your heart-light
With your mind-night.”
—Sri Chinmoy
(unofficial quote)

Age does not matter. Until his passing at age 76, Sri Chinmoy proved that to me. Through his life of meditation and self-transcendence he showed me that perhaps I am not as limited as I think. I hope to continue forgetting how old I really am. I hope to feel amused, rather than bound, if I do happen to remember, and grateful to Sri Chinmoy, especially if others find it funny too.

IMAGES:

• Portrait of Sri Chinmoy: courtesy of Pavitrata Taylor at Pavitrata.com
• Portrait of me age 7 (top): courtesy of my Mum
• Portrait of me, my Mum, Snoopy and Henry-the-dog: courtesy of my Mum

I was in the sea, snorkeling I think, or maybe diving. It was a long time ago. The sun heaved magnificent light into an already magnificent ocean, and all was bathed in lucid unearthly beauty below.

I was very fond of cowfish. They were like cartoons, little horns like raised eyebrows, boxy bodies puffing happily in and out as in a fit of laughter, big dark eyes, two arms fluttering—seemingly too small to do for anything but decoration. They always looked young, with childlike curiosity, as if so sure their own cuteness would keep them out of danger.

Their colours varied like all things in the sea, wearing different shades even when a cloud passed overhead. They were always brilliant, as if generating their own light, and always in such complex detail as if embroidered with a very fine needle and silk.

Someone caught one in one hand. The hand broke the surface and there she lay on the broad of the palm, in the raw blades of the sun, with no significant fins or tail to flip her back to safety. Her body looked instantly starved, the skin now dry in mottled greys stretched over a tiny twitching skeleton, eyes like dull flakes of flint, mouth and gills straining and sucking for a life she might never feel again.

I, like the cowfish, did not know the intentions of the human hand. For all we knew she’d breathed her last of the ocean, in the homely gardens of a coral maze. I held my breath with her, unable to speak or act in a daze of horror. The hand closed around her again

and let her go.

She puffed downwards as if squirted from the bulb of a pipette, her colours instantly proud and resplendent in the sun, now through its proper lens of sea. And she was gone.

I was told that it was all for me—so I may have a closer look at her when she was still. Still, I thought. But it was not her at all. Fish are colour and movement. I saw only the shrouds of death closing around her. Ridiculous. How can she be herself when she is in the air. I remained silent for a long time.

If it is true that fish have short memories then she would have been unchanged by the trauma, but I carry it with me everywhere. I glimpse her when I feel coerced by others—even when their intentions are innocent—to be something other than myself. True, I am in no mortal danger, but I am reminded that what is comfortable for others may be harmful for me. She reminds me to allow others their freedom too; to let them be as God made them, in their own proper environment. Only then may we each laugh and let our colours shine as He intended. I still have a way to go, but the shock of the cowfish makes me try.

“Accept God’s Will
Happily,
Rejoice in God’s Will
Proudly,
And move on with God’s Will
Speedily.”
—Sri Chinmoy
Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, 25101

By far my greatest fear when I was younger was one of deep water. I suppose as fears go that’s quite a rational one. It was perpetuated by Jaws—a movie surely unavoidable by anyone alive in the late 1970s. At the time, Jaws served as confirmation that fear of the sea was absolutely justified and almost constituted common sense. Those who ventured beyond the shallow end of a pool I crowned in my mind as heroes, and as veritable demigods those who would dive head first from a board. Those who would wade out far enough to lose their footing in the ocean however, I labeled as reckless dolts who did not properly value the life they had been given.

When harboured and reinforced for twenty years, even the most rational fear can reach irrational proportions and formidable strength. It seemed God had to carefully engineer an opportunity for its final dismantling, starting with a phone call from a friend—out of the blue so to speak. My friend had planned and paid for a scuba diving holiday in the Caribbean with a partner who had since gone off in a huff about something, so would I go instead? Many excuses came to mind, but you can imagine that none of them would be very convincing faced with such an offer. I accepted, viewing it gravely as a service, and nervously hoping more specific and robust excuses would present themselves when faced with the ocean itself.

It was with much trepidation and considerable self-transcendence that I completed my training and gained my diving license, graduating from the shallow end to the deep end of a pool somewhere in Alabama, then to the murkier regions of a former quarry. I would use up my air in half the time of my peers due to my anxiety, but by that time I had resolved to face The Deep once and for all, and I would not be deterred by any amount of cajoling.

I had to be pushed off the boat on my first adventure in the open sea. With all that outer paraphernalia and inner baggage, the physical and mental strength to do it myself had to be developed over time. I was enraptured though, from the very first moment. The harsh sun, the growl and fumes of the boat engine, the nauseous movement of the waves, the weight of the equipment, were all replaced by purity and gentleness on the other side of the ocean’s skin. Fear turned to awe as I entered a world where I did not belong, but which had ample room to house me. How humbling to be at the mercy of such a body of vastness, floating in a medium of which the human body is largely composed, but which alone would not sustain it for more than a few seconds. Up to then such tranquility was unknown to me, but seemed a perfect natural state. My breathing became slower even than it was on land, and I used less air then even than my peers.

There was no sound then except that breath: the husky drawing in, and the chink of exhalation, releasing plumes of amorphous bubbles. Colours were completely new; their hue and luminosity changed constantly, with a freedom alien to the flat shades known to land. Freedom of movement in all directions was also new and brought boundless fun, though my own mammalian efforts took me nowhere in comparison to the sleek agility of sea creatures. Stillness was a favourite practice, controlling the posture and breath to hover inches from the seabed. Movement without effort was the crowning joy, drifting with the tide over coral gardens, tiny fish hovering and darting, as would bees over blooms.

The creatures seemed to look on us as bumbling enigmas. They showed no irritation by our presence, neither fear, as they knew any lazy flinch of theirs would easily outsmart us. Some were notoriously intelligent, and many seemed positively hospitable, even taking time from apparently busy schedules to play games. The beauty, power, and harmony of that vast and strange environment have etched themselves on my mind and heart. I can still see a flock of eagle rays emerging into view, their massive wings forming slow, graceful arcs suspended in a saline cathedral. I can still catch the cheeky glance of grouper snatching chunks of raw fish from my pocket. I can still feel the specific majesty of depths beyond 100ft. I’d have imagined the form of a shark in those depths would have caused me to expire from sheer fright a few weeks before. In reality its beauty disarmed me, and I saw only the grace and efficiency of movement. The perfection of that creation brought tears to my eyes. In The Deep, to my surprise, I seemed to meet the Creator in myriad beguiling guises.

I have visited other oceans since, but I no longer hanker for sub-aquatic charms. Perhaps it is the growing sense that such peace and beauty are in-built, requiring only the key of meditation for their discovery. An ever-deepening Deep seems accessible without need of a license or expensive airfares, without the use of weights, wetsuits, and cumbersome canisters, and without the job of conquering fear.

Image: Prashphutita Greco at Sri Chinmoy Centre Galleries

I met my second nephew for the first time last week, eight days after his arrival on earth (that’s me on the right, at a similar age). His expressions changed fast, as if dreaming. What could he dream so soon? Memories of other worlds or other lives perhaps. I wondered what his dreams would be in later life, hoped we would be friends, collect beetles in a jar, laugh together over a late lemonade in his grandmother’s garden.

He is huge for a newborn, with hot fists and a determined frown, but I was a little afraid for him. It seems brave to me to be born at all, to be human, to live on earth.

Despite its intensity, nobody remembers being born. Everyone uses their first breath to cry. Raw sound, cold, movement, pain, exhaustion, separation from the source, are too much to bear at once. There is no strength of one’s own to call upon, and nothing certain or familiar on which to depend. Julius Caeser, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali, however mighty they became, each arrived naked and alone, and cried.

My primal bewilderment stayed with me longer than theirs, and perhaps longer than most. The cry silenced but was always there. Life was a fast road and the human vehicle seemed so brittle on it. I saw pain in others and felt it as my own. I grew no armour in my thoughts or senses.

I was a morbid child, my first dream in colour was of death. I lay awake in fear of everything, craving the release of sleep, but dreading my own dreams more than waking life. “Empty your mind,” said my mother, “think beautiful things or have no thought at all.”

So I made my first tiny flame of peace inside. It lit my world a little in that strange perpetual night; spilled into the darkness so at odds with my safe and gentle circumstances.

I worried about life and the end of it, about the world and myself in it, about being small and about growing up. I worried that God had forgotten me on earth. That’s the strangest thing: I was raised an atheist but always secretly believed in God, that there was more to life than earth, that death was not the end of it. Thank God for that.

It was a vague belief though, like a church bell ebbing and gathering on a faraway breeze, or a photograph faded almost to obscurity. There was nobody to sharpen the image for me. To own to another that I believed in God, and needed to feel closer to Him, would have seemed weak, delusional even; like admitting that I couldn’t handle myself.

But nobody knew anyway. Nobody knew where we are, or even how far the universe goes. Nobody knew for sure what happens after death. Nobody knew where God is. It didn’t seem to bother anyone. That bothered me most of all.

I blundered through my teens as well as anybody can, still haunted by fears I couldn’t name, increasingly sensible to the vulnerability of a world I didn’t understand. As I grew, so did the dark. I was trapped in it, a slave to my own fear. The faint memory of God was swallowed in it too, and I was terribly alone.

Luck has a habit of following me, especially when I need it most. A lady where I lived had taught herself to meditate, and gave me some books so I could do the same. She talked about God, naturally, like a friend. The picture grew in clarity again, in brief glimmers.

Through each attempt, I collected strength beyond my own ability, harvesting happiness from an orchard much more bountiful than my own, an orchard of sweet fruits that went on forever, where it was always summer. I dared remember that my life is not a solo voyage, but piloted by Someone bigger. At last I could breathe, as if for the first time.

One day I turned against fear, and it dissolved, like a serpent made of smoke. God had not forgotten me; I had been forgetting Him.

I was a fair-weather friend to God though. Meditation was difficult. Although I practised every day, my efforts lacked vigour, unless I was desperate or in trouble. I reached an agreement—a sort of dual tenancy—with the serpent of smoke. It was always there but it would keep to its own quarters. God lived somewhere upstairs, and I was often too idle to climb there, perhaps calling a perfunctory hello from the second step each morning.

Courage came then from more comfortable sources, the sort you can buy in a bottle or a pill, that you can win through fickle friendships and small outer victories. It was a cheap happiness, and like most imitations, it fell apart after a few years. I chased it, all over the world, but arrived back where I started, and that time with nothing.

I suppose it was a new birth, a blessing in the form of annihilation. There was an accident which nearly took my life. Soon after that I had no money, no job, no family near me, no friends, no home, barely any belongings, not a shred of hope or self-esteem. I was helpless as an infant. And I cried a good deal.

I knew I had to learn to meditate properly. I had to find someone who knew how to do it and could show me. I dug out the books the lady had given me and tried a new exercise: The Spiritual Guide. It started with imagination, as all visualisations do. I waited on a beach in my heart for someone to come and teach me, and eventually he did.

He was a beautiful Indian man, all softness and sweetness, but with the strength of a galaxy contained in a human form. He loved me, as if he had known me always. He listened and understood, without judgment or harshness. He encouraged me, sincerely, not indulgently, and not in words, but in silence, releasing wisdom and peace like fragrances. I had only to breathe them in.

Here was someone who knew. He knew God. Anything I did not understand, he already knew. He did not need to tell me; the fact that he knew was enough for me, to see it and feel it in him. He contained all opposites, extremes of all I had longed for: subtlety and certainty, beauty and practicality, and most of all, immaculate poise.

He did not answer me or solve anything directly, but having sat with him, I knew what to do in life, and felt the strength to carry it out. Over the span of a year I gained a good job, a car, and a beautiful home. I was safe and healthy, challenged by the world but no longer terrified by it.

I wanted to learn more, to meet with others who knew meditation’s secrets. I wanted to practise with them, find new techniques, exchange experiences. The Sri Chinmoy Centre was the first and only place I found.

I thought it had been my own imagination. How could such a man exist on earth as the one who had sat with me every day that year? There he was, in photographs and videos. He had come to life. He had been there all along. I could read his words and sing his songs. Eventually I could sit in his outer presence, as I had done so many times in my heart.

I cannot account for my good fortune. I am small and full of imperfection, but divine love touches all creation like the fingers of the sun. Luckily we need not wait to deserve it.

In Sri Chinmoy I found answers to questions I had not yet formed. In his brief life of 76 years he gave to all equally and abundantly: not what was deserved but what was needed. In poetry, in songs, in physical demonstration and silent meditation, he made maps for us: maps of immediate inner lands, and others we will not reach for a very long time.

Sometimes I miss him. I had ten years to become attached to the luxury of his living presence. But I know he has given me much more than I need, and much more than all the world can give me. When I miss him, I know I need only sit in my heart and he will come to me.

Is there such a thing as a junkophobe? That’s me. I buy the same thing over and over because I keep throwing useful stuff away; I’m ruthless to the point of impracticality. I can’t tolerate anything old, broken, unlovely, unclean, or out of place.

Then what is this old Cheese Doodles packet doing here? Cheap crinkly empty bag, garish primary print, “Made with real cheese” blaring from the top, like that would make it ok. It’s taped into a big silver book of handmade paper, Indian beads hand stitched onto the front. It sits beside seven others, now amongst my most precious possessions: one of raw silk in a rainbow weave and coloured pages, one embroidered with satin ribbons, one with my name across the face of a dog, and a felt-tip drawing of a bird.

Words are scrawled inside: rough shapes of words, the pen hurried or tired, the phrases hackneyed and dull, but this content has held me stunned over the last two days; compelling as an elysian dream remembered at daybreak.

These, my journals of the last ten years, have stayed mostly unopened. I wrote them for a future self I thought I would not meet for many years to come, never imagining my Master would leave his earthly frame for Heaven so soon.

I knew such apparent debris would turn to treasure then. The spent packets of blessed food from Sri Chinmoy’s hand are now a link to another world which used to be my own; a world of outer instruction, more subtle, more powerful, more inwardly refined than I can even comprehend, let alone fit into the bounds of words. The Path of The Heart; The Silent Teaching; the sacred life of meditation; the unviolable bond between Guru and disciple.

Mostly these packets, photos, notes, bulging out of pages, are triggers to more abundant memories than those recorded. A concert ticket took me to the first time I saw Sri Chinmoy in person, Heathrow Airport 1997. In a bustle of artificial light and noise and movement, waiting for his arrival, I entered into one of the most profound meditations of my life. He passed by, looked into me with such surety and pure affection, I knew my life had found its home. Here at last was a teacher who could take me to God; a journey I knew I needed more than my own breath. His was the most familiar face I had ever seen, recognition flooded with sanctuary. Tears of relief followed me for twelve continuous hours.

* * *

Today I met with four others to meditate, the thirtieth day after Sri Chinmoy’s Mahasamadhi, an official end of mourning. One of our little band was raised a Hindu, as was Sri Chinmoy, and told us that in India, family members take lotuses on such a day, to set them adrift in the Ganges with a prayer. Perhaps we could do the same as a symbolic mark of gratitude and respect.

We took golden roses with only stubs of stems to help them float. We walked a long way down the river Ouse, slipping on the cobbles in the damp of autumn, checking at intervals with each other if “this” could be the “right place.” Two lads, three girls, and one sleek white dog named Pearl, seemingly out for a weekend stroll.

Who would have thought such profundity would come to pass on a rotting jetty by a rowing club somewhere in North Yorkshire. In the space of moments, so many impulses rose up in me that I have not dared to feel these past days. It seemed we grew up all of a sudden. Orphaned, we had only each other then, with whom to carry the legacy of a sacred life into an unknown future, to offer to others what we have had the unimaginable boon of receiving.

I set the small bundle of softness on the wide mass of water and watched it bob away. It seemed to have its own light, glowing with a joy and purity I thought only Heaven could conceive, smiling and shining at the onset of an unknown journey; a warm light above the dark and changeable—on it, in it, yet apart from it. I touched my fingers in the water, then to my head and heart, making some unspoken promise to this beautiful city where I was raised: a sudden totality of love and oneness.

We parted, all but wordlessly, and I went home. I smiled to the homeless man selling magazines and gave him a pound—I will not give to beggars, but he works hard, all in joy and fun, to make others smile. I saw myself in part in him. I smiled to the youth absorbed in a greasy paper of chips and scraps. I smiled to the aged lady struggling in pain and fear from the harbour of her own front door: I saw myself in part in her, and felt only love. I smiled to the big girls in skinny jeans, cursing and shouting (in fun, or in fear of not being heard?); the lady in shades on an overcast day; the pub landlord at his back door in a dressing gown, ruddy from the night’s excess; the sulking seven-year-old whingeing to her Dad for something vitally important.

Today I saw myself in part in them all. Or was it God?

“Thou art one Truth, one Life, one Face.
Supreme, Supreme, Supreme, Supreme!
I bow to Thee, I bow.”

—Sri Chinmoy
from Invocation

Image: Pranlobha Kalagian

After eleven years alive, I had lost all thoughts of calling somewhere home. Like a dry leaf on the wind of life, I went where it went, ever poised for the transport of its next gust. It pointed to Yorkshire, so we went north. I was determined not to like it there.

My cat spoke my thoughts that day, so I stayed silent. Her metal-lined box sounded more full of banshee than cat, and after an hour of teeth and claws it succumbed to her wrath. She flew about, heedless of windows or steering wheel, finally to settle groaning for hours under the passenger seat. She and I felt the same way about long journeys, and seemed equally pleased to move house.

The house seemed to have narrowly survived a brunt of exceptional hatred from its last owners. The woodwork had paint thrown at it in a spite of bright violet or pink, the walls asphyxial yellow from nicotine. Names were carved into windowsills, carpets more thrashed than trodden. Without human umpire, plants and trees were left to throttle one another in the grounds outside. The adjoining shop—the reason for our purchase—had been forced to close for failing to meet the basic rules of health. Be glad that my memory forbids a description, but for the weevil holes in every packet. The hungry creatures invited themselves to join us in the house, but I suppose they left or starved eventually, as things were kept in tins from then on.

Secondary school began for me soon after our arrival. My mother—through kindness, to avoid my standing out from other pupils any more than my southern accent betrayed—followed the school uniform guidelines to a T. I did not hint until a year later that I was peculiarly distinctive in my Clarks shoes, A-line skirt two inches below the knee, and shirt with a top button that fastened down to neatly accommodate a tie.

Choice of seat on the school bus said everything about social rank, thus the clamour at 7.30 each morning; thirty or forty gnashing teenagers vying for the back seat, or as far back as they dared. I, vying with a few for the front, so desperate to avoid confrontation, was heaved upward with the mass, often leaving a Clarks shoe behind as my feet quitted the ground.

I have forgotten what was taught to me at school, but I learned many new words and customs. I learned new skills too, such as dodging knives and staying the correct distance from brick fights. I quickly discovered that hair-style and respect had an uncanny, almost perfect, correlation. I longed to study Latin, but would have won the wrong sort of attention, so took a sudden interest in metalwork instead. “Is this it?” I wondered as I finished my first wrought iron candlestick.

Our first was the hardest winter the north had felt in decades. It was hardened still by the boiler—beaten to within an inch of its life—breathing its last at Christmas when nothing could be done to help it. To quell our festive eagerness, and perhaps to stay warm, we took long walks. Drifts of snow towered far above us, drilled with hailstone tunnels like giant weevil-holes. We scraped tracks in the ice to receive shop deliveries. Fizzy drinks froze on the lorry and gushed out of their bottles as they thawed.

I assumed this was what living “up north” would be forever more: cold, leaky, weevil-holed and shaded with nicotine. Of course it was not. Our little shop soon flourished, and I grew some social standing on the back of it, as our forecourt became a fashionable teenage hang-out. Like any 80s tween, life was all about riding horses or bicycles, eating sweets, and waiting for games to load from a tape recorder to a ZX Spectrum. “Is this it?” I sometimes wondered when I lost at Manic Miner. When will life begin? Or does it not? Does one just gradually look older but feel the same?

By thirteen I had grown the right sort of hair style and grown out of my Clarks shoes. Life was all about baby-sitting enough during the week to buy enough Pernod in bars at weekends to obliterate dull memories of evenings spent baby-sitting in the week. “Is this it?” I wondered, waking bruised and confused, but doing it again for want of a better idea. “Must laughter and relief be so quick to perish?”

At sixteen I moved on, alone, packing all my unanswered questions in some part of my memory labeled “York”.

* * *

The leaf, twenty-one years on, has settled in York again. Only twenty-one years? Is this the same life even? These city walls stood for a millennium, but now in the space of my life are they so changed? Through my open window, breezes bring the bells of the Minster, surging like a tide. This is it. Strangers smile at me in the road, one, two, three, before I realise I was already smiling, and they perhaps politely returning. Was that old cherry tree there in those days too, hurling confetti into a brilliant sky like the mother of some cherished bride? Is that the river inn where once I turned sixteen in a frenzy of loud friends, a cheap euphoria of sunny cider, my feet lolling in the green of the water? There are other loud frenzies now, and some look my current age. Is their joy as hollow as my own once was? As fickle as a draught? Are they still wondering “Is this it?”

It was not this place that was bleak then; it was these eyes that saw it so, and these same eyes that see it beautiful now. Many times I have thought and said that only since learning meditation do I really see; before I merely looked, and even then reluctantly. Again it shows itself to me as true, revisiting the same place on the long circular journey of life. I thank Sri Chinmoy for teaching me to see and to walk gladly in the world. He has travelled so much further in his life journey but lives on to encourage those, like me, who are only just setting out.

Journey
Onward, upward my heart proceeds.
I, the finite, perceive the One.
His soulful boundless Heart of Love
Awakes my bosom’s inner Sun.
Impossible deeds of yore to-day
Have reached their lofty wonder-goals.
My heart is changed, my world is changed,
I love all souls and own all souls.
I inspire the world to forget its woe,
I long for its inner cry to increase,
The far no more remains afar;
Now fast approaches my mind’s release.
—Sri Chinmoy

Excerpt from My First Friendship With The Muse by Sri Chinmoy