What I Could Not Know

[Guest guest]

"When you go beyond the consciousness of this world, knowing that you

are not the body or the mind, and yet aware as never before that you

exist — that divine consciousness is what you are. You are That in

which is rooted everything in the universe."

~ Paramahansa Yogananda

I've been away for a bit, having traveled to Paradise, and then on to

Nevada City. Bob and I were ‘attempting’ to take a break from the

recent, hectic, life challenges involving family issues and personal

regards in this. We had to retrieve our car which had been ‘wrecked’

by God two and half weeks ago, so the trip was also necessary. I say

“wrecked by God,” for Bob and Eric (my, Bob, Linda, Ed’s, and surely

Jim’s, ancient Friend in This,) at last met, were forced to meet

completely, and fell in Love with the Love they recognized in one

another. My prayers to God were answered in this most peculiar way.

My prayers were that we might all be friends and free from all

identification to past actions which had brought so much personal

suffering and distance between us. I so wished for these two, my

Beloved Bob and my Dearest Eric to meet, and to see how much they

already knew one another and Loved one another. I could never have

envisioned how much this would be so. It was more of a Gift of the

Lord than I could have thought possible, but had dreamed and longed

that it be so. All things are possible in God, in this Love which is

carrying us in the arms of Grace.

“Amazing grace! How sweet the soundThat saved a wretch like me!I once

was lost, but now am found;Was blind, but now I see....

....When we’ve been there ten thousand years,Bright shining as the

sun,We’ve no less days to sing God’s praiseThan when we’d first

begun.”

~ John New­ton, “Ol­ney Hymns” first stanza, (Lon­don: W. Ol­i­ver,

1779). Ex­cept­ion: the last stan­za is by an un­known au­thor John

New­ton was a slave trad­er be­fore com­ing to Christ.

We had wanted and been trying to visit these old, cherished friends,

Eric Smith and his family, and visiting then, in turn, Jim Rasa. What

I could not see, could not fathom, was that during this visit would

come a trip to the Sierra Nevada Memorial hospital in the late night

hours of silence and stillness. It was preceded by a very serious

illness, an infection of opportunity that nearly took the house down.

The physicians call it cellulitis with ascending lymphangitis. It came

on so swiftly that I became semi-delirious before I knew what was

happening. I fell asleep in happy comfort and bliss, lifted in the

Love of Bob and Jim and Guruji, and awakened to a nightmare world of

agony and sickness of body, mind and soul. Grace keeps us from

knowing, from seeing what’s coming over the horizon of life, coming

in its perfect time to burn down the world as we know it. I could not

know what I did not know… until I knew it through and through in the

Delight of the Lord of all life. The experience, one of many

hospitalizations and painful episodic briefings on how quickly this

life can be turned upside-down and inside-out, rerouted my whole

path, and it destroyed everything I thought I knew or ever could

know. It was and is, life-altering. I am changed forever in this. As

is Bob, and is Jim.

After the five days of ‘battle’ in the hospital, after a six hour

drive to Humboldt, returning home weakened, still very ill, and

suffering something of an organic reaction to the bacteria, my brain

was unable to function properly. I could not understand simple

things, could not do even simple tasks without great effort and

frustration. I wasn’t even able to ask myself what or who or why

about anything. There was no one here ‘well enough,’ unblind enough

to even know to go within, to give in, to be still, to let God do

what God will and must do. I just wept, trembled, struggled,

suffered, and went through great ups and downs. The inquiry into "Who

am I," inquiring into the “what is this wanting to be seen, to be

known and shown” by God, it came only in the early A.M. at the

midnight strike of March 9th’s arrival. It was this hour which marked

my Paramguru’s, Swami Sri Yukteshwar’s Mahasamadhi, (a Yogi’s final,

conscious exit from the body,) marked the date of his “death” in 1936

in India. He went “out” in the lotus posture, awake and conscious. I

did not recollect this memorial date until after the experience and

inquiry of this life and death struggle within myself. Only as

everything became more clear, as Bob and I continued the deep

conversation and exchange, only then did God make the Sweetness of

this date known to me. Only God can give what is His alone.

You cannot do this yourself. I realize this at last. I cannot do this

myself. I rest in Guru’s Love. To know this, to feel this, these

tears flow freely, and I am filled with His Love carrying me through

all of this, every moment of my existence. Gurudeva said to me, more

than one time, literally and in more than one way, “I Am With You

Always.”

During this experience which 'began' at Jim's home the first night of

our arrival, and in his Loving influence and sweet Friendship, Jim is

woven inside each word of this. What he means to me and to Bob is

threaded throughout this story, this sharing of where we three became

one Lovingness of intention – Divine Friendship, Unconditional Loving

Friendship. It is without beginning and without end, without

deception, without pause or cause, without fear of appearing less

than knowers or somebodies doing something special. We know nothing,

and Jim saying this of himself so sincerely, it appears that at last,

along with him, I think I might have a greater grasp of the truth of

this. We cannot know until we know.

Jim and Bob sat around me, Jim on the floor, Bob beside me, talking

while I slept between them on the couch. I wanted to be near them,

and how dear it was to be so.

What I could not know, was what was coming “like a thief in the

night,” as I lay sleeping, dreamless, and unaware. The karmic alarm

system, the soul’s storm front on the body-mind frontier appeared as

infection. It was building up strength, raging inside my body, as I

lay resting, comforted between these two Beautiful Beloveds of my

heart. The mind can never conceive what God will do to awaken us to

Him now, to This That Is, right now, this lifetime!

Slowly last evening, I became able once more to look at myself, to ask

myself probing questions concerning the illness, and the visit with

Jim. Jim’s inspiration brought Bob and I, incredibly, immediately to

begin to make decisions about life-changes in diet, habits,

addictions, and more. That Bob and I had experienced it together from

two perspectives with one drive, "Who am I," and “why is this

struggling ‘I’ experiencing this with such repetition, was not

missed. Encountering so frequently, enormous pain and re-occurring

disease and malady in this physical battle, this life's daily

struggle against myself at every turn, it was made critical by the

fact that with greater and swifter intensity of the Lord, life was

imploring adoringly, by nearly killing me, this:

"Listen to Me!"

I was blind and did not know it. I thought I knew and I knew nothing,

gave nothing, offered nothing of myself and my life that was free and

unconditional, free of "me" needing, feeding and bleeding out into my

own pool of desire to be admired and loved above all others, to love

all others as myself above myself, as God Himself Loves me... but it

was for all the wrong reasons. I did not know. I could not know.

"He knows, whom You let know. None else knows."

I could not see it for all my seeing and knowledge and experience. The

veneer of my appearance as Beloved, Sweetness, Kindness and direct

honesty, it was offered and shared with sincerity and where I was at.

But where I was at, what I could not fathom for all my understanding

and profound glimpses of God, of This That Is, was that I was caught

in the hubcap rapture ride down the hillslide of mind defined by

“Hugo,” the huge and wily guy of mind, the ego in assimilation of

reality and wisdom and love and truth, all the devotion and

elation... a creation in illusion, the delusion of this mind's master

plan to keep the Light from Abiding ... timeless and free, Being.

I was being buffeted by desires to always exist, if only as a memory,

to ascend into Light unchallenged by bardo stuff or hellworlds, to be

the friend of the friend. It bent me down, took me to the ground of my

sense of existence, and isness, did this by plunging me into darkness,

struggle, and great suffering on all levels. I lost everything. I had

nothing at all to look to, to call to, to hang onto, no hope, no

sense of anything nondual or spiritual or religious, nothing I knew

could help me to know and realize this was mind in flame. There was

no one to blame and no one to lay claim to any of it. There is no

shame in saying any of this, for it is the gift of God. I was thrown

into a hellworld bardo realm while living and dying at the same time.

 

I wept and cried, pleaded and whined, begged, railed, ranted, lied,

seethed, writhed in pain and fever, in growing fears so fierce that

nightmares had me screaming loudly, so much so that my Beloved Bob

had to wake me and save me from the utter "realness" of the dream. I

dreamt ‘primal’ dying kind of things; things with ancient memory of

great sea eaters, teethy-biting-killing things, and being eaten by

these beings of bardo-imaged dreadedness. I filled up with anger and

angst at the hospital, repented a million times over and asked Bob's

and God's forgiveness for this explosion of emotion and sickness in

body, heart, mind, energy and soul. I had so believed that I

understood rightly, these words: “Love God with all your heart, body,

mind, soul, and strength.

I had no idea, no real conception even, of how much this not

understanding rightly, these words, would come home to me, and in

such adversity and turmoil, in the most dire extremis of body and

soul, that God would be glorified in this which is come for Love

alone to be known… heart, body, mind, soul, and strength. This

strength is energy, or prana. “In the beginning was the Word…”

“Man shall not live by bread alone,

But by every word which proceedeth

out of the mouth of God.”

~ Mathew 4:4

I had recently, and in the past, many times over, glorified myself

with the pride of speaking about my ability to dream of only Light

and Love and great beings, never negative things, never horror and

never where I was not aware that I was dreaming.

I had bragged about how I would never be going through any bardos, any

"hellworld-like" experiences after dying. I believed that I had

conquered such things, such illusions. I could not know what I did

not know. While alive and nearly dying from this disease, this

infection, I experienced what this bardo/hell world was, what it

could do, and how completely I could be fooled and used by the ego’s

great power and ability to survive and hide the Light of Pure Mind.

"Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

~ Proverbs 16:18

In this coming up again and again, and in talking with Bob so

sincerely, so openly and broken to the ground of realizing my great

necessity to recognize now, this time, why this repetition of

experience was happening, to me, for me, and for Bob, too, it came to

a most intense looking at my life, myself, my behavior and

interactions, my experiences, indeed, my whole life's expression...

And Dear Ones, I tell you this from my heart, in the Love of my Guru,

something let go, not by my doing, but something became more clear to

itself. I understood at last, in seeing myself and my ideas about

everything, everything entirely, as false and ringing so, and nearly

dying, that something did indeed, die. The liar's spell was broken by

Humility of Spirit. I could not have seen this coming, for all my

strumpeting and trumpeting of knowing so much of what love is and

does. What Love can do, we have no conception except that Love can,

will and does anything, everything, without exception and without

rule.

"Take my last word, My utmost meaning have!

Precious thou art to Me; right well-beloved!

Listen! I tell thee for thy comfort this.

Give Me thy heart! Adore Me! Serve Me!

Cling in faith and love and reverence to Me!

So shalt thou come to Me!

I promise true, for thou art sweet to Me.

And let go those rites and writ duties!

Fly to Me alone!

Make Me thy single refuge!

I will free thy soul!

Be of good cheer!"

~ Lord Krishna, 'Deliverance and Renunciation,' "The Bhagavad-Gita"

Humbled, taken to the pit of devastation, physically, mentally,

emotionally, and spiritually, I was thrown down into the abyss of my

own mind, a mind compromised by infection, pain, and intense

suffering. My faculties and mind were compromised by medications and

bodily toxins accumulated through a lifetime of experience and

habits. In greatest weariness and lack, it was no less than the dark

night of the soul, the experience of God's manifestation as absence,

a bardo realm experienced and wandered lost through, while living. It

leveled me to the core of my sense of self. It was a shattering of my

most cherished beliefs and strongholds of egoic footholds, leaving me

with nothing, nothing, and in that, at last, after a week of darkness

and agony and fear and helplessness, the inquiry began to arise,

inquiry into my life and the many times that this 'near death

disease-edness' had manifested in my body-mind.

This time, there was nothing to hold onto, and no one able to even

‘claim it, take it and try to make it their own,’ for nothing was

understood and there was nothing to turn to which gave any meaning or

hope or release from this grief and debridement of the soul. I had to

go to "hell" and that hell’s darkness to find the light of my soul.

It was my time to find out, truly discover the truth about my life

and the littleness of myself in the largesse of Love's Abundance of

Nothing. With everything I thought I knew and understood, I found

that I knew nothing of truth, of love, of wisdom, of vigilance, of

anything at all. It came in through a form of annihilation, leaving

me empty and alone, my God and my entire structure of expression and

experience -- bereft in the sea of darkness -- experiencing God's

manifestation as absence, absence of anything to hold onto. I wept

bitterly and forlornly through utter darkness for a week. Seven days,

seven days and seven nights of no light, no anything but empty

aloneness and all my fears appeared, primal ideas arose in this fear,

of death, of restlessness and intense suffering. I was taken down to

the core of myself and stood there for eternity in utter isolation

and abject poverty of light.

If not for Bob's loving presence and kindness and service, his

selflessness, I cannot see how I could have borne this, how I could

have survived this and still be here, alive, and writing this. He

drove me to the hospital, a hospital in a town that we did not know.

He wound down the twisting mountain road through the darkness and the

fog at midnight, twice, trying to save my life as this disease raged

and made me delirious and sick near unto death. I vomited

uncontrollably, lost all bodily ability to be proud or beautiful. He

remained with me during the long emergency room visits, holding my

kidney-shaped, plastic vomit dish and more, such more than I will

say, and he stayed in my hospital room the entire time, by my side,

comforting, meditating, silent and listening, sweetly administering

to my needs. He watched my body be put through dozens of attempts to

get I.V. lines into collapsed and illness-wrecked veins. He watched

me go in and out of consciousness, and he stayed and remained unfazed

by all these changing appearances. He only left for short times to

bring me fruits, juices and other things in an attempt to get me to

eat, for I could not, did not. It was the kindest thing you ever

could be witness to, he staying with me, having lack of sleep,

experiencing nurses and noises and tests, doctors with names I do not

remember, and never really being able to fully rest... He rested in

the Self, for he was the servant of the Servant, unswervedly

remaining unruffled by my outbursts, the agony and outpourings of

grief, depression, and sadness.

"Breath in me the way to love you,That I may Faultlessly love you.Pour

me the wisdom-wineBy which I become intoxicated with You.Whisper in my

ears of silenceThe way to be with you always.Speak to my wandering

sensesAnd lead them back to Your sanctuary within."

- from "Breath in Me" by Paramahansa Yogananda

Last night, on Swami Sri Yukteshwar's Mahasamadhi memorial ... March

9th, at just midnight, the floodgates opened and light poured in...

infinite Mercy and endless Compassion flooded into my heart and mind

and soul, and I understood what I did not know, what I could not have

known, that This, this ever-changing show and this dancing light and

shadow life are all arising and dissolving in the Delight of the

Lord.

Rumi and Shams offered the Sun and the Moon's twin-stemmed Light in

the passage quoted last night -

 

143.

 

"The Messenger of God -- God bless him and give him peace -- said,

"When someone devotes himself purely to God for forty days, the springs

of wisdom will come forth from his heart to his tongue." He was explaining

this to his Companions. One of them busied himself with worship for forty

days. Afterwards, he complained to Muhammad: "O Messenger of God!

The companion so-and-so underwent states. His glance and his words

acquired a different color. In explaining about him you said, 'When someone

devotes himself purely ....' I went and spent forty days and strived as much

as I could. God does not burden a soul save to his capacity [2:286]. And

your words are not contradicted."

 

The Messenger answered, "I said devotes himself purely. The stipulation is

pure devotion. It should be purely for the sake of God, not for any other wish

or purpose. You worshipped out of craving that those marvelous words should

appear from you, just as you saw that they appeared from that companion,

and you wished for that." (187-88)

 

 

144.

 

Forty days doesn't give benefit to everyone. It wants a man who is prepared,

whose preparedness has been perfected, so that forty days may be the key

that opens his heart. Otherwise, a hundred thousand days will have no benefit. (706)

 

~ Shams, "Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabriz,"

translated by William C. Chittick

 

Humility never was so apparent and piercingly the "real," the reality

of my own ignorance of anything's cause or meaning, and in this

awareness of Who Am I, something died and was arisen alive, and

filled with Light, with Love -- tender, sweetness of Love. It is

Sweetness to see this, Sweetness to just be.

"What is the utmost end of need?

Finding what has no needs.

What is the utmost end of seeking?

Finding what is sought.

What is the utmost end of the sought?

Finding the seeker."

~ Shams-i Tabriz, "Me & Rumi: The Autobiography of Shams-i Tabriz,"

translated by William C. Chittick

 

Love,

Mazie