My Amritapuri Experience: Part 5

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Continued from Part 4...

 

Once I had made my 'big' decision (to clean or not to clean, that had

been the question) I went about executing it. I swept all the rubbish

into the corner where the termite mound was located and cleared some

habitable space for myself. It took me over an hour but it was not

physically exhausting. Just tedious. Then I entered my version of

hell, the terrible toilet and went about cleaning the bucket and a

broken mug in it. I also poured lots of water all over the place to

clean it up since I had no brush or other implements to do the kind

of job that really needed to be done. It occurred to me that things

could have been a lot worse in a dozen different ways and that I

should be grateful for being spared a higher level of difficulty. For

instance, what if there had been no water in the tap? Having grown up

in parts of India where water is rationed I was well aware that 24

hour water supply is only a dream for many people. At the end of it I

washed myself and then returned to the room.

 

Using newspaper sheets to cover the ground and some of my clean

clothes (the change I had brought along) for a pillow, I laid down

and prepared to sleep. My earlier feelings of inadequacy were gone

and in their place now was a quiet pride. I had done it! Old Mr. Ego

rearing his head again in a different guise, the hurt hen had morphed

into a confident rooster. What a transformation in my attitude and

outlook an hour of working had wrought! This had to be Maya. As I lay

there musing, I noticed that I was starting to get attached to the

very same room I considered to be a dung-heap not so long ago.

Starting to think of it as "my room" even. The termite mound was

still there in the corner but some of the cobwebs in my mind had

cleared.

 

I went over all that had happened so far in my mind with a view to

uncovering any lessons that might be embedded in my experience. The

main theme that came to mind was: Talk is cheap, action is what

counts. As I explained earlier, I have often made much of my being

a 'sadhak' around the house. Most of the time when I talk up

my 'sadhana' in this manner, I am kidding but I now realized that

there was something rotten at the core of my humour. It was really

the ego, masquerading as humour that had encrusted around the seed

crystal of my pride in renunciation, my pride in being more spiritual

than those around me. I guessed that while I had been cleaning my

room and toilet Amma had been doing the same with the toilet in my

mind which, as far as I knew then, had never been cleaned before.

 

I also felt at some level that none of what had been happening in my

life in the run up to this visit to Amritapuri was an accident. I had

a strong sense then, which reappears from time to time, that the

seemingly chaotic events in my life were all part of a deterministic

scheme, a plan. Of course it was also abundantly clear that I was

several 'yugas' away from figuring out what that plan might be. With

these thoughts and others, I dozed off, imagining my head placed at

Her feet, as is my normal practice.

 

Om Amriteshwaryai Namah

 

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