Conversations With Ananda — Ch. 57, Nayaswami Roma

Haridas and Roma help carry on Paramhansa Yogananda’s work in India, photo taken in 2014.

Nayaswami Roma and her husband Haridas lived in the Ananda community in Mountain View, California, where Roma managed the community kitchen and Haridas was the community’s co-manager. This is excerpted from a Sunday service that Roma gave in April, 2005. (Photo: 2000s – Roma with Haridas and daughter Rose)

In the last few days we’ve been blessed to host forty pilgrims from Assisi who’ve come to learn how to start a community, because they’re feeling the need for a place where they can raise their families and commit to having a spiritual life together. They were from many countries, yet their faces all shone with the light of the spiritual life.

I was asked to cook for them, and a dear friend volunteered to help, and then Ishani transformed the community room with flowers and bright colors.

People sometimes say they couldn’t imagine living in a spiritual community because they need their own space. It can be a challenge to live with your brothers and sisters and learn to say “Everything is from God. God is in my brothers and sisters, too.” But when I was asked to cook, I had a great feeling of joy. I thought, “This is going to be fabulous. I’m so excited.” And I immediately began planning.

The first night, we cooked for a hundred people. For breakfast the next morning we cooked again for sixty, and the next night for eighty, then breakfast the following morning, and again the next day, and it was one of those experiences where you put your head down and become fully immersed until you come out the other end. But I felt such joy throughout, and even in the beginning I couldn’t wait to get started.

The night before our visitors arrived, I woke up and sat bolt upright and thought, “Oh my gosh, I forgot to tell Gaetan not to get the cheese.” Then Haridas woke up and he said, “What’s the matter?” and I explained. He said, “Is there anything I can do?” “No, just go back to sleep.”

The next night, we came home very late. I checked my phone before I went to bed, and there was a message from a friend, “The school is leaving on a field trip in the morning, and it’s traditional that we take pots and pans and all kinds of utensils from the kitchen. I’ll try to make sure I don’t take the wrong things.”

Haridas and Roma in India standing before banner truck announcing a talk by Swami Kriyananda.
Haridas and Roma in India with banner truck announcing a talk by Swami Kriyananda in India, 2012.

I went to bed, but at three in the morning I sat bolt upright again and I said, “Haridas! They’re taking all the pots and pans from the kitchen – we have to stop them!”

He woke up and said, “Is there anything I can do?” I said, “Yes! Go to the kitchen and put a sign on the big pot, ‘Call Roma before you take anything!’” Pretty soon he came back and said, “It’s all taken care of.”

At six in the morning I got a call from my dear friend Uma Devi who lives above the community room. She said, “They already took the pots and pans – they didn’t see the sign, so they took them last night.”

I thought, “Oh my gosh!” And this is where it ties in with our Sunday service topic which says that you aren’t supposed to kill a person. [Laughs] Well, my dear friend, I didn’t think of killing you, but I did laugh. Because I thought, “What an amazing thing. I’m going to walk into the kitchen and there won’t be any pots and pans, and I’m going to cook for a hundred people, and it’s going to be really fun.” And, well, the teacher had left all the right things, so it turned out okay.

But, you know, this world will try hard to shove us off our center. We think we have it all planned, but remember the saying, “Man proposes, God disposes.” And why do these things happen?

In a spiritual community especially, they happen so that we can check our hearts. Where is our consciousness? How will we react? Will we panic? – “I don’t deserve this! How can this be happening to me? I have such good intentions, and everything’s going wrong. Why me, Lord?”

Even if there had been no pots, it would have been fun, because we’d have started a phone-calling tree, and we would have quickly collected the pots we needed.

Everything works out for the best, always, and if we can keep our consciousness where it needs to be, steadily advancing toward God, and if we can be in our heart, everything in life will flow in the right way.

It gradually helps to diminish all thought of the ego – the thought of “I, me, my, mine” – and what I want and deserve. Those things need to be put aside. The ego needs to be let go so that we can live more in our souls.

It’s a very good practice to look in the mirror and ask “Who am I?” We think we are a man or a woman. But are we? No, we are so much more. A schoolteacher? No, we are only in these roles for a short while. We are playing these roles. Do you have a good or bad personality? You don’t have a personality, because you are so much more. We are more than anything the mind can conceive of.

If you keep asking who you are, you begin to feel a bubbling of joy in your soul, and you begin to understand that you are the infinite joy and infinite love of God. And then everything that happens to us, and anything exterior to the feeling in our souls of who we really are, is superfluous.

I listened to a recording of a talk that Swami Kriyananda gave in India. He described how he was riding in a taxi, and the cab driver was listening to the song “Oh, God Beautiful” in Hindi. Swami began singing along, and then he said to the driver, “We sing that song, too – my Guru sang that song when he was in America.” And they began singing together. The cab driver said, “Oh, what would life be without singing to God!” And Swamiji was weeping. He couldn’t get through the story, because he was so filled with the joy of living for God, and singing to God, and giving everything to God.

How can we begin to know the soul that is just beneath the surface of our lives? What can we do? Above all, we have to be humble. We have to see God as the doer in good times and bad, in our successes and failures. That is the true definition of humility. And it’s the most important thing, because it diminishes the ego. What is humility? Living for God is asking Him to work through us, to speak through us, act through us, and see through our eyes.

If we live a life that’s filled with enthusiasm, joy, and love for God, and with service, viewing our lives as an instrument to help others, we will truly be alive.

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