From the day I first set eyes on Swamiji, I sensed that he knew me better than I knew myself.
When I sought his advice, his answers were always directed toward the liberation of my soul. It was always a heartfelt reply that would plunge me into silent reflection. It could be disconcerting, because he spoke as a spiritual father, a spiritual grown-up whose perspective was vastly broader than mine. To be in his presence was, in a way, like being a newborn, dependent on its mother for spiritual sustenance and counsel. It was seldom comforting to my ego, which too often wanted to know it all, and be good at everything, and be able to figure it out for myself, and be coddled and praised for my comfort.
His guidance extended into fathomless realms. There was a sense, at Ananda, that Swamiji was always silently present in the background of our lives. I often felt that we were living in a spiritual kitchen where God was baking happy people. (Nayaswami Haridas called Ananda “Fort Bliss.”)
Living at Ananda wasn’t always easy, but by God’s grace it was never dull, and it was thrilling for those who went along with the game. We weren’t leading an ordinary life, existing as beautifully as we could manage for a few short years before expiring atop a pyre of our worldly goods, painfully accumulated. There was a real chance, at Ananda, of growing up and becoming in some small measure more like Swamiji.
It was the early summer of 1976, four months after I had moved to Ananda Village. An annual Ananda India Faire was in the planning stages. We had invited a troupe of young female dancers to perform – they were students from a school of classical Indian dance in San Francisco.
The day before the fair, I found myself tumbling spiritually. It wasn’t that I was in pain. My ego wasn’t screaming, mortally wounded as it would be on other occasions. But my heart was strangely, mystically burst wide open.
I was suddenly all about feelings, feelings, feelings! I found it impossible to think in my usual way – my rational brain seemed to have been cauterized or extracted from my skull! I had grown up living very much in my mind, relying on objective thought. I had done well in school, and had approached each new experience with objective logic. And now that familiar, comfortable instrument was torn away.
I knew that Swamiji was working on me. It was scary! Where were my familiar mental props? Who was I? How could I cope? My girlfriend laughed, “Rambhakta, you’re experiencing what it’s like to be a woman!”
I was lurching inwardly when the dance concert began. I was the Village’s “official” photographer, by default because there were no others.
The concert took place on a rustic wooden platform that had been specially constructed for the event under an oak tree in the meadow where the Expanding Light temple would be built several years later.
The concert was wonderful. The dancers performed the life of Krishna, weaving a magical spell.
They danced in the kathak style, their feet making a wonderful sound with the dozens of small bells attached to their ankles as they portrayed Krishna’s life with the gestures of their hands and the expressions of their eyes. They were students of Chitresh Das, a well-known teacher from India.
I found it impossible to resist the dance. I entered into it completely, with a heart unimpeded by the rational mind. I took many photographs and later made 8×10 prints which I sent to the performers at their school in San Francisco. They replied that they had never seen photos that captured the spirit of kathak so beautifully. It was, of course, through no skill of my own – the dance, the music and the photos had flowed in an impersonal spirit of artistic inspiration. It was not my doing, but Swamiji’s.
Swami encouraged me to be active in the arts – writing, singing, chanting, and taking photographs; anything that would serve the work while helping to open my heart. He knew that I needed to expand the feeling side of my nature.
I had an interview with him around that time, where I asked him a stupid question. It wasn’t actually stupid, but it was a question that I could have answered easily on my own. He said, almost sarcastically, “Well, let’s see now…” and proceeded to work out the answer logically.
But generally, where the spiritual path was concerned, he never recommended that I spend more time thinking and analyzing.
In another conversation, he said, “You have a very objective mind.” He said it dismissively, as if to suggest, “And, well, what is that good for?”
I couldn’t have agreed more, because my “objective mind” told me that I could never find God except by offering Him my heart.
For years, as I’ve mentioned, I had a spiritual dharma, a life’s duty, to discover how yoga principles could be applied in exercise and sports training.
It took me more than twenty years to find the keys. How can we exercise in a way that will bring us to a state of intuitive, inner attunement with Truth, so that we can most efficiently achieve physical health and fitness and find joy? I tested many theories, but the art of it continued to escape me.
There was a period of about six months in the late 1990s when I ran hundreds of miles on the trails of the Coastal Range without feeling the barest hint of inspiration.
On a hot summer day, laboring up a long hill, and beating myself up for my spiritual shortcomings while praying fiercely and thinking, thinking, thinking, I heard Master’s voice. He said, chuckling with wonder, “You’re making it much harder than it needs to be!”
Though I tried to relax, the great secret of joyful exercise refused to reveal itself.
Weeks later, toiling up another long hill, I exclaimed inwardly, “What is wrong? I want to do the right thing! I will do anything”
I heard Swami Kriyananda’s voice. It said, quietly and simply: “Do it to please God.”
Whereupon I spent months trying to figure out how to please God. And, to make a long story short, I found that it required a difficult but very simple practice: I had to give God everything.
It didn’t mean that I had to exercise in a particular way, but that I had to put God in charge. If He wanted me to run or not, and if He wanted my runs to go well or poorly, or if he wanted me to run fast, slow, short, long, or not at all – it was none of my business. It had to be completely and utterly, humbly all right, without the slightest resistance.
The strange thing is that once I began to run without caring about finding happiness, I began to find it.
Exercise became much more relaxed and enjoyable. I no longer graded my runs by how strictly I was able to conform to a set of imagined spiritual “rules.”
It mattered only to be able to talk quietly and openly with Divine Mother. That was the true challenge – and a challenge it most certainly was. It isn’t easy, as an adult with a heart that’s encrusted with all manner of grown-up self-definitions, to find the soul-self inside that can talk to God with the innocence of a little child.
I realized that the way to find happiness is to enjoy each moment, rain or shine, and not care if my body sped along or if it was exhausted. It wasn’t the results that defined the quality of my runs, but the inner feeling of harmony.
I found that I could have horrible runs where my body could barely limp along, and that I could finish those runs with great joy. The secret, always, was to do the right thing. If my body was only up to running at a snail’s pace, and if it was the right thing to do, and if I happily complied, I found that it opened passages to an un-dreamed-of happiness. I realized that this was what it meant to “give it to God.”
While trying to feel the right pace for the day, I began to look for a feeling that I thought of as the “harmony zone.” I discovered that there was no single answer to the question of how to “exercise spiritually,” or how to train on a given day, but that each day brought new answers that could only be known by listening inwardly for that subtle feeling of guidance – of rightness.