Simple blessings

My first significant experience with Sri Chinmoy was at the Seattle airport in 1996. I was just five years old at the time.

My sister and mother and I had gone to visit him along with a bunch of other Seattle disciples, because his itinerary brought him there for a few hours. At that time, you were allowed to go into the gate through airport security without a ticket.

At one point Sri Chinmoy had offered prasad (blessed food), and I was in the line to take some. He called me over to stand next to him and pulled my arm to have me sit next to him. We were facing a crowd of people, just the two of us. I remember the very surreal feeling of being with someone so “famous,” and how wide and vast his consciousness was. I felt it stretching out into Infinity, filling the room and the building and city and entire world. I felt like I was a little drop next to the ocean, and his infinite heart was pulling me inside. I also felt his voice in silence inside my own heart, echoing “we are the same.”

At the place where his hand touched my arm, a very powerful vibration like a solid bolt of energy was tingling and electrifying my body like a conduit. In retrospect, I feel this is one of the moments he “initiated” me, or gave me a direct taste of the experience he’s having all the time. And I can say with full confidence and utmost certainty that that moment has been with me wherever I have gone, and will remain with me no matter what I do for the rest of my life!

After taking a photo of the two of us, he asked my mother and sister to join us and we all posed together.

P.S. This is my favorite photo of Sri Chinmoy, or Guru as I call him, because in it he is exhibiting both immense strength, soulfulness and power, coupled with infinite sweetness, kindness, softness and gentleness. I aspire to be like that, with such a lion-heart.

My sister and I first visited New York when I was 8. It was during the off-season in New York, not when Celebrations were happening and everything was crazy.

I was at Aspiration-Ground relaxing, not doing anything, just writing some silly things in my notebook.

Sri Chinmoy was preparing for a public weightlifting exhibition, a programme called "The Body's Fitness-Gong, The Soul's Fulness-Song". He was testing some lifting machines on the clay surface of the tennis court.A boy who was assisting Guru called up to me where I sat in the bleachers, next to my mother and sister. Guru wanted to use me as a warmup. I came down and gave him a big smile.

Guru lifted me several times and invited my sister to join me. Next he brought down the sister of this boy who was assisting Him. The three of us were lifted together.

What struck me most about that experience was that I wasn’t trying hard to be a good disciple or please him in his own way, but he totally honoured me and gave me lots of joy. I had not done anything to deserve it. Instead, he just gave it unconditionally.

I learned a valuable life lesson from this experience. To this day, it is in the quiet moments by myself that I feel his presence most strongly and am able to tap into the highest consciousness full of peace, joy, fulfillment and satisfaction all around me and within me. Especially in the beauty of nature, I feel so close to the Divine. I don’t need to go anywhere or do anything to search for it or find it within me. It is all around us at every moment if only we are receptive enough to feel it – or even if we are not.

Thank you to Sri Chinmoy and to his disciples, who enabled me to be raised in this loving, supportive environment. You continue to shower me with your blessings!

God awakens my life with His purest Concern.
God blesses my life with His sublimest Thought.
God has awakened me. I am no longer asleep.
God has blessed me. I have emptied my life of problems.

Sri Chinmoy 1
 

• 1. Meditations: food for the soul, December 24, Agni Press, 1970