The Universe Provides

We can't pick and choose our moments… we can't pick and choose our life lessons, we have to see what comes up in the moment and act or react accordingly.

We can envision ways of empowering ourselves or enlightening ourselves like through seeking out masters or meditating but a key turning moment could happen in any event or even in the middle of an ordinary conversation.

And sometimes it is the extraordinary moments - the bolt out of the blue, like death or grief, which open up a doorway and enable us to go beyond ourselves. We seem to understand the universe for a second when we are faced with tragedy.

One of the most touching and thought-provoking films I've seen in some time is Fierce Grace, an insight into the life and times of Ram Dass - a spiritual teacher from the 60's and a student of Neem Karoli Baba.

Ram Dass, who wrote Be Here Now, lived and breathed his spirituality. Then a few years ago he had a stroke. And for a while, he had to struggle with all the problems associated with a body that wouldn't co-operate. He couldn't walk and he had real trouble speaking, so it affected his path as a teacher.

Ram Dass felt the atmosphere around him change. "Poor Ram Dass," said the people around him… and he believed it too. And at one point during his stroke, he realized he was terrified of dying… he felt he had flunked God's biggest spiritual test… death.

"After the stroke, I had a hard time for a while. Ever since I met Maharajji, my guru, I'd felt that I'd led a graced life, that he was watching over me. And now, here was this stroke. What was that all about? Had Maharaji been out to lunch, or what? But then gradually, as I began to see the way the stroke was working on me and opening me to deeper levels of my own being, I started to appreciate that in fact it was grace - but a different kind of grace."

After much soul-searching and enquiry, Ram Dass is a right-on spiritual teacher again… he wrote a second book Still Here Now which looks at the ageing process, the limits of the body and our cultural perceptions of death.

His experience was a tool for spiritual transformation, taking him beyond the mind and its logic to an authentic wisdom.  His spin is that he doesn't even refer to the stroke as a suffering, he says he has "been stroked."

We don't know what twists and turns our lives will take, we don't know the extent of our joys and our grievances yet, we can't plan for them, we can't schedule…

But sometimes we just have to accept that growth comes through these lessons and most importantly that the universe will hold us.

If we live everything fully, not shying away from grief, not losing ourselves in our stories, we can start to appreciate the universe and our place in it.

"I'm explicitly making my life a teaching," says Ram Dass in Still Here. "By expressing the lessons that I've learned through it so it can become a map for other people. Everybody's life could be like that, if they choose to make it so; choose to reflect what they've been through and to share it with others."

At the moment, I am experiencing role reversal in my family… I have become the proud owner of a six year old girl; unfortunately it's my mum.

She has Alzheimer's and right now, she knows me, she doesn't always remember where I live or that I don't eat meat or what job I do, but she still recognizes me.  I guess over time this will change.

Already my relationship with her has turned from best mates to well, I don't actually know… I guess we are still friends, playmates… I try and meet her in her space, by giving her massage, giving her hugs. She is still very tactile, although most of the words have gone.

I certainly can't say what her lesson in all this is, or the lessons for my father, and though I'm still trying to come to terms with it, I don't feel sad or angry.

Sadness and anger would be about my experience, what I have lost, a mother, a best-mate who I could confide in… it would be about worrying about how my father copes… but my mother although she has moments of frustration, seems to be content in her world. She seems to have found peace with it.

Being with your family, traveling the world, being in a job you love or loathe, every moment will reflect that universal mirror back at you, give you a chance to see where you act, where you react, where you grow, where you hold back.

The universe provides us with an infinite number of ways to wake up.

For me, what counts is the 'wake up call.' Eckhart Tolle speaks about 'awakened doing' in order to ‘align with the Divine.' And to stay awake, is the work that has to be done. "After the ecstacy, the laundry," says author Jack Kornfield.

Here's a meditation from Yogi Bhajan which will help you to wake up to yourself and raise your kundalini:

Sit comfortably with your arms out to your sides parallel to the ground. The palms are flat with the left palm facing up and right facing down. The fingers are stiff like iron. And open the thumb so it is at right angles from the rest of your hand. Stare at the tip of your nose. Breathe into this space.

If you can, you chant powerfully from the navel and ideally you chant…Sat Siri Siri Akaal, Siri Akaal, Mahaa Akaal
Mahaa Akaal, Sat Nam, Akaal Moorat Wahe Guru.

After 3 to 11 minutes, you take a deep breath in, raise the hands over the head, no bend in the elbows and as you clap the hands together forcefully, breathe out. Bring your arms back to the posture and repeat cycle 7 times.

You can find a beautiful version of this mantra on 'Aquarian Sadhana' by Aurora on http://cdbaby.com/cd/auroramusic
For more on the life and times of Ram Dass, check out www.ramdasstapes.org or check out the charity he set up www.seva.org Seva has projects to help the blind in Nepal, India, Africa and around the world.