28 Jan, 2008

I asked for it. But never could I have imagined that it would happen this way… or hurt so bad. Kali’s way can be mysterious and decisively severe.
While separated from Amma during the European Tour, I was studying yoga in the Himalayan foothills. Each day, I sought refuge at the nearby Ramakrishna Math. There, poems to Kali flowed from my pen like water from a tap. I gave Amma a series of these poems when I returned to Amritapuri. The theme was consistent… I have grown weary of the suffering brought on from my own tenacious ego, and ask the Compassionate Mother to speed up the purification process by uprooting the ego, (chopping of my head) and leaving me free to live and serve lovingly from my heart.
Recently on the South India Tour, during one of the rest stops with Amma, I told a story which Amma and many devotees found very funny. Over the course of the following day, I received many compliments and was beginning to feel quite proud of myself.
On the next rest stop, I got a seat very close to Amma’s chair. She looked at me with a playful smile for some time. At that moment, I thought she was again showing Her approval for the story I had told the previous day. Little did I know that she was setting me up to deliver a crushing blow to my ego, and the most exquisitely painful teaching of my life.
After meditation and singing a few bhajans, Amma asked for a spiritual story that was funny. She then looked at me, immediately handed me the microphone, and said, ‘You!’
For a moment, I felt so much importance because Amma wanted to hear another of my wonderful stories. Then with mic in hand, I began to stumble through an embarrassing attempt at telling a funny story. It had more of the effect of digging my own grave then making anyone laugh. Not only was the story not funny- there was no spiritual message. Towards the end of a story that landed like a lead Buick on everyone’s head, I called out, ‘Oh Amma! Why did you make me do this?’ At this point, I couldn’t bear to look at her, but my friend said a look of Kali came over Amma’s face – as memorable a look as he’s ever seen.
She took the microphone without any acknowledgement and handed it to someone else….
Humiliated!!! If only the earth could have opened up and swallowed me.
Later, riding on the bus, I reflected on all the ways over the past weeks that my ego had been growing outside the radar of my watchful attention. My seva position as security supervisor had gone to my head and my behavior was at times very cocky and self-assured.
I knew that Kali’s sword had just handed me a precious teaching in humility. I was also shown how my emotional and mental condition is still so dependent on what others think of me, that I am spiritual immature and have a long, long way to go before I go beyond praise and blame and all of Kali’s duality in creation.

– Sean