The days of Amma’s Seattle program unfolded all too quickly.\u00a0 The skies cleared for a few hours every day and many attendees took short walks around the parks and streets where pink, red and white azaleas bloomed.\u00a0 The population of this part of Seattle is thirty per cent Asian and the ethnic mix was noticeable as attendees included devotees of Indian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese origin, giving the program a particularly international flavor.<\/p>\n
The public program and retreat included many of our “fav” things.\u00a0 Question and answer with Amma, meditating with her and receiving our Prasad dinner from her hand are always high on the list.\u00a0 After receiving my plate, I went to a corner to eat in silence, but the density of the crowd meant that soon a conversation was going on at my shoulder.\u00a0 At first I was a little irritated, but then I heard a woman happily telling her companions that this was her very favourite thing at the program, getting her dinner from Amma.\u00a0 She continued saying, “Just imagine all the billions, trillions of beings that would love to be here getting their food from Amma.\u00a0 Just imagine how many lifetimes we might have waited to get this chance\u2026 Don\u2019t you find this food particularly delicious?”\u00a0 Suddenly I was very happy the devotee had sat down next to me.\u00a0 Her joy and attitude of “gratitude” had added to my experience. And it was a lesson, that relaxing and being open to all experiences enriches life immensely.<\/p>\n
Another personal favourite were the two archanas a day and having two to three satsangs a day.\u00a0\u00a0 In one of the satsangs, Swami Ramakrishna commented on the final stanza of the Meditation Shloka of the Lalita Sahasranamam, “Oh Great Goddess, let me imagine that I am One with your glorious form\u2026”\u00a0 He pointed out that the divine qualities of the Divine Mother, which we were chanting in the archana, were the ones that we should be reflecting on as we went about our daily activities.\u00a0 Chanting this in the morning should set the tone for our day and we should be thinking in every situation, “What would Amma do?”\u00a0 Later several of discussed that we had never really paid deep attention to that sentence in all the years we had chanted it!\u00a0 There is always something new to learn at Amma’s programs.<\/p>\n
All too soon it was the final night with Amma glorious in Devi Bhava.\u00a0 She stood for a long time at the end, gazing at everyone, missing no one and even asking to have a fan on stage removed that was blocking someone’s view.\u00a0 The curtains closed all too soon on that compassionate gaze and shortly afterward Amma’s camper pulled away.\u00a0 The tour caravan was heading down the coast of the Northwestern United States, surely blessing sky, land and water on the way.\u00a0 All of us that had been pulled like iron filings to a magnet by Amma’s presence dispersed as that magnetic presence moved to a new location.\u00a0 Next, many “filings” would realign in Amma’s San Ramon ashram, then to Los Angeles and onward across the continent.\u00a0 For the next weeks, Amma’s swirling magnetic energy will continue to transform and inform our lives with the power of Pure Love.<\/p>\n
Rta<\/p>\n
Seattle 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The days of Amma’s Seattle program unfolded all too quickly.\u00a0 The skies cleared for a few hours every day and many attendees took short walks around the parks and streets where pink, red and white azaleas bloomed.\u00a0 The population of this part of Seattle is thirty per cent Asian and the ethnic mix was noticeable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[574],"class_list":["post-5283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-with-amma","tag-ay2013"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e.amritapuri.org\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}