We're all on a journey to find out who we really are and what our purpose is. You've probably noticed that the path usually isn't clear and direct. Read this book and be inspired by the story of someone who has suffered and is now living a life he loves. Be touched by his experiences and informed by the lessons he's learned. One big lesson: act now and don't wait! There's no time to waste, so learn more about yourself, decide where to focus your attention, and take steps to reinvent your life.

In the Path of Light with Maa

A Journey of Love and TransformationBy Swami Parameshwarananda

BALBOA PRESS

Copyright © 2011 Swami Parameshwarananda
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-3763-4

Contents

Foreword..............................................viiDedication............................................xiiiAcknowledgment........................................xv1. The Early Years....................................12. And Then Came Maa..................................113. Come Fly With Me!..................................254. Getting To The Bottom Of It........................435. Bridging East And West.............................536. From East To West To East..........................637. Taking Off For India...............................798. Creating Community In Crestone.....................899. Transitions........................................10710. Atmiji and Atmiyaji...............................12111. Becky and Me......................................13712. It All Comes Around...............................16313. Practice or You'll Get Rusty......................17314. Let There Be Light!...............................19315. My Favorites......................................21516. Let's Come to the Edge............................229Appendix: Reminders...................................233

Chapter One

The Early Years

What's a nice Jewish boy from the Midwest doing as a swami devoted to a guru and wearing whites with a shaved head?

First of all, there wasn't and isn't much for me to shave each day to end up with no hair. Second, I'm going to give you some clues about how this happened by explaining my background leading up to meeting Maa.

Start by taking a look at me below before and after Maa. Maa and I have joked for years about providing everyone with before-and-after photos to help them appreciate their transformations. Notice my hair in the older photo. A friend of mine during that period called me the draper because I draped my hair over to cover up what wasn't there (the wind wasn't my friend). You'll see this is symbolic and indicative of how I covered up a lot in my life at that time.

I was born in Chicago into a traditional Jewish family and moved to the suburbs, like many, when I was eleven. My life in Niles wasn't very eventful or too different from the norm. I had my bar mitzvah, mainly for the gifts. I went to movies, a pastime that hasn't changed. I went to Burger King; my diet has changed. I went to summer camp. My strongest memory is being thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool to learn how to swim. It didn't work. I just choked, swallowed a lot of water, was embarrassed, and hated going to the pool.

I always did well in school, but not in sports. I didn't have too many friends. I was bullied in those days by greasers, as we called them, and let's just say I didn't look forward to riding on the school bus. My extracurricular activities included choir, of which I was president in my senior year of high school, and theater, where I was a member of both the cast and crew. I understudied for Rolf in The Sound of Music, buy I didn't go on and become a star.

During my childhood and young adult years, I was very attached to my mother and thought I would never leave her. I got on all right with my father, who was pretty quiet and withdrawn, but I didn't really know him. I didn't get on well at all with my brother, who was angry and depressed for many years. He told me years later that I followed him around when I was young, and he ignored me. I never really knew him, either.

I was what one calls the "good child," meaning I wasn't a problem at school or at home. No cigarettes, no drugs, no alcohol, no sex. No fights, no rebellion. I was sensitive to the moods of the family and kept things as light as I could by joking, pleasing, and doing and being as was expected. There was an undercurrent of anger in the house, usually unexpressed. There was heavy silence during meals. The anger, resentment, and sadness continued to fester inside me for many years.

When I went to Beloit College in Wisconsin in 1972, it was the first time I'd been really independent. I continued with my love of French as a major. (I began studying French when I was eleven.) I added in psychology later as my double major. I met Leslie, my wife-to-be, that first year, on the first day of classes, appropriately in nineteenth-century French Romantic literature. I was excited by my first intimate relationship. We were friends at first, and I even let Leslie's boyfriend stay in my room during his visit to the campus. It then developed to something more during a visit to New York when I stayed with Leslie and her parents for the first time. Leslie's mother predicted this when we met; she was always very perceptive.

Leslie and I spent our junior year abroad in France on an exchange program with other students. We studied at La Faculté des Lettres in Rennes, Brittany, and stayed with different families. I lived in a little château with a gruffyet kind lieutenant colonel, his funny and eccentric wife, their beloved dachshund, and a maid. One of my exchange parents was a descendant of Lafayette, and one night after dinner Monsieur and Madame went to the salon armoire and pulled out letters written on yellowed parchment paper between Lafayette and General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. I was impressed. As for everyday living, I relished having a maid, dipping Nutella sandwiches on baguette into steaming hot chocolate in the morning, and running up the winding, red-carpeted staircase to my bedroom.

Leslie lived with a large, friendly, and boisterous family with many children. I relaxed being with them, listening to their heated political conversations over delicious meals. They represented diverse political factions, including Marxist-Leninist, Communist, and Fascist. I didn't catch everything they were saying and joined in when I could. This was in stark contrast to growing up where silence reigned supreme during meals.

After four months, Leslie and I finished our exchange program and moved to Paris, a city I loved immediately for its elegance, history and diversity. We lived in the first-floor servant's quarters of a townhouse on a gated street by the Seine and Eiffel Tower. It was on Rue Gaston St. Paul. I would have other Saint Pauls in my life (see two paragraphs below). By the way, my birth name was Paul, not that I'm a saint. My middle name was Harry, not that I'm that, either.

Leslie worked with a charter flight company on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, and I worked in a suburb, Neuilly-sur-Seine, as a bilingual receptionist at the American Hospital of Paris. I didn't use many skills, but I fought for tips and made some. I didn't enjoy taking the newly deceased's wealthy relatives to the morgue. After Paris, Leslie and I traveled for several months on a Eurail Pass throughout many different cities in Europe. We got engaged in Berne, Switzerland, diamond engagement ring and all.

We left Europe after almost a year overseas, lived in New York City with Leslie's parents, and worked as typists at Teachers College for college credit. Leslie's father, who was a brilliant intellectual and loved to drink and debate, put me to the test. Her brother was hostile and made it apparent he didn't like me. I kept as quiet as I could, continuing my pattern of holding in what I felt. My compensation was getting free tickets to the theater from her father, and eating terrific corned beef sandwiches and pickles at his famous midtown delicatessens. Leslie and I were more than ready to return for our final year at Beloit. We got married on April 4, 1971, at Saint Paul's Chapel on Columbia University's campus. I was twenty-one.

It was a whirlwind of activity that didn't stop. We graduated from Beloit in August 1972, and we both started graduate school in September just after moving back to Manhattan. I went into the PhD program in industrial/ organizational psychology at New York University, and Leslie went into the MSW program at Columbia University, followed by the EdD program at Teachers College. We both received our doctorates seven years later.

Those years for me were filled with classes, internships, comprehensives, my dissertation, and consulting part-time and then full-time a year before graduation. Leslie worked full-time at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital after she obtained her MSW and continued on for her doctorate. There were ups and downs in our marriage, but we decided to have a child as we neared the completion of our studies.

Picture this. It's late at night on May 16, 1980. Leslie's lying down in bed, and her water breaks during Johnny Carson. We wrap her in an orange bath towel and get a cab to nearby Beth Israel Hospital. After twenty-two hours of intense labor, Leslie gives birth to Becky. And how did Becky enter this world? Sunny-side up, looking straight at me—a gift I now cherish with all my heart.

The following years before meeting Maa were filled with contrasts. I felt comfortable, had fun, traveled, and socialized. I suffered, was angry, was in conflict, and was withdrawn. My therapist described this as "being in a cave." Being in the dark was better than facing myself, my needs, my fantasies, what I really wanted in life. In short, I had no idea who I was.

I spent a lot of time processing during my individual therapy and together with Leslie in marital therapy. I spent long hours working my way up to becoming a partner with the Hay Group, a large international management-consulting firm. I had transitioned from school and getting the best grades, to career and billing the most, to selling the most. I always measured myself against external goals of achievement and success.

Although I was successful according to social, professional, and financial standards, I was coming to the abyss, the cliff. My path stopped there. If I jumped, I didn't know how to fly, and I didn't have anyone to guide or coach me. I was at a dead end in my thoughts, feelings, confusion, and inaction.

What happened then? What did I attract in this state? Perhaps what I'd been contracted for before I incarnated. Within two years, my brother died from lung cancer after being in remission from thymus cancer. My mother died from a brain tumor after having breast cancer. I was fired after thirteen years with my firm. I was divorced after twenty-one years of marriage. Everything I identified myself with, my whole identity, was gone. I was left with nothing of what I'd focused on for so many years (forty-four to be exact). I was sad, grieving, angry, anxious, in denial, numb, almost dead. I didn't know what was going to happen to me.

What happens when one's completely stripped of everything, made open and vulnerable, a tabula rasa? That's right: Maa. Maa happens.

Mother, guide, enlightened master, servant to love and light ... Maa is a guru, one who leads us from untruth to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality, as the Sanskrit sloka from the Upanishads or Hindu philosophical texts says: Asato ma sadgamaya. tamaso ma jyotir gamaya. mrityor ma amritam gamaya. Om shanti shanti shanti.

That magnificent, momentous, and magical meeting with Maa is coming up. I know you want to skip ahead, but please take a look at what comes next. It's good for you. We move from my experiences to the lessons I learned. After that come the questions for your reflection and the practices for your use.

Lessons Learned

• We don't have to suffer! Yes, I lost everything I identified with and felt great pain, sorrow, grief, and even a kind of death. We don't have to go this far or low to transform. We can take a look at the present, reflect, and see the habits and patterns of inaction or action that don't serve our highest. We can see that we create our suffering and not blame others or our circumstances. Yes, we create and re-create suffering; we reinforce suffering in our lives. We feel it's a fact of who we are, part of our identity. However, we can just as easily de-create it. We can re-focus ourselves and our lives. • Transformation doesn't have to take so much time. As a psychologist, and one who was in therapy for years, I won't disparage the practice or negate results that can be achieved with skilled practitioners. Know, however, that we can transform quickly without processing every thought, feeling, and happening in our lives. Accelerated transformation takes focus, discipline, honesty, and humility. It takes courage to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Remember the difference between transformation and change: you're not just plastering and painting the walls, you're creating something new that didn't exist before. • Don't forget to look inside. I was so focused on external goals and accomplishments, it took me years to look inside and confront what wasn't working. I had to face what didn't feel right or truthful within me. I was afraid and denied and pushed down what I didn't want to feel or know. When we don't look within ourselves honestly and directly, we waste time. Most importantly, we stretch out our suffering. We water and nourish it so it grows in our lives, minds, bodies, cells, and auras. Suffering doesn't just go away voluntarily. Anxiety, confusion, depression, and anger don't disappear by themselves. We have to open our eyes and ask questions. We have to express ourselves. We learn from this and use what we learn to reinvent ourselves. • We're not our parents or our history. I played a certain role with my family growing up. I tiptoed around, smiled, did what I was told. We don't have to feel the same feelings, continue the same patterns, or listen to the same stories in our heads. We don't have to play the same roles with others in our lives. We are creators and can re-create ourselves anew right now rather than extend the past or extrapolate from it. • Fear narrows our view. As I said before, I was in a cave and didn't venture out in my thoughts, feelings, or actions. Know that this withdrawal, this narrow frame of reference, comes from fear. This can be a fear of the unknown, a fear of being hurt or rejected or unloved, or a fear of making mistakes. It might be a fear of what might happen or what others might do if we were to truly express what we thought or felt. The truth is that what we close ourselves to still remains within us and becomes magnified, stronger. We attract people and circumstances that aggravate us and cause even more suffering. • Trust and go for it! In looking back now and knowing what I know, I see how I waited, how I prolonged my suffering and state of limbo. This impacted not just my life but also the lives of my former wife, my daughter, my parents, and my brother. Know that we're held by love, by the universe, by light beings, and by masters. Know that we're the ones who are waiting and not listening to those who will serve us to heal and transform ourselves and our lives. We have other human beings, other opportunities, waiting to be attracted to us and part of our lives. These will serve us to be our highest, to express ourselves more fully and powerfully, and to live our purpose. What we might call setbacks, problems, chaos, loss, or the lower depths is actually a clearing and a gateway for reinvention.

Chapter Two

And Then Came Maa

From the lower depths of loss and emptiness, I rise to the heights of rediscovered love and joy.

During the time that my identity was disappearing, I began to search for some meaning, something different than before. I moved from Gramercy Park to Greenwich Village. I felt both rejuvenated and a bit old beside all the young students. I went on an Outward Bound trip to Colorado, where I now live, rappelling down a cliffin the Rockies, holding on for dear life, and feeling insecure about falling while someone was belaying me. Of course, one of the lessons was to feel confident that someone else is holding me. I stayed out by myself at night, reflecting and communing with nature. Not my habit.

I started to meditate just about six months before meeting Maa. The first book I read about meditation said, "Visualize a feather floating down onto a cloud." I explored new intimate relationships, learning more about my body, desires, and sexual preferences (I was both "in a cave" and "in the closet" for many years). I attended programs offered by Landmark Education back to back with the Forum, the Advanced Course, and the Self-Expression and Leadership Program. I learned about my "rackets" and "winning formulas," and created my possibility: "Who I am is the possibility of people creating together." Happily, this possibility has come to fruition and continues in my life.

I finished the project to manifest my possibility in the world just after my mother died, just as I was about to lose my job. This manifestation was an arts and music festival on the Jersey City pier where our offices were located. I rejoiced in the co-creation and involvement of people I knew and of many I hadn't met before. At the same time, I felt a bit awkward because I sensed the project and what it represented for me was alien to many consultants I worked with, including my bosses. I also felt "the ball was going to drop soon" at work.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from In the Path of Light with Maaby Swami Parameshwarananda Copyright © 2011 by Swami Parameshwarananda. Excerpted by permission of BALBOA PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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