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Another encounter with Ammaby Savitri L. Bess |
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Just when I would settle into a sense of deep love and interconnectedness, something would happen that would shake the foundations of my spirituality and my relationship to Ammachi. My trust rattled, I would wonder how she could allow certain events to take place. At first I wouldn't understand. I would feel hurt, sad, angry, disappointed, even betrayed. For instance, one time when Ammachi was in America, I wrote her a note through the translator asking if I should go to India on a certain date, and if I would get the funds in time to do so. I was bubbling with joy when she answered both questions with one "Yes." Without a shadow of a doubt that anything could go wrong, I left post-dated checks made out for all my major and minor bills and managed to borrow enough money to pay for a one-way ticket. After a couple of weeks in India, I found out that the balance due on a house I had sold had not come through as expected. No money to pay bills or to buy an airline ticket home! It was as if I was held captive with no escape. I was afraid to tell Ammachi how deceived I felt, but even greater was my terror that she would withdraw her love. I was certain she would abandon me forever if I were to confront her with my belief that she had advised me poorly. If Ammachi is omniscient and omnipotent, how could she have made such an enormous error? Before this incident I did not suspect that the security of money had carried such grave importance for me. Even more amazing was my discovery that I had more faith in money than in a Father or a Mother God. Instead, I believed the Mother had betrayed me on all levels. Hidden in the depth of my shadow lay the fact that money represented freedom, trust, and empowerment on all levels. I was incensed. How could the Mother of the Universe pose such an enormous obstacle to my source of independence? Full of despair, aching inside, I ran to her in desperation. All the way up the darshan line my heart was beating wildly; my throat was in a knot. I was certain she would know exactly why I was so distraught and would deliver me from my financial mess. When I reached her lap, I was not comforted. Even as I lay in her lap, I could not feel her with me. To my surprise, she didn't let on that she knew my plight. Instead, with a twinkle in her eye, she asked, "Problem?" Since I felt irreparably separated from her I said, "I can't feel Mother with me." Through the translator, she replied, "Child, I am always with you." I blurted, "But I can't feel Mother with me." With a soft light in her eyes she said, "Sometimes I hide so you will come running to me like a small child." The above encounter pacified me for a few days, but didn't bring the needed money, which I naively had thought it would. Surely she knew my predicament and could fix the situation! Ultimately my mind became so tormented by this event that I reacted by becoming ill with fevers and bronchitis. I was too confused to understand how to approach Ammachi in a more direct way. The angry and hurt part of me wanted to stomp my feet like a child and demand to know how she could have counseled me so poorly, but a wiser part of me knew that there was an important lesson in it. Since I really needed to know what to do and badly wanted her to help me as a mother would a child, I eventually mustered the courage to seek further counsel. I took her a letter telling her the details of my financial entanglement. "Ask again," she told me. Even though her answer didn't make sense according to the financial particulars, out of some tender spot in my fossilized hope for faith, I did exactly what she said. I called my friend in America and asked her to call again the ones who owed me the balance on my house. The process of waiting stirred up muddy, dark images of myself. Had Mother really known what she was talking about when she told me to ask again? Feelings of fear and unworthiness pervaded my being. I concluded that I must have done something terrible to have deserved so much inner torment. I remembered the story at the beginning of this book when I'd sat behind Ammachi while she was giving darshan, when my shadow side seeped into my consciousness, and hoped she'd again love me in spite of my crusty woundedness. I received relief from her nurturing presence, bathed helplessly in her love, as I sat with her while she hugged the thousands who came to her daily. Over the next couple of months, through fevers and gut-spewing coughs, my distress began to melt away. During that time, an intuition as certain as the flow of tributaries into a river seeped into my consciousness: I knew Mother had foreseen my financial delay and wanted me to be in India with her rather than in America with no job, no money, and no place to live. With the dense fog clearing out of my mind, it gradually dawned on me that this monetary drama had at least one purpose. It exposed a few of my inner demons. Through it, Mother drew out of me archaic pus from lifetimes of injuries having to do with loss of trust, feelings of betrayal by the supreme. When I saw that my fear of unpaid debts was a surface manifestation of a much deeper wound, my heart softened into her love. I now knew that, instead of money, faith in Mother was my key to freedom and security. One warm evening as I sat on the stoop of my thatched hut gazing at the stars through the coconut palms, listening to the ocean waves beating against the shore, I received a phone call from my friend in America. The sum owed to me had been deposited into my bank and all of my debts had been paid. Excerpted from The Path of the Mother by Savitri L. Bess . Excerpted by permission of Wellspring/Ballantine, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Savitri L. Bess, MFA, MEd, is a transpersonal therapist, devotee of Mata Amritanandamayi (Ammachi), fiber artist, author, and workshop facilitator who founded and directed the Center for Creative Consciousness in Tucson, Arizona. Bess is the author of Offer Me a Flower and The Path of the Mother, released by Ballantine Books in June 2000. She currently lives at the Amma Center of New Mexico ashram in Santa Fe and spends time with Ammachi in India. |
