Tuesday, 20 November 2012

4. Yair/Amma


So what else did I get up to in all those times and days between the crazy mad summer that ended with the salvation of Harry’s lovely house and bed and the bit last Monday where I ate all that LSD and everything began once more brand new and shining? Well there was:

1. Women. A continuation and growth of the free and easy path I’ve been on since I slept with that Mexican witch back in 2009 who, through her magic mystical yoni powers took away all my fear of commitment and attachment and shyness and made me something I know not what but which I kind of dig, even if it’s in stark contrast to most of what I see around me. Like, doing things that the world’s supposed to frown on and that drive other people – normal people – South Elmsall people – Yorkshirepeople – to snarls and fists and broken glass and even murder and prison. Like going for dinner with two girls I’ve been sleeping with on and off over recent months (plus a friend) and not even thinking for a second there was anything odd about that. They’re my friends. They know each other. They get on. Why shouldn’t they be friends? More and more the sex becomes like squash. That’s the enlightened way. I hope I can grant others the same freedom and joyfulness I grant myself. We’re having a good time, right?

2. And then Yair came over from Israel and there – yes: for all the things I said before – I had a friend. Me and Yair are good buddies. We talk a lot and listen to one another and laugh. He’s as spontaneous as a cuckoo and twice as crazy too. But in a really good way. He’s tall and handsome and ever so sweet-natured and good. He’s now got into balloon-modelling – taught himself off youtube – and can make hats and cakes and Disney characters and bras. Really good at it. Brought like nine thousand balloons over from Israel and when we went to Amma’s was making hats for all the children and made me a cake with ever such a realistic candle on it. He went on adventures in London, so child-like and free. What an inspirational fellow! He –

We were on a break from Amma’s and had gone down to Finsbury Park to meet up with Perlilly, my ex, and to have a look at the Arsenal stadium cos he’d been going on about wanting to see a football match. It was the night of the game with Schalke and there were thousands of men with scarves all around, swilling beer and singing big boisterous songs. Police too. I found it a little harsh and uncomfortable in comparison to Amma’s – the one bad thing about seeing Amma is that the world looks even more dirty afterwards – but Yair was loving it. We sat outside the stadium making balloon things and then Yair said – declared, really – “I want a beer! You want a beer?” I was like, man, are you mad? Who’d want a beer after Amma? But Yair was going for it. He went off and came back with two cans of Kronenbourg and drank one of them really fast. Then we were hungry and went looking for somewhere to eat with all our balloon creations in tow (in truth it was all Yair and Perlilly’s balloon creations: I couldn’t even make a worm). Perlilly and I found a place. Yair said he was going to go elsewhere and get a “street burger”. So we went inside and got our food and chatted and expected him to appear. Except he didn’t. He never came back. And after like forty-five minutes we left. No Yair in sight.

I had a few hours to kill then before I was going to see my friend Abi and so I walked slowly all the way to Highgate along back streets and over some obstructive fences and then finally, like two hours later, I got a call from Yair (he had my spare phone). “Where are you man?” I said, “You just disappeared.” “I’m in the game!” he said. “I got a really good seat! Wow: it’s nice.”

He’s irresistible, is Yair. He kind of talks like Borat sometimes. Everything’s “wonderful” and “lovely” and “perfect” and “beautiful”. What a guy! For a chap who was in the army for four years and went on missions to Syriaand stuff he’s so full of innocence and charm. Israeli’s are cool; the hippy Israelis anyway. I dig this guy so much.

“Okay man, I’ll see you later” – and the next day, I did.

Yair, Yair: he’d only gone off buzzed up on beer – “wow,” he says, “I was really drunk: I don’t usually drink beer” – and somehow managed to bag a ticket for fifty quid when they were all sold out and touts we saw were asking two hundred. Right on the half-way line. At a really good altitude. Only problem: “Arsenal were very weak: I think I’ll go see Chelsea versus Manchester United next week.” And he did. The 5-4 game that went into extra-time. He loved it. God bless that man. I’d give anything to be that into these experiences of beer and football and just find the joy and bliss in it all – I type as a mad drunk croons madly three floors down outside my window – but I just ain’t built that way, too flowery and sensitive to this car-peeping world.

How cool’s all that?

3. After Amma Yair came up to Yorkshire, just for a couple of days. He’d stayed down in London to watch The Lion King – God, he loved it – and also eat English breakfast and be entertained by my great little Irish friend and lover, M-----, who astounded Yair with her hospitality – it is stunningly good – before having to go back down to a balloon modelling conference. We dug Leeds and I enjoyed showing him my beautiful and vibrant city – eager to point out all the billion ways in which it wazzes all over London – and then took a whole day off to explore Ilkley Moor and walk crazy in the wind and rain getting socks wet and rolling in the heather. I told him I’d give him a hundred pounds if he could catch a sheep and laughed my guts off watching him stalk up to it – slowly, slowly – and then go galloping after it across the moor always just five minutes behind until joyously giving up and expressing, “damn, I was this close!” Another group of sheep were passed up so on the third one I said “two hundred” and off he went again. Man! My heart leapt when he got to within like four feet of one and it looked like he was going to bag it. But Mr Sheep was just playing nonchalant and just as he went for his grab the sheep took off and once more long-leggéd Yair was off galumphing across the moor behind an ever-distancing sheep while I laughed and laughed and hearing him laugh too. God bless that man! And God bless those sheep too! I mean: two hundred pounds is perhaps just a little too much. But: what fun.

Having a visitor is great: you really get to appreciate your own place through them. Leeds is great and Yorkshireis great and our day on Ilkley, despite the wind and cold and rain, was great too. In fact, probably because of that: it wouldn’t be the same tramping wet long lost miles without that ponderous grey cloud and the foreboding of worse to come. Thoughts of getting lost. And the strange out-thereness of being on that moor always so close in reality to civilisation and safety but, wow, in your head it really does feel like the middle of nowhere. And then so English: after two hours of walking through bogs and heather and going in puddles up to our knees and feeling like prehistoric man with rain-numbed faces and a stop to ring out my socks – why, here comes a man with a dog, and a jogger, and they just nod their heads and go on their way. Like that story of some of the first English explorers of the Arctic (or Antarctic) who solo and from different parties just in their Londontown shoes and hats doffed their caps and their carried on their way in the middle of all that ice and snow two thousand degrees below zero. That’s the English: it’s great to revel in that eccentricity and to see it all so more clearly in the mirror of an overseas friend who has just left behind thirty degrees and sun.

“It could be like this in August,” I say. “Or it could be twenty degrees in December, you just never know.” I love the English weather. Who cares what it does, what the weatherman says? It is what it is. It’s only a problem if you’re expecting something different.

Yair falls asleep on the bus on the way home. Then we take our wet socks to what I consider Leeds’ finest fish and chip shop – Royal Park Fisheries on Royal Park Road – and scoff a feast. The portions are massive. The quality and flavour much better than the ones we’d had from Graveney’s the day before. This is what fish and chips is all about – and all for three pound sixty. Of course, I remember when my dad lived two streets over and we went for the Saturday tea-time special after a day in the shop – fish, chips and a breadcake, all for a pound – but you can’t turn back time. The man who sold those looked like an old rocker and I always said he must have used the chip fat to grease his hair, but now we buy them from Asians and they’ve taken up the mantle with aplomb. The guy in there told us loads about a big demonstration in Kurdistan that day – over a million people – “but you won’t see anything about it on the BBC” – and he was right. It was all that bit of rain they had in America at the time, pretty much non-stop. Makes you wonder ‘bout this media of ours and the places they choose to shine their lights...

The next day we went to Popina’s to undertake the Mega Breakfast Challenge. It’s a pretty big breakfast, is the Mega. It’s six pound fifty but you get a keyring if you finish it. I did it once before but I figured it was something Yair needed to see. Only ‘bout twenty percent of guys beat the challenge (for girls it’s maybe one in eight) but I can’t say I found it too hard. What do you get for your six pound fifty? Well, for the veggie option it’s something like this: four big sausages, four eggs, a ton of beans and mushrooms and tomatoes, four slices of fried bread, four slices of toast, four big hash browns, and a cup of coffee or tea. I dig that. I ate mine up and then I ate Yair’s remaining forty percent too. I had to get the guy his keyring.

The other awesome thing we did was go to the uni sauna in our underpants. Well, Yair had his Simpsons kegs on but, as you know, “I haven’t worn underwear since February 1997” and after a failed attempt to blag some lost shorts from reception – probably health and safety wouldn’t allow it, and they weren’t about to get all non-counter-intuitive on my ass – I had the brainwave of sticking my legs through the arms of my t-shirt, bunching up the neckhole and clenching it between my cheeks, and wondering in like that. It actually worked really well: in fact, though one of us did get told off it certainly wasn’t me. Underwear that looks exactly like swimming trunks not allowed. But an upside-down t-shirt is. It really is a wonderful world.

And then Yair said goodbye and went on his merry way to the balloon convention and from there to storm-ravaged New York and Montreal. Chillier there than Ilkley Moor, I should think. But then again, maybe not. That’s the thing with the Canadian winter: they know how to dress for it, and they don’t go out in it much, unless they can help it. But England...well it’s just not quite that cold enough to persuade everyone that they need to wear coats, something other than short-skirts, tops, etc. It’s never too cold for a walk on’t moor baht ‘at.


4. But now we’ve reached the end of lovely Yair’s section and he’s gone jetting off across the ocean – well, lo and behold, but he’s back again! But not, alas, in reality, but in the magic of prose, wherein time breaks down and sometimes the writer gets ahead of himself. For before all that, of course – from the 23rd to the 26th of October – I was once more with Amma, the hugging saint, and what a great and glorious time that was.

I had this idea that things were going to change at Amma’s. That the gap that had been created by the completion of my MA and various other things – internal completions – was going to be filled by something there. Maybe it was: I don’t know. But what I do know is that: wow, seeing Amma really is about the best single thing that a person could do with their life. She’s amazing. She’s probably the most amazing person who ever lived. There she is, still going strong, year after year of non-stop hugging and giving and being joyful and loving. You think she’d slow down, take it easy now she’d approaching sixty – but instead she just seems to be giving more and more. More times over the hugs. Later finishes. Less break in between sessions. Instead of finishing in the afternoon at 2 or 3 she was there till after 5. And on Devi Bhava night she went right on through till 9.45am. Always the same, ever fresh and smiling and wonderful. I think even the flower-throwing bit and final darshan, wherein she looks each and every remaining person in the eye – often my favourite and most powerful and moving part – seemed to be longer than before. A few years back it was really noticeable how gray and drawn she looked and you wondered how long she could go on. But now, all those hundreds of thousands of hugs and extraordinarily long hours later and she looked ten years younger. Where had it all gone? But nothing makes sense with her.

Yair comes back from a big long snooze on Devi Bhava night and sits down next to me staring at the video screen and looking stunned. It’s maybe 7am and Amma, of course – no one’s ever seen her yawn – is the same as she was at 10am and 3pm and 10pm and 1am the whole day before.

“She’s crazy,” he says, “it’s not possible.” He’s been touched by her, for sure, and felt the peace and joy and pure spirituality of the energy around her – but, like for me, it’s this simple fact of inhuman stamina that so easily blows the mind. It’s not possible – and yet there it is, right there in front of us. She just gives and gives and even when it’s over she’s got more energy than anyone there. What a woman.

Seeing Yair get his darshan was awesome. He came off glassy-eyed and stoned slowly walking ten-feet tall and smiling huge. And then Laura, who’d come down for just one night, got hers, and I think it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. A triple hug. A joke. Lots of giggles. Laura who’s been having her problems and not feeling so good – and in that moment of pure, unadulterated motherly love – wow, she’s a glee-eyed child smiling big and true and absolutely not a care in the world.

Good old Amma: she gives her children exactly what they need. She’ll take care of you. She’ll put a smile on your face...

And me? And me huh? And me was probably as much about the place as it was about the person of Amma. The peace that permeated the whole arena. The ease with which one can glide around and smile at everyone and start talking to anyone and say anything you feel because – that’s the thing about that place: it’s the one place I know where people know what they’re doing. They’re here for Amma. They’re here for Amma because they’re on some sort of spiritual path. And being on some sort of spiritual path, they’re acknowledging what they actually are: spiritual beings having a human experience and trying to make their way home. That’s what’s so draining about the world – and that’s the ultimate counter to all those arguments about being able to do it anywhere – ‘cos in the world you have to – well, I find – that I have to pretend otherwise. Pretend I’m not a spiritual being having a human experience. Pretend that life isn’t about love and growth and sharing wonderful things – or at least nod my head while other people pretend this – but that it’s about buying stuff and worrying and getting ahead, etcetera. But at Amma’s...well, we all know why we’re there, and even though we’re half of us crazy, and still wondering and not sure, at least we’re on the same page, together, no longer pretending, hiding, and that’s a beautiful thing. It loops right back around to what I was saying before, about friends, about community. To be amongst like-minded souls. Made me want it more...

It’s amazing the way I felt when I was at Amma’s. No restlessness, no urge to do anything. Just sitting in a chair staring in her general direction, even though unable to see her, and then noticing that everyone else is doing the same. The mind becomes quiet and just floats through the day. I didn’t care whether anything happened or not – the peace was lovely enough for me. And then you go and sit close to her and feel it even more – and then you go and join the darshan line and wonder what’s to come. So many memories of times with her before: in fact, I could see it all so clearly, those days when I was with her back in ‘99, 2000, 2001. Out of my head on bliss. Doing mad things with all the other bliss ninnies. Circles of us talking and relaying messages and thinking we were on the threshold of enlightenment. Totally zonked. Hugging for hours. Crying and staring into one another’s eyes. Wow, we were mad. But so many memories, and such a revelation of the changes I’ve undertaken – now I’m one of the sane, quiet ones – while others have risen to take my place, staring deeply, relaying messages, doing healings and massage, looking zonked. Another round of bliss ninnies. And on and on and on.

And kind of sad ‘cos, even there, and wonderful though it was, not really my place either. Except for Amma...

The videos always get me. The natural disasters and the suffering – and then the kindness of the huge gifts of charity that she and her followers give. Wow, they’re amazing. I cry buckets at that. The twin heartstring-pullers of infinite sadness and then absolute goodness. One devastating, one wonderful beyond measure. I love it all. Makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be up to my knees in gunk, building houses in India with my big strong man’s body, with my lack of desire for any kind of material rewards from this life.

And then darshan. Shuffling slowly towards her. Feeling more and more the peace. And then, out of nowhere, ten feet away, a real desire to cry. It leaps up in me and I think, yes, let it come, I would love that. To collapse in her bosom and sob a billion tears. But just as quickly as that emotion has arisen, it has passed, and no tears will come. I’ve got nothing to cry for anyway. All my tears have been shed. Which is a shame, really: I do like a good cry. But I suppose happiness and joy are ample compensation.

First darshan: lovely. Second darshan, right at the end of Devi Bhava morning/night: amazing, and interesting...

It’s linked, I think, to the one kind of weird, out of days of old thing that happened when I was there. This year, as in most recent years – and in huge contrast to those early years – there weren’t any mindblowing connections, any sudden meetings of souls that just seem preordained and perfect and destined, energy bubbling up and flowing between us, sparks flying off, divine bliss and intoxication and, some would say, insanity, such as I had with Eve and Carla – wow, that was mad! – and I suppose I could even include Grace and Ashargin and maybe Kellie in all that too. But nothing this year except – this one moment, sitting there calmly not too far off the stage, and this girl going up for darshan looks at me, and our eyes connect, and suddenly I’m overwhelmed with a huge grin and a massive upsurge of energy from inside, and for a few seconds we’re locked into one another. Then she looks away and I’m left with the feeling. It was kind of connection and heart loveliness at first – but actually what I feel at the end of it is a little bit queasy and ill. Not nice. And not what you expect when locking gaze with a lovely looking woman.

I wonder about it. Three days I’ve been there and the first sign of something weird, something Amma-esque. She reminds me a little bit of Grace – though, to be fair, I have no idea what she looked like anymore. But the feelings and thoughts are there and, one thing I’m thinking is, man, all that stuff I had in the last year about not getting in Grace's car being like my one massive regret in life, I really owe it to myself to say something to this girl. And, yeah, sure, the voice is still there – “she could be the one!” – but quieter now, sober and sedate. I don’t really feel it, I’m just curious, that’s all – and determined, too, not to leave there with regrets.

I see her later. I get up the bottle. Problem is she keeps closing her eyes and meditating and so I guess it’s obvious I’m like some stalker dude. And I feel real nervous and sick. But finally I talk to her. Stuttering, stumbling talk, like I’m drunk.

“When you were up on the stage,” I said, “I felt something. Something like...” I stop there. I motion to my body. It’s a standard New Age signal for whatever I’m trying to express, but she’s not getting it. “I guess I’m thinking, like” – I was nowhere near this coherent – “maybe wondering if you...felt something too, could explain it to me.”

She looks at me kind of blankly. Not in a stupid way. Just perhaps pitying. Poor drunk Amma-boy. Creepy scary stalker boy.

“When our eyes met...”

I feel stupid and ridiculous. I temper it by telling myself I needed to do this, that stupid and ridiculous and nothing is better than regret. But still...

“I look at a lot of people,” she says, smiling lovely, trying to be nice, to let me down gentle.

She gives me a sweet. Says it was nice to meet you. Walks off to somewhere other than near me.

I laugh. I smile. It was a nice lie, that last sentiment.

I didn’t want nothing from her except perhaps an explanation of that connection, that feeling. But there was nothing there.

And just typing that maybe I realise that I got the explanation I needed after all...

Later on, at maybe seven in the morning, I look up and see this Spanish girl I met at the ashram in 2008 when I went over for a couple of weeks. Funny thing is, even though I knew she followed Amma I’d not once thought of her the three days I was there. That’s how it works, eh? You wonder around thinking of people you might see, and hope to see, and for some reason the ones that you will actually see don’t even enter your head, and come as a wonderful surprise.

Ana’s the girl who sorted me out her parents’ beach house in Alicante for me to write my first book in. Without that...I don’t know what I would have done. She’s still pretty high and new to the whole Amma thing, but been through a lot. She’s like to talk about it. One thing she talks about is these connections with people, and specifically with people of the opposite sex.

She talks about it a lot. It makes me think again of Grace.

“They mean nothing,” she says, “it’s just feelings that rise up, that we then interpret to mean this or that, get carried away with and turn into things they aren’t because of attachment, desire, need.” She’s felt it with so many guys – felt it with me, in fact, when we first met – wondered if I was her “one”, even though I felt nothing in return – and has decided this is what it now is.

These connections. That moment of eyes locking on one another. Bodies moving together. Energy wanting to be shared. In hugs. In kisses. In sweet tender embraces and caresses and sex...

But is it more than that? Or is it something weird and twisted that makes us want to convert these initial impulses into marriage, into grand declarations of ‘soul mates’, into invented/intuited stories about past lives together, and destiny reuniting us, and staying together “forever”?

I’m reminded of a story I once read – it may have been from a Celestine Prophecy book, or perhaps it was from something like Robert Monroe’s out of body experiences literature – about a guy going on an astral journey and meeting a woman in this other dimension who telepathically communicated that she wanted to get it on with him. Except, it wasn’t in a physical realm so even though it was sex – hey, let’s use the CWG definition of that: “synergistic energy exchange” (I don’t know ‘synergistic’ means) – it was really actually just a purely energetic meeting and merging, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, the guy describes it as being awesome, but also as puzzling, because he expects something more from it while the woman is as done with it as, well, someone who you just had a game of squash with. She enjoyed it – the sharing, the pleasure, the melding of energies – but that was as far as it went. Not in a cold way, just purely devoid of attachment and a need to give it any further meaning, which is what the guy was used to, being Earth-based and all. Something like that.

It also reminded me of my own development in that area – in the way that it’s so rapidly becoming less and less attached, and so much more about something fun and pleasurable that two people can do together. Like squash. Except, usually nicer. Or different, at least. It’s hard not to let the emotions get involved – especially while remaining totally open – and yet, the more I grow, the more that’s the direction I’m heading in. Like most things, it feels better without all the attachment and extra luggage. And it seems to work for other people too. Certainly, I’m far from there yet, but...

And all this loops right back around to Grace and Eve. Eve who I met at Amma’s when I was sky high out of my mind. Eve who I felt an unbelievable magnetic pull to. Who I had to have. Who I sacrificed my path for...

And Mexico/Manchester Lee’s ideas about the pain body, and that that’s what’s actually drawing us to other people, our unhealed aspects pulling us to one another, and us mistaking that magnetic force as love...

And me, feeling less and less pain, and more and more healed, and less and less ‘love’ – romantic ‘love’ – normal ‘love’ – human ‘love’ – Earth-based ‘love’. The love of movies and TV shows and people who have lots of pain. The love that would die for another – but most likely sooner kill them first. The love that ties down, not release. The love that binds, not frees.

You get the picture.

I don’t know anymore about this idea about women. I’m not even sure it isn’t just something someone made up one day and we’ve all bought into it without really knowing why. I mean, share some times, yes. But marriage? Lifelong commitment and the shunning of all others? Is that what we were meant for? Or, at least, it seems to be a planet whose orbit is no longer holding me, it’s gravity no longer stronger to hold me in place as I float off into space...

I’ve been musing much on all the things that I’ve bought into that were handed down to me by hereditary and society and upbringing and conditioning and, wow, I’m pretty amazed at how deep those things go. And how free you can get when you really dig them out...

All the women I’ve met and felt overwhelming things for. Love at first sight. Desires to be together forever. Even that “provider instinct” that sprang spontaneously up in me one day with Nicky, the only woman I ever really wanted to impregnate. But what did they all really meaning? Could it have just been nothing? Or a meaning I was inventing/interpreting myself? Just momentary feelings that I gave significance to when there really was no real significance there in the first place, beyond the experiencing of the feeling in the moment and the awareness and the letting go of that, to move into the next feeling, and the next, and the next?

Life, so Conversations With God tells us, has no meaning save the one we give it.

And like so many things I’m starting to see just how deep this rabbit hole goes. Everything is deeper than I ever imagined. Almost infinitely so. Reality is cool...

So I’ve talked much in this blog about Grace, the girl I met in New Mexicoback in '99, and it’s a story I build around an overwhelming feeling, and a meeting of two souls, and a chance I feel I missed and regret. But lately I’ve begun to rethink all that, and let go of it some. It is, after all, only the internet that keeps alive any hope of re-meeting all those distant souls that twenty and thirty years back, when people still tromped off to India and had their spiritual times, were never seen again. Even I’ve got folks like that, from days pre-1996. Now I wonder if it isn’t as I’ve been getting at above: just another magical meeting. Just another feeling inspired. Just another exchange of energies, a gift from one to another, a hello and goodbye between two souls/ships passing one another in the night of this Earthly voyage towards the light. And somehow, I think, Amma orchestrated the whole thing. The thoughts of this year. The girl on the stage. The discussion with Ana. And then...

When I go for my second darshan Amma does something she’s never done with me before. She gives me my hug, and it’s nice – nothing special – and then when I raise up my head and think we’re done she holds up a big juicy red apple and looks at me with this wild twinkle in her eye and says, “bite!” Wow, I remember her voice now: really, like, powerful and godly and direct. I look startled at the apple and feel in my bones that I have to obey. I feel clumsy and useless, like I don’t even know how to bite an apple. When Amma does something like that it’s not just about biting a silly apple, or sharing a joke, or whatever it is she does – there’s a meaning and a purpose behind it, an energy that she puts in you. I lean forward a little and bit it and then – immediately she laughs – a real, guttural Kali-laugh – and I laugh too, and off I go, with the apple in my hand, laughing and chortling for no real reason ‘cept the energy seed she’s put in me and when I sit down to meditate I just giggle and giggle and giggle. Not mad giggles but – wow, she did something to me.

And then I remember that Santa Fe gas station, and Rob Brezsny’s divinely-timed horoscope, and how it got me a-kissin’ Grace, even though I thought I was a monk, and...

Well there I am saying nothing means anything and ascribing all kinds of mad things to a little Indian woman telling me to bite an apple but – the point being, hey, wouldn’t it be great if things didn’t really mean anything, save what you want them to mean, and that Amma’s little trick there had just cured me of all my thoughts and regrets about this one curious encounter from all those years back – an encounter that has made it hard for me to commit to women in the recent past – that has bugged me rotten on several occasions – and that I’ve felt deep regret over during this past year: regret being a really annoying thing?

Yeah, that’d be cool.

Plus, also, I think there was a reason for writing all that. Maybe not the last bit about the apple, but the earlier stuff. That seems quite significant. Christ, it sure would clear up a lot of my women-based headaches to just attribute it all to wonderful transitory feelings. Except now I’m feeling that maybe having written all that it’s brought alive again certain things that I was really starting to forget: especially knowing that people like Eve will probably be reading this – and no doubt railing against it since I doubt very much she wants to think of our encounter as a weird emotional impulse misinterpreted and taken too far.

Oh well: I’ll get over it! Teeheehee.

5. In a nutshell, Amma was awesome. Even though I hardly talked to anyone there, and didn’t really feel much connection with what people were doing there, it was so cool to be in that space, and also to be around Amma herself. Man, the moment just before she left, when she stared at us all for the longest time! Wow, her eyes just glowed. Like, seriously, I saw them burning like two red coals. I think her skin went green as well. Maybe I was seeing her Kali incarnation. Times over the years – even after I sobered up, post-bliss ninny days – that I’ve sobbed tears during that last blessing of hers. The time I heard a voice as clear as day – “Amma is in everyone. Amma is in everything” – and the gratitude for that gift, planted deep in my heart. If only some of her devotees could remember that as they trample one another to get closer to her physical body as she leaves the building rock star-like and we all magnetically feel the pull sweep our bodies towards her. I try not to but you can’t help it. Ah, man, the Chrizzers are missing out! There’s their second coming right there, if they will have it, but they won’t even see it ‘cos they think Jesus’s gotta be some dude with a beard...

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