Approaching spiritual practice, most people get excited and jump into the process that is sure to bring them to enlightenment. If they have stumbled into actual practice, however, it will not take long before they realize their life is ruined. If their life is not ruined, then they have not begun to practice.
My whole life was turned upside down after my first month with Baba. I had had a successful Tai Chi Chuan school with a hundred students on Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Everything needed for a successful life was in place: a great space, great students, my teacher in California. In addition to my other education, I had a degree in acupuncture I had earned with Dr. So in his inaugural class in the US, and had studied Chinese language. I taught, traveled and was well known. I had even demonstrated Tai Chi for the Taiwanese consulate. Even though I had continued to search for someone who could answer my deeper questions, I had a successful life.
On my return to Cambridge from that first month with Baba, I was not sure what I was going to do. Baba had revealed Truth, and I knew I had to go study with him, be with him. I had no idea how I was going to do that, especially since I had such a successful life. As soon as I went to my school my landlord told me that a Rockefeller wanted to buy out my lease. I said yes, not knowing how I was going to make my living or how I was going to be able to be with Baba. My whole life turned upside down. I had never liked Indian trappings, and now I was going to be with an Indian Guru. I knew none of the outward lifestyle. I have a terrible singing voice, and of course they chanted everyday. So much of my discipline was about physical movement, and now people just sat there. My life was ruined. Why?
Our lives have to be ruined in order to go Home, because if we are really practicing we are realigned internally, and that will change our outward manifestation. Our lives and all our decisions are based on our “love Machine”. When we give up the machine, our motivations will change. If we just take on board new concepts and external rituals, we will not change our lives. We will just have intellectual pablum. And that is sad.
So my life was ruined—and I am so glad for that. As I practice, whatever has not been ruined needs to be. Slowly, though I am always me, my life is being transformed. By anchoring into the Self and God, we remain true; our whole being is realigned with God.
If we do not surrender, whatever we are holding onto will only get bigger until we cannot hold on anymore.
In the fourteenth century, the great Dominican mystic Henry Suso began as a committed—and proud—renunciate, withstanding all manner of privations and rejecting rather than being nonattached. He was annoyed by most human contact. God ruined his seemingly perfect spiritual life. Scandal engulfed Suso when a woman accused him of fathering her child. At first, he could not understand how God could do such a thing to him. But when a local came to him offering to do away with the baby, he insisted that he see it. On meeting the infant, Suso realized that his task was to accept the child as a gift from God and take responsibility for it. His world, and his idea of himself, had been completely dismantled. Only at this point did he surrender—by surrendering his idea of surrender.
Our task is to surrender to God completely on all levels, and have only God left to be the doer.
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