Great Souls, Dear Friends  

I am glad to be connecting with you again and I am thinking of you, and feeling closer to you as I write this. In my email system there is no "group send" facility so I have to click on each name to send the email; which is very nice because I think of each of you as I select your name, and I remember you fondly and the times we have spent together - whether you are  friend, client, student, teacher, or yogi, or none of these. However we met, you have touched my life and I thank you.

Here in America life has been very interesting - challenges big and small; plenty of learning;  and underneath it all a deep and growing joy, the source of which is hard to define. 

Perhaps it is being here at the Expanding Light my spiritual home (www.expandinglight.org).  Perhaps it is just knowing that the path I am on is so  very right (for me).  Perhaps it is the powerful feeling that everything that happens in my life has a deeper purpose, and moves me towards my highest potential. But I don't always understand what is happening.  For example, I really don't understand why I had to "play stupid" for a few weeks when I first arrived in America.
 
In San Francisco I went to the India visa office to apply for a 12 month visa. When I left the office 40 minutes later my car had disappeared.  In fact I was 10 minutes over parking meter time so my hired car had been towed. Cost : a few moments of blind panic and a fine of $230.  To add insult to injury when I collected my car from the pound I found I also had a parking ticket.  In the confusion of San Fran street signs I hadn't noticed the sign that indicated that parking was for loading and unloading only.     Cost: $60 

The Toyota hire car was an automatic. It was 3 days before I realised that I had to push the gear stick 1/4 inch to the right to engage "D" -drive gear. I had driven about 400 miles in 3rd gear!! 

I visited my friend Mary Catherine (M-C) near Portland.  Every night we would go in the hot tub for half an hour or so.  On this particular dark and slightly wet evening I went out to take  off the cover and fell 3 or 4 feet down into the garden.  As I gingerly got up I was glad to realise that nothing was broken although  I had strained my right  shoulder a little in the fall. Then I noticed my left thumb was sticking out at an odd angle and I couldn't move it.  I knew it was either broken or dislocated.   But when I tried to get back into the house I found that I had locked myself out.   MC was finishing the dishes and had the CD player on, so for a little while she didn't hear me knocking on the window trying  to attract her attention.  There I was in the dark, in the rain, dressed only in a towel, banging on the windows of her thankfully isolated house.

Eventually we ended up in the local Emergency Room at midnight where, after taking a deposit of $400 and a few xrays, the affable ER doctor gave me the good news that nothing was broken. "We'll count to 3 and then pull the thumb back into place. OK?" he said.  So as he counts I'm trying to relax - aware that I was tensing for a jolt on "3".  Then he yanked the thumb on the count of "2".   I yelled, jumped up in the air hitting my head on the examination lamp and my back on the suction apparatus behind me.  It was briefly very painful and something of  a shock. 

"You said you were going to count to  3", I complained. "Oh we never get to 3" says he with a smile.  If he had been really smart he would have added that it's a rule of thumb!!
(Total cost $1700 - hopefully covered by my insurance)
 
And finally - though this is not a comprehensive confession by any means - I put my trousers in the wash only to find, when I took them out, that I had left my passport in the trouser pocket. Result: one soggy passport (with new $120 india visa stamp).  It dried out eventually leaving me with a slightly faded, misshapen and wrinkly passport.  Some wag suggested  that it is a reflection of its owner!

So - Stupid or What?

Increasingly, I am aware of the illusion which is this life. In my therapy practice I have met a number of people  who are  acting out the karma of others; it is not their "stuff" which is creating their challenges.  Sometimes we are given  strange roles to play by the divine director - roles which are not congruent with "who we really are".   Some of you will already understand this.  For others, perhaps, these ideas seem far-fetched.  (To them I say that  these are my truths and I  ask only that you consider them). And if we can meet these challenges with grace then that grace enters the global consciousness.  If we meet these challenges with anger and resentment then that energy enters the global consciousness.  You cannot fight for peace ; "fighting" is a conflict energy; "fighting for peace " is an oxymoron.   But each of us can contribute to world peace by being peaceful.  Each of us  can bring more love into the world by being loving.

The great Indian master (and my guru) Paramhansa Yogananda likens our life experience to a film show.   We can get pretty involved in the cinematic experience - we may laugh or cry, feel happy or sad.  But what we see on the screen is a play of light, shadow and colour which does not have any  real existence.  And if we look behind us we can see that the film experience  comes from a projector - the source of the light.

And if this is true, then you may like to consider what the source of light is in your life.  For if there is a higher light source, then surely it would be a good idea to find out more about it.  As I journey on my own path, like all of you I have joy and I have challenges, laughter and pain.  But beneath the joys and sorrows is the constant awareness of the divine play, and the roles we are invited to play.  I  try to see the light rather than get drawn into the delusion.  Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I get drawn into the delusion, only to emerge from the delusion later with the thought "What was that all about?  It doesn't seem as important as I thought it was.  How did I let myself get so wrapped up in that experience and in those feelings?" Does that kind of thing happen to you?  Pain and suffering caused perhaps by a small misunderstanding........But that's another story for another time.

So was I stupid?  Am I stupid?  I like to think not. I choose to think of these events as part of life's rich play; life's cinematic dream. And behind the dream is the most amazing love, joy and peace. If we are lucky we can sometimes feel that love, joy and peace.  If we make the effort to connect with that light we can feel that love, joy and peace more powerfully and more often.  Remember how you feel when you see a newborn baby. Or marvel at  the intricate structure and intense colours of a single flower. Find an intensely moving poem (eg Mary Oliver's "Mindfulness") and read it slowly several times, going deeply into it.  In these moments you  can  realise that there is "something more".   A divine light which shines through all that is. A divine light which shines in you.

May you know that Light in you

Love and blessings
Stan