Oh I am getting so tired of my story! Don’t get me worng, I think it’s a good story and some people even want to make a movie about it. Imagine that! But – you know, it’s all about the past. And that’s over.
Really the present is much more fun. You and I, we can actually meet here and now and my heart likes that. That’s really what it’s all about for me, the heart. If there is any value to my story it’s about the way my heart is being awakened more and more. That is what I love to share: how we all can become more and more alive and enjoy this miracle of a world we live in, a world which at one time not long ago seemed like a place of so much suffering to me.
Well okay, you’re getting me to tell my story. I’ll keep it short. My book “Being Love; Through Auschwitz to Absolute Happiness” (working title) is coming out sometime – God knows when - but probably this year. That has the whole story in it.
Here is the very short version: I saw the light of this world in Germany after WWII and the Holocaust and everything seemed pretty dark. I became a reflection of how I experienced my environment (or maybe it was the other way around): gloomy, depressed, filled with anxiety and the bottomless shame that was the secret MO of Germans in those days. All this changed in a flash one summer day in 1968 when my mind and heart exploded into the beauty and limitless love of this world. In the midst of this epiphany I realized I had only one thing to do in this life, only one single thing: to find ways to free and expand my awareness so I could learn to live in this enlightened state all the time. It is a fantastic journey.
Those were the days when good spiritual teachings and skills were extremely hard to find in the West and so I was guided to India, to Neem Karoli Baba (we called him Maharajji), one of the very great sages of our time. Being with him was an immersion into a love so profound I am still at a loss for words to describe it. Probably will always be. How do you put a heart as vast as the whole world into small things like words. It just doesn’t fit.
This experience with Maharajji is still going on. While he left his physical form in 1973, his presence is always available. He dwells in the heart. It is the presence of that blissful Self that we are. That is where I long to meet you!
The rest of the story is that I came back West and lived on Ma Jaya’s Kashi Ashram in Florida for 25 years until 2000. I completed a Ph.D. in psychology and began to test many different methods and skills. Among the countless spiritual and psychological techniques I needed to find the very best. I was seriously comitted to getting free. I had a lot of baggage and my desire for awakening was intense. I had to find what could set me free in the most direct way. That’s how I identified four techniques – I call them SKILLS – which I find to be the most effective. I’d like to share them with you.
The skills are: OPEN ATTENTION, to help us find emotional harmony, SELF-INQUIRY, or ‘The Work of Byron Katie’ to make the mind clear and free of stress, the cultivation of STILLNESS to find Inner Peace, and DEVOTION for lasting unconditional love. I call them the SKILLS FOR AWAKENING. They belong to us all.
I am in debt. I am in debt over my ears. I am in debt for the many great gifts I have received from my teachers, from my friends and from the profound goodness of this universe. And I want to pay back. I want to ‘pay back’ because that is what love wants. Love wants to share itself. I offer to meet you in this clear space of sharing our oneness.
After finding the skills I had to test them some more. I went to the concentration camp in Auschwitz (my version of the deepest hell on earth) and I practiced them there. The outcome? What can I tell you? I realized more deeply that ever before that we are total goodness. We are the most profound love. It lives in us, always, and it is covered up in us to a greater or lesser extent. The brightest light can be found in the deepest darkness.
The fastest way to save ourselves, and to save the world, is to uncover this profound goodness in us. To celebrate and to share it. In so many ways we are all doing just that. I would love to be of service to you by offering you the skills and the love that waits in my heart until I can share it with you.
