This morning when I read the activities for January 29th – along with art exhibit openings (1975), new weightlifting records (2002), peace concerts in South Africa (1996) and Brazil (2000) – Sri Chinmoy began a poetry series entitled The Golden Boat on January 29th, 1974. He began writing these poems in Puerto Rico and the series eventually encompassed 1,000 poems in total with the publication of the 20th volume in October of that same year. Each of the 20 volumes contains 50 poems and they are available to read online.

The symbol of a golden boat traveling to a golden shore is found in Sri Chinmoy’s poetry, songs and artwork. I have a framed print on the wall in my living room which is called The Golden Boat – Sri Chinmoy painted this abstract image of a boat on the water in 1976.

Here is one poem from the series I especially like:

MY LOVE OF GOD

My morning love of God
Liberates me from the frets
And fevers of life.
My afternoon love of God
Protects me from world-dangers
And world-tragedies.
My evening love of God
Inspires me to stand
On the battlefield of life
To distribute the Breath of God.

Sri Chinmoy, The Golden Boat, Part 11, Agni Press, 1974.

Four days after he began the Golden Boat poems, he completed 208 poems in 22 hours. A book called The Inner Journey published in 1977 includes the transcript of a talk he gave to the disciples who helped publish and print those 208 poems students the same day they were written.

Dear children, the Golden Boat is not mine. This Boat belongs to the Supreme. We are all passengers on this Boat. You may say that I am an experienced passenger because I have been on this Boat for a longer time than you have been. But I wish to say that this Boat belongs to the Supreme. Right now He has only a few hundred passengers on this Boat, but a day will dawn when he will have seven thousand passengers or even more.

And in the near or distant future the Boat of the Supreme, where we are all now seated, will carry not only seven hundred or seven thousand individuals, but the whole of humanity to the Golden Shores of the Beyond. The Transcendental Supreme in His Golden Boat will carry all of us to the Golden Shores of the ever-transcending Beyond.

Sri Chinmoy, The Inner Journey, Agni Press, 1977.

Somehow when I think of the image of a golden boat ferrying human beings towards God, I imagine Noah’s Ark. As a child, I had a particular fondness for the concept of Noah’s Ark and used to imagine when I went to bed at night that my bed was the ark and that my stuffed animal collection represented all the animals brought onto the ark. This thought made me feel safe and protected by God.

Today I revisit the poems of The Golden Boat and dwell in a grateful space as I ponder the magical wisdom, life lessons, aphorisms and food for the soul overflowing in Sri Chinmoy’s poetry.

This year my finances necessitated a different approach. I have been meditating on the following quote from my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy. It starts by envisioning a world in some future yet to be realized date in which divinity is more established on Earth. Giving to others is a big part of the picture painted of a more beautiful world.

In answer to the question, “What will it be like when divinity is more manifested?” Sri Chinmoy states:

Treachery will go away, first of all.

Then, people will think more of one another and less of themselves, as a spiritual Master does. I can meditate all the time for myself, but I don’t do that. Instead, I concentrate on my disciples; I help them and others who want and need my light. In this way I serve them, and I get joy. As long as I am of service, I am fulfilling my role on earth.

But right now, It is not like that with everybody. When divinity is more manifested, people will offer themselves more for the cause of others than for themselves.

Now you will say, “If one is not realised, how can he help others?” But you can help, according to your own achievement. Always we have to be of service to those who need us.

When divinity is more manifested, each one will offer himself to the service of mankind and each one will have something to receive which he has not yet manifested.
Sri Chinmoy, Oneness-Reality And Perfection-Divinity, Agni Press, 1983.

Because I do not have the resources to give material gifts this Christmas, I am contemplating the idea of being of service to others and thinking more of others and less of myself as this year’s way to share in the “Season of Giving”.

Joel Osteen, in his new book Every Day a Friday devotes an entire chapter to these concepts, using the terms “be a dream releaser” and a “people builder”. He writes,

TODAY’S WORD from Joel and Victoria

Think about the people God has placed in your life. They’re not there by accident. God brings people to you for a purpose. We should live with this awareness that, “I am here to add value to people. I am here to help them succeed.” Don’t go around always thinking, “I wonder what that person can do for me. I wonder what they have to offer.” No, we should have the attitude, “What can I do for them? How can I help them come up higher? Can I teach them something I know? Can I connect them with someone who can help them?” Don’t make the mistake of going through life ingrown. Instead, be a dream releaser. Use your talent, your influence and your experience, not just to accomplish your goals, but to help release a dream in someone else.

Remember, there is nothing more rewarding than to lay down at night knowing that you helped someone else become better. You not only fulfilled your purpose for that day, you did your best. It may have just been a two-minute phone call where you encouraged someone; but when you live as a dream releaser, you’ll see your own dreams come alive as well.

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE

“Be devoted to one another in love…”
(Romans 12:10, NIV)

I find it inspiring that this spiritual truth transcends different religions and perspectives. Whether I am trying to help someone on my job who approaches the desk with a question, or I am trying to be a patient teacher in computer classes or I am trying to share Sri Chinmoy’s meditative wisdom with seekers; it all comes back to Sri Chinmoy’s words from above,

“As long as I am of service, I am fulfilling my role on earth.”

This Christmas, that is my prayer and wish as I travel, a girl on a road.

Have you ever noticed that certain numbers have powerful significance in your life? Have you ever explored numerology? Whether harkening back to Pythagorus or the Kabbalah, the idea that everything can be reduced to a number with mystical significance is an interesting thing to ponder.

I haven’t learned much about numerology but am intrigued by the frequence of the number 56 in my life and its relationship to the number 11. Ever since I received my spiritual name on Nov. 11, 2001 (11/11/01), I resonate with the number 11. Quite often, I instinctively look over at a digital clock as it displays the time 11:11.

The number 56 has been in my midst again and again and 5 +6 = 11. Twice I lived at a street address of 56 and currently I live at a street address of 156. What are the odds of that happening so many times?

To me the number 11 symbolizes that there is one and only one divine reality – that God is all, the one and only one.

Pythagorus said, “Eleven is the number of a cycle of new beginnings.”

There’s some pretty “out there” stuff about 11:11 – one website that says that it is a doorway to ascension into a higher world (www.nvisible.com), all kinds of mind-blowing stuff.

Eleven has to do with the DNA codes.

Eleven is also considered a master number and has a lot to do with awakening and spiritual psychic realms. In that sense, I guess it’s appropriate that my spiritual journey catapulted to another level in conjunction with this number.

To observe this day full of special elevens which is also the tenth anniversary of receiving a spiritual name “Sharani” from Sri Chinmoy, I traveled to Queens New York and meditated while gazing at the spot where I received this special blessing. Perhaps it is only appropriate that my inner focus soared right towards a yearning for the highest goal of God-realization. You can be sure that most of the time my trajectory is much closer to terra firma than that.

What number is special to you? Do you like the number 11? Or are you already setting your sights on 12-12-12!

p.s. I started writing this post at exactly 11:11 pm on 11-11-11 but have to admit that I finished writing it at 11:47 pm (hey 4 + 7 = 11)

5 plus 1 = inspiration and fun

I just turned 51 about a week ago and at first it all seemed rather anticlimactic after turning the big 50 last year.

Last night I was reading in Live in the Eternal Now, a new book of previously unpublished talks given over the years by my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy. When I woke up this morning, I felt energized and inspired by one idea in one of the talks which suggested that one could do certain activities and projects drawing upon the number of years one has been alive on Earth. For instance, he recommended that if someone was a good singer and liked to sing, they could sing every day the number of songs that corresponded to their age.

Suddenly I no longer felt deflated about turning the page on being 50 – the big half century! I could think of things to do with the number 51 in them and find inspiration in the notion of 5 + 1, feeling like a child at heart to counteract the other ways that my pace has slowed down as I get older.

Right now I am in New York for a few days to observe the 4th anniversary of Sri Chinmoy’s passing on October 11, 2011. Students of Sri Chinmoy from around the globe have gathered for memorial activities, prayer, offerings of flowers and incense at the Samadhi burial shrine and a candlelight vigil starting at midnight on October 11th and ending midnight the following day.

While in New York for the memorial observance, when I woke up this morning I wanted to go walking on the 3100 mile race route which is only about a mile from where I stay when I come to New York for prayers and meditation with the Sri Chinmoy Centre.

As the year wanes, sunrise arrives at about 7:00 a.m. so I found myself walking the 3100 mile race route as the sun rose. I contemplated my inspiration to do things with the number 51 in them now that I turned 51 and next thing I knew I pulled out my camera and took 51 photos of the 3100 mile race route. I am quite fond of these photos – probably because they make me think of the immortal achievements that happen on that route, amidst the hustle and bustle of a service road onto a parkway, a park with playground equipment for children, an area to play handball, a baseball field and a vocational high school.

I hope a little of the enthusiasm and inspiration I woke with rubs off on you as you look at the photos. I am SO grateful to Sri Chinmoy for the myriad ways he finds to sleeplessly inspire humanity even though it is 4 solemn years since he walked among us on Earth.

Other posts about Sri Chinmoy’s Samadhi:

Three of the epic series of poems penned by artist, writer and spiritual visionary Sri Chinmoy contain imagery from the plant kingdom in the choice of title for the series. Flowers, plants and trees. Was it a coincidence that three series of poems (comprising 87,000 poems in total and composed in a 24 year time period) looked to the natural world for titles that married creativity and spirituality?

I must confess that I am a bona-fide nature-lover. I find much fascination in taking photographs of birds, animals and flowers. You are usually hard-pressed to find a photo of a person in my online photo albums unless perhaps that person is reading a story to a therapy dog.

That tendency noted, I still surprised myself with what happened to me yesterday as I sat in an outdoor setting filled with beautiful flowers while on spiritual retreat with the International Sri Chinmoy Centres.

I was watching musical performances, absorbing the life messages in moralistic plays based on Sri Chinmoy’s writings and sharing meditation with the hundreds of people surrounding me during an afternoon function.

Slowly but surely, my attention was drawn to the climbing and unfolding greenery that I sat alongside of and up into the sky I was drawn to look at the tree limbs and myriad variety of leaves that dappled the sunlight and shaded us from the hot summer sun.

The more I looked at the greenery right next to me, the more it seemed to pulsate with life and I became convinced that these plants were striving upwards and aspiring in much the same fashion as the people who sat in their midst. The tendrils of the climbing vines and other plants were in various states of unfolding just as surely as those of us gathered together were all embodied in perfect divinity within regardless of how much it had yet to actually blossom. I started to feel that the plants were more than simply alive, but actually sentient and spiritual in some unusual way.

As my own meditation embraced the natural beauty and, spirit if you will, of the plants around me, a sense of contentment and completeness heightened within and I began to feel convinced that if I was ever so lucky to experience Heaven, this is what it must be like.

Later I wondered if it could be that plants are like people and have feelings and strivings just as we do. Lo and behold, the online library of Sri Chinmoy’s writings produced the following question and answer on precisely this subject. I think my sentiments were “barking up the right tree” after all.

Bob: What is our relationship to the plant kingdom in our aspiration-life?

Sri Chinmoy: Our relationship to the plant kingdom should be extremely sweet. The plant kingdom has real aspiration. We don’t see the seed; it is under the ground. But when we see the plant, we see how it aspires to become a tree and then how it aspires to have flowers. The Indian scientist J. C. Bose discovered how plants quarrel and fight for their own existence. But here we are dealing with their aspiration.

The relationship between the plant kingdom and your own existence is extremely important, extremely deep, extremely intimate. First you are a child. Because you are a child, you aspire to become physically strong, tall. You are a seed that germinates into a plant. Then you become an adolescent, and all the time you are dreaming of becoming a tree, a spiritual tree. So there is a child in you, a soul, that aspires to become a spiritual banyan tree. Plant life and human life are like two brothers. One human brother and one plant brother are here together. Your plant brother is reminding you of your aspiration. The plant brother is going upward to reach the sky and this helps to increase your own aspiration. It makes you feel that you also have to grow into your divinity to reach the highest.

Sri Chinmoy, Father’s Day: Father With His European Children, Agni Press, 1976.

And I can further console myself that this unusual sentiment towards plants is explored in a May 2011 scholarly publication from the State University of New York in a book titled, Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany by Matthew Hall, a conservationist affiliated with the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. He explores many religious traditions and their attitudes towards plants as well as scientific studies that posit plants have feelings and are sentient.

The next time that I think about the natural world as a symbolic and tangible aid to spiritual practice, I will have to remind myself that the plants themselves could be part and parcel of the process. Think twice before you step on that plant. It is a living, breathing organism in the interconnected web of life.

Footnote:
In the case of the Flower-Flames, ten thousand of them were composed over a five-year span begun in 1979 and completed in 1983. In the spirit of transcendence so central to Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy and life, the next series of poems called Aspiration-Plants numbered twenty-seven thousand in all and started the same year that the Flower-Flames  were finished (1983) and continued until the 27,000th aspiration-plant was composed in 1998. The final series of poems  called Service-Trees began immediately after the Aspiration-Plant series completed and the final poem composed in this series was the 50,000th and was published posthumously in 2009.

The notion of running 2 marathons a day from 6 am to midnight for seven weeks leads one to imagine that the participants must be superheroes who have secretly leapt off the screen of the Captain America film opening today in the U.S. or perhaps they snuck out the back door of the Comic-Con Convention going on in California.

As a fellow female, I derive the greatest inspiration from following Surasa Mairer, the only woman in the field of runners this year, now back for her second attempt at reaching the 3100 distance before the end of the race on August 3rd.

Talk about improving with practice! On Day 40, July 22nd, she is 336 miles further along than she was a year ago on day 40 of the race.

A little more than a week ago, blogger Utpal Marshall interviewed Surasa while she was out on the course and compared her achievement to Derek Jeter with his 3,000 hit over the course of his baseball career. Utpal blogs most every day during the 3100 mile race, sharing photos, interviews and quotes from conversations he engages in with the runners, helpers and observers of the race.

Read and listen to Utpal’s post on Surasa here: “July 13: Just a Dream”

Read my post about Surasa from a year ago here: “Surasa Mairer: Ultra-Running Pioneer”

With only 12 days of the race left, it will be a special day indeed if Surasa reaches the 3100 mile distance by the race’s end (last year she achieved the amazing distance of 2760 miles).

Ushasi Jill Thompson

Currently Director of Academic Support Services at Swedish Institute, the oldest continuously running school for massage therapy in the U.S., Ushasi shares her own guiding light and journey to destiny in her newly published memoir Thy Will Be Done.

The book is a fascinating account of her life experiences which includes her coming of age in New Zealand at the age of 18 and conversion to born-again Christianity.

Thy Will Be Done book cover

It follows her through the world of Esalen, Divinity School, the Metropolitan Community Church in New York, teaching massage therapy and finding her spiritual home in the Sri Chinmoy Centre as a disciple of the spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy.

Her faculty profile nicely sums up her varied experiences:

Ushasi’s 20-year practice as a massage therapist focused on massage therapy for medical conditions, as well as providing massage as part of the integration of bodywork with psychotherapy and spiritual meditation practice.
Ushasi holds a Massage Therapy Diploma from Swedish Institute. She has a B.A. in History of Religion from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, VA, and a Master of Divinity degree from the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is a long-time member of the Sri Chinmoy Centre, and has studied bodywork and gestalt therapy at Esalen Institute.

Because her spiritual journey began in New Zealand and the memoir includes her return there again 30 years later with the International Sri Chinmoy Centres, Ushasi has decided that all proceeds from sales of the book will be donated in support of Christchurch Earthquake relief. First for sale this April 2011 in New York, copies may be obtained by contacting the author at: thywillbedone(dot)ushasi(at)gmail(dot)com.

It is a perfect example of the spirit of resilience and hope evident a mere 1 ½ months since the 2011 earthquake caused widespread damage in the environs of Christchurch.

Support for the effort to rebuild has poured in from many places and takes many forms. Kurashiki, the Sister City of Christchurch in Japan, had collected $300,000 up until the earthquake hit in Japan and still shared the money with Christchurch although subsequent efforts have been focused at home after the March 11 Japan quake.  Concerts to raise money have already happened and various celebrities have gotten involved such as Russell Crowe.

One simple but sweet effort touched my heart – a woman from Christchurch living in Australia is creating a paper “Chain of Hope” as people make donations large or small and she will bring the paper chain with her to Christchurch in May as a gesture of support and goodwill. Her site also led me to this video on YouTube that shows both the destruction and the spirit of hope shining in response.  Gospel songwriter Ric Knott of the band Magnify penned the tune after the earthquake. Magnify won Best Christian/Gospel album at the New Zealand Music Awards in 2004

There is not a single difficulty
That is not followed
By relief-hands.
Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 21, 2001.

Talk and act
Always
From the heart
Of your generosity.
Sri Chinmoy, Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, Part 83, 1984.

I fell in love with Japan when I visited there a few years ago and my thoughts and prayers are there now as the world responds to the Japan Honshu Earthquake, Tsunami and the nuclear reactor crisis.

While people from many nations valiantly struggle to assist in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami, the whole world also comes together in unity and sympathy with prayers for survivors and those who perished.

One place to virtually “gather” to say a prayer and light a candle for Japan is located at the website Gratefulness.org. Over 11 million candles have been lit there since it began ten years ago and right now there is a group where candles are being lit for the people of Japan.

Sri Chinmoy (my meditation teacher) wrote many books on spirituality which include poems, essays and questions and answers offering insight into the quest for solace in times of hardship and suffering.

In an interview with someone from the Russian Tass News Agency in 1999, Sri Chinmoy discussed the impact of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and part of his answer follows:

Your country has suffered tremendously, and it breaks my heart because, as I said before, I am a seeker. As a seeker, I pray not only for myself but also for all of humanity. On the strength of my oneness with all human beings, I suffer. I am an Indian; I come from Bengal. But for me there is only one country, and that country is the country of our heart. In my heart-country, you are there, she is there, everybody is there—each and every human being. When I say you are my brother, I mean it. When I say she is my sister, I mean it. The heart is oneness. The mind is division. As soon as I think of you, my mind tells me that you come from another country. But in my heart you are absolutely, inseparably one with me.

God is our Father, God is our Mother, God is everything to us. If we claim the Creator as our own, very own, we are bound to claim the creation—which includes each one of us—as our own, very own.

I wish to tell you not to look behind. Let us look forward. The destination is right in front of us, not behind. The past has not given us satisfaction. Anything that has not given us satisfaction, anything that has not fulfilled us, is not the answer. The answer comes from our inner awakening, inner illumination, inner perfection. Once we get inner illumination and inner perfection, then our outer life becomes a life of satisfaction.

Suffering there is. But if we think all the time of how much we have suffered, it is not going to serve any purpose. We have to look for light, we have to look for love and the feeling of oneness so that we do not make the same mistake and we do not suffer again.

- Sri Chinmoy Answers, Part 18, Agni Press, 1999.

To pursue that “inner awakening, inner illumination, inner perfection” of which Sri Chinmoy speaks to as the foundation of our existence that resides outside of joy and suffering, I try to deepen my meditations.  I have been drawn inward to intensify my spiritual life and have increased the time I spend in meditation each day.

My goal since the earthquake has been to meditate seven times a day but I have yet to actually reach that number quite yet. To this end I have been watching video footage of Sri Chinmoy meditating and giving a concert in Japan which can be found at a website called SriChinmoy.TV. I find a poignant relevance in watching video footage of  Sri Chinmoy meditating and performing in a peace concert in Japan while my thoughts are currently focused in this part of the world.

Last but not least, I revisit Sri Chinmoy’s poems about hope quoted by New York Governor Paterson at a 9/11 memorial last September.  They beckon as a candle in the darkness whatever the circumstances.

Hope
Knows no fear.

Hope dares to blossom
Even inside the abysmal abyss.

Hope secretly feeds
And strengthens
Promise.

-Sri Chinmoy

Cat, my cat,
You cry for constant affection.
I have affection plus compassion.
Therefore
Stop crying,
Start smiling.
I tell you a supreme secret:
“I treasure your dependence.”
Excerpt from Animal Kingdom by Sri Chinmoy

For six months I have been a Mama to a Siamese cat that I adopted because he was living on the street, primarily in my backyard.  Having lived alone for almost ten years and having never been a pet owner since moving out of my parent’s house over 30 years ago,  the experience has been a crash course in caretaking for a four-legged furry little being.

Named Bowtie, he is extraordinarily affectionate and our days and nights are not complete unless he spends time sitting on my lap, laying on top of my legs, head-butting, kneading his paws against me and licking my face quite thoroughly. In return I try to talk to him, massage and pet him, cradle him in my lap and sleep with him draped over my arm or shoulder.

When I think of how my life is different as the mama of a cat, my notion of lessons learned includes:

Undivided Attention: Quality time with Bowtie involves giving him my full attention. I almost never watch television anymore and use a computer less than before adopting him. He seems attuned to it if I am trying to multitask and is far less satisfied with anything but at least some time each day in which we interact without any distractions.

The Power of Encouragement: Popular psychology about cats states that they do not understand the concept of scolding or the word “no”. If you are telling them no and in your mind’s eye are imagining what you want them not to do, they will just do it. Only the positive approach works. If he tries to get out the door when I have to leave the house, I have to see in my mind’s eye that he is under the dining room table a few feet away and then he reluctantly does what I am visualizing. How often does the positive approach also only prove effective with people as well? Pretty often in my experience.

Give Me Bread but Give Me Roses: Even if I provide for Bowtie with all the material comforts, toys, etc. to meet his needs, he wanders around with a sense of malaise unless he also has the opportunity to socially interact with others in a playful and loving manner.

Cleanliness is Next to Godliness: Before life with Bowtie, I used to cut corners in the cleanliness department – especially at floor level! Now that I know he sees the world mostly from that range and his dark fur shows every little speck of dirt or fluff, I vacuum about a million times more often than previously. Keeping the cat litter boxes clean (I have 3 all-together for him), the water fountains (2 all-together) and his food dishes clean keeps me busy too.

Regularity and Routine: While the fact that cats do not like change could be seen as a negative, the positive side to it is that keeping a regular routine in a consistent manner can be a real asset for discipline and achieving goals. Routine seems related to ritual as well and for spiritual practises can be a tool to assist in the gestalt of spiritual and religious intensity.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: Now that I am handling medical emergencies with Bowtie and coping with various health and emotional issues that seem connected to his background as a stray, I seem infinitely more relaxed and mellow about the other stresses of life that inevitably arise. When you are invested in the well-being of another living creature, the joys and trials of that kind of “parenting” seem to diffuse the degree of importance or anxiety I used to place on the dramas of my life and relationships with others.

Be Proactive: God helps those who help themselves sometimes. I am still somewhat incredulous that Bowtie used to live 2 doors down on the street where my house is and that he ran away because he didn’t like his living situation in a multi-pet household with 2 dogs and another cat. Or at least that is what the teenage girl who lives there told me when she saw him in front of my house one day. Considering that he is declawed, he has a lot of chutzpa and bravado to choose to live on the street over a situation where he didn’t like his circumstances. Apparently it has been 2 years since he lived with them and I am either his 3rd or 4th owner. He still adores to go outside and several times I have witnessed him chasing away cats bigger than him in the neighborhood (and those cats have claws presumably). I feel I have much to learn from him in the bravery department. And when his softer side shows itself and I have my hands full with his emotional scars and separation anxiety, I find myself thinking that being brave often means doing something even if you still feel scared inside.

Last but not least, I am very grateful to Bowtie for the affection and companionship that we share. I try to model for him the spirit of unconditional love that I feel has been shown to me by God in the last 25 years of spiritual seeking. Since we adopted each other, I am a happier person than before even if it involves the likes of trying to get liquid antibiotics in a syringe into his mouth twice a day for 2 weeks or getting him to remain calmer and more secure that when I go on vacation or leave for the day that I do come back.

Sri Chinmoy’s quote at the top of this post about the essence of a cat having to do with affection rings 100 percent true with Bowtie and myself. And I do indeed love our mutual dependence.