Om Ganesha
Morning Pujas and Prayers
Sept. 6, 2008
Namaste my chelas all over the world.
When grief arrives so many of us try hard to control the way we feel and our reward is that we become quite stiff and make ourselves uncomfortable as well as others.
In the stiffness of trying to control our emotions we do not allow our selves to mourn.
In fact some begin to blame God.
Blaming God for the death of another human being can bring so much sadness in the heart and close the door on true grief.
Through your own heart you enter the into the place of lament.
You cannot seem to get out of the pain.
I know I have been there.
Yet I have always turned toward the Mother and She has held me close.
She cries out I FOR ALL ETERNITY ENDURE ALL THAT ENTERS INTO YOUR HEART,
YOUR PAIN IS MY PAIN.
YOUR GRIEF IS MY GRIEF.
Knowing this helps one to grieve with a full and flowing heart and to understand that INDEED DEATH HAS A HEART.
THE EGO TRIES HARD FOR YOU TO ABANDON HOPE WHEN EVER THERE IS GRIEF.
Wisdom supreme which lives in all of us does not believe this.
For as long as there is breath in our bodies there is hope in our world.
In the heart of all are the heavenly fields of Paradise.
The dead live and breathe in the heart of their loved ones.
Its like the one you love is always sitting on a cloud deep in your chest, always watching.
Once my Baba said to me, THE DEAD DO NOT DIE SO WHY THINK THIS?
I have pondered these words over and over for years.
I have repeated them to the dying and they have rewarded me with a sweet smile.
In the emergency room last week, I could feel death all around me, I prayed to Lord Yama for hours to ease the pain of others as i myself could feel my loved ones waiting with open hearts in the waiting room.
It is so easy to accept Death as your friend when you know He has a heart.
When the dying process begins it is good to understand the heart of Death.
Life is short yet ever so long.
Long enough to feel love and bring love and give love and to hold a bitter tongue.
Hell is to not feel love for fear of love thus unable us to bring or give love and to use a bitter tongue.
It is all here and now.
Life is not cut away at death, memories carry one over the threshold of life and they land in a different place where all is familiar.
Perhaps I want desperately to teach of death, not because I am any authority on the subject but because i have spent the last 28 years in the throws of Death with hundreds and hundreds of young men and woman and children and babies who have died of AIDS
I have seen happiness in a child’s eyes and that same child could not move for fear of pain.
He would cling to the life in me and be content.
And I would call on Lord Yama to walk through the door and quietly take this beautiful child out of pain and bring him into the hearts of all of us who love him.
I can not even give you a name for there were so many names and faces and little bodies.
Yet I do know them all.
I know every thing about them.
I speak to them every day and seek their guidance.
And yes I cry.
Though the crying is for my own fragile human heart.
AIDS has stolen generations of children.
If not the children then the parents causing heart aches in those who are so very young.
I look into the faces of my very young orphans in Uganda that my son Father Centurio looks after and feel so blessed to know them.
My students travel to Uganda many times during the year to serve and take care of the many in my name.
And I am so pleased.
Yet every day I can hear the sound of the funereal director who came to pick up my baby Toby’s little broken body,
He was wearing a mask and full cover and he threw my little boy on the floor of the hearse.
To say that your Ma went crazy was the understatement of a life time.
I looked at my Shody and saw the grief in her eyes.
I picked up my little boy who has spent his whole life in Conners Nursery for children with AIDS and held him tight in my arms until we could let him go gently and beautifully.
All say that day that Death indeed has a heart and that heart belonged to all of us who reached out to the dead little boy bowing always to the living God Yama.
To this day I can feel my babies holding me, becoming part of me. loving me, loving us all.
All the children were my place in heaven.
All still breathe only now with a silent breath.
For one to have deep grief for a love ones death then one must have loved quite deeply.
This is indeed a blessing.
A little child, a simple child, that draws in breath can find love in all of us who serve.
Or perhaps that little child has loved ones who will be left behind and feel pain in every moment.
What should they know of death.
I pray that they could know of Death’s heart.
A young man all alone and crying in my arms, he is blinded by AIDS yet can grasp the scent of my perfume. Ma he cries out i know it is you.
I smile and kiss his brow and all the Karposi sarcoma on his face.
Don’t he cries out you will get it.
I have it I replayed, until there is a cure we all have it in our hearts.
And my Brian said TELL THEM ALL TO BE CAREFUL MA, CAREFUL MA.
I promise I said with the tears falling down my face,.
The blind boy kisses them away and says with a smile, yeah Ma Death truly does have a heart.
My chelas with so many going ahead of us, what is there to fear?
Their Ashes are in our Ganga or their graves are green.
Yet the less we fear death the more we can enjoy all those we lost who still live in our hearts.
A little one once asked me, MA I KNOW MY DADDY IS DEAD BUT WHY CAN’T HE COME HOME FOR LUNCH?
I just held him so tight and told him he is having lunch with angels and one day he will be able to see him.
He smiled and said Promise Ma.
And my chelas, I made that promise easily.
Any of you who are sick with AIDS or cancer or any disease I am not teaching you to die simply because you may think you are.
I am teaching you to live simply because you are alive.
And once we can say death death death over and over with out fear then truly our lives begin.
I want so much to give life and the love of life to every one,
To teach that no one can be happy if they bring suffering to others.
Say what it is you have to say in life instead of whispering in death.
Let each moment be a moment from eternity.
Know that through the ages you have wandered.
Perhaps through jungles or burning sand.
Perhaps you have whispered on the wind and can feel that same wind come swirling around you now with the fullness of your voice.
Death has a heart that expands through out time.
We all have lived and we all have died.
We all have danced through the cycles of birth and death and birth again.
We all have experience a tender meeting and a hard parting.
A joyous moment and moments full of sorrow.
And the life times rolled by.
They will always simply roll by until you grab hold of the branch of life and sit quietly under the Great Tree.
So many have told me I have no fear of Death it is only the dying that scares me.
Then prepare your self for death, i will help you.
This way you can melt into the Light of the Cosmic Mother before the fragrance of Death knocks on your door.
And my children I am there, I am always with you.
Love Ma
Jai Kali Ma Ki Jai
Always at the Feet Of Our Neem Karoli Baba Ki Jai