She chuckled. “Oh, well, you should come to Sufi camp in Mendocino this summer! There will be a lot of nice people and music and dancing and meditating . . . I think you’d enjoy it. Kalyan and I are both going; you could share a cabin with us.”
And I did just that, hoping, at idealistic twenty-eight that some teacher at this camp in the woods near the coast might give me a mantra that would make my life blissful and perfect.
I shared a cabin with Farida, another friend, Kalyan, and a gentle young man named Neil Klotz, who was a journalist from Colorado.
A couple of days into the camp, I was alone in the cabin with Farida during a break and I told her, with tears in my eyes, “I’m just not good enough for these people!”
“Why do you think that?” she asked with concern.
“I’m not like them,” I said. “I still like to drink a little alcohol. I’m not going to give up having sex, or become a vegetarian. I just am not holy.”
“Listen,” Farida said, “these people do all that. There is no set of rules that you have to eat something in particular, or that you can’t drink. All things in moderation.”
That was a relief, since I was generally moderate in most habits anyway. I saw that my Mormon upbringing was coloring what I thought “good” people did and did not do. This community seemed to be much more based in the “God is Love” than the “God is Judge” mentality. This was a group of mostly formerly hippie folk who had channeled their energy into doing spiritual work with a musical and artistic bent. Perhaps I fit in better than I thought.
On June 11, 1976, I had a couple of experiences that were unusual for me. We’d moved the ancient metal cots out on the porch, and were sleeping on the floor on our skimpy old mattresses, which was more comfortable, and just after we turned in I heard a tap, tap, tapping on the floor near the head of my bed. I shone my flashlight in the direction of the sound and a scorpion raised its head and waved at me. I grabbed my cowboy boot, smashed it in two, and pushed it over to the old stone hearth, my heart racing, then told the others what had happened. I now wondered at the wisdom of sleeping on the floor, but we left things as they were.
During the night, I had two dreams. The first was of Christ on the cross—impressive, since I’d never had a dream such as this before, not during all my devout years as a Mormon and not even during times of taking psychedelics or doing yoga, mantra, or breathing practices. I had never had any symbolic dream of any kind that I could remember.
Next, I dreamed that I swallowed the scorpion!
Holy mackerel. I awoke thinking, Something in me is changing. I was not sure what all this might mean, or if my subconscious was trying to tell me something . . . all I knew was that being at this camp was greatly affecting my psyche. If there was some meaning beyond that, it was not specific enough for me to decipher. After considering my dreams, what I did decide was that I was being led to make a huge spiritual transformation—to basically crucify my old lifestyle—and that I needed to express my desire to do that despite my fears (the scorpion in the throat).
The next day, I took initiation into Sufism from Pir Valayat Khan, leader of the Sufi Order.
In one session, days after my initiation, Pir Valayat looked long into my eyes—a practice called “darshan” in which a teacher gives a transmission of love or conveys the sense of his or other great teachers’ spirit. (This could be darshan of Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, or other advanced beings.) The teacher also often looks for a need in the student and tries to understand him or her, and possibly make suggestions based on intuition.
After his intent gaze, he gave me one practice: to concentrate on the fragrance of the rose.
Over time, this meditation on the fragrance of a rose served me well: it was a comforting and peaceful practice; it helped me to remember the beauty and essence of life despite my difficulties; and it incidentally improved my already keen sense of smell. (I have prevented at least three electrical fires in office buildings before the wires actually began to smolder and, less relevantly, have detected an open jar of peanut butter twenty feet away.)
One of the philosophical ideas I heard Pir Valayat address in a talk that week was in response to a set of questions about depression, being happy in one’s work, finding a relationship, and not being lonely. Essentially, how to maintain happiness.
“If you are not an executioner or a butcher [and I take exception to the latter, given I am a cautious meat eater], any profession is honorable,” he told us. “Just choose something and if it doesn’t work out, change professions. As far as relationships go, appreciate where you are now. When single, you have much more time to do as you’d like, though you do not have the joys of relationship. As to being happy, you must remember that there is always someone who is not as happy as you are. You could be eaten by a tiger. Many people in India, where my father was born, have died in this manner. So if you are not being eaten by a tiger, maybe things are really not so bad.”
I still sometimes think when things are tough: I am not being eaten by a tiger.
Sufism eventually gave me a body of practices to take my mind and heart off my difficulties, whether physical or emotional, and help me be at peace—and it gifted me with a spiritual community of friends, most of whom have not seen me as a person who was deficient in some way.
The following week, Valayat was gone, and the remaining time at camp was devoted to the teachings of Murshid Sam, so there was a lot of singing and dancing—in fact, there was “Sufi” dancing every night. This was very tiring for me, but it brought me so much joy that it was irresistible.
One day I got an interview with a local teacher, Moineddin Carl Jablonski, who was a student of Samuel Lewis. I walked up a hill to his sunny cabin.
“Hello,” he said with a gentle, welcoming smile. “What is it you’d like to see me about?”
“Well, I took initiation with Pir Valayat last week, and he asked me if I was working with you. Then I came to understand that he’s rarely in California. I wanted an interview with you since I’ll be going to your meetings in Marin County.”
“Oh, I’m glad you’ll be joining us,” Moineddin said. “I can give you some practices. Did Pir Valayat give you any?”
“Yes, he told me to concentrate on the fragrance of a rose.”
“Very good. After you do that each morning, I’d like you to chant the word ‘Hu,’ the essence of spirit, on one note thirty-three times. You can get a tasbih”—prayer beads spaced with the right number for different practices—“or you can count on your fingers.” After also explaining a zikr (a phrase meaning “God is the only reality”), which he wanted me to practice singing, Moineddin asked me, “Would you like to have a spiritual name?”
“Yes!” I answered, elated. I thought perhaps with all the practices and the new name, I might finally leave behind my disquiet.
He traced the outline of a winged heart, the symbol of Sufism, on my forehead with his index finger, and said, “I give you the name ‘Sabzpari,’ which in Sanskrit means ‘Green Soul’ or ‘Water Fairy.’”
I loved the idea of being a fairy, especially a green one or one who was attuned to water. The story of Sabzpari, however, which comes from Hindu mythology, is also one of great pathos.
Sabzpari was a devic (fairy-like or angelic) being in the temple of Indra, the Lord of Heaven, and she was a favored dancer in Indra’s court. (Given how I loved to dance, this also was appealing to me, and possibly meant to be an inspiration—that I could dance in one way or another, despite my physical limitation. Moineddin saw that I had at least the nature of a dancer.)
Sabzpari was often called to court to dance for Indra, but on one of her trips to Earth, she fell in love with a human prince, Gulfam. (Oh, those human princes! How I knew the pitfalls of that path.) She told Gulfam that their love could not be, that earth was earth and heaven was heaven and they could not be mixed. But he was seductive. On his request, Sabzpari took him to heaven with her.
Gulfam was mistrustful and je
alous, as only a human could be, and whenever Sabzpari was called to dance before Indra, Gulfam accused her of going off to see some other fairy, of having another lover. Finally, in desperation, she let him talk her into bringing him to court. She knew that no good could come of this, so she told him to stay out of sight, yet near her. She hid him behind her veils as she danced skillfully before Indra.
But one of Indra’s devas saw Gulfam and cried out to the Lord of Heaven that there was a human present in his heavenly court. Indra grew red-eyed with rage! (Not only the Bible has an angry god in its legends.) He stood, pointed his fiery finger at the offenders, and decreed as only an incensed god could, “Throw the human out! Send him back where he belongs, to the Earth! And tear off Sabzpari’s wings and throw her also to the Earth to live there, if the ways of Earth are what she desires!”
Thus Sabzpari, the earthy, water-loving fairy, was separated both from her lover and from the ecstasy of heaven, to more deeply learn that the two could not be mixed, and to spend her days in the green world she loved so well, with its joy, drama, and trials.
Awfully intense! Especially the symbolism of not being free to fly. Punishment in general was also something I’d had quite enough of in my life. But I was entranced by the tale, and enamored by the lovely name, the green soul/water fairy aspect, and the idea that I might have the soul of a dancer, so I was very happy to be Sabzpari. I thought perhaps I needed to pay more attention to the ways of heaven than of earth.
I now had a mantra, a concentration, and an inspiring name. I settled in to see what effect they would have upon me, hopeful and somewhat expectant that my life was now going to be joy-filled and fully repaired.
22
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not exactly bliss
After my initiation, I began doing the “Hu” chant (wazifa in Arabic, pronounced “wa-ZEE-fuh”), and within a day or two began hearing those overtones I’d heard back at Farida’s house on my hike up the hill. When I formed my mouth in a particular way and the air passed through in just the right fashion, two or more notes resonated at once, in harmony. It was quite otherworldly, more like a flute than anything I’d heard from a human voice before, and not unlike overtone harmonics on a guitar—beautiful, and joyful. (I now know that this is called “throat singing” and is popular in Tibet and Mongolia.)
I was glad to find that this was something I could do without the use of psychedelics, given my quest to find something higher up the emotional scale than the despair I sometimes felt and the frustration and loneliness I often experienced. I thought, Okay, pretty good, I’ve gotten a mantra that brings me joy—step one. The concentration of that practice and imagining the essence of a rose took my mind off my personal considerations.
Given that this Sufi group was human and not unlike other groups, it wasn’t long before members of our well-meaning, big-hearted community began offering me advice about my leg, my personality, my work, my approach to life—anything that came into their heads, it seemed. The ones who had been initiated as teachers often felt a responsibility to do this, and perhaps because I was an advice giver myself, in some respects, I was attracting the same qualities in those around me. Maybe.
That first week at camp, someone approached me and told me that nerve cells were now being replaced and regenerated and I should look into this; perhaps I could get my polio-damaged nerves regenerated. I naively thought, Gosh, I wish I’d heard of this before 1976, but I’ll get right on it.
After a dance class ended that day I approached Saul, a fellow at the camp who was head of the healing order segment of this Sufi branch or “order.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” he said, looking into my eyes inquisitively.
“Someone told me there’s a nerve regeneration process of some sort . . . I had polio, and I wondered if you knew where I could find information on that kind of thing.”
He kindly put his hand on my shoulder. “You know, people mean well. You, given your unique condition in life, are going to hear a lot of things from a lot of people. I know of no miraculous cure such as this, and if there is something like that, it’s surely only in the research stages. But healing occurs on all levels. It’s not all physical. You want to take care of your own health and healing in whatever way you can. Just take people’s advice with a grain of salt.”
I was disillusioned by Saul’s response. I was so eager to believe that there was some faith healer or some Western MD who had come up with a cure for nerve damage, muscle regeneration, bone growth, anything. (Today, of course, nearly forty years later, we’re on the verge of something like this, with stem cell research, but even now any regenerative cure for humans is many years away.) At least my disappointment was brief, and I learned early on that lots of spiritual people, in their naturally sensitive way, were liable to want to “help” me with my disability. I did hear what Saul said about healing taking place on many levels, not just physical, as well. In any case, I had become used to people telling me to try things that they thought would benefit me even though they knew nothing about polio.
When a split between the more meditative Sufi Order and the more outgoing, dancing Ruhaniat order required us to make a choice in 1977, it seemed obvious that I belonged with the singers and dancers in the San Francisco Bay Area. I moved into a Sufi property in Petaluma, Sonoma County, California, where nine to fifteen of us—including Moineddin and his wife—lived together for several years.
The house was a huge Victorian mansion with ten bedrooms, lovely grounds, and a pool. It was a great place to hold Sufi seminars, and I was soon organizing these. I then was offered the barely paid position of bookkeeper for the organization, in addition to my bookkeeping job with a CPA firm.
What a leap into the fire. I lived in the same house as my Sufi teacher, who had years before been diagnosed with kidney disease and thought he was probably going to die soon. We had classes in Petaluma six nights a week, and I attended all of them. My housemates and I prayed together every morning, and we ate together twice a day. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, and house maintenance responsibilities were all shared by house members, most of whom were working full time, as was I. About a year into living in the house I was asked to be volunteer CFO of the Ruhaniat, and began meeting one full Sunday each month with the board of directors, who were all teachers in the organization. I was responsible for organizing the accounting for all the branches of the organization, which was taking more and more time. And I wondered why I didn’t have a boyfriend.
It was interesting how my relationships with people shifted as I took on more responsibility for the organization, especially those related to finances.
It started when I was only the dues secretary. I was told by one person that when she saw me, she felt guilty, because she knew that I knew she had not paid her dues. I could rarely remember who owed what, but people thought I did, so they’d avoid me sometimes.
This was the beginning, for me, of realizing how many issues people have going on about money. I tried to learn to be relaxed with people (especially if I did happen to recall that they were not paying dues at all) and tried deliberately to forget their balances, a challenge for my detailed memory. I worked at using the knowledge I had of names in the group as a way to recognize people. But my position did create a distance I regretted.
We in the Sufi community concentrated more on spiritual growth, music, dance, and compassion than we did on income, or at least that was true for more than a few of us. So it was particularly ironic that people thought that I was financially successful and sometimes measured their own success by mine, when I never made more than a lower-middle-class income in my forty-year career.
These were spiritual lessons I had not expected. I had signed on for bliss and learning to live with adversity; instead I was finding trial after trial. But these experiences did help me to further develop depth and compassion. Jumping into roles others didn’t want—and sometimes didn’t respect—taught me a great deal about how
to relate with people, and also how to take a little less seriously what they thought of me. I was now in my early thirties, and at last beginning to grow up. Everyone in this age group had life lessons to learn, and these were some of mine.
In everyday life and conversation, I found that within the Sufi community, language about cause and effect and what was God’s position on this or that was similar to how people had spoken in my Mormon Christian congregation. There was a lot of “If it’s God’s will” and “There must be a purpose in it, or it wouldn’t have happened.” As a polio patient, I could not imagine that God really willed things like terrible disease or was okay with a myriad of human troubles, such as war. The concept that we were paying for previous wrongs, whether Adam’s transgression or the Eastern philosophy of karma (which made more sense to me than western Christian tenets), seemed ludicrous to me. If this is God’s way of teaching lessons, I thought, well, God must not be particularly nice.
It was hard for me to accept disinterested punishment and enforced tough education as the nature of God, but I did surrender to this thinking for several years in my early Sufi studies as I had when a Mormon. I came to see this as dualistic, black-and-white, and non-inclusive conceptualizing.
It will always be true that we do not know what result may come of any experience, but I don’t believe that God either causes or allows things to happen. I believe we instigate much ourselves, and that there are also many random occurrences. I am willing to consider the possibility that we might come into this life to learn particular lessons, and these lessons do show up.
I took several solo Sufi retreats from 1977 through 1988—usually three or four days of doing breathing practices, chanting, and meditations for about nine hours a day, which was very intense. Sometimes there were tearful searches through my faults and seemingly limited perceptions, and sometimes a deep sense of peace. I found that afterward I nearly always felt like my spirit and mind had a clean slate and I was inspired to be more creative and understanding, and to meet more of my potential as a human being, than I had before the retreat. I was always exhausted and sometimes got very sick during these retreats, and always left with a desire to just do what was in front of me rather than think about the meaning of my life so much. I was ridding myself of emotional baggage and negative states.
Not a Poster Child Page 17