Some of my Denmark friends were devotees of Master Da and so I continued my studies and devotional practices as part of a small group. Devotees are constantly reminded to live in continual remembrance of their Master. I had put up a picture of him on a little altar and one on nearly every wall of my house. The pull towards Master Da grew so strong, that a year later, after attending a week’s retreat in the picturesque countryside near Melbourne, I wanted to vow my perpetual allegiance to him. This time, I convinced myself, I was vowing myself to the ultimate cause, to a life of complete surrender that would lead to true spiritual realisation—including giving up more than twenty per cent of my income. I needed a Master; no one can do this great task on their own, I was told.
Before I was allowed to make my vow, I was asked to clean up my act regarding sexual matters. Sexual relations are to be reserved for an emotionally committed relationship—a major tenet that was to be taken seriously if I chose this path. At the time I was celibate but, as fate would have it, still in contact with a client because he happened to live in Denmark. Jack had lost no time in looking me up after I arrived. News of a fresh arrival travels fast in a little town! To me, Jack was like the salt of the earth: he was so innocent, so good, hard-working, simple and wholesome. When he first came to my door in Perth, he was wearing a fresh checked shirt, his newest baggy pants, his cleanest boots and a felt hat cocked to one side on his balding head, which he politely removed when he spoke to me. He was shy, with a disarming smile and a voice that was soft from cancer of the oesophagus, which was in remission.
Dealing with Jack was a simple and loving affair. He just longed for female company. He had married a young woman many years ago, who had tried to run off with a lot of his money soon afterwards. Even though he loved women and looked at them adoringly, he didn’t really understand them and had no clue of what to do with them. I gave him the loving contact he looked for. He was content to be massaged and very happy to lie in my arms. He said he didn’t like sexual intercourse, or to have his penis massaged to orgasm very often, because it made him feel tired afterwards. What he wanted was closeness and being touched, to relieve his loneliness.
I tried to explain all this as best I could to the devotees of Master Da who were in charge of my spiritual development. My contact with Jack was the only one that could be classed as sexual. It was complicated by the fact that Jack paid me. Jack also looked after me by lending me his car when mine broke down, and made me generous gifts of the apricots that flourished on the trees in his backyard. We cared for each other and I was committed to making him feel good. Could my relationship with Jack possibly fit their ‘emotionally committed’ tenet?
Of course not. It may have been a relationship between a loving prostitute and a loving man, but it couldn’t possibly meet with their approval. I had to renounce this relationship before being allowed to make my vow to Master Adi Da. This moment of decision was an acid test for me: could I know for myself what was right and what was wrong? But hadn’t I felt right many times before and later discovered I’d made a mistake? Shouldn’t I now trust my new Master, or his representatives?
I took the vows. Once again, as in my convent days, I was willing to ignore the hurt I felt inside in favour of a higher purpose. I accepted the judgment of my supposed betters that my motives were impure, because Jack paid me. All this because I wanted to think of myself as a spiritual person. I was paying a high price for a new self-image.
To my lasting regret, I refused to see Jack the way I used to. I tried to explain to his bewildered large brown eyes behind the heavy-rimmed glasses, but the poor man couldn’t understand at all and he suffered. He embraced me one last time, his innocent lips trembling against mine, his soft voice echoing in both our chests. I left Jack to his loneliness and his confusion. His cancer returned and he died a few months later in hospital, without my being there for him.
Jack’s death was a turning point for me. No one, not the most spiritual master on earth, not the freshest sage from heaven, nor any god at all, had the right, ever, to tell me what is true for me. Dear Jack—he served a higher purpose in my life by teaching me such a valuable lesson. During that sad time, I began to regain respect for my own inner truth.
I WITHDREW FROM Master Da. Strange to say, that caused me tremendous anguish. I felt that by going it alone again I was possibly giving away my last opportunity to completely surrender to the Divine, that I was losing connection with a special stream of grace. I didn’t want to break a vow I had taken in all seriousness, all over again. And I took it to heart when I was told that Master Da felt each defection with terrible sorrow, deeply wounded at the rejection of the gift of himself.
To love Master Da was probably a great blessing. To leave him was an even greater one, because by doing so I was choosing one value above all: to be true to my inner self. The transcendence of fearful ego-self begins by no longer doubting the inner self. Maybe that was the purpose of Master Da in my life: to lead me to choose inner truth above any magnificent promise of liberation. I wasn’t sure that I was doing the right thing; all my spiritually involved friends counselled me against my decision. Doubts racked my conscience as I removed all the photographs of Adi Da from my walls but, by some grace, I was not to be derailed again.
My shoulders were killing me, carrying my anguish about leaving Master Da and the guilt of my betrayal of Jack. I could have cried with pain and was desperate to feel better. So when I heard of Tom, an exceptional healer who had come down to Denmark from Perth for a few days, I went to see him.
The moment Tom lightly touched my torso as I lay prone on his treatment table, I felt a soothing sensation. Tears welled up; I hadn’t felt the bliss of free-flowing energy in my body for so long. Tom’s simple, momentary touch on my neck and on the vertebrae of my back let me know what I’d been missing: this feeling was like love for myself, acceptance of myself.
I had been so aware of my failures; for example, my failure as a devotee to follow even the simplest instructions regarding diet. Every time I made a cup of tea, I felt guilty. Every time I ate butter or eggs, honey, or worse, chocolates, even, God forbid, a cappuccino! My days had been preoccupied with whether I was getting it right, and I hardly ever did.
‘So,’ Tom said rather loudly, apparently reading my thoughts, ‘you’ve been through a monumental battle. And it’s all been kept on the inside!’
Very perceptive, I thought and was reminded of a psychic who had recently said much the same to me: ‘You’ve fought tremendous battles and you’ve not succumbed.’
‘You are a beautiful soul.’ Tom dropped the words gently onto the table where I was lying. ‘Why don’t you show on the outside how you are on the inside?’That made me blink, the implication being that I wasn’t much to look at for starters. Tom went on calmly, ‘Your soul has a very fast and fine vibration. It’s not like most souls, so no one has ever seen you. It’s not that they don’t want to; it’s simply not possible for most people truly to see you, because you’re out of their range of vision. All your life you have not been seen.’
I felt like crying a bucketful then, from happiness at being seen at least by Tom. He did not mention a devil.
‘You are a very, very gentle soul,’ Tom said quietly, as his fingers continued to rest lightly on my body. He went on to explain something about soul. ‘Soul and mind are different,’ he said. ‘They each have a different vibration. The mind patterns are not trained properly in your case. They can be retrained. My job,’ he added, ‘is to help people like you to know who you are.’
I felt deeply reassured and affirmed by Tom’s words. It was good to hear for the first time in months that I wasn’t the failure I believed myself to be. Tom wasn’t trying to charm me. When I said, ‘It’s a lonely existence, not being seen,’ he chipped in immediately. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘not really. That’s only an emotional requirement. Once you relinquish the wish for fulfilment through the emotions, you find yourself with God and can be happy all the time. You
will never feel alone.’
I’m glad I wrote down his words afterwards, since at the time they sounded like a very important truth, but I couldn’t imagine how to ‘relinquish the wish for fulfilment through the emotions’. That gift would come later, and then Tom’s words would make wondrous sense.
As I lay there, my thoughts returned to Tom’s words: to truly know who you are. But how do you do that?
Tom’s gift was to read minds; he heard my thoughts and said, ‘It’s not about figuring it out. You have a great sensitivity—but also a strong intellect, so your mind gets in the way by wanting to know everything. You need to feel from the inside how to express your true self.’
Energies in my body seemed to be rearranging themselves under Tom’s hands. A great feeling of being loved came over me, reminiscent of other times of grace, sweetly relaxing and healing the pain in my shoulders, neck and back
‘Why are you so critical of yourself?’Tom broke in again, touching on a central issue. ‘You assess yourself all the time.’
Tom was referring to the severe parental voice inside me that never left me in peace. Apart from the parental voice, there also seemed to be a judge, a sort of Reverend Mother in legal attire, and the all-seeing critical eye of God that I grew up with. I had been keeping the wrong kind of company all right! Had Gaye been referring to my own internal critics when she had admonished me to ‘say goodbye to all your evil friends’? I doubt it! But if that had been the case, it would have been so accurate.
Tears of gratitude, relief and joy welled up. I found myself simply accepting myself as I was and it felt like coming out of a prison. So this was my starting point: self-acceptance! I was no wiser or more spiritual than this, and didn’t need to be. This was reality! I couldn’t wait to get on with life. I thanked Tom. What a blessing to have him come into my life when I needed him so desperately.
When I talked to a friend about my decision to retract my recent vows, he sensed my regret at what others called my disloyalty and he replied calmly, ‘Carla, you only made those vows to yourself.’ Again it came home to me, with the utmost relief, that the only truth I needed to surrender to was the truth I felt in my own heart. All outside references only detracted from that sweet union with the ever-present Divine in the depths of my own being.
Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so, wrote Shakespeare. In my sessions with Gaye, several years ago now, I had had my first experience of this. Evil had turned out to be all-embracing love. Back then I had been too immature to really appreciate this extraordinary gift. Now I was beginning to savour this awesome truth.
YOU ASKED FOR IT, CARLA
IT WAS 1994. I would soon turn fifty-seven, and had just learned the first real lesson of my life: self-acceptance. I pondered with astonishment why it had taken me so long to understand this simple thing. The religion of my childhood, with its constant emphasis on sin, punishment, guilt and humiliation, had hidden the concept in some closet, or buried it beneath the floorboards, somewhere it would be hardest to find. How would the Catholic hierarchy control its subjects without the great power of guilt? If Catholics did not feel the constant need for forgiveness, for approval of ‘the Father’, would they go to church as often, or at all? Would they go to confession; would they continue to grant special status and respect to those who preach what is right and wrong (mostly what is wrong); and, most importantly, would they continue to give the money that keeps the machine going?
It was easy to blame it on my religion. Some fault lay with me too: I just hadn’t been prepared to be honest. I had been too afraid to face the truth. And now that I was beginning to face it, what was the big deal? I can say from personal experience that honesty is the best exorcism there is.
I also saw that there was no real spiritual life without honesty. All that squirming about being good enough for God, for others or for my own inflated self-image—it had nothing to do with spirituality. I felt as if I’d been lifted out of a minefield, which I had mistaken for a path, and placed onto a new and strange way, to which my eyes and legs had not yet grown accustomed.
The past had made a very deep impact and required a lot of undoing. My new-found freedom was only a beginning. Deep-rutted patterns were being reformed, and it would take time and more experiences, not always pleasant ones, to turn God’s Callgirl into simply God’s Girl.
DENMARK TREATED ME well, even if the only paying work around seemed to be cleaning and a bit of gardening. The government stepped in and had me trained for six months in office skills. I continued to search in vain for real employment for another three years, after which, according to Social Security, I officially became a pensioner. A polite way of telling you that you’re now getting too old and you might as well take a back seat.
I used my new computer skills to write about my experiences. Life was pleasurable—meeting friends for shared dinners, for dances, gatherings on the beach and in the coffee shop. I experienced the wonder and bliss of growing into an ordinary human being, a member of a community. And then it became time for a little explicit learning. If I thought I’d pretty well got my emotional self together by now and could start trading on my new self-image to impress my friends, then I could think again. The disaster that happened on my sixtieth birthday was all my own doing.
I wanted to entertain my friends with a performance. I wrote a script and called it my Sister Act. A nun (me) enters the stage on her knees, hauling a cross on her shoulders. Resisting temptation from a horny priest, she gradually transforms herself from a prissy suffering nun into a woman who tells risqué jokes and sings endearing songs. Finally, dancing to the music from The Stripper, she sheds pieces of her habit, flinging them into the audience, and ends up in a black lacy bra and tiny matching panties. She then runs to the embrace of the priest she had formerly rejected.
The subtext was that I would impress my friends as a truly liberated woman, free of sexual hang-ups and free of fear. I wanted them to think I was funny, titillating, slinky and still in pretty good shape. If only I had acknowledged this hidden agenda to somebody, or at least to myself! Even more hidden was my desire for a little fame and recognition, to ‘be somebody’—this was something I definitely didn’t want to admit. I was going to wow my friends with my new evolved self. Unfortunately, since it was only a cooked-up self, as is any supposed new, improved self, I was a sitting duck for my inner censor.
The evening progressed in a lovely mellow mood. About thirty of my friends turned up, bringing delicious food to share. There was a quiet hum of excitement in the air, a delicious blend of the pleasure of being together—chatting, laughing, embracing, admiring—and the enjoyment of shared food and drink, all in the beautiful setting built by my friends Mark and Ray high on the banks of Wilson Inlet in Denmark. I was happy to notice how at ease I felt; my performance was going to slay them!
It was only when my friend Claire was helping me into my nun’s habit, that panic began to invade me. I swallowed hard, breathing deeply to quieten it down, but I was completely thrown. I remembered to let the fear come (accept it!), and it would die down. When the fear didn’t go away in a hurry, my old strategy of trying to control it immediately came to the fore. No way would I allow myself to go on stage panting with fear and ask my friends to please wait until I’d gained my composure! That would not have been such a bad thing—it might have been the very best thing—but my hidden agenda got the better of me.
My embarrassment and discomfort were compounded when my nervousness got worse instead of better after my dramatic entrance. I ploughed on, straining my voice the way I had when I had to sing in front of my class in primary school, and getting very hot under my black habit. My friends were an appreciative audience nevertheless; they loved the silliness and my hilarious impromptu dancing.
At some stage, something took over that had nothing to do with my conscious will. I just enjoyed myself; singing, strutting and stripping with abandon, panting from the effort afterwards, supporting myself with one
elbow on the mantelpiece while my friends clapped and laughed and wolf-whistled.
The morning after, however, my self-criticism was sharp and awful. I recognised my old enemy of self-sabotage—would the horror-pattern ever let go of me? I was a prisoner again and I felt it keenly. That old devil who laughed at me in the shaman’s forest must surely have been satisfied. I sensed him glowering at me for thinking that I could ever be free of him. How it hurt!
I talked about it to my friend Jill. A friend can change one’s perspective completely and Jill did so in no time at all. ‘How about simply accepting that you had a hidden agenda? Just accepting dear old you for having these secret ambitions? We all have them, you know, and for the spiritual ones the ambition is to hide the fact that we have any ambitions!’
Her response took my breath away and immediately brought me peace. What a relief! There was no need to be anything special at all; I just needed to be ever so gentle with myself and accept myself truly, in spite of everything I perceived as faults, right down to the last little bit. I was lucky to have friends who had realised this long ago and now lived a life of simple sanity.
What else was there to do now but be compassionate with myself? I was beginning to feel that maybe I was no better or worse than anyone else in the world; that given the right circumstances, I too could take the path of a criminal, a lying, cheating bastard, murderer or sadist. I felt the seeds of all these possibilities in me and it sobered me. Paradoxically, maybe because it was the simple truth, the thought also gave me peace. I would always be an imperfect human, full of all sorts of illusions—except the illusion that hating myself was going to save me. I did not articulate it, but the truth is, I was taming my devil. I had discovered the one thing that makes it impossible for evil to live long in anybody: true and consistent self-acceptance, which is the work of unconditional love.
God's Callgirl Page 42