The Miracle of Anna

by John Nelson

  Thomas looked at them in amazement. “Yes, and if you have any health complaints, she’s your girl,” Maggie added.

  That night after class, Maggie cooked them a late dinner. While she prepared it, Thomas and Anna walked Bodhi. After dinner and after Anna had been put to bed, Thomas and Maggie sat in the living room. “I told Swami Vinanda about Anna, or I just had to mention her name and he chimed in. Said she was a very advanced soul, and that you would have to bring her to India to visit her homeland, or where she had lived in many previous lifetimes.”

  Maggie smiled. “You don’t say.”

  “Just passing along the suggestion.”

  “So, are you finished with this round of instruction, or do you go back soon?”

  Thomas stared at Maggie for a long moment. “I teach at Swami V’s ashram, and I had planned on returning in May, but being with Anna certainly makes that harder.”

  They just looked at each other and let this sentiment settle. “I can imagine. She’s quite taken with you as well.”

  “So, where does that leave us?”

  Maggie laughed. “You mean where does that leave you and Anna, since we haven’t really established a relationship?”

  “And if I were to stay in town, or moved to Ma hi’ Ma’s Ashram, and start to visit more often?”

  “I think if you were to stay on this visit for a couple weeks, we’d be able to figure that out, or get a better handle on it.”

  “Of course. I’ll ask at the Center, see if I can extend my stay. My sister lent me her second car, but I’m sure she’ll let me keep it a while longer.”

  “Good.” Maggie stood up and walked Thomas to the door. They hugged, but did not kiss.

  “I’ll call tomorrow and let you know how it goes with the studio.”

  When Maggie went to bed, she half expected a dreamtime visit by Joseph giving her relationship counseling, but she had no such encounter, or did not recall it, and was relieved. She was still attracted to Thomas, and she couldn’t imagine being with any man who wasn’t totally committed to self-realization, as he was. But, and maybe it just her new heightened sensitivity, he seemed much the same as before, or a bit immature. She knew a lot of spiritual men were what Carl Jung called Puer Aeternus, or the eternal boy who won’t or can’t integrate their feeling side. Some contemporaries called it the Peter Pan Syndrome. What was interesting in this regard was that Anna, as young as she was, defined spirituality in a much different light for her. Despite her trance states and long meditations, there was something very solid and grounded about Anna, which may be due to her perpetually stilled mind and the lack of any monkey-mind chatter. This beingness was what she hoped to achieve by dedicated meditation and mindfulness exercises, but wondered whether or how soon Thomas would take to such an accelerated integration himself.

  In the morning Anna had crawled into her bed, as was often the case, and they had some girl time together. “Is daddy going away?”

  “Anna, this was just a visit, but he’s staying longer to spend more time with you.”

  “I not want him to go.”

  “We get that, dear. But, let’s see how it all works out.” Maggie paused, scooting up in bed so as to look her daughter in the eye. “Anna, Thomas has his own spiritual path, and you can’t… hold him here for your own benefit.”

  “You want me let go of cords?”

  Maggie stared at her daughter for a long moment. She thought that she heard her correctly, but wasn’t quite sure. “You mean the energy cords that naturally form between people with emotional attachments?”

  “Yes… and no.”

  “Anna,” her mother said with emphasis.

  She turned her head away. “I hold on to him with my… energy.”

  “We all do that with people we care about, but your energy is very… strong, and you must be careful and let people go so they can do what’s best for them.”

  “Even if it not good for you?”

  “Holding people against their will is never good for anybody.”

  “Okay.” Her eyes teared up—the first time Maggie had ever seen her sad. “It’ll be fine, Anna. You’re see. Sometimes people choose what you want on their own without… help.”

  At Thomas’s next yoga class, Maggie saw that the word had gotten out about the young sexy instructor, and the yoga bunnies were lined up to attend his class. While Anna still took up a lot of his attention, it was obvious to her that Thomas was equally open to the adulation and sexual come-ons of the young female students. She knew that this was always the test for gurus-in-the-making, and how many exploited both women and men for sexual favors. In this case, it was also a test of their relationship possibilities. Maggie decided to allow Thomas more space and declined to go for coffee after class with him and the others. Anna didn’t resist; apparently she didn’t want to share her father’s attention with other women.

  Over the next week, they went to dinner once and Thomas came over to their house for brunch on Sunday, but Maggie kept the relationship cordial and nonsexual. On his part Thomas was equally aloof, testing his own feelings for Maggie while totally taken with his daughter Anna. This came to a head the next week. One morning Anna crawled into bed with her mother, and was a little weepy.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” Maggie immediately asked.

  “Daddy with other woman last night.”

  Maggie sat up in bed. “Anna, you must not spy on your father.”

  “But, I want him to stay.”

  “He can, or can visit, and be with another woman. His relationship with you is not affected, just mine.”

  “But we not be happy family together.”

  “No, not if he wants to be with other women.”

  It was a rainy morning and they just lay in bed and after a while fell back to sleep together. Maggie and Anna didn’t attend Thomas’s class that night, and afterward he came over to the house.

  “I missed the two of you at class tonight,” he told them as they sat in the living room and drank Chai.

  “Well, neither of us is in good shape today,” Maggie said and left it at that.

  “What about this weekend? I thought we might go camping together.”

  Anna stared at her father. “Just us?” she asked, rather ingenuously. Maggie gave her a look.

  Thomas saw that exchange. “Anna, isn’t it time for bed?” he asked.

  “If you read to me,” she said to her father.

  Maggie stood up. “Let me get her in bed, and you can read her a story.”

  Afterward Thomas slinked back into the living room shaking his head. “Anna told me. Guess it’s hard for me to keep secrets from her.”

  “Well, I’ve warned her about monitoring people.”

  Thomas nodded his head and looked away. “Sorry. I had hoped this would turn out differently, but I guess I’ve still got some second chakra issues to resolve.”

  Maggie laughed. “At our age, who doesn’t?”

  “It was easier in India, not the same level of temptation.”

  “Well, maybe you need to go back there to resolve that issue,” Maggie said.

  “Maybe,” Thomas said tentatively. “I will miss Anna. I’ve grown quite attached to her.”

  “You know she can visit you in your dreamtime.”

  Thomas lowered his head. “It’s not the same.” He looked back and said contritely, “Sorry, Maggie. I had wanted this to turn out differently.”

  “I know. For me I was open either way, but it definitely swung the other way for us.”

  “I was planning to leave Friday. Can we take another walk on the beach? I’d liked to see Anna one more time.”

  “I’m sure she’d like that.”

  Wednesday morning was clear and sunny, and Maggie and Anna picked Thomas up at the Yoga Center, and they spent the day together walking on the beach, driving up the coast for lunch, and then stopping off and taking a walk in the woods on the drive back. Anna wanted him to stay for dinner and read to her again, but Thomas had
other plans and they said their goodbyes at the Yoga Center.

  Anna was sad that her father was leaving, but on the drive back to their house, she told Maggie, “He is not ready yet. But, one day. I send him love and energy; he… grow faster.”

  “Just don’t interfere with his natural development, dear.”

  Anna looked at the window for a long time. “It not easy being me.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re you, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Chapter 15

  Anna usually lived in a state of perpetual joy, or abiding joy as the Buddhist would call it, but the sadness she felt over her father leaving was curious to her. It appeared that this talky/mental side of her became very attached to people and situations and felt badly when things didn’t develop the way it wanted. In fact, it felt a fear of loss over such situations, and that was a most unpleasant emotion for her. However, experiencing these feelings and emotions did help her to understand her mother and other people better and feel real compassion for them and their plight. How had they lost the connection with their divine Self was again most curious to her. She would explore this dilemma when she was older, but for now she focused her energy on people’s divine Selves and energized them. Some people naturally gravitated toward her and her energy while others shrunk away from it. She knew, as Joseph had told her, that eventually everybody would find their way back to the Divine, but she could feel their suffering and would like to alleviate it where she could.

  And as she grew older her mother kept insisting that she learn to read and develop her mind. She said that if Anna was going to reach people and help them on their paths that she would need to be more familiar with the mind or the ego as Joseph called it. Anna tentatively agreed, but said she would be careful to keep it in its place, as it were, and continue to abide in her divine Self and its connection to the greater whole. But, as she learned to read and to express herself better and to use her mind to think about things, she could see the enticement and understood how in one’s development most were seduced by its allure. Since the world was made of mind stuff, she assumed that you needed a large dose of it to move forward in its maze and earn its rewards, neither of which interested her.

  This was one reason why she did not like to watch television or listen to the music she heard when out in the world. All of this electronic encroachment, and especially these remote talking devices everybody carried with them, defined their reality in mental terms and made it harder to see through or go beyond that realm. Since they lived in a sea of electromagnetic waves, Anna at first had trouble going to grocery stores or restaurants with her mother, because of all of this electronic vibration in the air. It wasn’t until Joseph had shown her how to create a cocoon of energy around her, or strengthen her aura and use it as a filter, that she was able to move more freely in the world. She also noticed, and was somewhat amused by the fact, that some of these devices wouldn’t work in her presence, or if she was annoyed by them that she merely needed to expand her aura to shut them down.

  Once while sitting in the park and enjoying the sheer magnificence of nature and its subtle emanations, a teenage boy with spiked orange hair strolled in and sat down on a bench with a big boom box and began playing very loud hard rock music. It destroyed the peaceful ambience of this natural setting. Anna expanded her aura and strengthened it to the point that the boom box no longer worked. The boy kept turning the dials, but eventually he just stood up and walked off.

  Her mother found this very curious. “Anna, did you do something to turn off the boy’s music box?”

  “Mama, it hurt my ears.”

  “Mine too, but I’m not sure that is the proper use of your… energies.”

  “It will work other places and not hurt our ears.”

  “Well, next time let me know and we’ll just walk away.”

  “Yes, but it hurts the trees and the grass and the bugs in the dirt too.”

  Maggie didn’t have an answer to this dilemma, but started to make a list of questions on which to query Joseph.

  Part of the problem was her mother’s fear that her state of being, as Joseph referred to it, would be discovered by others. She understood that a world ruled by mental schemes would find her consciousness threatening, and her mother was here to protect her and so she would try to be more careful with her spiritual expression. But she had to wonder if there wasn’t another place on this planet that would be more accommodating. Her father had talked to her about India, and Anna wondered if they would all be happier and safer there or maybe at Ma hi’ Ma’s place, or the ashram as they called it.

  One night while they were listening to Hindu devotional chanting or Kirtan, Anna raised the question.

  “I like this music better than American. Maybe we go to India and live there instead.”

  As with many such questions from her spiritually precocious child, Maggie waited a moment to allow for a more heartfelt response. “I would like us to visit India someday, but if you were meant to live there, you would’ve been born there. Don’t you think?”

  Anna stared at her mother with that ageless look of hers. “But, by other mother. And I wanted you… and Daddy. We have good karma from past lives.” She paused for a moment. “But now we can just move there.”

  “You know for decades many Indian gurus have come to live in America to help… raise the vibration of our people.”

  “You think I was born here for this reason?”

  Maggie smiled. Her five-year-old daughter picked up on nuisances so quickly. “Yes. I was thinking that.”

  Anna gave this some thought. “I see. But we go visit before I get too old.”

  “I promise, Anna.”

  This seemed to settle the question, but Maggie figured it was time to visit Ma and the ashram and let Anna soak up some of its Indian vibrations. She also needed to talk with her publisher, and decided they would stop there on the way to the ashram. Jean was anxious for Maggie to write a third book since the other two had been both critical and financial successes, but she had trouble coming up with another book concept with a similar motif. The first two used Palmistry’s life and heart lines, not that she was an adherent of this esoteric art, but there were no other lines that offered the same feeling tone, as Maggie would refer to it. So, for a year, she had been stifled trying to come up with another concept.

  When Maggie told Anna that they would be stopping by to see Jean Millburn, her publisher, on the way to the ashram, she asked, “She want more books?”

  “Yes, dear. But, we haven’t been able to decide on another approach.”

  Anna nodded her head and thought for a moment. “Why not ‘Only God’?”

  Maggie didn’t overreact to its overtly religious theme. “You mean how God is the life force in all things?”

  Anna smiled. “Connects everybody like life lines and heart lines.”

  Bodhi sauntered over wanting to go out for a walk. Maggie reached over and petted him, and suddenly had the idea, “The Dog Who was God.”

  Anna clapped her hands. “Yes, and put Bodhi picture on cover.”

  Maggie laughed. “I don’t know about that.” She stood up. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  As they walked to the park and Anna and Bodhi played together on the grass, this book idea started to jell: how everything was a part of God or all-that-is. And using a dog as an example, given the reversal of its lettering, dog to God, gave the idea a whimsical spin, even if it would still offend some. But, given that she was trying to keep a low spiritual profile to protect her daughter from undue scrutiny, was this an invitation for some to look at them more closely? Maggie had never been a provocateur, but maybe because of Anna’s influence and her own spiritual development, she wanted to use her art to explore her connection to the greater whole.

  That night, after Anna went to sleep, Maggie stayed up and started to write a concept paper and sketch out some drawings. She remembered one New Age author saying that the dogs in her life were the insp
irations for her bestselling books, and that a new one appeared at each stage of her own inner development. This made her wonder about Bodhi and whether his “affect” on Anna also extended to her. She had had dogs as a child and teenager and felt particularly drawn to them. Maybe this concept was inspired by Bodhi’s Spirit as well.

  Maggie called Jean the next morning, and she scheduled an appointment with her on Friday afternoon. The plan was to go to dinner with Jean and spend the night at her house before driving on to the ashram the next morning.

  On Friday afternoon, Maggie, Anna, and Bodhi traipsed up the stairs to Millburn Publishing’s second-floor offices and were escorted into Jean’s office. She had set out chairs for Maggie and Anna, and seeing their golden retriever, she stepped out and found a rug in the next room and spread it out on the floor next to Anna’s chair.

  “Anna. You’re so big now. I can’t believe you’re five years old.”

  “Oh, I much older,” she stated matter-of-factly.

  Jean looked to Maggie for an explanation. “We’re Hindu, and she believes in reincarnation.”

  “I see.” She smiled indulgently. “So what’s this ‘great new idea’ that you wouldn’t share over the phone?”

  Maggie tentatively handed Jean her concept paper and the few sketches that she had drawn. Jean read it once, and then reread it again, and carefully looked at the drawings and sample interior illustrations. She looked up and glanced over at Bodhi. “So, your dog is whispering in your ear instead of vice versa?” she said facetiously.

  “Well, actually Anna started the ball rolling, but my applying her ‘everything-is-God’ concept to a dog makes it more… palatable I would imagine, but it’s just an extension of the oneness theme in my first two books.”

  “Yes, but you’re really going to get slammed by some reviewers,” Jean said, and paused for a moment. “But then all of these dog books on the market are idolizing their dogs anyway and this just ups the ante. I think we can skate on the concept.” Anna looked puzzled. Jean leaned over her desk in the child’s direction. “We can do it without annoying too many people.”