Posted January 8th, 2005 by srichinmoyinspi...(#10104)
I guess one reason I really liked Nayak's message #9680 is that it
was very real and personal. It seemed to be the quintessential
posting in a certain style which many people appreciate - where the
poster talks about not just the happiness that comes from spiritual
living, but also the daily struggles leading to that happiness.
(Palyati and Sarada, I do remember these things.)
Sometimes an intense feeling of loneliness for God can be the
precursor to a spiritual experience. A not-terribly-profound
aphorism came to me when I read Nayak's message:
"The beauty of God is found in tears and smiles."
What I feel is that having a teacher and a path is not an "instant
happiness pill," it's an incredibly valuable tool - but we still
have to work through our sorrows and learn to transform them into
joys. Or, we can depend on God to change our nature, but God needs
our constant, dynamic cooperation in this process.
I'm not a December person - it's usually the roughest month of the
year for me. And I am by nature a lone wolf - not someone who finds
it easy to come in and sit by the fire and bond with a spiritual
community.
I'm also about a million miles away from the "surrender" stage of
the spiritual journey, so in going through the postings I wonder if
some material is meant for very advanced seekers. Here I am
struggling with the basics, and at times I feel hopelessly buried
under postings talking about surrender. Have most people posting
about surrender reached the surrender stage, or is it a question of
"a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"
(Robert Browning).
I tend not to think of myself as terribly fit for the spiritual
life, and maybe that's one reason I volunteered to be the "bouncer"
for this group. I feel I'm a crude enough person to deal with the
harassing emails anti-cultists send me without it "lowering my
consciousness." Not because I'm above it, but because my
consciousness is already in the basement much of time, so what's to
lose? ;-)
Around the end of August, some friends sent me a beautiful video in
which Inspiration Group regulars offered their good wishes to the
Assistant Moderator. I did not (and still do not) know how to
receive such kindness gracefully. My first thought was that they
must be talking about someone else; but I hope someday I will be
able to feel such kindness more fully.
One issue I have been exploring this year is something Doris
mentioned a few months ago. She talked about seeing children growing
up in the streets of East Berlin, and how they needed a kind of
emotional cutoff valve just to survive.
We live in a larger society ("the world") which produces many
casualties, especially among children - and the children who were
those casualties are faced with the problem in adult life of
learning to feel deeply - learning to trust. It's a universal
problem, and I've been trying to write a short story about it.
Anyway, on to Aparajita and my apology. One of the people in the
video was Aparajita. He said some very nice things praising my
efforts. Now it's true I don't much mind getting the harassing
emails from anti-cultists, but one reason I don't mind is that these
people don't know my name. This helps me feel that the insults stop
someplace well before my real self.
The troubled people who spend much of their time harassing Sri
Chinmoy Centre have no idea who I am. Maybe it's cowardly on my
part, but I very much prefer it that way! Yet, in the absence of any
knowledge of my identity, some hostile people have started the
(false) rumor that I'm Aparajita. I think they have developed a need
to hate - and just as the God-lover may choose the form of God which
is most pleasing to them in order to feel more love, people addicted
to hate also find it difficult to hate a mere abstraction. They are
not satisfied simply to hate "Assistant Moderator." So from a vacuum
of information they have started the rumor that I'm Aparajita, and
they have proceeded to harass poor Aparajita!
So I apologize to Aparajita that whatever there is to hate in me
(and I'm sure there is much), he is being victimized as a surrogate.
I apologize that I'm not so courageous that I want to give out my
name on the Internet, so that the anti-cultists can harass me more
up close and personal. I apologize that I am causing Aparajita
unintentional suffering.
Far be it from me to write a book called "Harassment For Dummies,"
with the familiar yellow-and-black cover. But surely Step #1 would
be "Correctly identify the person you have a beef with." I think if
the people who are harassing poor Aparajita would look more deeply
and question more carefully, they could gain insight into the
process which led them to believe many false things - not just about
Aparajita, but about Sri Chinmoy.
If they look even more deeply, they can begin to question the forces
which constantly push them to belittle and harass people who are
following their conscience in choosing a life of prayer, meditation
and service. In my opinion, Sri Chinmoy's students are not saints,
they are ordinary human beings trying to bring out the divinity
within themselves. (Maybe that last bit does make them
extraordinary!) They are following the age old counsel to "hunger
and thirst for righteousness." Like all human beings, they sometimes
cry out in loneliness. (It takes courage to admit this, and that's
another reason I admire Nayak's message #9680.) They feel that when
they cry out to God, God hears their prayers and gives them real
sustenance, helping them find the joy and wisdom that will lessen
their burdens and transform sorrows into joys. As Sarah in Seattle
has pointed out, this is different than simply drowning one's
troubles through conspicuous consumption.
But to each his own! If people have found something that works
better for them, why don't they apply themselves wholeheartedly to
it? By ridiculing those who feel loneliness for God, and who shed
tears for God, they are only showing their hard-heartedness. (Here
again I am referring to the anti-cultists.)
On another tangent... Just about *everybody* who's had an email
account for any length of time receives tons of computer viruses.
This includes both spiritual seekers and their critics - as well as
chicken farmers and astronauts. Viruses are a fact of life on the
Internet, and you protect against them by such methods as installing
anti-virus software and not opening suspicious emails containing
attachments. Only wackos believe that "the cult" is monitoring their
computers!
In my duties as Assistant Moderator, I've gotten auto-respond emails
saying that a message sent from
Sri_Chinmoy_Inspiration-unsubscribe(at)yahoogroups.com could not be
opened by the recipient because it contained a virus. Now, that
sender address is not available to users for sending emails - it's
just an auto-unsubscribe address used by Yahoo. How does an email
containing a virus get sent from that address?
>From what I understand, viruses propagate by collecting large lists
of email addresses, and sending copies of themselves which appear to
come from those addresses. So it's not unusual to get these
"spoofed" emails containing viruses from a sender whose address you
recognize as a friend, an enemy, the company you bank with, or the
name of a Yahoo group you belong to. This doesn't indicate that the
person, company or group listed as the sender is infected with a
virus or has sent it to you. It only means that somewhere along the
line, the virus found that email address and started using it to
email copies of itself.
Thank you to anyone who has made it through this labyrinth of
topics!
I guess one reason I really liked Nayak's message #9680 is that it
was very real and personal. It seemed to be the quintessential
posting in a certain style which many people appreciate - where the
poster talks about not just the happiness that comes from spiritual
living, but also the daily struggles leading to that happiness.
(Palyati and Sarada, I do remember these things.)
Sometimes an intense feeling of loneliness for God can be the
precursor to a spiritual experience. A not-terribly-profound
aphorism came to me when I read Nayak's message:
"The beauty of God is found in tears and smiles."
What I feel is that having a teacher and a path is not an "instant
happiness pill," it's an incredibly valuable tool - but we still
have to work through our sorrows and learn to transform them into
joys. Or, we can depend on God to change our nature, but God needs
our constant, dynamic cooperation in this process.
I'm not a December person - it's usually the roughest month of the
year for me. And I am by nature a lone wolf - not someone who finds
it easy to come in and sit by the fire and bond with a spiritual
community.
I'm also about a million miles away from the "surrender" stage of
the spiritual journey, so in going through the postings I wonder if
some material is meant for very advanced seekers. Here I am
struggling with the basics, and at times I feel hopelessly buried
under postings talking about surrender. Have most people posting
about surrender reached the surrender stage, or is it a question of
"a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a Heaven for?"
(Robert Browning).
I tend not to think of myself as terribly fit for the spiritual
life, and maybe that's one reason I volunteered to be the "bouncer"
for this group. I feel I'm a crude enough person to deal with the
harassing emails anti-cultists send me without it "lowering my
consciousness." Not because I'm above it, but because my
consciousness is already in the basement much of time, so what's to
lose? ;-)
Around the end of August, some friends sent me a beautiful video in
which Inspiration Group regulars offered their good wishes to the
Assistant Moderator. I did not (and still do not) know how to
receive such kindness gracefully. My first thought was that they
must be talking about someone else; but I hope someday I will be
able to feel such kindness more fully.
One issue I have been exploring this year is something Doris
mentioned a few months ago. She talked about seeing children growing
up in the streets of East Berlin, and how they needed a kind of
emotional cutoff valve just to survive.
We live in a larger society ("the world") which produces many
casualties, especially among children - and the children who were
those casualties are faced with the problem in adult life of
learning to feel deeply - learning to trust. It's a universal
problem, and I've been trying to write a short story about it.
Anyway, on to Aparajita and my apology. One of the people in the
video was Aparajita. He said some very nice things praising my
efforts. Now it's true I don't much mind getting the harassing
emails from anti-cultists, but one reason I don't mind is that these
people don't know my name. This helps me feel that the insults stop
someplace well before my real self.
The troubled people who spend much of their time harassing Sri
Chinmoy Centre have no idea who I am. Maybe it's cowardly on my
part, but I very much prefer it that way! Yet, in the absence of any
knowledge of my identity, some hostile people have started the
(false) rumor that I'm Aparajita. I think they have developed a need
to hate - and just as the God-lover may choose the form of God which
is most pleasing to them in order to feel more love, people addicted
to hate also find it difficult to hate a mere abstraction. They are
not satisfied simply to hate "Assistant Moderator." So from a vacuum
of information they have started the rumor that I'm Aparajita, and
they have proceeded to harass poor Aparajita!
So I apologize to Aparajita that whatever there is to hate in me
(and I'm sure there is much), he is being victimized as a surrogate.
I apologize that I'm not so courageous that I want to give out my
name on the Internet, so that the anti-cultists can harass me more
up close and personal. I apologize that I am causing Aparajita
unintentional suffering.
Far be it from me to write a book called "Harassment For Dummies,"
with the familiar yellow-and-black cover. But surely Step #1 would
be "Correctly identify the person you have a beef with." I think if
the people who are harassing poor Aparajita would look more deeply
and question more carefully, they could gain insight into the
process which led them to believe many false things - not just about
Aparajita, but about Sri Chinmoy.
If they look even more deeply, they can begin to question the forces
which constantly push them to belittle and harass people who are
following their conscience in choosing a life of prayer, meditation
and service. In my opinion, Sri Chinmoy's students are not saints,
they are ordinary human beings trying to bring out the divinity
within themselves. (Maybe that last bit does make them
extraordinary!) They are following the age old counsel to "hunger
and thirst for righteousness." Like all human beings, they sometimes
cry out in loneliness. (It takes courage to admit this, and that's
another reason I admire Nayak's message #9680.) They feel that when
they cry out to God, God hears their prayers and gives them real
sustenance, helping them find the joy and wisdom that will lessen
their burdens and transform sorrows into joys. As Sarah in Seattle
has pointed out, this is different than simply drowning one's
troubles through conspicuous consumption.
But to each his own! If people have found something that works
better for them, why don't they apply themselves wholeheartedly to
it? By ridiculing those who feel loneliness for God, and who shed
tears for God, they are only showing their hard-heartedness. (Here
again I am referring to the anti-cultists.)
On another tangent... Just about *everybody* who's had an email
account for any length of time receives tons of computer viruses.
This includes both spiritual seekers and their critics - as well as
chicken farmers and astronauts. Viruses are a fact of life on the
Internet, and you protect against them by such methods as installing
anti-virus software and not opening suspicious emails containing
attachments. Only wackos believe that "the cult" is monitoring their
computers!
In my duties as Assistant Moderator, I've gotten auto-respond emails
saying that a message sent from
Sri_Chinmoy_Inspiration-unsubscribe(at)yahoogroups.com could not be
opened by the recipient because it contained a virus. Now, that
sender address is not available to users for sending emails - it's
just an auto-unsubscribe address used by Yahoo. How does an email
containing a virus get sent from that address?
>From what I understand, viruses propagate by collecting large lists
of email addresses, and sending copies of themselves which appear to
come from those addresses. So it's not unusual to get these
"spoofed" emails containing viruses from a sender whose address you
recognize as a friend, an enemy, the company you bank with, or the
name of a Yahoo group you belong to. This doesn't indicate that the
person, company or group listed as the sender is infected with a
virus or has sent it to you. It only means that somewhere along the
line, the virus found that email address and started using it to
email copies of itself.
Thank you to anyone who has made it through this labyrinth of
topics!
Assistant Moderator