Meeting Divine Mother

Mother Meera is an avatar and incarnation of Divine Mother. By her simple touch and by looking deeply into your being, she offers a darshan blessing where she can clear negative blocks that have built up along your spine and open your heart and mind to the cosmic experience of God.
I drove Ryan to the U.C.L.A. campus to meet the Divine Mother. The smell of sour milk still pervaded my car from Ryan spilling his granola and made it hard to eat the banana I brought as a snack. Like the milk, I felt the relationship with my guru had soured since my refusal to smoke pot. I had to drag him along with me reluctantly after the ride he was promised by someone else fell through. I was like the consolation ride. He talked to me very little on the trip and mainly sent text messages and chatted on his cell phone.
“Are you pissed because I didn’t smoke pot?” I finally said, sensing the unspoken tension.
“No, bro. You can smoke pot or not smoke pot. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Don’t you think it clouds your mind if you want to experience God though?”
“To each his own, bro. What works for me, may not work for you.”
We arrived at the campus early and sat at the front of the line in the vestibule of the conference center. I was nervous as hell. I imagined Divine Mother gazing into my heart and seeing a huge, piled up dung heap of sins and evil curses, then, reacting to the mess, collapsing in a thrashing seizure. Or her penetrating gaze stabbing my already-delicate heart and causing me to have an attack right there in front of five hundred spiritually-minded devotees.
At our seats we removed our shoes and waited for Mother to arrive. We waited a long time. The banana I ate produced a lot of gas that I had been holding in, which built up and began to cause severe cramping. My nervousness made it worse. Soon waves of stabbing cramps forced me to squirm in my seat.
“What’s wrong, bro?”
“My stomach is cramping.”
“Ride it out, bro. She’s on her way.”
I sucked air and wondered how Mother Meera might look, if she had a divine aura or if she appeared differently, as they say, casting no shadow or leaving no footprint, characteristics of someone who has achieved God realization or avatar status.
We were instructed to stand as Mother Meera entered the hall. I was terrified I might rip one as I lifted off my seat but the gas settled back into my guts. Mother Meera was surrounded by a group of assistants and nuns. She was barely visible, a tiny woman, with steepled hands, bowing her head as she walked. She wore an ochre-colored robe with a purple scarf. She was well under five feet, barely weighing ninety pounds.
A line formed and we worked our way to the dais where she performed the darshan which consisted of the individual kneeling before Divine Mother, bowing to her as she placed her hand on your head to shoot the white light of creation down your spine and then look deeply into your eyes, to see your soul and the tangled web of individual experience lurking within. I wasn’t wearing any socks and was extremely nervous about people seeing my feet. Both of my toe nails had been crushed off in soccer games. It looked grotesque. I tried to hide my feet under the seat in front of me, and as we made our way up, I sat cross-legged with my hands gripping my big toes. I caught a glimpse of an older woman checking out my feet with a disturbed look. She kept her eyes on my feet and I felt the burn of her gaze the whole way to the front. Now the cramping in my guts had reached its zenith and if I didn’t keep my butt cheeks flush to the floor, the gas was surely to escape. I writhed. I wriggled. I held my breath. Stabbing waves came that nearly forced the gases from my bowels in the cramped, crowded quarters of the line moving to the front of the room. I fought valiantly to hold it in. The woman behind me was right on my back and I knew if I let one rip, it would spoil the whole affair.
I crawled up to the dais where Mother Meera was seated in an ornate chair. My heart was racing. Five hundred people were watching in rapt attention, many were praying, many in deep meditation. My stomach coiled and uncoiled like a snake with razor blade scales. I thought I might faint. I noticed she was spending more time with some people and others she sped through in a few seconds. I was thinking if she spent more time on the blessing, it probably signified the individual needed more work. I was hoping my darshan would be quick and painless. Another sharp cramp tore through my insides and I stretched my legs out in front of me.
My turn came and I shuffled in front of Divine Mother. She looked about ten feet tall. A colossal figure. I squeezed my butt cheeks together. I bowed and she placed a gentle hand on my head and I felt an electric current race through my body. I didn’t breathe. I think my heart stopped beating. When she withdrew her hand I looked up into her piercing eyes spearing into my soul. My whole body was trembling. It seemed almost impossible to hold her gaze. She remained focused into my eyes for a long time. A really long time. So long a time I almost turned around and looked at the long line behind me to apologize for it taking such a long time. My stomach started doing back flips and another wave of cramps rolled in from the sea.
I held my breath and squeezed my butt cheeks together tighter. It felt like an eternity that she stared into my eyes.
I said a prayer to myself, inside my head, and I hope she didn’t hear it: “Please God, don’t let me pass gas in front of Divine Mother.” I repeated this over and over.
Then the wave of cramps passed as if magically and her eyes dropped and I noted a disappointed twinge in her expression, pursing her lips faintly, as if she knew what was really going on in my twisted soul. Jeez, I wonder what train wreck she saw in there? I hope it didn’t freak her out too much. I bowed to her a last time and stumbled off the stage almost tripping down the stairs and flinging myself headlong into the row of plants near the exit. In my sudden loss of control, I farted but the banging down the short flight of stairs masked the sound...I hoped. The movement of my body carried the smell to the exit. The middle-aged woman behind me only took a few seconds for her blessing and walked right through the invisible gaseous cloud. I watched her out of the corner of my eye to see if she reacted. Her head was down as she stepped off the dais but suddenly shot up, scowling a little as she looked right at me. Oh no. She caught the whiff and definitely knew it was me. I hurried to my seat and put my face in my hands to meditate and hide. Then I hurriedly threw on my shoes and sat squirming impatiently.
Ryan appeared smiling brightly with the corners of his eyes glinting with tears.
“How’d it go, bro?”
“I think good. Yeah. I got a weird vibe though.”
“She took away your pain, bro.”
“It doesn’t feel like it.”
“She took it. You’re good. I’ll tell you what you need to do when we leave. She told me.”
“She did?”
“What Jay needs to do to let the light shine through,” he said smiling radiantly and affectionately punched my shoulder.
It was recommended everyone stay inside the blessing hall until the very end, after the last person in line had received their darshan. Ryan asked me if I wanted to go and I said it was up to him, but I really wanted to go. We left early. I stopped in the bathroom and let out a long oozing sigh of gas. It was that god damn banana. Never eat a banana before visiting a saint.
Later, we went to Subway to eat dinner. Over a six inch chicken teriyaki with Italian herb and cheese bread, my guru told me what I had to do to find the eternal answers I was seeking.
“Smoke pot.”
“I thought we already went over this?”
“Bro, I’m just going by what she said.”
“She really said, ‘Jay needs to smoke pot’?”
“Correct.”
“I don’t like that advice too much.”
“Like it or not, bro. It’s what you need.”
“I don’t think I can accept that.”
“You have to, if you want to grow.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“What were Divine Mother’s exact words? He needs to toke out to be free?”
“No, bro. I sensed what she was thinking. She sent me a vision.”
“Maybe it got lost in translation?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Wash birds,” a man at the table next to us said. He was a small, muscular, African American man in a “Tap Out” T-shirt with the peculiar flattening and thickening of the nose and ears marking he was a fighter.
“Wash birds?”
“Watch birds, man. Forget the drugs. Watch birds.”
The fighter was sitting with another skinny man in glasses who looked like an artist. “That’s where you’ll find it.”
“So I just go outside and watch a bird in a tree or something? Watch them fly around?”
He shook his head looking for a napkin to wipe the vinegar running down his chin.
“Guided birdwalk.”
“That doesn’t sound so great.”
“It’s nature, man. Birds are the soul.”
“Birds are the soul?”
“Birds are the soul. And freedom.”
“How often do you guys go on guided birdwalks?”
“Every weekend. I’m an MMA fighter. That’s my quiet time. My meditation time. He doesn’t go. He’s my manager and he plays poker every weekend.”
“How do I find a guided birdwalk?”
“How do you find anything? Get online.”
I looked at Ryan. “Have you ever gone on a guided birdwalk?”
“No.”
“Would you?”
“Not right now. I’m pretty busy with my son and a lot of projects.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by “a lot of projects” because he didn’t work and usually woke up around noon and his only real activity was smoking and selling pot.
“Get online and find a group, man. That’s how you connect,” said the fighter taking another big bite. “If I didn’t I’d just walk around knocking people in the head.”
The guy was about five foot five but ripped. I’m sure he could do some damage even though he was small.
My only experience watching birds was when I was around ten-years-old and found a dusty copy of the Peterson’s Field Guide on our book shelf. I loved the colorful illustrations and would venture into the outlying forests around Mud Bay in northwestern Washington State identifying fantastical and magical species of birds such as the giant Pileated Woodpecker, Kingfisher, Flicker, the tiny House Wren, the Mourning Dove, Goldfinch, Killdeer, the Great Blue Heron, Chickadee, Steller’s Jay, Cedar Waxwing (one of my favorites), all of which I knew well by my tenth year. I would sketch little drawings of the birds and make notes of their identifying marks and calls. One of the most awe-inspiring experiences I had birding as a youth was coming upon a series of Great Blue Heron nests atop a grove of cottonwood trees and seeing the magnificent creatures in large numbers shadowed in silhouette, trumpeting and squawking, like giant, mythic sentinels from some lost prehistoric epoch.
“What about the Kryia yoga initiation?” I asked Ryan as we drove home up the congested 405.
“I asked Babaji and he said it wasn’t a good idea yet.”
“What do I need to do to get it, man?” Kriya yoga was at the forefront of my spiritual goals. I really felt driven to receive the technique, not only to heighten my meditation practices, evolve spiritually, and get closer to God, but also to suppress some of the greasy, neurotic, fear-desire, slipstream, teeth-gnashing, high-low, hate burgers bringing me down.
“I don’t know, bro. I don’t really know anything.”