Mom of Us All

Our neighbor’s automobile door was badly scratched. The householder, a dentist, had sandpapered the broken space on the driver-side door, however that had solely served to spotlight the necessity for the entire door to be repainted. The little boy I used to be at the moment, usually inattentive to considerations about automobiles, couldn’t assist however discover the large blemish on what was in any other case a spic-and-span, upper-middle-class Sixties automobile.

One morning my pal and I had been merrily taking part in on the street. Rapidly the dentist’s household erupted from their home: father, mom, and the 2 older daughters, who jogged my memory of Cinderella’s stepsisters in Disney’s animated function.

They known as us and requested us if we had, perchance, broken their automobile. My pal was fast to vanish. “I’ve nothing to do with it,” he mentioned, and in a second he was gone.

I, too, needed to go, however the household took benefit of my sluggish decision-making by cornering me and unleashing a collection of accusations.

“I noticed you do it, on the bicycle of… (adopted by the identify of a lady I didn’t know)!”

“We all know that you simply did it, and it is best to cease mendacity about it!”

“Simply confess, and every part might be OK!”

In the long run I confessed to the offense. Their animosity melted, and so they turned the soul of kindness. My concern was gone. I went residence and forgot all about it.

That night, nevertheless, the dentist rang our doorbell. He got here to say the cash for his automobile restore! My father was a bit cross with me, not due to the alleged mischief I had been making, however as a result of I had failed to inform him about it.

That omission, in fact, had not been intentional. Since I had not dedicated the crime, I had merely forgotten about it. In any case, my father paid for the injury, and that gave the impression to be the top of the matter.

Some years later, nevertheless, it got here up once more throughout a second of calm dialog with my mom. Such shut, casual events arose typically. I used to be mendacity on the sofa and he or she was sitting beside me.

“Had been you actually the one who broken the dentist’s automobile again then?” she requested out of the blue.

“No, I wasn’t,” I responded.

“I by no means thought you had been,” she answered. “He merely didn’t wish to pay for that costly automobile restore himself.”

And that was actually the top of the matter!

This dialog stands out among the many many recollections I’ve of my mom. There have been no classes hooked up to it. She didn’t speak in regards to the basic unreliability of human nature or issues like that. Nor did she attempt to tune in to how I felt about the best way these neighbors had harassed me. She calmly confirmed some intuitive information of who I used to be, thus giving me a sense of security and happiness.

This trifling childhood tragedy got here to thoughts after I re-read a chapter from Swami Kriyananda’s e-book, The Hindu Approach of Awakening. I’ll most likely learn that chapter, “The Divine Mom,” many occasions over. In it, Swami relates an expertise that he had together with his personal mom:

Once I was solely 9 years previous, the physician really useful that I be despatched away to highschool in Switzerland for my well being. Our household lived in Romania—a universe away, it appeared to me. I had grown up talking English, German, and Romanian, however no French, which was the language of my new atmosphere. I used to be homesick, and desperately sad.

After which, after a number of months, Mom came around me. I first noticed her strolling up the road from the practice station, her very stride demonstrating her eagerness to be once more with me. Oh, what pleasure I felt! Even immediately, that flash of reminiscence brings tears to my eyes.

From recollections like these, we will really develop a revolutionary, new strategy to God: extract every part associated to motherhood from our personal life experiences and make it the principle focus of our devotion. On this course of, we should transcend the ups and downs that are inclined to afflict each human relationship and meditate on the golden nucleus: unconditional love. Visualize this love in ways in which that attraction to you, let it develop into your Divine, your actual Mom. Steadily she’s going to emerge from the dream realm of your unconscious thoughts; she’s going to enlarge your perceptions of actuality, because the restricted sources of your little self might be augmented by the infinite sources of your individual higher Self. She is going to rework your consciousness and alter your life as no individual on earth might ever do.

It could take some effort. Paramhansa Yogananda, in his Autobiography of a Yogi, relates how he processed the traumatic lack of his earthly mom on the age of 11. For years he stormed the gates of Heaven, earlier than She appeared to present him phrases of ultimate, definitive therapeutic:

Many occasions have I fed thee with milk
From the breasts of many moms.
This time, the loving black eyes of your mom,
Although misplaced for a short while,
Had been nobody else however I, My very Self.
At all times have I liked you, ever shall I like you.

For hundreds of years, our relationship with God has been troubled by threats of everlasting damnation, of authentic sin, of imprisonment and non secular constrictions. Now Yogananda is providing us a brand new, way more luminous possibility: a relationship that’s not one between a convict and his judges, however relatively between a toddler and his Cosmic Mom.

This new strategy could effectively have been crucial guideline that Swami Kriyananda realized from his Guru, and he’s passing it on to all those that really feel in tune together with his discipleship. It’s the core precept on which he constructed Ananda Sangha.

After Swamiji had completed writing his chapter on Divine Mom, he printed it and introduced it to the Temple of Gentle, right here at Ananda Assisi, to present one in all his most memorable satsangs ever. He spoke in Italian in regards to the specialness of motherhood in nature: how a mom suffers to present start after which enters a circulate of giving that’s her true nature. He wasn’t idealizing human moms. He was considering the essence of motherhood itself.

At a sure level, within the circulate of enthusiasm, Swami appeared to neglect us, his viewers; he spoke on to Her, his Divine Mom, on phrases extra intimate than all of us had been accustomed to. However his phrases and the tone of his voice epitomized an strategy to God that’s open for all of us to discover:

I’ve given my life to you, he mentioned, every part I’m, every part I’ve achieved. You can’t reject me. You MUST come!

Unique Submit: July 9, 2023 / anandaeurope.org