The Feminist

Thinny put the book down and closed her eyes. She was stopped; not another moment could occur; only this one over and over. She wasn't thinking anything, she wasn't feeling anything. She was open, just open. There was nothing else. No where else she had to be, no one else she had to be. Everything was in the past now, even the future. She could not move from this state. She did not recognize herself anymore. Her identity slipped away from its castings of doctor, woman, lover, daughter. What she was now was not dependent on form or role for identity.

She went to bed in this same state and didn't know if her eyes were open or closed. There was no fear in this state. It was pure awareness before it spun into all the dreams of life. When she woke up in the morning the effects of this mindless state lingered and she felt a simple childlike happiness, and life looked new and shiny and ready to be explored. Her day was filled with seeing patients and her joy spilled out to them. At lunch, over a cheese and tomato sandwich, she read the book, "Transcendental Wisdom," the book she had started to read last night. She fought the urge to close her eyes; she had eight patients to see before her day was over. She closed the cover and looked at the picture of the author. His name was only a title or rather a job description. He was called Sat Guru.

Thinny had experienced these mindless states before, more as a child. As she grew into adulthood they came to her less and less. She was not afraid of them because they always resulted in a renewed capability to enjoy life. She had read many books about mysticism and had thought about becoming a priest but her religion, Christianity, didn't allow such a possibility. She studied the other major religions as well and was not happy with the role of women in them. She decided to become a doctor; she felt inspired to serve women's health needs. She had started several successful clinics that were sensitive to health crises that women faced and she had found her work to be full and rewarding, even though at times it was too demanding and frustrating.

Change was slow and she was often dismayed that women still suffered spousal abuse and too many pregnancies - and at too young an age. Thinny had observed first hand how the different religions suppressed and contributed to women's health problems by not allowing women to make their own intelligent decisions about birth control. She had fought against the practices of female castration, of removing female genitalia to "make a woman clean" to control her sexuality, after seeing the damage of such practices being done in Africa and Asia - and even in her own country - by educating women that it was unnecessary and harmful to their bodies. She felt compelled to serve women through education and healing methods, and although change was slow, it was the good fight. Change, good change was occurring and she appreciated the freedoms that knowledge had given her and wanted all women to have the same freedoms. Her work was her practice of living an honest life that enabled and challenged her to be more human.

Lately, Thinny found herself reading spiritual books again instead of her favorite feminist biographies. She knew she would always be challenged with her work; there would be always more to learn, but she was growing weary with the unending need of it. It had given her a much wanted satisfaction and purpose. She was tempted to take a break from the heroic demand of it and settle in with her boyfriend and have a child - take a break for a few years from the "big crusade" of her life and enjoy the natural process of being a mother. She was in her late thirties so time was running out. She and Charles had talked about it a lot in the last month. The more they talked about it, the more she felt that they were trying to convince each other that having a child would answer something for them or her. She wondered, what? She knew she would be a good mother and a good wife to Charles. Yet...so what, she thought.

Charles had always made light of her spiritual search, and of her buying and reading contemporary spiritual biographies and teachings. He wasn't mean about it; he just made fun of it in his light-handed very funny witty way of his. Thinny had told him of her spontaneous natural meditations and if she wasn't so obviously a well grounded individual she knew he would have just dismissed them as the fantasies of a silly neurotic woman. He just listened politely and smiled in his knowing way (which meant that he didn't really understand). Thinny understood that smile all too well and would make her description as brief as possible, and they would fall into an awkward silence. She thought of her future and the possibilities of her work, of having a child, of marrying Charles. She sighed a heavy sigh and picked up the book, "Transcendental Wisdom" and randomly opened the page. It read, "You will not find out who you are through experience. You will only find more descriptions of experiences, more descriptions of identity. We are not the sum total of our experiences, nor do our experiences make us more of who we are. We are already ourself. We are prior to experience. We are mindless awareness without need of experience."

Thinny stared at the words and the page became blurry and she knew that her natural meditations were a return to this state of just Being without human identity. She felt a shock that she wasn't human or just human but this other thing that the spiritual teachers have called consciousness or awareness or beingness. She felt an intense call or need to see this man called Sat Guru. It scared her to make this step for she had a foreboding that it would change her life completely, and that it would ask everything of her. Her work as a doctor was hard, a great challenge of love and hope, blood and guts, but what would this unfamiliar next step ask of her? It seemed to border on insanity, an impulse that no one in her life would understand. She wrote a letter to Sat Guru telling him of her life, her work, and her spontaneous meditations, and why she wanted and needed to meet him. A month later she got a reply. "Come, Sat Guru will be sitting with people on Friday night." The time, address, and directions were enclosed.

Fortunately, she had left an hour ahead of time to get to the meeting. She followed the directions carefully but couldn't find Romany Street, the street where the meeting was supposed to take place. She was just about to give up when she noticed the moonlight was shining brightly and saw it light up the street sign that told her that she had found the right street. She felt very nervous and dropped her keys twice before she pushed them into the pocket of her jacket. The night air was chilly and damp so she pulled her zipper all the way up. She felt self-conscious, awkward, and sang a song to calm herself down. It only made her feel more ridiculous.

Inside she was greeted by two attractive women about her age. They asked for a ten-dollar donation. It seemed more like a requirement to get in rather than a mere suggestion, so she paid it with a twenty-dollar bill and smiled and said, "Keep the change." The two women just smiled politely.

Thinny found a seat near the back, next to the exit, so she could make a quiet quick getaway if she wanted to. She observed that many people were already gathered. Some appeared to be old friends and were catching up with the latest news with each other; others had closed their eyes and appeared to be involved in meditation. It was another hour before Sat Guru entered through the back doorways surrounded by an entourage of women. The women sat on cushions on the floor to the left and right side of him on the stage.

Thinny studied Sat Guru. He sat very quietly gazing at individuals in the audience for a few minutes and then closed his eyes. Thinny didn't want to close her eyes. She wanted to continue to study the great man before her. He was a big man, over six feet tall with a burly build. She already knew that he was Canadian by birth, but had grown up in India and the U.S. He was in his mid forties. He was attractive. His features showed a gentle man and Thinny had the feeling that she already knew him, intimately like a brother. She wasn't afraid of him; her nervousness disappeared and she knew it would all be okay. Sat Guru opened his eyes and cleared his throat and again gazed at individuals in the room. He gazed at her and a bright smile came upon his lips that invited her to his warmth and she found herself grinning from ear to ear. And then she laughed and he laughed and they were both laughing and everyone also joined in. She heard him say to her, "Welcome, I see we finally meet in person."

As the meeting progressed Sat Guru answered many questions from the audience. Thinny noticed that he was always gently charming and empathetic to the dilemmas the questioners brought to him, but by the end of his banter the questioner no longer felt a dilemma and was contented to just smile along with Sat Guru's always ready natural smile, whether or not he really understood the teaching. This didn't puzzle Thinny; she also felt enchanted by him and his smile which, even more than his words, filled her with understanding.

The meeting ended with another meditation and Thinny felt it occurring within her, welling up from her heart. She felt as if Sat Guru was showing himself to her by standing as her own heart. She felt the bliss of his smile on her own lips. There was no space in her to be critical about her blissful experience. She did not want to be suspicious; she wanted to open more into it, to allow it to be true. She opened her eyes and noticed that he was gazing into her eyes. She had never felt so seen and accepted. The thought floated by, "But I don't even know this man." Another thought floated by that said, "But you do. I am what you are truly. There is no difference, no separate one."

Thinny drove home still feeling the meditation going on. She never wanted to leave this kind of love, this kind of beauty. She had to see Sat Guru again.

She became a regular at the meetings. Life had a new meaning and task for her: to stay in this meditation and never leave it. She was a drunk and had to drink more and more of Sat Guru's wine. He always greeted her with a smile and their love affair grew more compelling and necessary for her to even sustain just being alive. She no longer sat in the back next to the exit; instead she arrived early and sat right in the front, focusing and meditating, quieting herself to catch and feel Sat Guru's divine presence. She had never been in love like this before. She had loved her work, her family and friends, and her boyfriend Charles, but in this love she felt truly known and seen. It made her entire body open and ache to receive and feel more and more of the bliss of Sat Guru's presence. He was always with her as a lover would be. She woke up in the night dreaming of him and meditated by looking at his picture everyday. All her spare time was given to this. Charles was becoming increasing more critical and defensive about her meditations and complained that she was only being brainwashed by "This guru guy." She didn't know how to explain to him that what she received from Sat Guru was more real to her than anything and that even her work and all her accomplishments meant nothing in this kind of bliss. Charles felt he was losing her and she didn't care.

When Thinny was asked if she would like to travel to India for several months with Sat Guru and his entourage of intimates as his doctor, Thinny was ready and so delighted to be close to her guru and to be of service to him in such a personal way. She took a year leave of absence from her work, not to have a baby and settle down with Charles but to be with the most important one in her life. Her family and Charles opposed it and told her she was throwing away all that she had spent years building up. "This is insane," they repeated over and over. She tried to explain it to them but they couldn't see and feel what she had seen and felt. She reminded them that when Jesus was alive, his disciples left their families behind to be with him, not knowing what would happen or where they would be. They just had to because they saw their freedom in him. Her mother was outraged and said, "How can you compare that charlatan with our lord Jesus."

Thinny couldn't help her family to understand why she had to go and said goodbye by saying, "If you love me, love me even if you don't agree with me." Her mother made some ridiculous statement about how she was brainwashed by THAT GUY and that the woman she knew as her daughter was no longer alive. Her father called her on the morning of her flight and said, "Thinny you always did what made sense to you and you fought the system and took a lot of risks. I respect you even if this one is throwing me way out into left field. I have a feeling we won't be seeing each other for a long, long time so I don't want you to go away thinking there is no love here. Who am I to judge another's choices?" Thinny hung up the phone assuring her father that she would be okay and that she loved him. She felt torn but knew she had to follow this maddening meditation that had drawn her to Sat Guru, and that she now identified this meditation as Sat Guru. Was it insanity? Was she brainwashed? She didn't care. She would give everything to find out.

The meditation was everything now and it had taken a form (the form of Sat Guru) that she could understand, be drawn into, and learn its meaning from. There was no fear in this state. It was pure awareness before it spun into all the dreams of life. Meeting Sat Guru had been everything for her. He had shown her that it was okay to be human, to appear as human and NOT only be human but to be this beautiful, pure awareness that is first, from which all dreams arise. That's what Sat Guru is and that is what she had fallen in love with and that was what she wanted to wake up to. I'm so tired of dreaming, can this just be another dream too? Her mind doubted but her heart was in the meditation. Meditation alone was her reality. Everything had already changed.

Thinny had been to India before to do research for a series of articles she had written about pregnant women. Indian women had been going to clinics to have ultrasounds to determine the sex of their child. Ninety-nine percent of all abortions were female fetuses. Indian women wanted fewer babies but they wanted a male child because a son would insure their place in society and be a means of financial support for them in their old age. Girls were costly because of the age-old practice of the dowry and they would leave home to be with their husbands and it was not expected that they would or could provide financial assistance to their parents in their old age. That was the domain of the men. Thinny had learned that over eighty million fetuses were aborted in a space of a few years; eighty million women were missing from the future of India. Thinny had seen India through the suffering of the Indian women and now she came to see India through her teacher's eyes. To her teacher, India was a land of great beauty and had a time-honored tradition of respect, need and understanding of the function of the guru to dispel the darkness of ignorance, the ignorance that there is a one that is separate from god.

They set down in the busy metropolis of Madras where they rested from the long flight and prepared to make the journey to Tiruvannamalai, a small city to the south. Thinny learned through Zamoria, who was one of Sat Guru's closest devotees, that Tiruvannamalai was a very special holy place because a great sage named Ramana Maharshi had lived and taught there. She also told Thinny that Ramana Maharshi had served in the waking of their own Guru. Thinny liked Zamoria; she was kind and exuded love for Sat Guru and Thinny felt His presence in her company. One thing she didn't understand was why Zamoria and the other women devotees wore beautiful stylish saris and wore makeup. She, Thinny, saw no need for makeup and saw it as a silly extension of vanity and insecurity and a waste of time and money. She had observed that Sat Guru's close female devotees took great pains to look attractive every day, even in the dusty, grimy cities of India. As Zamoria and Thinny became comfortable with each other, Thinny asked her about it and Zamoria simply said, "Oh, Sat Guru likes us to be attractive. We do it for him, to please him." Zamoria's reply rattled Thinny to the bottom of her feminist bones but she remained silent and tried not to be critical of Zamoria and the other female devotees and especially of Sat Guru. He knows what he is doing. He is giving me everything. Who am I to judge? I am here to wake up.