Sometimes finding a new job can feel like hitting a bunch of dead ends. I wanted to go into medical tech sales. Then I spoke to some salesmen in the field and realized that medical tech sales is their whole life- it is their dharma. They work sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week to meet quotas, to read up on the latest technology, to take doctors and administrators out to dinner. I respect their work ethic. But it’s not for me- I need time to meditate and read spiritual books.
I wanted to become a freight brokerage salesman. Once again, I did the research, I spoke to many people in the field. I have never driven a truck, I don’t know how to trace loads. I’m sure I could do it with enough training- and I wouldn’t mind making a hundred cold calls a day. I have a thick skin. I’ve been hung up on so many times during my job search that I feel that I could add it to my CV “I’m skilled at getting hung up on.”
Alas, most freight brokerages hire only people fresh out of college, and only then if they have already interned with the company while in school. I’m young at heart, but no spring chicken. Also, to be a successful freight brokerage salesman, you have to be on call all the time. I want a job where I can put my uniform on a hook, go home, and enjoy my own time. Like medical technology, freight brokerage demands a commitment I’m not ready to give.
I investigated other kinds of sales- real estate, insurance, HR software, home maintenance, and discovered that most of them involve more than a little bit of chicanery in the sales pitch. Unless it’s a product I could wholeheartedly believe in, like selling discounted college textbooks for low-income students, I think I’d have trouble hawking the best life insurance policy if I knew deep down that it’s really just a rip off.
In my journey, I reached out to a lot of companies, spoke to salesmen in many different fields, read a lot of books on sales and persuasion theory. I learned a lot from it, and I actually gained a lot of respect for people who work in the sales field. It’s an incredibly demanding career that requires a special set of skills. I’m sure I can do it- but I can’t believe that I would be able to balance a heavy workload and still study Guru’s books.
You only get one life. There’s no such thing as a rehearsal for it. This is it. I believe in reincarnation, but I’ll never be me again, at least not this me- tattered and battered maybe, but it’s the only self I know. I want to study Guru’s books. That’s my sadhana. I can’t have a job that would overrule my spiritual life.
But I need a job.
So I stumbled on a poster for a bus company. The company offered paid training, and would make me a school bus driver. I was excited. For the past two and a half months I trained on learning the mechanics of buses and how to drive them. I passed all three commercial learners permit exams, and all that was left was to learn to drive them. My teacher was an old black guy, dying by inches of pancreatic cancer. But he loved to teach. I’m not a good student. He had to shout in my ear to swerve to avoid road signs and cars. I didn’t hit anything, but I got yelled at a lot, understandably. He liked it when I recited Guru’s mantras. “Water we need for outer purity…”
And I learned offset parking! One of the hardest things to do with a big bus. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did. And then he started teaching me parallel parking. I knew I was getting close to passing the exam and getting my Class B CDL (Commercial Drivers License), which would entitle me to drive all kinds of buses for the rest of my life.
The company sent me to the doctor to get the mandated physical. I’m mostly blind in my right eye but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem because I have corrective lenses and I have excellent vision in my left eye. I’ve driven a car for many years with no issues. Alas, US DOT law requires two good eyes for bus driving and even with my prescription glasses my right eye wasn’t good enough. I failed the physical and the doctor had to tell the company to stop training me.
A ray of hope: he told me that I can’t drive buses with only one functioning eye, but I can still get a federal waiver to drive trucks.
Bus driving gives me innocent joy- and I’m not sure truck driving gives me the same spontaneous joy. But it pays really well, and it’s not a mentally demanding job. It just requires good reflexes, patient attention and focus. I have that.
To get the appropriate Commercial Driver’s License for truck driving, I would have to apprentice myself to a trucking company. They will have me sign a contract, and so in exchange for training me I will have to be on the great American road for a year or two. I won’t be able to really participate in any of the communal activities of my spiritual Path during that time, including attending Centre meetings. I’ll be the bondsman of the company, chattel on wheels.
On the one hand I feel a call to the freedom of the Road, the vastness of America which has always inspired me. On the other hand, I’ll be left to my own devices for many months. I’ll have to swim in the sea of ignorance alone.
The value of Centre meetings for me is that at least for those three hours a week I know that I’m doing the right thing. I’m focused on God. I’m with other people who are praying and meditating and trying to perfect themselves. For those few hours a week I know I’m pleasing God. Also, during my daily devotions, during those three or four hours of reading and singing, I know I am in a high consciousness, and I am doing what Guru wants.
But take me out of the spiritual environment and the spiritual community completely, and what happens? I mean, I’ve noticed that when I talk to old disciple friends on the phone, our consciousness merges, and we become a composite person, and share each other’s spiritual qualities. What I get from the spiritual community is my connection to a larger aspiring self, that is composed of all the people who follow the path of Sri Chinmoy.
Interestingly, when I had a profound experience of the presence of Jesus Christ at Guru’s August 23 2000 Riverside Church Concert, I felt that Christ was composed of the love and worship of all of his devotees, he embodied all the people who have ever prayed to him, who love him. They are in him, and they make up his living body. In the same way, the people who worship Sri Chinmoy make up his existence, they are an important part of who he is, they are his living self. I can’t reject the Centre without rejecting Guru too. Yes, I can meditate without being in the Centre. But if I say I don’t need the Centre, I feel like I’m being crass. It’s like you telling your spouse, “You know, I like and love you, but I don’t need you.” You wouldn’t say that to someone you genuinely loved. So if I say I love Guru but I don’t need the Centre, then there’s something about that statement that is a little dishonest.
A time comes in the life of every seeker when he realizes that he can’t leave the path, because the only thing he has is the path. Many years ago, I asked Sundar if he had any advice for me. It was 2000 or 2001, and I had just moved to New York. He just said that I will be happier on the path if I aspire- if I spend my time reading spiritual books and singing Guru’s songs and participating in all the Centre activities. These things are not required, he told me, but that if I want to be happy on the path, then it’s advisable to do these things, and to aspire.
Many years later, in 2018, I was talking to Sundar, and I wasn’t thinking of our earlier discussion, but I told him that I felt that sadhana is the only happiness. We have to stick to our sadhana to be truly happy. Sundar told all the people who came to that barber shop that day that “Mahiruha has given me a lofty message: Sadhana is happiness, stick to your sadhana if you want to be happy.” Two people actually called me to thank me for sharing this thought.
He didn’t remember that he was the one who gave me that message!
What career path I will take isn’t clear to me yet. But what is clear is that sadhana and inner happiness, founded on my own disciplines, must guide my life. I have to turn God-ward, Guru-ward, to see the truth, and the road ahead. Then only I can feel that the Master will make the decision for me. And his decision is always infallible.
Very interesting. Good advice at the barber’s shop!