In this new year, I’ve decided to be true to myself.
Oh, no! All the self-help books I’ve read tell me I need concrete measurable goals. “Being true to myself” is totally abstract!
Okay.
This year, I’m going to be myself.
The other night I dreamt I was at one of our meditation gatherings in New York, our bi-annual Celebrations. Usually I stay in the shared visitor’s housing, and in my dream I had woken up late for the morning function, and was by myself in the apartment. The space was sparsely decorated, almost abandoned-looking, but I saw the suitcases and sleeping bags of all the other disciples.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the function in time, so I just sang the Invocation. I sang it with utmost soulfulness, trying to convey the meaning of each word through my voice.
Often I sing the Invocation by rote. But, in my dream, I sang it slowly and with feeling.
I like it when I can aspire in my dreams. Sometimes I’ll dream that I go up to random people in department stores and ask them if they want to hear a poem. And before they can answer, I’ll just start reciting some of my favorite poems. I do this in real life, too!
I was in the locker room of the YMCA recently, and struck up a conversation with a heavily tattooed younger man named Brian. He told me he worked as a psychotherapist. I usually joke with people about their jobs, and I have lots of psychotherapy jokes stored up (think Woody Allen humor). But I didn’t tell him any of these jokes. I told him that I have known what despair feels like.
I told him that after I graduated high school, I fell into a serious depression because I had not gotten into the college of my choice, namely Swarthmore. I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping. I just stayed in my room all day and all night. This went on and on.
I had a lot of nightmares. I dreamt I was running through a vast underground tunnel network, but I could hear two pieces of metal being stuck together somewhere behind me, in token of pursuit. I couldn’t escape. I dreamt repeatedly of hanging myself in the school stairwell with my uncle’s Harley-Davidson chain wallet.
Then, I had a different kind of dream. In my dream I was in the living room of someone’s house that I did not know. The carpet was pure white, and light streamed through the big windows. The room was empty except for a big CD player in the middle of the rug. I approached it, and a CD popped out, hovered in the air before me, and I saw an old, old Black man sitting on the CD. He started singing a song to me:
“Turn the page!
Turn the page!
Turn the page!
And I started singing with him:
“Turn the page!
Turn the page!
Turn the page!”
And we started singing and dancing around the room in unfathomable ecstasy, like nothing I had ever felt before.
When I woke up, I felt like I was levitating, and I felt this deep sense of calm and fulfilment. I knew I was going to be OK.
Then I told him about how one day my friend Sebastian invited me over to his house to listen to music. He played me some guitar music by John Mclaughlin (Mahavishnu) and Carlos Santana (Devadip). I found the music soothing. We had a long discussion, and at the end of the night my friend, Sebastian, gave me a copy of Beyond Within and told me this man, Sri Chinmoy, was Mclaughlin and Santana’s Guru, or spiritual teacher.
I turned the book over to the back cover, and I saw Sri Chinmoy had the same face as the Black man I had seen in my dream!
Then, when I went home, I opened the book to a random page and I found the following poem:
“I fear to speak, I fear to speak-
My tongue is killed, my heart is weak.
I fear to think, I fear to think-
My mind is wild and apt to sink.
I fear to see, I fear to see-
I eat the fruits of ignorance-tree.
I fear to love, I fear to love-
A train of doubts around, above.
I fear to be, I fear to be-
Long dead my life of faith in me.”
I saw that Chris was looking at me very intently, and I said to him that that poem encapsulated exactly what I was feeling. And I told him that I knew that Sri Chinmoy was reaching out to me through the dream world, through the psychic world, and through the poetry world and he was telling me that I was meant to follow him. And two years later I met Sri Chinmoy at the Philadelphia Peace Concert, on my twenty-first birthday, and I got direct confirmation on the physical plane of what I already known.
Chris told me that it was so strange that everything aligned: the dream, the book, the poem, and he said that it is not a coincidence, but that there was a Higher Power involved. He was so moved! He said that I have a story to tell, and that it gave him chills, and he asked for the name of the book, and he pulled Beyond Within up on Amazon, and ordered it.
I know I have told this story many times, on this forum, and also to many people. But, in a sense, it is the only story I have to tell: how I found my Guru, how I went from deepest darkness to Light. I tell this story because nothing else really matters. And I think in this New Year, which will begin my 50th year, I want to make an effort to be as spiritual as possible. In 2025, only God matters, only the Supreme matters, only Guru matters. Nothing else is relevant.
