12th
A Little Story
When I was in elementary school I asked my mom whether I was good or not. She then decided to take me to church.
I got confirmed in a Methodist mega-church in suburban Kansas when I was 13 and soon became disillusioned with the spiritual benefits of listening to an unattained being say a bunch of words that are projected on 100 foot screens to thousands of people.
I have been meditating informally since I was 14. At the time, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I looked on the internet at this random website that just enumerated a bunch of meditation techniques (and who knows where on earth they were from or if they were legit!). I ended up closing my eyes and would sit each night before I went to bed visualizing this circle of light from far away that would approach until it got so big the perimeter was no longer visible and then the next circle would come, grow, and disappear like the first one.
During the winter break of my Sophomore year at college my friend from home had me come to this zen center in Lawrence, Kansas where he had been practicing. I liked the external rituals, the chanting, the austere aesthetic, and the simple practice. I ended going to a center in Los Angeles in the same tradition and went to a couple retreats and talks. I was given a Koan, “Why did the Buddha hold up a flower and smile?”
That summer I found myself at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, sitting in the Zendo at 5 in the morning, weeding the flower garden, and cleaning big pots of grain after breakfast. I wanted to drop out of college because I was tired of being rewarded for exclusively using my left brain. I wanted to just stay at the Zen Center for years! I imagined myself wearing robes and shaving my head and loving it! I met this awesome German woman Reirin who was in charge of organizing all of the guest students. I also got a chance to meet Wendy Johnson, who is an alumni of the school I attend, who once lived in a tree on the mountain near my school, who was a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, and who helped found the Edible School Garden in Berkeley.
My parents wanted me to come home to Kansas, get a job, take a study skills class, and be evaluated for having ADHD. While I was home my friend Sam sent me Autobiography of a Yogi. At first I had reservations about reading it as I was doing this Zen practice and strongly felt that reading a text could not help me spiritually progress. I ended up reading it anyways and falling in love with it. In the middle of reading the book, my other friend named Sam sent me a video of this guy, Yogiraj SatGurunath Siddhanath talking about Kriya Yoga and traveling faster than the speed of light. Since he was talking about the same practice that Paramahansa Yogananda talks about in his Autobiography of a Yogi, I was extremely interested in this Zeus-like man wearing all white, drinking tea, and laughing deeply. I suddenly felt that I had to meet this human being and was about to sign up for a retreat with him for a lot of money that I didn’t have. I soon after convinced myself that this urge to meet him was irrational. Meanwhile my mother had been trying to convince me to meet her Co-worker’s husband on the pretense that he meditates and is into programming. I finally acquiesced to having him and his wife over for dinner. It turns out that he was another practitioner of Kriya Yoga as taught by Paramahansa Yoganada in the Self-Realization Fellowship. He and his wife used to hang out with Ram Dass on the very same street where the Zen Center that I visited was! Then on another night while I was crashing at the house of one of my best friends, I found in the guest room Autobiography of a Yogi and a bunch of Self-Realization Fellowship reading material. It turned out my best-friend’s mom has been learning the Kriya Yoga!
I didn’t actually make much of these coincidences at the time. I was in the darkness that Jesus refers to when he said in John 1:5 “I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not.” I forgot about Yogiraj and Kriya Yoga for a semester as I put all my energy towards “focusing on academics”. Then over winter-break my interest in learning Kriya Yoga was renewed. I researched the Self-Realization fellowship and the Hamsa Yoga Sangh, the organization founded by Yogiraj SatGurunath Siddhanath. I put in my calendar that on the first weekend I was back at school I would go into Westwood, Los Angeles and go to this woman’s apartment where she held initiations into the science of Kriya Yoga. I have been practicing Kriya Yoga daily ever since.
I had the opportunity to meet Yogiraj this summer at his Satsangs in Berkeley, San Francisco, San Diego, Irvine and Los Angeles. He is radiant, his energy transforming entire cities by the light of his presence. I am grateful for all the work on behalf of the universe that went in to me finding him and this practice. I now know that not only am I Good, but that all of creation is Good.
