nmah6409.xml

nmah6409.xml

born-digital

story

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2004-01-18

I have already given a detailed account of my experiences regarding September 11th, and I received an email requesting permission for the Library of Congress to display it, and also an invitation to write more, if I like. So here I am. I may write more later, but I will tell you what's gone on, briefly, since then.

I have, since the moment the first plane struck on 9/11, felt "called" by my late Uncle Felix's spirit, to seek enlightenment. I was far away at the time, in Vienna, which is where my father and my Uncle Felix were born, on the advice of a Vedic monk named Maya Ma. My Uncle Felix's spirit was standing right before me, practically, and he said, "I knew how to make money, but I wasn't happy, and you're smart to want to seek enlightenment." Since then, that has become my calling, but it's been slow-going and painful, at times. I have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which doesn't make it any easier. In fact, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 have only added to my sense of insecurity and these wars for oil Bush wages do not make me feel any safer. They do not protect us, and frankly, I feel scared to share this with you, since so many of our "inalienable" rights as US citizens have been taken from us, courtesy of the Patriot Act.
I have had a number of spiritual teachers since then, "most notably," perhaps, Amma, "the hugging saint of India," and also Thich Nhat Hanh, among others. I was just rejected, though, for the three-month winter retreat, because I fell in love with a man I deemed "too young" for me, David Viaforo, and they didn't like that at the monastery. I found this particularly disappointing, since I spent most of the past year, trying to "integrate" into that community, as a resident at one of Thay's (we call Thich Nhat Hanh, Thay, for short) centers.
At first, I went to Deer Park Monastery in Escondido, which is in Southern California, for two weeks, on a "trial basis," and while I had a fairly good time there, monastics recommended I go to Plum Village, which is in the South of France, and where he lives in exile with his senior disciple, Sister Chan Khong, from Vietnam for opposing the war there in the 60s.
I did go, in the spring, for another two weeks, and while it was recommended I return, I did not, as my mother then told me she'd rather I didn't live in another country, so I returned, never to go back.
I waited until fall of this past year to go back to Deer Park, as Thay, Sister Chan Khong, and the sangha from many of his centers were on tour in the US in the summer and Deer Park was closed to the public at that time.
I then asked, informally, if I could attend the two-month practice period at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, since it is very near where I live, and I used to go there frequently.
But, like before, in the fall of 2001, when I filed an application for a price, I was rejected--presumably because I have PTSD, but it wasn't clear.
I missed Amma's 50th birthday celebrations in Kochin, India, which millions of people attended, but it wouldn't have been easy to go, according to my chart, from what my Vedic astrologer, Prasannan, told me. I didn't actually end up going, because of poor planning--leaving getting a visa until I thought it was "too late," though I later heard I could get one expedited, as it usually takes a month. I'd felt alienation from Amma and her community about the time my mother got breast cancer in the fall of 2002. Among other things, someone black and poor came into the San Francisco satsang, saying he had cancer and needed $35 to get to a hospice in Oregon. No one I spoke to that night believed him but me, and while he may have been lying, as he later came into a soup kitchen in the city, where Amma devotees volunteer--I used to be one of them, before all this happened--I still want to give him the benefit of the doubt, since cancer is an epidemic in this part of the country. He was the only black person to come into that satsang in the year I attended regularly, and I'd wonder why that was the case, when in he walked with the note he handed to me, as if he could read my mind. It was for this reason that I felt Dr. King's birthday should be celebrated in Amma's temple in San Ramon, but that story is coming up in a moment.
Marin County, where I live, has the highest rates of breast, testicular, prostate, and brain cancer in the country, and it is very scary, as the pristine area where I live, Muir Beach, has high bacteria level in the water of its only tributary, Redwood Creek, and the trees cut in the name of wildfire management have been painted with round-up, a deadly herbicide. Much of the cancer is attributed to environmental causes, so I have extra cause for alarm.
I did go on tour this summer, briefly, with Amma--both to her San Ramon ashram, nearby, and also to LA, where she gave programs and a retreat. I had, by the way, toured with Amma in 2002--that is when I began to do so. First, in the summer, when I went to 7 out of 11 cities in the US, including NYC and DC, where I saw the "site," as where TWC was is now called, and also the Pentagon, which I'd never been to before, but I've worked for, long ago, as a civilian, indirectly. I left prayers for peace there, and it is my sincere hope that peace comes, as no one wants these wars for oile Bush wages--not even Bush himself, but he doesn't know that yet. :) In the fall, I went to Michigan and San Ramon, both cities on Amma's US tour, but that is about the time the proverbial crap hit the fan when it came to my Mom's breast cancer.
I sort of feel like the government should be sponsoring my quest to seek enlightenment. My calling, in that moment the first plane struck is about the only one of its kind I've heard of, though I know many people have felt more spiritually inclined since then. In fact, I was just reading an article about Attorney General Ashkroft, which said how "religious" he and Bush are, but really, if they were, would all this bombing have occurred? You have to stop and think...
In 1994, I lost my last full-time job, because I love everyone too much to work for the military anymore. Some time prior to that, I'd gotten deathly ill while working on a "missile deployment" proposal for Synergy, a government contractor in DC, as a consultant, which was what I did then, and I guess I still do, in my own way.
In LA, too, I had a chance to meet Leonardo DiCaprio, as per "premonition dreams" that began about the time Mom had breast cancer, but it was not meant to be.
He and Martin Scorcese were "too busy" working on their latest project about Howard Hughes' life, and Leo ditched his own fundraiser he was to host with Gale Anne Hurd, an executive producer, who was once married to James Cameron, who directed "Titanic"--about which I've had many "premonition dreams"--for Reef Check, a UCLA institution.
His mother, Irmelin DiCaprio, was on the board for the event, and when I asked where she was, during the VIP party after the Greg MacGillivray premiere of "Coral Reef Adventure" in IMAX at Universal City Walk, I was told she flew her own mother home to Germany that night.
It's an "irony," as my own mother is from Koningsberg, on the Baltic Sea (?), but it has since been renamed Kaliningrad, I believe, after the Wall.
While in LA, I rather hesitantly asked Amma if I could go to India to try living there and get the health care I like. One "revelation" I had in Plum Village was when I was "touching the Earth," for my land ancestors. While I am a first-generation American, born here, I felt like I'd be abandoning my homeland if I left here, so that is a consideration, too.
Amma has an Ayurveda center in India, and since I have no health insurance and insurance doesn't usually cover such things, anyway, I haven't had panchakarma, which is a rejuvenative and detoxification method used by the sages for millenium--not since before my Mom had breast cancer, anyway. I used to get it seasonally for years, staring more or less in late 1996, when my Uncle Felix died while on a tour of Cairo, Egypt, with my aunt Melida. He hada heart attack a day or so after she broke her arm, while children were playing with a ball that knocked her over. He died within hours of reaching the hospital, and she had to ship his body home in a special coffin, as Egyptian authorities did not let her cremate his remains. And she knew no Arabic, which is the native language, so it was a traumatic time--for her, especially.
I've also been "frozen" with fear, and I haven't even had a thermogram, which, from what I understand, is superior to a mammogram, in that it uses infrared heat and not radiation and is far more effective at spotting breast cancer. I recently attended a free talk about this by a leading expert, Dr. Phil Hoekstra, who came to Mill Valley all the way from Michigan, to be at Beth McDougall's Clear Center for Health, there.
Amma said yes. I did, however, recently finally file for some health insurance with Blue Cross, and my case is pending, after many mix-ups, regarding my wonderful therapist, Soonja Kim-Raynor, who works with "undermothered women." I had been suicidally depressed this holiday season, what with Mom not letting me come visit for that, for the first time in my life, and she helped a lot by calling her long distance and talking to her over the phone for some time--my father, too. We will have a follow-up session, the three of us, next week, and I hope it will be good.
I do hope to get some health insurance soon. I have since then developed some "cold feet," regarding going to India to live--notice I did not go for her 50th birthday, and that was a chance in a lifetime. I have heard it is hot and dirty and there is a lot of poverty, among other things. I do not consider myself that devoted to Amma, at present, though I may be, one day, again. I don't attend satsang or do seva, which is selfless service, regularly, anymore, though I am working on a book about my experiences as her devotee. It may become a post-9/11 thing, since I got my "calling" to seek enlightenment shortly thereafter, "by chance." Living there, however, would be a "viable alternative" to me living here, since at present, my funds are down, due to the recession after the terrorist attacks and wars Bush wages for oil, and the cost of living at Amma's main ashram are low, to say the least. I understand the market is up the last year, as my financial advisor, Alison Sullivan, has put it--but what I inherit is down, due to the past three years' losses, apparently, according to my mother, who handles these things. I do wish I'd been more wise with my money all this time, as I'd be far better off, had that been the case. I never was compensated for surviving the terrorist attacks of 9/11, even though my flights home via London on the 14th were canceled after that, and it took five days for my parents to arrange for new ones, as I couldn't get through on the phone to Virgin Atlantic, which flew me from London to the Bay area, where two of the planes were headed that day.
I had "premonition dreams" about flying on that airline, and I made special arrangements to do that, since its owner, Richard Branson, was friends with Diana, Princess of Wales, and I had a lot of nightmares about her, ever since she died, out on a date, chased to death by the paparazzi, with her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed. In fact, I re-visited Althorp that year, just prior to my returning to Vienna, after 28 years away, finally--and I also did some charity work for the Foundation for Women's Health, Research, and Development, which is opposed to female genital mutilation, a cause of which I've been very supportive, over the years.
If I didn't live here, too, I could theoretically finally stop driving my "gas-guzzling" car, a Nissan Sentra, which gets 30 mpg.
One interesting thing I learned at Leo's website-he has his own charitable foundation for environmental causes--is something his friend, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. writes of, too--that if we all drove cars that got 40 mpg, then we'd break dependency on foreign oil, and these nasty wars Bush insists on waging for it would cease to "have a cause."
The famed poet, June Jordan, died of breast cancer in June of 2002, and I didn't find out for about a year after that--not until I went to a Breast Cancer Action town meeting in Oakland and her long-time collaborator, Adrienne Torf, played a piano piece for the occasion.
The keynote speaker for it was Faith Fancher, the TV news journalist who made a series on her own illness. She died last year, I read in the newspaper near New Year's Day.
In regards to what I wrote earlier, I have requested, two years running now, that Dr. King's birthday holiday be observed in Amma's main temple in the US, at the M.A. Center in San Ramon.
Last year, this was not granted, though Amma just won the Gandhi-King Award in Geneva at the first conference for women religious and spiritual leaders the UN held there.
This past year, Yolanda King, having met Amma in LA, "by chance," last summer--after I engaged in a discussion with Amma about all this at Q&A in San Ramon, during a retreat--gave a speech at her 50th birthday in India. And this month, just yesterday, in fact, her head monk, Br. Dayamrita at the ashram in San Ramon, "granted" me the opportunity to bring a short video, "I Have a Dream," to the temple, and it was run there after the talk and devotional singing, which I found less than satisfactory, but gratifying, nonetheless.
Dr. King's work took on new meaning for me about the time my mother had breast cancer. Then, my faith was shaken, and I found myself returning to my spiritual roots, which are Judeo-Christian in heritage, but agnostic by upbringing. I consider Dr. King one of my greatest Christian teachers.
My father, for one, was involved in the Civil Rights movement when the assassination occurred. He'd been professor at Howard University in the 60s, and our family moved to the DC area not long before that, so he could take the job in German literature. Shortly after that, he had a series of ulcers and retired from teaching altogether at age 54 or so, and my mother, who had been home-schooled in the jungles of Puyo, Ecuador, since they are both Holocaust survivors and she escaped rather young, went to work as an accountant, which is the best work she could find, under the circumstances. My father then began, out of frustration, to be physically and verbally abusive, and though he is an old man, now, he still is prone to being tyrannical, in word, if not in deed. He's also just had a major stroke, and I was not permitted to come visit this past Christmas, nor at my birthday in July, though my guru expressly wanted me to. I live on the West coast and my family of origin lives near DC, still, as I wrote before.
I will admit that an agnostic upbringing is not much to return to, but that is why Buddhism had appealed to me, since it is non-theistic by nature.
I began to go to a Jewish renewal group, led by Rabbi Michael Lerner, called Beyt Tikkun. But just the other day, he had me leave the annual meeting, because I was not a due-paying member, yet. I had considered joining, and he had led me to believe it was OK for people in my boat to attend, so I was shocked he'd do that to me there. I was the only one. I wonder how many others were not due-paying members, but kept their mouths shut.
Also, on November 15th, this past fall, I attended a concert ritual, held by Jennifer Berezan and friends at the Scottish Rite Temple, in Oakland, called, "Praises for the World." I went with her and Joan Marler to visit ancient temples to the Goddess on Malta in the summer of 2000, before all this disaster struck. And while I had a good time, I also did not feel "healed," as I sometimes do as an Amma devotee, though the going can be very rocky, indeed.
In fact, I have sometimes wanted to return to graduate school, but I never did, as I was put on academic probation last time, for stress, before I knew I had PTSD, and I never returned to finish the master's degree I sought in expressive therapies, at the time, 1995. I had moved to Massachusetts, then, from the DC area, and that was very hard. I do prefer the weather here, as it is much milder than what I grew up with and had in Massachusetts and NY, when I lived there, too. Anyway, I feel like I'd need to "be over" the PTSD, pretty much for good, to go back to graduate school, if I ever do, though I don't know if that is the case. I would focus in something more aligned with my "calling," now, I believe, if I ever do that.
In the spring of 2002, I met up again with Swamini Mayatitananda, or Maya Ma, as she is called. She was keynote speaker at the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine's conference in Berkeley. There, she agreed to take me as a student at her Wise Earth School of Ayurveda in Candler, North Carolina, but I never did go that fall. I opted, instead, to go on retreat once more with Thay and Sister Chan Khong at UCSD, where I re-newed the five mindfulness trainings I took the previous year, before the attacks.
One of them is a commitment not to kill, even in one's mind, and that can be hard--that latter part, anyway, for me, personally. I never kill anyone in reality.
So, that is "it," in a nutshell. Pretty sad stuff, huh? I never really did feel like I "fulfilled" this calling I so clearly got on 9/11, the moment the first plane struck. Over two years have passed since then, and my interest in this is waning and has, pretty much, since my mother's breast cancer, which is better, by the way, after two lumpectomies and a botched radiation treatment.
I do feel, though, that seeking enlightenment is "life's highest goal," and that I keep trying, no matter what. I keep thinking that my Uncle Felix's spirit, because of how he worded it, meant for me to be Thay's student and live in, say, Plum Village, where the system in France, for one, is much more sustainable and saner than the one here. I feel far safer and saner there, frankly, what with the government and major media so vocally opposed to the wars Bush wages for oil.
In fact, early on in my mother's breast cancer, I had a "premonition dream" that Amma was like the rising sun, smiling on a symbol of the Eiffel Tower, only people lived there, in an array of dwellings held aloft by cables underneath. I took this as a symbol of Plum Village at the time, but now, I wonder if it wasn't meant to be her ashram in France, which is an ancient manor, her main center in Europe.
Maybe one day, I will "find the way." I want to admit, though, that since becoming devoted to Amma in the summer of 2001, which is when I first got darshan from her, several of my long-standing ailments have cleared up, including quite severe back pain from spondilylothesis, starting back in the early 90s, after a car accident, I think.
And more "miraculous" than that is the fact that, lately, sometimes for a week or so, some of my major PTSD symptoms "clear up" for a time, so that is good. I am hoping that will continue to the point that there is no need for a "reprieve," and I will be "cured."
I truly believe that healing is possible, and I'm not sure if my satguru, Amma, instigates this, though many such miracles are attributed to her, daily. She says they are "illusory," though, and I believe that, as well.
I also believe that peace is possible and, obviously, war is not the answer, as Bush seems to think.

P.S. I wish I could attach my book, when it is done, as it may turn out to be interesting to you there. Please consider arranging for such an option at your website. I have since revised a copy of an earlier book of poems I wrote, "Cherry Tree Lane," dedicated to the Princess of Wales and Mother Teresa, who inspired me to self-publish it for charity. Since I mostly just gave it away, it ended up costing me money, and back when I had more, I set up my own charitable fund named after myself, which I've since closed, due to the recession and financial hardship. I sent Richard Branson a copy, along with a tape about Mumia Abu-Jamal, on death row, still, for a crime he didn't commit--killing a police officer named Daniel Faulkner. And while his death sentence was lifted in the winter of 2001--after I gave up hope he'd be released, because of the terrorist attacks and war Bush waged in Afghanistan (though none of the hijackers were from there)--he still remains on death row, physically, and his state Supreme Court appeal last fall was denied. How this could be, I don't know, since he is innocent. I gave Amma the depostions in his case early on--during my second darshan, in fact--and in them, the real killer, Arnold Beverly, confessed to being hired by the mob to do this awful thing. Apparently, the police were in on it, too, and the FBI. Branson, by the way, never published my book, though his Virgin enterprises could and sell it and the film, too.

Everything that is of importance--for me, personally, see above.

No, I am not a flag-waver, and it is my God-given right as a US citizen not to be one.