GANGAJI

I am a seeker but I am not looking for another guru. I already have one. So, when I walked over to the coffee counter at Schat’s Deli and saw the poster with the pretty blonde woman’s face smiling at me, I thought something like, "no, I don’t want to meet another teacher who will give me another set of rules to live by." I have enough trouble following the rules I already have.

But, when I lived back East still, I’d watched this woman on television and was always captivated by the way she taught. She has someone from the audience come up on the stage and sit beside her and they talk. The person asks questions, Gangaji asks questions, and they have a conversation which she guides—incredibly skillfully—closer and closer to the truth until, invariably, the student has some revelation, some "ah-ha". It always amazed me how the student always seemed to get closer to their own reality, to who they are, by the time the conversation was up.

So, remembering Gangaji, only from the TV, I raced down to the San Rafael Community Center this past Sunday, balancing "not trying to get a ticket" with "trying to get to Gangaji’s talk on time." Miraculously, I made it in the time prescribed on the website where I’d gone for directions: "20 minutes before 5:00 PM." This, I learned was time to be taken for the audience to settle down, to meditate. This was a good thing. Because I showed up fairly stressed out from my race down 101.

Pulling into the parking lot, I was immediately reminded that I hadn’t been around a group of seekers in awhile. A woman in her 40’s with a long skirt directed me to a parking spot with a blissful smile. It seemed like everybody was hugging. And, what shocked me most was I recognized myself in the crowd. We all, somehow, looked like each other. Middle-aged, graying, long-haired or bearded—that sort of thing. We were all well dressed in a casual Marin County "seeker" sort of way. I’d actually put on a nicer shirt and pair of slacks than I normally wear up here in Mendocino County where things are not nearly so "hip" and "aware".

I found a seat up close enough to make me happy—just a few rows behind the avid followers who were sitting in full lotus at "the feet of the master." I recognized these folks who are, in the business of seeking, affectionately known as "bliss ninnies." The ones who can actually sit with their legs folded under them throughout an entire meeting.

During the twenty minutes, I opened my eyes a number of times to check things out and was not surprised at all to catch others doing the same thing. I was eager to catch Gangaji walking in because I was sitting on the side closest to the door. Sure enough, peeking with only one eye open, I did catch her in the act of…walking in.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that she was even pretier in person than on TV or the poster. She was a young-looking middle-aged woman of average height, with a beautiful head of almost white blonde hair. She walked with the bearing of a dancer—or of a yogi—Kundalini flowing up her spine. She was dressed in a sky blue silk shirt and silk pants. She didn’t exactly dress like a holy person, but as it turns out, she acted like one.

One of the first things she did was to confuse me—and fairly everyone in the large hall. This, she did on purpose. She began by expanding the mind of everyone in the room by stating contradictions; that she was not a teacher but in fact she was, and that she had nothing to teach, and yet she did. Those kinds of things. She did it all with a sense of humor. And it worked: In the hour and a half that followed, she took the minds of everyone there on a journey deeper and closer to his or her own core. It was exactly as I’d remembered watching on TV back East. Only now it was here, in person, and more powerful.

At one point, Gangaji wanted to know how we got there. Had we in fact seen her on TV? Or in a dream? Or what? In my case, I felt like somehow I’d driven all the way across the country to get there. I didn’t jump up and say that, but that’s what it felt like. Sitting there, listening to her talk with a young man about his life, and watching her slowly bring him closer to his own reality, did in fact bring me closer to mine.

I left the talk, tired, and feeling more real—one of my goals in life. Or to put it another way, I left there feeling closer to being myself.

I’ve always believed that we’re all involved in the search for who we are. And, for me at least, it’s good to find someone to help remind me. This is what Gangaji did.