The First Step In The Return To Amma

Hard to believe that so much time passed since Amma made the world tour rounds. Another of the impacts of the covid moment. Hearing she was coming I decided to answer the call for sevites even though I was a bit hesitant. It’s been about six years of separation, for me, and I was filled with a mixture of feelings, some anticipation and reflection.

I couldn’t help but wonder if this visit would it be as fulfilling as in my earlier years or if I would feel as if I were just going through the motions, as I had started to feel in the last couple of years before the long break. I was also traveling to a different state and it would be interesting to see how, if at all, the program and doing Seva differed.

image: https://us.amma.org/meeting-amma/ammas-north-america-tour

Boston was the city I chose as the first step in this long-awaited reunion. I was on the fence about whether to go to the New York as I had gone in the 15 or 16 years prior. Besides being a city i’ve never visited the choice was purely random. Most things went smooth at first. I caught my flight on JetBlue, and even though I chose not to pay extra for a seat choice, I was assigned a window seat, which was great as that would have been my choice had I paid. The seating was far more spacious than the economy paid-extra-to-pick-seat I had on my flight to Paris a year or so ago. That Paris flight was so cramped that I developed a limp, which lasted months before I could walk normally again. However, all that being said, my seat on JetBlue was the last one in the back of the plane—an amusing twist.

The Paris flight taught me a lesson, though, and if this wasn’t just a half-hour flight, I would have paid more for better seating. The flight took off on time, and we arrived on time. I went to my car rental place, nervous about driving in a new city but confident that I could handle it since, at least, there was google maps.

I had been told I would be getting a Nissan SUV, and didn’t think anything of it until the agent walked me to my car. She was kind of hesitant to say they only had this small red Mazda SUV. Not sure if it was her hesitance or her words but hearing her say “Mazda” triggered a memory from way back over many years to when I lived in Hawaii and had just started a new job running the country’s first legal Needle Exchange program. Feeling good and a bit abundant, I went to buy a car. The process was long and painful, as I was repeatedly shown cars I couldn’t afford, which reinforced a deep-seated what I like to call “poverty consciousness.” A way of filtering life experiences through a poor lens at every turn.

One of the last test drives was a Mazda. I don’t remember the model, but I remember really liking it. It felt good, the engine was smooth and quiet. I was hoping to drive that one home. I was disappointed when it turned out to be yet another car I couldn’t afford. Before leaving the car lot the sales person said they do have a car they think will work and showed me a yellow convertible Volkswagen Cabriolet. It was a bright and pretty car. Kind of boxy but with the top down great for driving in Hawaii. I ended up taking it. A combination of being overwhelmed by can’t afford and not really understanding the long term implications of this purchase. But it sufficed for my remaining time in Hawaii.

The Mazda I loved, this one I just liked. Eventually I had to get rid of it, I made a sudden move to Seattle and work was sparse and the payments were too high for me to afford. Something I learned while running the needle exchange program when a visitor, who was looking for a friend, recognized me from the dealership and remembered that particular car deal. Turned out he was the owner and felt the salesperson should not have sold me the car as the payments were too high based on my income. That meeting should be the subject of another blog posting. It eventually took another crazy series of visits to multiple car dealers, a couple of years later, to get out of that now upside down car. All of whom told me “no”, for various reasons, to using it as a trade to get me into something less expensive, the main being it was worth less than the amount owed and they did not want to buy me out. Another pummeling to my psyche. I hadn’t thought of that experience in forever and here I was being handed the keys to a Mazda with a thank you and a smile. Things have changed dramatically since then and perhaps this was one of those spiritual signs at the beginning of this journey to show just that. I’ve grown in a positive upward direction.

I climbed in and sat for a moment, overwhelmed with gratitude for the grace of the God of my understanding, who had made a way for me when there seemed to be no way. I had been transformed from “can’t afford” to “can afford.” I wasn’t looking to own a car this time, but I knew I could if I wanted to. That felt good and affirming of all I am learning about this thing called my Higher Power..

That being said, I took out my phone and nervously plugged in the address of the hotel, ready to navigate - and as the navigation time said almost two hours I was prepared for a long drive. I made it out of the airport parking lot feeling confident in my ability to find my way in a new city. However, as I got further from the airport, the route became more complex, and my confidence began to waver. I wasn’t sure I could trust my iPhone navigation, but at that moment, I had nothing else to rely on.

The directions from the navigation app took me not just through city streets but also on a winding route through unfamiliar and eerie, dimly lit neighborhoods that seemed to stretch endlessly in directions that felt entirely wrong. And, I must admit, while I am pro-American, there are spaces where seeing houses with American flags makes me nervous. I began to feel uneasy, questioning the accuracy of the directions and my decision to abandon my initial instinct to ask the rental car counter staff for directions. What was supposed to be a straightforward journey turned into a nearly two-hour ordeal, where I found myself lost in the labyrinth of Boston’s backstreets.

As I drove through these unsettling areas, I reflected here and there on the deeper meaning of this experience. The journey felt symbolic of my spiritual path—sometimes clear and direct, but at other times confusing and filled with unexpected challenges and deep unknowns. I also questioned: How did I get here? Was I lost? Was I going to die on a backstreet in Boston? The only clue I had that things might be okay was the timing on the navigator that, with each block and stretch of road, got closer and closer to zero. So, I just had to trust and have faith.

Eventually, I arrived at my hotel, relieved and tired. I poured myself up to the hotel counter and half-jokingly remarked to the staff how it had taken me almost two hours through some strange streets to get there. "That's odd," they said, "it only takes 30, maybe 40 minutes with traffic and the detour from the airport to here."

I felt like a total dweeb. When I got up to my room, I checked, and they were right. It should have been a much shorter trip, even with a detour for the closed tunnel. Further investigation revealed that on my iPhone, the “avoid highways” option had been checked! I don’t remember checking it. My question of how I got there (seemingly lost) was answered. And of course, I didn’t die on a back street in Boston lol.

This experience taught me an important lesson about humility and the value of seeking help when needed. Just as I felt lost in the streets of Boston, there have been times in my spiritual journey when I was lost and uncertain, and yet the path unfolded anyway in a way that seemed to suggest, on some other level, that I wasn’t lost but right where I needed to be. And in this case I had a nice driving tour through Boston I might otherwise not have taken because I would be so busy doing seva for Amma. I realized once again that the journey itself—filled with its challenges and lessons—was a crucial part of the darshan, the “hug” experience.

After my three days with Amma, I took a day to just relax before flying out. This time, when I put Logan Airport and my hotel address into my navigator, it came up with a thirty-five-minute time, and I sailed smoothly with plenty of time to return the Mazda gift, shop for a t-shirt and catch my plane.

The difference in outcomes of asking for help and not asking was pretty clear for me, though. Had I known ahead of time it was about a thirty minute ride from the airport to my hotel I might have questioned the two hours google maps time and maybe even stopped to double check my directions. Again I was assigned a window seat and this time it was a little more towards the middle of the plane.

On the face of it this was a small thing. Easy to not consider what spiritual nuggets it might yield to contemplation because it’s so everyday. Yet, for me, as I contemplated just the start of the journey I was reminded of one of the many things I love about visits with Amma. They are chock full of amazing and sometimes seemingly insignificant interactions happening on the way to the “hug” - things that often times feed me spiritually, even the frustrations, as much as the hugs themselves. In fact, I’ve come to think of all of it - the smooth and the crusty - as part of the Divine Hug experience. I’m glad I made the choice to go this year.

Ase.