Alone With You

“And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.” - Luke 5:16

“We need to know that it is okay to not project and communicate on the outside. That it is okay and understood by others when we wish to be alone.” - Kathy, Silence On Retreat

“Here, I am alone with you.”- Rābiʿa al-Baṣrī 

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“Why are you still here?” Kathy looked surprised. It was Family Night, when we got together to watch television with Her, and I usually left around six to meditate. That evening I’d wondered if I was being a little too particular about the schedule and decided to stay. I told Her I thought I’d watch TV with everybody that night. She said, “You can stay for one hour.”

I stayed for the hour, and after that I went back to leaving when it was time to meditate. I’d thought the schedule was my own idea, which was a reasonable thing to think if you knew me. By the time I was eight or nine, I was already making schedules to see how much I could fit into a day. I played a lot of sports growing up and knew what it felt like to practice something until I could finally do what I’d been struggling with. I did the same thing at school. I’d go back over a paper I could easily have called finished and stayed with it until it said what I meant. I’d had years to learn what putting in a little more time could do.

By the time I left law school to live with Kathy, I’d already fallen in love with Her. I was mesmerized from the beginning, and there was a part of me that knew She was a spiritual Master and could help me get where I wanted to go. I wrestled with that. Did I love Her because of what I hoped She could give me? Did I love Her because She was who She was? I wanted to love Her purely, and I wasn’t sure I knew what that meant yet. I knew I wanted to be in whatever room She was in, even if all we were doing was watching television.

I was also trying to understand what had happened to me spiritually. So much was changing inside that it was hard to go about an ordinary day the way I once had. I accepted that I needed to be with Her and surrendered to it as best I could. I missed my children terribly. Some days I could hardly bear how long it would be until I saw them again. I felt a responsibility to use the time I’d been given with Kathy.

I came to Her as a student, and I wanted to get every dime’s worth of my education. Some days I was cleaning or taking care of all the birds She had then. When the physical seva was done, I might spend hours transcribing a satsang or editing somebody’s book. I went through the Radha Soami Satsang Beas books with a pen in my hand and took notes the way I had in law school. In my mind they were law books, in a way. Every so often I’d come across a passage that spoke directly to something I was living through, and I’d stay with it because I wanted to understand what it meant.

The idea to sit on a more regular schedule came to me in meditation. During those first five years I didn’t have another job, so I could sit for two and a half hours at noon and at least an hour at night, sometimes two. When I sat at noon or in the evening, it was easier to settle into meditation the next morning. I could feel the difference for myself, and it made me want to sit again at noon. When Kathy looked over at me on Family Night and asked why I was still there, I understood that She’d been working through me when the idea came.

In the books I was reading, I kept coming across Masters and mystics who’d spent an inordinate amount of time in meditation. I remember reading that Soami Ji spent the better part of seventeen years meditating in a dark room before he began giving Satsang publicly. I wanted to know God for myself. I figured if Soami Ji had given seventeen years to meditation to reach enlightenment, I was going to need a heck of a lot longer.

Kathy often talked about quality over quantity. She also told me that She and Joe Leeming, whom She knew at the Dera, used to go on their own meditation marathons. Joe wrote Yoga and the Bible. As I remember Her telling it, they each spent three days meditating once and came tumbling out of the darkness into the daylight, both of them delirious. I can still picture it from the way She told it. When I think about what She meant by quality, I think about what I actually do with my attention once I’ve made time to sit.

My meditation chair was a purple La-Z-Boy with a burn hole in it from live incense ashes. I’d put a passage about acceptance from page 449 of the Big Book on the armoire, right where I could see it from the chair. The paper yellowed over the years. God knows how many times I read that page sitting there.

The woods down where my cabin was were magical. I could lie in bed and watch the moon play hide-and-seek through the trees above the skylight. Every so often a turkey would fall out of a tree and chatter all the way down, and then there’d be a loud thud as it landed on the ground. In the summer I used to go out and dance with those ancient trees in the middle of huge storms. I had thick towels for when I came back in soaking wet.

There was a little well pump down the path from my cabin. I’d fill six gallon jugs there, and they fit exactly in the middle of my nightstand. If I kept going past the pump, I’d come out of the woods and start up the big hill to see Kathy. I used to count the hours until I could go. Then I’d run part of the way because I couldn’t wait to see Her.

On May 19, 2004, I wrote in my journal that Kathy had told me this was meant to be a time of seclusion for both of us. She wanted me to rest and meditate and have time to read and write. At night I kept the window open so I could hear the frogs down at the wetlands. I loved hearing those frogs. In the same entry, I called leaving the house at six-thirty “a flippin’ disciplinary nightmare.”

Three days later I wrote, “Would feel totally alone, but all of the meditating really helps.” Farther down the same entry I asked, “Am I to live the rest of my life like this? Alone?” When She sent me off to meditate, I trusted that She was doing it out of love. So I went back to the chair.

I tend to go pretty far with anything I care about. I had a great deal of time to give to meditation in those years, and somebody else’s day may look entirely different. What I learned from Kathy and from the Masters I read about was that if I wanted to know God for myself, I had to meditate. I had to sit many, many times. I could give the Lord my time and my attention, and the next day I could do it again. Whatever opened in me through those years was His grace.

In January of 2006, I wrote in my journal that I was crying every day from missing Kathy. A little farther down that same entry I wrote, “She is right here with me all of the time. I am never alone.” I meant that as much as I meant the part about crying. I could feel Her with me while I wrote and still want, with my whole heart, to see Her face.

During most of the last year of Kathy’s life, I meditated about forty hours a week. When I sat down to watch television with Her, it was usually Wheel of Fortune, of all things. The name made me think of karma and the wheel of transmigration, and it always struck me as funny that this was the show we watched. I loved those forty-five minutes beside Her. What I would give to sit there with Her and watch it again.

I loved Kathy from the beginning, and over these twenty-six years, that love has deepened through meditation. I used to think that if I ever felt what I was longing for, the longing might let up. My hunger for God has never gone away. I can have hours with Her and still want a little longer.

Rumi tells a story in the Masnavi about a man who knocks at the door of his beloved. When she asks who’s there, he says, “It’s me,” and the door stays shut. He spends a year longing for her. When he comes back and she asks again, this time he says, “It’s you,” and she lets him in. I keep thinking about the year in between. He could have learned those words in an afternoon. I think about all the books I read with a pen in my hand and how much I still had to find out by going down to the cabin and sitting in meditation.

In Sant Mat, I repeat the Holy Names Kathy gave me and listen for the Shabd, the Sound within. This is how I worship the Lord. I feel a great deal when I sit, and sometimes what I feel most is how much I long for Him. I’m grateful Kathy gave me something to do with that longing. I can sit with the Names and give Him my attention.

People often say to me, “I haven’t seen you in a while.” Usually they’re right. I spent a lot of time alone in my early twenties, and I have again over the last 26 years. Some of it comes with being a writer. Ursula K. Le Guin said a writer’s job is “ingoing,” and I can lose a whole afternoon working on something I thought would take an hour. Even if I never wrote another word, I’d still want those early hours with Kathy. I talk to Her all the time, and sometimes all I want is to sit quietly with Her. I understand why Rābiʿa loved the hours when the world was asleep and even the kings had shut their doors.

Once the day begins, there’s plenty to draw my attention outside. I work full-time from home, and I can go a whole day without leaving the house and still feel how many directions I’ve been pulled in. I love spending time with my friends and family. Even after a day I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, I can feel how much of it I’m still carrying around when I sit down again. I remember how it felt at The Highlands when we were all getting ready to meditate together.

On summer retreats at The Highlands, we’d walk up the hill to the Satsang Hall before daylight. We’d all be stumbling along half asleep through the dew, with millions and millions of stars over us. I still remember the smell of the wood chips and the sound they made under my feet. We’d do ether yoga in the Names and then go back down to our chairs to meditate. I loved those walks up the hill together in the dark.

Kathy wrote about how much love we could give one another in the silence, out among the trees or sitting together in Satsang. For years what stayed with me was that She’d given us a whole week to meditate. Now I think about those walks and how good it felt to be together without saying a word. I know how it felt when Kathy gave me Her full attention, too. When I’m with someone, I want to give them the time to say what they came to say and really hear them. That’s part of what being in the world without being of it has come to mean to me.

When I wrote from the cabin, I thought I might have to learn to live with being lonely. Now a friend tells me it’s been ages since we’ve seen each other, and sometimes I feel like I saw them yesterday. I think of them often, and it feels good to see their face when we finally get together. I’d been so aware of how much my love for Kathy had grown through meditation that it took me a while to notice how much closer I felt to everybody else. I still love to be alone with Her. I never would have guessed, sitting in that cabin wishing I could go back up to the house, how much room there would be for other people in that love.