Rocktober
Trigger warning: This post includes references to suicide, alcohol and drug use, serious accidents, death, and grief. Please read with care if any of these subjects are difficult for you.
“The soul is the ray of that Sun which is the source and goal of all beings.” — Hazrat Inayat Khan
“Mira’s dear Lord, when will your arm extend, and with much love and grace take her in your embrace?” — Mirabai
October has arrived, or as Kathy used to call it, Rocktober. I remember Her talking about this as an especially intense time of year, when the veils between worlds seemed thinner. October has always had that feeling for me, as though what is usually hidden is a little closer.
She left this world in October of 2017, and this month marks nine years. I miss Her horribly. I can love the fall and still wish She were here talking with us. So much comes back when the days start getting shorter, including the very ordinary things She told us to do to get through this time of year. Kathy used to tell us to get “happy lights.” She knew how the fall could affect us, and She was practical about it. Here in the Northeast, with the shorter days and all the clouds, I certainly feel the change. We still have bodies to take care of, however much we want to go inside.
The news isn't making this October any easier. Sometimes I need to stop looking at it because I can feel how much I am taking in. Kathy followed it closely later in Her life. She wanted to know what was happening here in the U.S. and all over the world. She was immersed in what was happening, even while She taught us that this physical world is an illusion.
Kathy taught us that through meditation we could come to understand what She meant by that. We each have our own karma and our own relationship with God, so that understanding doesn't come in the same way or at the same time for everyone. Comparing experiences tells us very little when we don't know everything another person is going through. It is all grace, including so much that we don't recognize as grace while it is happening.
I think about that when I look at how I came to the Path. As a teenager, I had gone pretty far off the rails with alcohol and drugs. During those years I was involved in two serious motorcycle accidents, and in both I had experiences outside my physical body. I knew nothing about Sant Mat then.
After one accident, I could see what was happening around me from outside my body. During the other, I remember two very long lines of what appeared to be people, all dressed in white. My body was lying on the grass in the center of a highway with a shattered ankle. Yet I remember standing and talking with a being in white who was beside me as soon as I thought of standing.
I remember those experiences more clearly than I remember much of my life around them. I couldn't explain what had happened, and it didn't turn my life around overnight. I continued with alcohol and drugs for a while. But I could not forget what I had seen or go on thinking about death in quite the same way.
By my early twenties, I had stopped drinking and using drugs and was going to twelve-step groups. I was searching earnestly for God. Someone very close to me died by suicide, and it rocked my world. Later my brother Ned developed AIDS and died. When he came to me in dreams and other experiences afterward, I became convinced that death was not the end. I needed to understand what was happening.
I went to Bible studies and born-again Christian churches. I studied Buddhism and other religions, read books about theology and near-death experiences, and went to New Age festivals and fairs. I explored past-life regression and attended a meeting of the Theosophical Society. There were Native American ceremonies at my home over a period of months. I traveled to the Black Hills and visited ashrams.
I had a Celestine Prophecy meditation group at my house. There was another group with a friend where we used guided meditation tapes, and I spent time with psychics, mediums and teachers from different traditions. This went on for years. I read and looked and tried things because I wanted to know God. I had questions I couldn't leave alone.
Some of the people I met helped me tremendously. There were priests and spiritual teachers whom I loved, and I would never dismiss what they gave me because I eventually went somewhere else. Kathy later taught me something Her Master, Maharaj Ji, had also taught: no time spent sincerely searching for God is ever wasted. I think about all those years when I hear that.
Eventually that search brought me to Kathy, and that was when everything changed. I was initiated and connected to the Sound Current, the Shabd. Here was someone who understood what I was experiencing and could tell me where to put my attention. I could ask Her about the meditation and have Her guidance as I learned to follow it. After years of looking, I had found my Master.
I can see the longing in all that searching now. At the time, I was trying to understand death and what had happened to the people I loved. I wanted to know what was beyond this life, and I kept looking for someone who could help me understand. Kathy helped me understand that this need to find Him was already part of His grace.
She taught us to give our attention to the Sound. Great Master Sawan Singh describes the Shabd as the current of God that sustains creation and gives life to everything in it. It is already within us. The Master connects us to it at initiation and teaches us how to follow it. When Kathy said to go inside, She meant something we could actually do, through the meditation She had given us.
The inner world is far larger than the experiences that first made me question what was real. Sant Mat describes the soul following the Sound and Light through regions of consciousness toward its true Home in Sach Khand. Some of what is inside is spectacularly beautiful. Those experiences can deepen faith and understanding as the soul continues toward its Source.
There is also Maha Sunn, the Great Void, with its vast and seemingly endless darkness. In The Science of the Soul, Maharaj Jagat Singh explains that the soul cannot cross this region alone and that the Master takes it through by His radiance. That guidance continues far beyond the initial instructions we receive about how to meditate.
I trusted Kathy to guide me, but I never knew what She would say or do next. Since She left, I have asked myself countless times, “What would Kathy do?” After spending much of the final seventeen years of Her life with Her, you would think I would know. Most of the time I honestly don't.
She could respond very differently to two people who seemed to be asking the same question. I watched people misunderstand Her, and I certainly misunderstood Her myself at times. I was trying to figure out the Master with the same mind She was teaching me to get beyond. What I could always come back to was Her Love. I have never known anything like it.
And I saw how much that Love involved taking care of people. Kathy and David gave members of the Sangat, our spiritual community, rooms and meals without charge. They helped support people financially. I couldn't get over how much they gave, or how readily they gave it. People needed somewhere to live, and they helped.
There was no charge for initiation or the spiritual teaching either. Kathy gave hours of Her time to our problems with relationships, jobs, childhood wounds, illness, and family. I brought Her plenty of my own. She would listen and give advice, and we didn't always take it. What She really wanted to talk about was meditation, and She wanted us to do it. We could talk about our lives for hours and still need to sit down and go inside.
Of course, following a spiritual path doesn't stop the mind from wanting attention. We can get caught up in what we have experienced and what we think it says about us. I have been guilty of that myself. When I felt hurt or insecure, being thought of as spiritual could become another way of wanting to feel important. That wasn't why I had gone looking for God.
Maybe that is the simplest difference for me between spiritual ego and longing. Spiritual ego keeps bringing the attention back to me, while longing keeps turning it toward God. The more my attention is on God, the less room there is for me to become preoccupied with myself.
When I get caught in my own mind or overwhelmed by what is happening around me, I go back to what Kathy taught me. I repeat the Names She gave me and bring my attention back to the eye center and to the Sound. I want to be with Her, and that longing keeps bringing me back to the meditation.
This time of year, I think about being beside Her as She was leaving this world. She suddenly sat up in bed and said, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” The room seemed to fill with an enormous golden Light.
The glory of God was before Her, and She was clearly going toward it. Then She made the effort to tell us how much She loved us and how much God loved us. That Love was for all of us, far beyond the people who were in the room. Her final words were to David: “I love you, David.” Even with Her very last breath, She was making sure we knew we were loved.
I had watched Her live with that same submission to God's Will. Her body went through so much. There were times I wanted Her to fight what was happening because I couldn't understand how She could accept it. I understand it differently now. She was submitting completely to whatever God's Will was, including when it meant physical suffering, and She went on caring for all of us.
I sat with Her in hospital rooms for days and sometimes weeks. During one stay in an ICU, requests for vegan food kept going unanswered, and meals arrived with animals in them. I wanted to say something about how She was being treated, but She asked me not to draw attention to Her. I was upset. She accepted what was happening without demanding that anybody recognize who She was or even treat Her with basic human dignity, which was often missing.
Her submission did not make Her indifferent to anyone else's suffering. I had seen Her listen for hours and help people with the most ordinary needs. She cared about the world enough to keep watching what was happening in it. I think about that when I feel overwhelmed by the news. I don't want to become so consumed by what people are doing to each other that I stop being loving myself.
There is still good in the day I have been given, and I want to notice it. I love being with my dogs and laughing with my friends. I can tell someone I love them instead of assuming they know. When I have been holding onto a hurt, I can make the effort to forgive. None of that has to wait for the world to settle down, and I don't think we can afford to keep putting love off.
Going inside belongs in that life too. As consciousness changes, our understanding deepens, and the love we come to know within affects how we live with other people. Kathy taught that loving God includes caring for those around us and keeping our responsibilities intact. She did that Herself. The people who needed Her weren't interrupting Her spiritual life.
When I say Home, I don’t mean somewhere far away that we have to reach across a physical distance. We are out here in this physical manifestation, with our attention pulled toward everything happening around us. The reality we are seeking is within. Kathy gave us a way to turn toward it, and we can still follow what She taught us, even though we can no longer sit beside Her in a room.
I miss that. So many of us do. There are questions I would love to ask and conversations I would love to have with Her sitting beside me again. The relationship did not end when She left Her body. Kathy is still my Master, and it is Her I turn toward when I meditate. Her promise to take us Home was never limited to the years we could spend together physically.
She said, “God wants you more than you, even in your most intense moments, want God.” I think about how badly I wanted to find Him, through all those years when I kept searching. And He wanted me. That is such a mercy. God is within us, and the longing for Him is part of His grace. We are not doing all of this alone.
That makes me want to give the meditation its time. There is always something else that needs doing, and there are mornings when keeping the attention where it belongs takes more effort than others. Kathy asked us to sit regularly, repeat the Names, and stay with the Sound. I can miss Her and think about Her all day, and I still need to do what She taught me. The longing is what makes me want to sit down and be with Her inside.
All these years later, I still want God. As we move through Rocktober, I want to give more attention to Him and love the people in my life while we have this time together. What I know, with every part of me, is that everything we have been promised is real.
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