Whew!

After four years of work at Meherabad, I had resigned from all positions. My spiritual training turned me inward and away from the community. I built a home, healed a broken leg, grew through hard emotions, and wrote. Then, after four years, I had a first job—but that, too, ended.

Approaching Samadhi,* one afternoon, I realized the duty person needed to talk to someone elsewhere, so I offered to assume his role. I felt quietude and pleasure in the hour he was gone.

Now, preparing to leave for America, I learned of a new rule—that to be sponsored for a student visa, I had to have a job with the Trust. My concern increased after I was rejected for archival restoration work. But one of the staffers told me that she thought I’d be perfect for Samadhi duty. My tension dissolved. I had already signed up after my "one hour" experience.

Two months later, I was startled to discover that my duty days had been reduced. Sitting in Samadhi didn’t calm my mind—instead my inner voice demanded, "Get up! Go see him!" My supervisor listened as I calmly began with, "Anna, I need your help." I learned that there had been a misunderstanding and that he would reschedule me.

Leaving, I let out a loud—

"Whew!

" And smiled.

My realization is, "When we speak from the heart for what we love, we have the strongest opportunity of another's listening well."

*The tomb shrine of Avatar Meher Baba

Sad From One Perspective

As I wrote the title, I suddenly knew the story was not about sadness but about love. It was about what is inside—held but unexamined—that changes when allowed out.

He had said to me quietly— "Healing hearts sometimes have to weep alone." I’d considered his words and thought of how long it had been since I’d cried (I couldn’t remember) and felt sure that "weeping" was not in my future. I’d been working hard at challenges in my life and feeling gradually successful.

Now—months later—my cheeks wet from weeping, his words came back to me, and I felt grateful for their benevolent presence. I’d been working on my identity, considering my journey from younger woman to older woman; and on this particular day, for the first time, I had said that it was "sad from one perspective" that I had not been able to truly love in marriage or truly find my niche of work in the world until my late forties, when I began to grow up emotionally.

The karma (or destiny) of my life perfectly gave me the lessons I needed. The tears for what I had missed (when at the time others my age were more knowledgeable and successful) lasted a short time—but felt sincere. In the quiet that followed—I made a list of proof of what had favored me for my good fortune—and what, in my late sixties, I continue reaping.

My realization is, "What lies within us—unknown—when it emerges and is faced—transforms in its new freedom—bringing us fresh truth and love."

Leaving Our Daughters Without Parents

I remember talking back to my mother—her back pressed into an overstuffed chair by the living room window—the andromeda’s sprays of white, bell-shaped flowers outside—hearing her say, “Go to your room,” with each word enunciated, “and wait until your father gets home.”

As an adult, that day my anger was gripped in emotional immaturity and insecurity—our daughters could have been left without parents. "During this time, my anger emerged, against my parents and my husband, in a way I had never known or expressed. The day I drove after Paul eighty miles an hour down the highway was a splitting between the adult I was in most situations and the emotional child in control momentarily.

I was trying to get rid of my suffering by blaming others, remaining ignorant of its true cause. Anger felt both appropriate and justified, yet below the surface would grow into a bog of guilt. Learning that depression covered anger, and anger resulted from fear, through therapy with the psychologist, I focused on understanding why I felt the way I did."*

By the grace of God, clarity came, and I swung off I- 91 South onto an Enfield road home.

Twenty years later, when my second husband and I were exploring healing avenues for our approach to his cancer, I worked with a bioenergetic psychologist—one who uses talk and physical pressure to open the subconscious to truth huddled within. He had me arch backwards to an extreme as I gripped a tennis racket that I swung with force against his massage table, while repeating affirmations. I’ve forgotten the words, but their healing power touched me. He was the first to separate my emotions from my thoughts—dealing with each differently—setting me on a new direction.

My realization is, "Without the right understanding, we may hunt for a solution fruitlessly—but given the needed understanding, we become empowered."

*A Flower for God
* Dr. Robert Glazer, Ph.D., Director of the Florida Society for Bioenergetic Analysis