“24 Letter Mantra integrates the ancient wisdom ‘Tvam Bhumir Apo Analo Anilo Nabha’ (You alone are Earth, Fire, Water, Air & Ether) and (sic) natural farming practices to bring you wholesome food consisting of these basic elements.”
In the ‘50s, in a television commercial, a young woman stirs a pot of rice and says, “Mother, I’d rather do it myself.” That could have been my disagreement. But it lacked the emotional maturing needed for my growing into an independent adult. After years of imbalance between my intelligence and my emotions—and the suffering from it—I am only now assembling my life into a peaceful picture—meaningful for new understanding. Age ten in 1953, I was fifty-three when a healer told me that I was a “spiritual child with no self-love and self-esteem” and that I was now going to grow into a spiritual adult. The learning-journey brought me to India, after six years of training in America, and has continued for the past ten years.
I wash this much rice because it is part of my three meals a day. What began as a job, by alchemy, became a joy. I spread the grains over a piece of textured plastic on my double bed that is under a ceiling fan—lowered by a pole from a twenty foot ceiling. Stepping into the room, I enter the sweet smell of drying rice.
My realization is, “Living offers us many pieces that may keep reassembling, if we are willing to allow the sum of us to keep changing—enlightening the past and renewing our present.”