e-Guru

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.
Meister Eckhart

Many of people who profess that mindfulness is your natural state and that you need not take a step to discover it, go on to talk about their routine trips to India to visit their guru, their private meetings with the Dalai Lama and their experiences washing dishes in a secluded Buddhist monastery. Their travels can leave the average Joe or Jane wondering if higher levels of consciousness are available with their frequent flyer miles.

It is my understanding that one can experience the peace of mindfulness while mowing the grass, attending a PTA meeting or watching Dancing with the Stars. If this bliss is so within our grasp, why travel to such distant places to try to obtain it? Isn't it just as available to the person who rather than meeting with their spiritual guide, met with their stock broker who informed them that their 401k just dropped about 399k?

It was with these questions that I turned to the website Gurus R Us and found my own guru, the Venerable Swami Rama Ding Dong. Now I would find the truth behind the accessibility of mindfulness.

Me: Swami, I text you with a confused mind. Why do so many people seem to travel great distances in order to learn to be in the here-and-now?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: It is wise to ask this question. But you might have also asked why does the sun travel across the sky, why do the geese fly south or why does the river run?
Me: I’m not sure that helps.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Yeah, I know. I just wanted to try the “let’s confuse him with more questions” technique in hopes that you would log off.
Me: Your honesty is refreshing. But I would still like to know if it is a mixed message to say that the kingdom of heaven is within and then send people out in search of roads to lead to that kingdom?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Who sent you to search?
Me: You are still answering my questions with questions.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Sorry, it’s a hard habit to break. Try this, remember the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Glinda tells Dorothy that all she had to do to get back to Kansas was to click her heals together because she had the way back all along?
Me: Yes, I remember. I always secretly hoped that Dorothy would read the riot act to Glinda as to why she had to suffer through flying monkeys, talking trees and all of that other acid trip stuff.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Me too, but Glinda was asked why she hadn’t told Dorothy in the first place. Do you remember what the answer was?
Me: No, but give me a second and I will Google up the script…here it is:

Glinda
Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.
Tin Man
What have you learned, Dorothy?
Dorothy
Well, I - I think that it - that it wasn't enough just to want to see Uncle Henry and Auntie Em. And that it's that - if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that right?
Glinda
That's all it is!
Scarecrow
But that's so easy! I should have thought of it for you.
Tin Man
I should have felt it in my heart.
Glinda
No. She had to find it out for herself. Now those magic slippers will take you home in two seconds!

Swami Rama Ding Dong: Get it?
Me: So, the search is essential in order to find that which was never lost? Seems a little misleading.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Terribly misleading, to be exact. But such is our fate.
Me: I’m not sure this is any comfort.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Good, it is your discomfort that keeps you searching.
Me: But what about the finding part. When do I get to that point?
Swami Rama Ding Dong: To find that which was not lost?
Me: It feels like we are going around in circles.
Swami Rama Ding Dong: Exactly the point! Welcome home!
Me: This reminds me of the quote from Meister Eckhart who said “God is at home; it is we who have gone for a walk.”
Swami Rama Ding Dong: A wizard in his own right. I would love to chat more but the rules are that I can’t give away the whole show in one session. Keep in touch, lol.

So it was with a more precise confusion that I left my online guru to meditate on the following:
1. All travels lead to the same place, the eternal you.
2. If you think you need a spiritual guide along the way, then you do.
3. All methods you pick up along the way will have to be dropped in order to experience freedom from mind.
4. The essential search is for nothing, no thing, and to make it you have to become a nobody, no body.
5. Chatting with an online guru is much cheaper than airline tickets to India.