The day I saw my Guru for the first time

Guru was flying through Los Angeles; he had a layover of a couple hours. So, the idea was that we would all spend time with him in the airport.

We sat waiting for Guru. It was very early in the morning, and we found a corner of the airport that didn't have anyone in it.

Before I flew down to Los Angeles, some disciples in Seattle told me their stories of meeting Guru for the first time. They told stories of seeing light and angels and all kinds of wonderful, fantastic things. This created some expectations in my mind. So in the airport, when Guru finally came, he came in a tracksuit, which I didn't expect, and Guru looked tired, and he was kind of limping because his knee had hurt. My mind started looking at these things and getting confused.

We found this corner and everyone, of course, was thrilled to see Guru. They were obviously feeling wonderful things, but I wasn't feeling anything.

Then Guru just sat down and started meditating and everyone else started meditating and everything went silent. I started to get even more agitated, and my mind created more problems.  Here I had come down to meet my Guru and feel this bliss again like the experiences I had had, and now I wasn't feeling anything. My mind was just torturing me. Of course, when you meditate, everything is more intense, so all these awful feelings were getting more intense. Then Guru started talking about the soul of California and that confused me even more to think that a state had a soul.

At that point, my mind started to torture me with thoughts that maybe I wasn't meant for spirituality. It was at that point that Guru told everyone to stand up and have a walking meditation. We got in a line and slowly walked past Guru looking into his eyes. I didn't know what was going on. I'd never heard of a walking meditation. So, I asked Nayak and he kind of struggled to explain it. He said, “Just imagine you have a bowl and you're offering everything to Sri Chinmoy, and he'll fill that bowl with something nice.”

So I was really confused. But then I found myself approaching Guru. As I walked past him, it was as if everything else faded away. I looked at him, and it felt like all my anxiety and worry was being washed away. In a matter of seconds, I had my whole consciousness shifted and elevated. I had never experienced anything like that in my life.

I was both in awe and also just in bliss at this wonderful feeling. We walked around Guru and went and sat back down on the floor. I could not stop staring at Guru. I did not even want to blink to miss even a moment looking at Guru. I realised that what he had, what he was offering was what I really wanted in life, and I just wanted to do everything possible to receive whatever I could from him.

The mind’s negativity-capacity
Is no match
For the heart’s God-receptivity.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, part 179, Agni Press, 1993