Letter from the Field: Finding Her Way Back to the Home She Never Left

My Irish great-grandfather emigrated to America during the potato famine and became a Baptist minister. He rode circuit from parish to parish on horseback, in Boston and Cape Cod. My mother was his only granddaughter and argued with him even as a small girl that if God really loved us he couldn’t have invented Hell. I grew up in her shadow and chased all over the San Francisco Bay area in the 60’s with one guru or holy man after another.

Learned lots of sayings and ideas, but didn’t wake up. In fact nobody asked me to wake up. I married a philosopher who taught at American River College in Sacramento. I was hugely impressed with his ability to think. One day a visiting holy man came to the campus and gave a talk on Vedanta. He was Swami Shraddhananda of the Ramakrishna Vedanta Society. I was enthralled and followed him home to his Mission where I ended up working in the gardens for years. Swami used to teach us, “You are not this body, you are not this mind.” He said everything was “chitta,” mind stuff. He’d ask us, “If a salt doll walks into the ocean, what happens to the salt doll?” He was the holiest man I ever met but I didn’t wake up. Not until Fred. Thank you Fred! All the things Swami taught us make perfect sense now. I get it!

I feel so free. No limits. Nothing owns me. You can now refer to me as a true space cadet. Non-dual space. I was walking through the woods with my two dogs enjoying sunlight bouncing off the leaves when I realized this body is just a space suit with sensors locating the different functional parts. I don’t live in it any more. Delighted to wonder, “What’s next?

See you at Satsang.

Betsy C.