When the Student is Ready, the Teacher Appears

When I first met Kathy, I knew very little about different spiritual paths and nothing about Sound and Light meditation. I was just desperate to find a teacher who could explain what was happening to me. I had been in a meditation group for years that I started with my husband at the time and we had a band of people that really did more New Age things – trips to channelers, working through books like Celestine Prophecy, bringing in a past life regressionist to link us, going to New Age conferences that were springing up everywhere, and guided group meditations using cassette tapes of people like Dick Sutphen. “Wide awake! You are wide awake!” But by the time that I was really seeking a guru, I thought I was in real trouble. My world had turned upside-down and it was impossible for me to function in it. I was seeing things that other people weren’t and hearing and experiencing signs and symbols, along with having massive inner experiences when I meditated that were not frightening but definitely intense. I started noticing friends not talking and exchanging glances when I talked about what I was experiencing, and my energy levels were insane. So I meditated more, thinking it would calm things down.

It didn’t.

Luckily, I also had a lot of people around me at the time who were not spooked by what was happening to me, and who were also having experiences when they were with me, but I needed someone to guide me and explain what was happening – other than a psychiatrist and not in some kind of mental ward. I felt like Halle Berry in Gothika. My entire world changed rapidly, and for a law student and mother of three small children, newly separated from my husband, the situation was not ideal. So I started seeking earnestly for a teacher. I went several times to speak to Gurumayi at the Siddha Yoga Ashram in upstate New York, not knowing that each time I was driving right by the exit to my true Teacher. While I had conversations with Gurumayi and had different inner experiences while in chants with her or in the meditation caves, something did not feel right to me. She was so famous and there were so many people that wanted her time. I knew I would likely see very little of her, and I wanted to spend real time with my Teacher. I saw and interacted with Amma when she came to Virginia for several days in a row and while I had several very intense experiences with her, she spoke Indian and lived in India. I needed to talk to whomever my Teacher was going to be and to have things explained. I’m an Aquarius and a first-born child!

Through a series of spectacular events, I was in New York City, where I had been spending every other weekend for months with my best childhood friend who was visiting from Stockholm when, on her last night in the city, she turned to me one more time and said, “Won’t you please call our childhood friend? She knows someone who this happened to. I know you aren’t crazy because I’m seeing things after you talk about them, and I believe that what is happening is real, but I’m leaving and I’m scared for you. Now, I think her friend lost everything – her family, her job, and all that she owned – but she’s okay now. I think.”

Not a great sell.

I was getting ready to decline again when I saw something in her eyes that made me stop. She was going through so much and she looked really worried. “Okay, I’ll call her,” I said. She walked across the apartment and picked up the phone and our friend, whom I hadn’t talked with in many years, answered right away. She too was soon leaving New York to move south. I talked to her, fast as I always seemed to do those days, words gushing out of my mouth at a rapid pace, with so many inner experiences mixed with the outer experiences that were crossing paths with the inner and finally, when I was finished, I was horrified. I couldn’t believe everything I had just told her! She was going to think I was totally nuts. Instead, she said slowly and calmly, “I know someone that you can talk with who will help you.”

I didn’t know it then, but she was referring to a woman who had “shifted-“ a word Kathy used for a change in consciousness that happens quickly and spectacularly, and that she herself was one of Kathy’s initiates. As was the woman who had been in a similar state to me. I gave her my phone number and she told me to expect a call soon from the woman.

My Swedish friend looked relieved. I suddenly felt relieved, but also anxious because everyone else I had seen had not been the right person for me. I somehow knew it in my soul. Still, I had renewed hope and we went out for the evening in a much lighter mood. The next day my girlfriend traveled back to Stockholm and I drove back to Maryland to wait for a call that was suddenly all I could think about the whole drive home.