It's been a week

Today it's a week in Austin. Again in the night I slept in this dorm. The light is just above my head, the one that is always on. I don't complain. I try not to complain about anything. I feel it is totally against the truth to complain. My whole body itches. I have a rash. The medicine I used is supposed to take care of this, but it will take up to 14 days to take affect.

I slept again so long. In the night I woke up around 12:30a.m. There were two women up. They were talking. I spoke to them. The one woman was giving some tips about different things that are available for homeless people. So, I wrote down some telephone numbers. Then I went back to bed. There is nothing else to do. I had gone up to the shelter at around 4:40 p.m. and someone whisked me up to the dining room and I ate. I was not sure what was going on, but I tried to just do what I was told. The normal meal is at 5:00. I was confused, but Mother sent this person to get me into the dining early. I was hungry, too. Then I went to bed and slept. I thought I should not go to bed that early. Then I rationalized. I said, "I feel like sleeping. I should do what the body wants." This was probably not true. I don't know. I slept again after being up. I slept to 5:30 a.m. without really waking up in between.

I have been bombarded with so many chemicals and so much stress this week. I felt like sleeping. It is just to relieve the stress perhaps. Or I didn't know what else to do. I spent most of the day yesterday looking for work.

Then when I woke up in the night I realized, I had forgotten to sign in at the shelter. Every day at 7:00 p.m. we have to sign the roster. I had slept through it. That is not good. Again, Mother does things her way. I don't know why.

I felt then this feeling that the past is taking over again. There is a feeling of being liberated from the past. That was fading and the memory was becoming active. I can feel it. It feels likethis. There is guilt. There is a feeling of being a bad person. There is a feeling that I did something really wrong. Otherwise, whent he feeling of having a past is gone, there is no guilt. There is nothing.

I went down to the river this morning and chanted again. I chanted and was watching the feelings. I was seeing that the feeling that "I am doing this" was coming and going.

Strange, even though I am in such a deep tamasic state, I feel this coming and going. I feel that I am this, then I feel, I am doing nothing. I feel, I am, through Divine Grace, transcending even the feeling of being in tamas. It is, after all, simply a guna. Transcending means all the gunas, apparently, even the deepest tamas.

OM

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It's Saturday and that is the day where there is so little to do, so little one can do. All the offices of the various agencies are closed. So, I called one of the numbers I got from the woman Debra in the night. It is the toll-free number of Assurance Wireless, a part of Virgin Wireless. They provide handsets and 200 free minutes a month to people who are on government assistance. I suppose for them this is a good deal. If the person uses more than 200 minutes in a month, they have to buy a top-off card at $0.10 per minute to use the phone after that. For people who live hand to mouth, this could mean that they would eventually pay more than they would if they were on a regular plan, that is, if they use the phone a lot.

Well, but anyway, the woman on the phone was really sweet. She sent some papers to me, through fax. I was not sure whether to do this, but this is what she suggested for me to do. So, I did that. Then, I was sitting in the computer room at the ARCH (Austin Resource Center for the Homeless). The man in there who was volunteering, taking care of the computer lab then introduced himself to me when I was walking out. He asked me if I spoke German. He said he was himself German, married to an American. We spoke then in German for several minutes.

He asked me how it came to be that I went to live in Germany and I told him my "tale of woe" or "tale of Poe" as it were. It's that story, that strange tale, how I remembered a past life, without even wanting to, without even believing it ever possible that people live multiple lives, that souls really do embody multiple times.

I kept saying to him, "People think you are (I am) crazy." He kept saying, "No, I don't think so." But I still feel at the end of the day, it alienates people when I tell them the truth. Nevertheless, I told him. I gave him my email and asked him to contact me if he hears of a job. I was there to finish up the online application for McDonald's. That was also a bit strange. I had to keep answering questions to which I had no answer. The answer is, I have never worked much.

That is the strange thing. I feel like I am coming out of a dream. I have never really seriously worked. I have never worked hard. I have never been sincere. I have never been serious about anything. I have been in this state in between everything for so long. But just yesterday I felt like I snapped out of it. I felt, "Ok, just work, just be happy. You can do anything and be happy, as long as you stay in the moment."

I was thinking, and thinking is this thing, it's a habit. I was thinking about the future, about where I might go, whether I will return to India and so on. Finally, I just said, I don't care. I cannot care about this. If indeed I return to India, it won't be tomorrow. It won't be next week. It may be soon, but I will have to work to get there. I have to do something to get myself there. I want to work also. I really and truly want to and I don't care what it is I do for the most part. There are certain jobs I cannot do. There are some that are so difficult and depressing, I suppose. But I think I have to rethink every job opportunity. I have to reconsider every time. There are some things I feel, when I look at the description, that it would just kill me to do that. To sit at a desk all day and do data entry. Yes, I can do that, but it must be limited. I cannot do this for years on end, perhaps. Well, I am in the process of getting very much less choosy than before.

This morning I felt this faith. I felt, "Things will come right. I know it." I keep vascilating between these two states, between the mental, that is somewhere thinking that everything is messed up and I am a terrible person, and this feeling that it is all the gunas anyway, that I have never been a terrible person, just that the gunas are so crazy in my system and I have so little control, because I am so dominated by tamas energy.
Then what happened? I was sitting and dial numbers on the telephone at the ARCH, just to have something to do, something constructive. But in the end, it is just all these help lines, it is just numbers where you are asking for a handout. And I realized, it's Saturday, so there is no point. A couple were sitting there. It was a young black man with acne scarring and a white woman in shorts and tank top with a bra underneith. She kept trying to sit in his lap. At first it seemed he did not want her to sit there. Then she sat again, then he held here there, just like you would hold a child.

At first I felt, Oh, here, these people are so tamasic. Oh, these people must constantly touch each other. But then when I saw the tenderness between these two I realized it is just like two people who are mothering each other. In this case the man was mothering the young woman and was that not what I was doing with this young man? He was like a father to me for those 10 days, was he not?

Why was I attracted to him and why were we moving together? He was, first of all, such an enigma. He was a god. He was a man. He was a boy. He was like my father, he was like my son. He was taking care of me. He was putting me in danger. He was keeping me from danger. He was all of this. He spoke to me the truth. He called me on all the untruth I was doing or speaking. He was so honest with me. He cried openly. He go angry. He was everything. I was so astonished. He was dominant with me. He was submissive also. When what I said or did was not something he could deal with, often he remained silent. He exhibited so many yogic qualities. At the same time he smoked, drank beer, ate meat and had sex. He was everything. I felt like he was Krishna, come to me in a form. He really seemed to be absolutely Divine much of the time.

He loved me without any compunction, even though I made all mistakes and did all kind of nuisance behavior. He treated me like a goddess. He treated me like human when necessary. I sincerely felt his love was real. He stayed with me even though I misbehaved so much.

He seemed to be really guided by something higher than the mental. Often the things he did didnt' seem to make sense to me and I was often trying to control him. That was painful for both of us. I could see that I was really not able to follow his lead. I felt for some time I could worship him just like that. I felt some times I could just do whatever he said, that IF I could follow him, I could come out alright. He seemed to have this perfect instinct. He spoke to people and they responded to him.

Never do people respond to me that way. I was trying to get him to do this or that thing very often. The problem was that my own mental was interfering constantly. At some point I said, "I promise, I see that it is going all wrong when I call the shots. Now I will do only as you say." Still, it was impossible for me to do what he wanted. But had I been able to do these things, the story would have ended much differently.

He was not identified with the body. He was not identified with his age or mine. He did not care. He simply saw something in me and loved that. I asked him about it. I asked him what is it that you see in me? Why do you love me? Why do you think we can stay together? He paused and said then, "I just know because there is no reason. I simply love you."

What broke us up in the end was that I started to pass judgment. I fell into fault-finding. He was simply a Divine being in a human form. I could not hold on to that fact. I kept being embarrassed or saying, "You have to dress like this or that." He wore torn and dirty clothes. But he told me that he never found that people responded to him any differently if he dressed any different. I was trying always to impose my own ideas on him. That is what ended it finally.

OK, so I made all the mistakes. It seems to me so. But then, I said to myself, this is the way Mother has of moving her chess pieces around the board. The whole thing that took place seems so fantastic, so unreal. How is it possible that I would meet such a person and fall in love, or become attracted so that I would leave with him and completely throw everything else away? Looking at every step of the journey, it becomes clear that this is the way things were to be. Mother Prakriti does these things and we have no control. We think we are bad because we do this or that thing or we don't do some other thing. But it is She who is doing Her work always.

I lead the strangest life. For the time I was with this man, all the normal rules were suspended. Everything went according to a totally different rhythm. Everything cooperated in a different way. People gave us money and food, often we did not even ask. We were together for 10 days without any source of income and travelled some thousands of miles without any money. He just had his guitar. He played and sometimes didn't even play and people helped us.

We got to Austin. Then everything went bad. That was when my mind started to take control. Then I left him standing and he went back to where he came from. That was all. And here I am. And the situation is that I arrived here with the clothes on my back and my purse with a toothbrush and some other things, like that.

So, I have gotten some more clothes, like I said. And today I was doing laundry. A man was also doing laundry and he offered me a red T-shirt. I did not want to take it. It was a nice enough shirt, a ladies' T with a nice design on the front, fitted. Then there was another woman, a young black woman. She was going to take the T-shirt and I thought, "Oh, I should have just taken it." I didn't want the woman to take it. I guess I wanted it. Then she turned and said, "Oh, this fits you, this is for you." and she held it up to me and I took it. Then I thanked the man. He had found it somewhere. People leave things everywhere here.

Then, the thing that has been bothering me now these several days is that I have to walk around without any bag to carry my things. I have my purse, but it is full. But I still need a bag to carry a few things with me, like a hat and some papers, etc. For a few days I had been carrying these things in a plastic bag. Then that bag was breaking. Then on the same day, that was when I met the woman at the MLF truck (Mobile Loaves and Fishes). She gave me some new plastic bags. Then I am still carrying allt his stuff around in these plastic bags.

But I said, "Ok, I may be a bag lady now." But I am not identified with this. It is just what is happening now. Then today, I went out of the ARCH. I went and thought, OK, just go to the library. Then I thought, "Why go to the library?" I had debated whether to go. Then I said, "No, I will just go there and do some work, any work." I cannot really apply for jobs yet, because I have no telephone number. I have no number where people can leave a message. I thought, anyway just go there. I had been at the ARCH using the computers there, but I wanted to spread it around a bit. You can use the library computers for 2 hours max per day.

So, I am on the way. Then I crossed over one very main street in downtown Austin and started up the hill. Then there was a bag, a women's sort of handbag, made of jute and leather. It was just empty, resting there on a stoop and next to it was a big suitcase. I thought at first, it belongs to someone. Then I passed by. I did not feel to take it. I definitely thought, this belongs to someone. Then I said, "Hold on" and went back. The suitcase was empty. I looked it over. Both were empty. Both were sitting out on a stoop, abandoned. No one was around. I looked around. I stood there. I thought, "Ok, this is being offered." Then I took it. But I felt, "NO, I have to wait for some minutes. Maybe someone will come and claim these things. I cannot simply take them and go." So, I waited maybe five minutes or more. I waited. I waited until I felt it was alright to take them. I wandered on up the hill, but kept looking back. I felt, I don't want to just take.

but then I felt, "How strange. Here I was thinking just now, whether I will ever get back to India, or what will happen. And there is Mother giving me not only the bag I wanted, but a suitcase as well." Because I had had nothing to put my clothes in. I thought then, I wonder if this means I will be out on the street altogether? If I will also lose my bed in the Salvation Army. But that is not now. I thought, thank you. I thought, I had relinquished this idea that I need a bag. I had gotten used to the idea of carrying my stuff around in a plastic bag. But Mother now gave me this handbag and a suitcase.

The point that I am coming to is that I can do anything if I remain in the moment and transcend the mind. The nature of mind is that it is in the past always. It is always somewhere, future or past, but never present. It always sees some problem, some difficulty. But in the present there is never any difficulty. It is always the mind that makes you feel this pressure. The pressure is, "what is coming? What pain will I feel now?" That pressure is only from the mind. Outside of mind there is no pressure really. You just are. You just flow, you just do thing that is in front of you and don't think of any future or past.

OM