A new day

Today I woke up and felt a new thing. Somehow in the night I was rested. After the chaotic emotional ride that was yesterday and having somehow resisted the temptation to break out and run, I was calm and somehow more in control. The roller coaster had slowed down a bit.

I had gone to bed after putting cream all over my skin from the neck down to the soles of the feet. The doctor gave me this prescription and I read there that it is to get rid of scabies. I must say, all this is quite repulsive. I felt this,under the skin on my backside, there is this hardness. It is the human equivalent of mange I think. I remembered this feeling of the skin from the dog Alokh, who died at ashram last year.

So, I woke up around 2:00 a.m. and thought again, what use am I to society, I am just a parasite. But then I thought, "No, I can pray for others." Then a voice said, "Then get up and pray." But I did not. I did not get up until 4:00 a.m. I had gone to bed quite early, so I had slept at least 9 hours. I did then get up and took my bath. I wandered through the dorm, stopping in front of each bed as I brushed my teeth, repeating a mantra for each inhabitant. I tried then not to be so obvious. I think they might be frightened to wake up and see me standing there over them, fully dressed with this toothbrush in my mouth at 4 a.m.

After bathing etc I sat and sorted my papers and read some job descriptions that I found on the table in the day room. I organized my purse and got everything ready, tried to make some kind of a plan for the day. The thing that frightens me most is not having any plan, not knowing what to do, being confused. But somehow, it seemed that this was not as critical.

what I wanted to say more than anything is that the feeling of being identified with all this trouble was dissipating. I felt, this happened, this is in the past, now we move forward from here. For whatever reason, God created me like this. I have been like this. But somehow it seemed I would be able to transcend this. This is just gunatic, it is just tamas. I can go beyond it. It seemed possible. Then I ate breakfast.

I remember before going downstairs, someone was knocking at the dorm door to get in. I started to get up, but the non-pregnant pregnant woman stopped me. She said, "No, they will write you up for that." I felt, "Thank you". That is a first. Often I feel this anger when someone corrects me, but I really felt, this is Mother telling me how to behave. I felt love. I felt loved.

Then a few minutes later, I said thank you to her, and she took me out and showed me the sign on the dorm door and explained in detail. It was good, I felt loved by her, I felt loved by myself. I felt love everywhere.

At breakfast she offered me biscuits she did not want to eat and I took them. I did not feel repulsion. But when I went to eat them, I had to stop. There was then too much tamasic energy in the food and I had had enough of that.

I went out and sat in the park and finally, after so many months, chanted the Bhagavad Gita from start to finish. I felt all this tamas coming up. Squatting there, Indian style, I almost fell asleep after 2nd chapter. I was totally aware, but body was sleeping. I awoke then again and chanted, I forced myself to chant to the end and not judge.

Mind was going everywhere, but I finished it. Then I went up to have the TB test read by the nurse at the clinic.

After that I felt, I had felt all morning, now you will seriuosly look for a job, something I have perhaps never done. and I did not feel any fear about doing it either.

I wanted to call the place about the medical testing, but then I realized, "No, I don't want to lie about my address." If I lie, I am closing doors. I cannot do that.

OM

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There is a sense in me now, this is all not me. It's just the gunas. I don't know where this comes from. I can only say it is purely grace. All the pain I experienced as a result of the recent attachment to this young man is gone. I don't feel helpless anymore. I don't know what happened. I felt love from this person. That helped perhaps a grea deal. I felt only love. He was patient, he put up with a lot. I was very impulsive. I was completely crazy, even. I was blown about by the mind, first one way, then another. The events of the past week went through my mind today. I did not feel any shame. I only felt compassion for the person that got dragged into the vortex with me.

It seems now amazing to me how Mother Prakriti works, how she moves about the pieces on the board, just like Sri Aurobindo said, "through the ego of the jiva in the lower nature". The lower nature did this thing and that. I was helpless, a puppet. I just watched it happening. I was actually in the lower nature much of the time it was happening. That was the pain. The pain was this identification with the mental. If there is no identification with the mental, there is no pain. But when you are identified there will definitely be pain.

Consider what happened. I was trapped, stuck. I had tried to leave several times, but I had had no success. I had even walked out several times, out of that house in Fort Wayne, away from that man, Brian, without any money, and almost, almost I had left for good, but every time I had been trapped and had gone back.

Then Mother created this opportunity, she created this with this young man to come and take me, and then she created all this confusion in my system to make it happen. It was so painful, but it worked. She got me out. Then there was the pain of being here in the first moment, but I realized, it is only attachemtn to a place. All pain comes only from this tamasic attachment. only.