HAFIZ: What Happens
What happens when your soul
begins to awaken your eyes
and your heart
and the cells of your body
to the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter
and probably precious tears
and a hundred sweet promises
and those heroic vows
no one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted
and amused you once tried
to be a saint.
What happens when your soul begins to awake in this world
to our deep need to love and serve the Friend?
Oh, the Beloved will send you
one of his wonderful, wild companions --
Like Hafiz.
Excerpted from I Heard God Laughing
Photo
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January 28, 2010The Mask Unmasked
Here is Jim Carrey, one of the funniest dudes in history, sharing his recent revelation about the illusory nature of thought and the true definition of spirituality as being the relieving of all suffering. The times they are a 'changin.
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January 27, 2010VIDEO: The Key
We are all so lucky to be alive -- no matter what path we walk. Everywhere, there are reminders to wake up and feel the love inside.
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January 25, 2010TPRF Makes $50,000 Donation to Haitian Relief Efforts
Within days of the earthquake in Haiti, The Prem Rawat Foundation (TPRF) made a donation of $50,000 to provide immediate food aid for survivors.
TPRF teamed up with one of its ongoing partners, Friends of the World Food Program. The World Food Program (WFP) was able to begin delivering food within 24 hours of the disaster, since it has an already-established aid operation in Haiti, long ranked as the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
With stores of ready-to-eat food and trained staff already in Haiti and in the nearby Dominican Republic, WFP has now delivered rations to over 200,000 people in and around Port-au-Prince.
The initial phase of their six-month recovery plan is to distribute one-week supplies of High Energy Biscuits, which are rich in protein, vitamins and minerals and can provide the immediate energy needed for survival. Now sixteen million Meals-Ready-to-Eat are en route from the US, Italy and Denmark, set to be distributed in the coming week to people who have no access to cooking facilities.
In addition, food kitchens are being set up in strategic locations in hospitals and schools, including in the town of Leogane, which is close to the epicenter of the quake and which suffered 90% destruction. Some are already serving nutritious hot meals to survivors -- for most their first in this very tragic week.
Less than 24 hours after the quake hit, The Prem Rawat Foundation began an ongoing fundraising campaign to help the people in Haiti. TPRF plans to continue its aid for the Haitian people to provide support and hope in their long road to recovery.
WFP Haiti photo credit: WFP/Alejandro Chicheri
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January 20, 2010Finding the Miracle
A few years ago I was invited to MC an event at the Shrine Auditorium, in LA, where Maharaji would be speaking. While I was totally thrilled to be asked, I was also totally terrified -- convinced I was the wrong choice and would be a huge disappointment.
Doing my best to ignore the sorry state of my mind, I fly to LA, and make my way to the hall. Though I am clearly not at my best, I get through the dress rehearsal, review the announcements, say hello to some old friends, and figure I'll find my groove after I have time to meditate.
I don't. It gets worse.
People are wishing me well, but I am in a well -- a well on the moon -- and the air is very thin.
A few hours pass. I take my seat. I take a breath. I study the announcements one more time and wait for my cue to go back stage.
The cue finally comes and I take my new seat, now in the wings, and listen to the wonderful sound of the hall filling up with thousands of people waiting to see Maharaji.
The backstage manager tells me the event will start in five minutes. I am still, shall we say, not on top of my game.
I find myself hoping the building will catch on fire -- anything to get me out of there.
"Two minutes," the backstage manager says.
Now I'm in BIG trouble. In two minutes I'll be walking the plank and I AM NOT READY. My eyes are open, but my heart is not.
And then, with 90 seconds to go, two extraordinary things happen to me that I will never forget.
First, I remember something Maharaji said years ago -- that human beings have two choices: to go through life gnashing their teeth and waiting for it to be over OR saying YES to life and enjoying the moment.
I choose the moment. I say YES. I embrace it all.
The second thing? I hear a few lines of Daya's Find the Miracle now being piped into the hall.
Somehow, I find the miracle. I find the place of peace within me, the place of love and happiness. Everything that was weighing me down evaporates in a heartbeat. Poof! All I'm left with is a spacious feeling of joy, light, and gratitude. I am home.
"Three, two, one" the backstage manager tells me, holding up his fingers in case I didn't hear.
I stand up. I take a few steps. I walk to the podium and begin.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:02 PM | Comments (4)
January 17, 2010Waiting
I have been a student of Prem Rawat (AKA Maharaji) since 1971. For the past 39 years, inspired by the feeling of deep peace and gladness he has awakened in me, I have been attempting -- in various unsuccessful ways -- to describe who he is.
In the beginning, my descriptions were extremely effusive. Borderline inflated, you might say, and tinged with a hint of the zealot -- not unlike the poetry of one in love for the first time and badly in need of an editor. Charming? For sure. Engaging? You bet. Attention getting? That, too. But also confusing to anyone sincerely wanting to understand what the big deal was all about.
In time, like wine, I have mellowed, no longer ruled by the need to label, define, and explain. It's a game I choose not to play any more. What does Maharaji say when people ask him who he is? "Just a human being" -- a mirror that helps people see their true reflection at that moment in time.
This has been my experience completely. Allow me to be more specific...
The year was 1983 and I was living in Los Angeles. Although I had enjoyed some wonderfully casual moments with Maharaji throughout the years, most of my contact with him had been at big programs, him on stage, me straining to see from the mezzanine, wondering how to get a better seat. Like most of his students I wanted "special" time with him, away from the crowds.
And so when a friend asked me to be a waiter at a party Maharaji was throwing for his neighbors in Malibu I jumped at the chance. I rented the outfit. I shined my shoes. I showed up early. Nobody but my mother could have guessed I wasn't a waiter by profession.
And then, with a signal from the caterer, my adventure began -- silver tray of hors d'oeuvres in my left hand -- spreading out with the rest of the waiters among the guests, each according to our designated areas.
The first thing I saw was Maharaji. Technically speaking, he wasn't in my "area," but since none of the other waiters were approaching him, I decided to fill the void. This was my chance, I reasoned -- especially since I hadn't talked to him for three years.
"Hors d'oeuvre?" I asked, extending my tray of goodies in his direction.
Maharaji pulled his head back, looked away, and extended his hand in a slow, downward motion as if to say, "Keep that thing away from me!"
I smiled and continued on my way, wondering if his refusal had any kind of cosmic significance. Was it me or the pizza puffs? Was he seeing some deep, ancient flaw in me? Was I hopelessly uncool?
Fortunately, the day was too beautiful to obsess on my thoughts for long and so I kept moving until I located my area in the field behind his house.
From where I was now positioned, there were absolutely no sight lines to the party, no chance to see, I thought, Maharaji. The only thing interesting to look at was the ocean and the sky.
And so it was: Every 10 minutes or so a few guests would make their way back to my area, surprised to see a waiter, umbrella in one hand, tray in the other, standing in a field so far from the party.
It took about ten guests to empty my tray. After that I would head back to the waiters' shed for refills. This must have happened at least 20 times during the day and each time it did, Maharaji would somehow enter my field of vision -- standing, talking, eating, walking, and doing all the things that a person does at a party. And though I could never predict what he was going to be doing when I saw him, I could predict the feeling I would have.
"Jazzed" is how I would refer to it. Pumped. Buzzed. Blissed. I was a curious hybrid of boy seeing Santa and a Grateful Dead groupie with a lifetime back stage pass. "It's "him," I would think to myself again and again. "Him!"
This little scene played itself out several times during the day. I could have gone on like this forever. But then something curious happened.
About the 20th time I saw him, I felt nothing. 
Zero. Nada. Zilch. An unwelcome sense of normalcy began to take me over. Seeing him was suddenly no big deal. I wasn't awed. I wasn't amazed. Neither was I captivated, astounded, excited, glad, grateful, inspired, delighted, or energized. I wasn't anything.
My concept of Maharaji was being deconstructed before my eyes. My "mental model" wasn't working. Something I had counted on for years -- that seeing him would always be uplifting -- was no longer operational.
Was it him? Was it me? Was it both of us? Neither? Something else?
One conclusion I could have easily drawn was that Maharaji was nothing special -- a Wizard of Oz made great only by my own neurotic projections. Yes, if I wanted proof that he was nothing but my own self-invented hype, now I had it. But having received Knowledge from him 12 years earlier and having experienced the many benefits of his guidance in my life, I could not bail out at such a simplistic conclusion.
Something else was clearly going on.
Looking back, my 'buzzless' series of waitering moments at Maharaji's party felt like the unceremonial end of my extended honeymoon with him -- that formerly delightful time of spiritual romance in which I had been protected from (or blinded to) the moments in which one's "significant other" does not appear very extraordinary.
In marriages, this either marks the beginning or the end of the painful acceptance of the apparent mundane -- the time when the husband no longer seems heroic and the wife is no longer recognized as goddess.
It was confronting to admit it, but the part of my relationship to Maharaji that I had fabricated was becoming undone. Without knowing it, I had become a fan and a groupie in addition to being a student. Like my previous strategy in my personal life of creating short-term love affairs to keep me feeling studly, I had been orchestrating my relationship with Maharaji to provide well-timed payoffs. Did it work? Yes it did. But it went only so far.
I was not alone.
In my experience, lots of Maharaji's students have set him up in this way. Ruled by the very human need to define and categorize, we turned him into many things: a superstar, a hero, an Avatar, an anthropomorphized version of our own private God -- projecting all kinds of images on him, not unlike small children do with their parents or teachers.
Inevitably, this leads to disappointment. Which leads to doubt. Which leads to anger. And it is this anger, born from the gap between who he is and who we imagine him to be, that is often the reason why some students of Maharaji eventually reject him. "He is not who I thought he was," they claim. And of course it is true, because, in many ways, it is impossible to know Maharaji (or anyone else for that matter) through the medium of thought.
More relationships are ruined, I believe, by expectations than by anything else.
Husbands do it to their wives. Wives do it to their husbands. Parents do it to their kids. The Master/Student relationship is no exception. Somehow we get it into our heads that a Master has to be a certain way.
Casting directors in our own "B" movie, we patch together our favorite stereotypes and create a picture of how the Master should be -- and then proceed to compare everything he does to that picture.
Of course, we're going to be disappointed. How could it be any other way?
The alternative? Live and let live. Be who you are and let Maharaji be who he is. Give up the addiction to having everyone and everything fit the Procrustean bed of your spiritualized imagination.
Allow the simplicity of love to be the fulcrum around which your life revolves. Appreciate each breath. Be grateful. Live and let live. Savor the opportunity to be alive and enjoy all the many blessings in your life. Take off the rose-colored glasses and those rose-colored explanations. You don't need them anymore.
PS: If you like this story, you'll probably like this one, too, one more waiter experience -- 14 years later in Amaroo.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:15 PM | Comments (6)
January 13, 2010Soaked!
People ask me what it was like
being with Maharaji
five days in a row.
Here's what I tell them:
It was like spinning around in a monsoon, cup in hand,
trying to catch the rain.
Every time I noticed my cup was full,
I opened my mouth to sing,
but my mouth filled up with water.
I gulped, I drank,
I bailed my boat of joy.
Somehow,
in between the tidal waves of love
and my odd little habit of trying to understand
what in the world was going on,
I heard what he said:
"Get wet! Get wet!"
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:18 PM | Comments (3)
January 11, 2010A Lulu of a Contest
OK, it's contest time!
I just found out from my publisher (www.Lulu.com) that they are sponsoring a contest for their authors. It's a simple deal. The author who sells the most copies of his/her book in January wins $1,500. Second place is $750. Third place is $500.
All you need to do is buy a copy for $14.97 + shipping. If I win, I'll donate the prize money to TPRF, a non-profit humanitarian foundation. Everyone wins! You in?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:16 PM | Comments (1)
January 10, 2010Making Room for Rumi
The first time I heard Coleman Barks read Rumi I was baffled. Somehow, a Southern accent and Rumi's timeless poetry didn't seem to go together. But they do. Barks has done wonders to get Rumi's souful wisdom into the world marketplace. His reading has grit, gravitas, and good vibes. Enjoy!
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Follow Your Bliss
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January 09, 2010The 8 Irresistible Principles of Fun
I'm sure you've heard the expression, "Are we having fun yet?" Well, that's what the flash animation video below is all about -- the eight irresistible principles of fun done in time to Johann Strauss' The Blue Danube Waltz. Inspiring. Cool. And yes, fun!
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 05:51 PM | Comments (5)
January 08, 2010Looking for the Real
See that guy to your left?
Looks a little intense, eh? Must be on some kind of spiritual trip. Or maybe he's just protein deficient. I'm guessing he's into Eastern things. Probably reads the Bhagavad-Gita and doesn't make enough to pay taxes. Maybe he lives in a tent. Fruitarian? Macrobiotic? I really don't know for sure.
Wait a minute! That's me! 36 years ago. (Now you know why my parents were so freaked out when I was in my 20's.)
After all, I was their golden boy, the carrier of the family name, the hope for the future. According to everyone, I was supposed to be a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist. Maybe even a rabbi.
I coulda been a contender.
What happened? Why the long hair, the sallow cheeks, the penetrating I-can-outstare-anyone look?
Growing up in the suburbs of New York, you'd never think I would have gone off what some people referred to as the "deep end."
After all, I had it good. I had my own room, my own TV, a good looking girlfriend, a dog, excellent grades, played varsity basketball, and went to summer camp. And though my father, unlike Buddha's, was not the King, he had enough money to send me to a fine college -- where I majored in English and existential despair.
No matter. Still, I graduated with honors and went on to graduate school. Not in medicine, law, teeth, or the Talmud -- but poetry.
So there I was, in some fancy-schmancy Ivy League grad school -- hair and shadow growing longer by the day, when I get this invitation to an ultra hip, faculty-student party -- the kind where everyone is either drunk or stoned. Or both.
Feeling especially bold that night, I approached each of my professors and asked a simple question: "If you could be anywhere on Earth, at this precise moment, where would it be?"
Each of them, glad for the audience, began waxing poetic on their favorite place -- the nearest of which was 2,000 miles away.
Doh! No one wanted to be where they were! Everyone wanted to be somewhere else!
And me, the wise-ass, longhair, full of poetic-potential, Vietnam-phobic, draft-deferred 22-year old enduring Beowulf, Wallace Stevens, and iambic pentameter homework assignments was aspiring to be one of them?
I saw the future and it wasn't pretty.
I'd be 45, bearded, smoking a pipe, sitting in this same room being asked by my much younger alter ego where I wanted to be at that moment in time and it was going to be some place very far away.
Ouch!
Enough said. I decided to quit.
Thus began a series of adventures and accompanying odd jobs "beneath my station" that left my mother somewhat speechless around the canasta table -- 
dish washer, waiter, cook, hotel desk clerk, house painter, day care teacher, and food stamp collector.
Thirsty for less, I moved to an island in the ocean -- a pristine place where I could really get away from it all.
And so I did.
I grew vegetables. I grew a beard. I grew further disillusioned with "the world." I fasted. I chanted. I prayed. I read the Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, the Aquarian Gospel, the Zen Teachings of Huang Po, the Old Testament, the collected writings of Chuang Tzu, Meher Baba's discourses, the Life of Milarepa, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and anything else that addressed what life was all about.
I was living in paradise, but I wasn't happy. Not even close. To the casual observer, I had it all -- the house in the country, the girlfriend, the dog, the friends, the fresh baked bread, the mellow job on a 200 acre farm, but it wasn't enough.
I plastered my house with pictures of all the enlightened beings I could find -- Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Shiva, and Meher Baba. I prayed to them all.
And then I got the letter -- the letter from my best friend, Ed.
Ed was the real deal -- a practicing Zen Buddhist, a calligrapher -- a kind of spiritual big brother to me. Five years older (and maybe several lifetimes, too), Ed was deep, soulful, authentic, and cool.
He was also a minimalist. Preferred one flower in a vase, to many. Was a man of few words. Had a huge BS detector and always had a twinkle in his eye. A full tilt individual, he was not the easily influenced kind. Nor was he a joiner of anything that smacked of group think.
I trusted him.
Which is why I was so intrigued to get a letter from him one fine Summer day. Ed, the man of few words, had a lot to say in this missive. Apparently, since the last time I'd seen him, he'd "received Knowledge" from a 13 year old "boy Guru" from India -- someone named Maharaji.
Hmmm...
The first thing I did, after reading the letter, was stuff it in a drawer. Something in me knew the jig was up -- that all my seeking was about to come to an end. But I didn't want to give it up. I liked seeking. Seeking was cool. Seeking was exciting. Seeking was spiritual... familiar.. and a proven way to pick up chicks. Seeking gave me an identity -- the seeker.
Finding, on the other hand, was... well... confronting.
Flash back to high school: Seeking is to dating as finding is to... um... er... uh... marriage!
MARRIAGE! Help! Who, in their right mind, wanted to get married? Certainly, not me. Marriage was so... so... final... so entrapping... so end of the line.
And so I procrastinated as best I could.
I knew, in my gut, that Ed's letter was a direct response to a deep prayer within me, but the immediacy of it all made me anxious -- like when a really good teacher called me to the front of the room and asked questions I didn't know the answers to.
But Ed was relentless. He was not about to concede to my procrastination. Two weeks later he called me, inviting me to visit for the weekend.
I went.
The first thing I noticed in Ed's apartment was a framed picture of Maharaji. I found it odd -- especially since my image of "The Guru" was very different than the one in Ed's frame. Where were the sallow cheeks? Where was the long white hair? The robes? The ancient look in the deep-set eyes as if to say: 
"Come my son, I know you have waited lifetimes for me to incarnate, and here I am -- crossing the universe to come for one of my favorite (and most humble) disciples of all time."
In reality, the picture of Maharaji in Ed's apartment looked more like a second string fullback for a little known high school in New Jersey. "That's the Guru?" I thought to myself. "That's the guy who's created such a stir?"
It made no sense.
Ed, God bless him, didn't care in the least. He just kept on talking and laughing and smiling. When we went for a walk, I couldn't keep up with him. He was a ball of fire -- radiant, glowing, buoyant, alive. Gone was the Zen minimalist shtick. Gone was the dude who mindfully chewed his rice 100 times before swallowing. In its place? Radiant, child-like wonder. Fun. Mojo. Elan. And something neither of us had talked about in any of our esoteric conversations -- happiness.
When I returned to my home on the island, I had a lot to think about.
Could it be? Could this young boy from India be the ONE (at least for me, that is)? Could all of my chanting and praying and fasting and yoga and reading and attempts to meditate have invoked this moment in time? Was Maharaji's appearance on the scene in direct response to my inner calling?
I didn't have to wait long for the answer.
Two weeks later Ed called to tell me that one of Maharaji's emissaries was going to be in Boston and that, if I wanted to receive Knowledge, I should come. The cost? Nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. Ed explained there was no charge because what I was about to receive I already had.
Sounded good to me.
I went. I asked. I received.
It was, looking back, the most extraordinary experience of my life. Like coming home. Like waking up. Like discovering I was made of pure love. Everything became so simple, so perfect, so full of essence, energy, and peace.
I could have pulled Redwood trees from the ground.
These, of course, are only words. If you ask a hundred different people who have received Knowledge (and practiced it), you'll probably hear a hundred different descriptions. But all of them will be spoken with the kind of feeling that will catch your attention.
What I'm trying to stay is this:
What you are looking for is within you.
Your thirst to experience this will guide you on your way.
What you will get guided to will be a direct response to your thirst.
You will need to trust your thirst and that which it guides you to (even if I'm not supposed to end this sentence with a preposition.)
For me, this thirst led me to Maharaji and his gift of Knowledge. His invitation is the same now as it was 39 years ago. He's still here. And so are you.
Now that you know, what do you want to do? It's your move.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:01 AM | Comments (5)
January 06, 2010Written in the Sands of Time
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Heart of the Matter videos
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January 04, 2010Finding Home
When I was a small boy, I used to look up at the sky a lot, sigh, and think one basic thought: "I want to go home."
Though my parents tried their best to love me (allowance! grilled cheese! dog!)I was sure I came from someplace else. I felt like an orphan.
It wasn't that I was unhappy. I wasn't. i just felt displaced -- absolutely sure that my real home was very faraway.
As I grew up and translated my boyish sky-prayers into a more classical spiritual quest, I began to notice a pattern in the books I was reading.
Beyond the jargon and the all too common habit of implying that their way was the only way, a central theme was emerging -- the home I was looking for was within me.
My seemingly unquenchable thirst to have the experience of arriving was not going to be a matter of traveling to exotic places worthy of my pilgrimage. It was going to be a matter of turning within.
But how? How does one turn within?
Well, that's what my teacher, Maharaji, was (and still is) revealing. In a very simple way, he has a knack for helping people experience their true home.
Yes, home is where the heart is, but where is the heart?
That is the quest. And that is also the destination.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)
January 03, 2010The Glowing Ember of Your Heart
Everybody I know has something within them -- ember-like and glowing -- that is completely capable of flaming up at at any given moment.
This "something" has been called many things by many people throughout the ages, but it does not need a name to give off light.
Primal, elemental, and pure, it is the innate potential every human being has to be fully alive.
What fans the flame of this unnameable ember varies from person to person, but its essence is the same: the power to ignite a transcendental sense of wholeness, goodness, and joy.
Some people have this moment once in their lives. Some have it every day.
Here's my New Year's wish for you: Find that which fans the glowing ember of your heart. And when you do, give thanks.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:11 PM | Comments (1)
May I Stay Here Forever
May I stay here forever
in this perfect place of peace with you --
the sacred space
between in breath and out,
timeless moment
before the need for anything has risen,
Buddha enjoying his late afternoon nap
with no one around
to extract any meaning from it.
First, there is a breath.
Then, there is a second.
This is how I begin my long walk with you by the water's edge,
cool white sand beneath both our feet.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)
January 02, 2010The Way of Knowledge
Thanks to Richard Bann
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January 01, 2010A Place That Is Timeless
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