There Is a Poem Within This Poem
There is a poem
within this poem
and I want you to find it.
If you say YES, you will.
If you say NO, you won't.
That's how simple
the whole thing is.
But if you look,
you will not see it.
If you listen, you will hear
only the sound of a cello in the distance.
Think of this poem, if you like,
as what remains after everyone is gone,
the perfume of your first lover,
remembering you, with a slow smile.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:09 AM | Comments (1)
May 25, 2011Why Are They Having Such a Good Time?
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2011Why Is This Woman Smiling?
1. Did she just get a job promotion?
2. Did her boyfriend just propose to her?
3. Did she just get her nose pierced?
4. Did she just listen to Prem Rawat in Barcelona on April 3?
(HINT: It's not 1, 2 or 3)
Here's what he said
More
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
May 22, 2011A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words
People listening to Maharaji speak at an event in Buenos Aires, April 23, 2011.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:47 PM | Comments (1)
May 20, 2011You Are Not a Philosophy
"You are not a philosophy. You can think about philosophy, you can listen to philosophy, you can comment about philosophy, but you are not a philosophy. You are something living, existing, breathing, changing, evolving. A human being. You're not a theory. You're not a possibility. You exist." - Maharaji, 4/24/11, Buenos Aires
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:52 PM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2011TPRF Receives Highest Rating
Charity Navigator, considered America's premier evaluator of US non-profit organizations, has once again awarded TPRF (The Prem Rawat Foundation) their highest rating of 4 stars.
The Charity Navigator rating system includes an analysis of how efficiently organizations use their support and how well they are growing their services over time.
This is the third consecutive Four Stars award for TPRF.
Ken Berger, President of Charity Navigator, wrote to Linda Pascotto, President of TPRF, that "Only 13% of the charities we rate have received at least 3 consecutive 4-star evaluations, indicating that The Prem Rawat Foundation consistently executes its mission in a fiscally responsible way, and outperforms most other charities in America. This exceptional designation from Charity Navigator differentiates The Prem Rawat Foundation from its peers and demonstrates to the public it is worthy of their trust."
That TPRF consistently receives such a high rating is largely due to the capable and generous donation of time and expertise by volunteers on several continents.
This unusual level of support is key to the Foundation's ability to keep overhead costs at a minimum and efficiency at such a high level.
More and more people are becoming aware of TPRF's unique work of addressing the essential human needs of food, water, and peace and are trusting TPRF to use their donations effectively and efficiently.
$130K raised for Japan
TPRF work in prisons
Relief for war-torn areas
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Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2011Long Before Words
Being of the Jewish persuasion, I'm not exactly the kind of person given to confession, but allow me the ecumenical luxury of confessing at least one thing in this first paragraph of what may well turn out to be the Mahabharata of blog postings:
Writing about Maharaji and the gift that he offers is not easy.
It's not easy for a few reasons.
First off, what I want to say existed long before words -- long before nouns and verbs and the leaky vessels we construct to float our shaky boats of babble.
Secondly, words are approximations of the real thing at best. Like menus, they indicate something's cooking in the kitchen, but they are not the food itself.
And thirdly, the dog ate my homework.
I don't know how it works, but there are decades of my life I can barely remember, but seconds with Maharaji that remain a vast eternity, indelibly impressed on my heart like some kind of rock 'n roll Rosetta stone.
I never laugh so hard or cry so long as when I'm in his company. I never feel so good.
The first time I heard about Maharaji, I was both ecstatic and afraid -- ecstatic at the thought I might finally experience what I'd been born for -- afraid that somehow, grand impostor that I was, I would be the only person on the face of the Earth not to get it.
Forget it. I got it.
Yes, that moment happened -- the moment of ooooooh -- the moment of aaaaaah -- the moment of finally coming into my own after years of imagining my own was someplace far away -- in a forest, cave, or future lifetime.
What has he taught me? How to wake up -- and stay awake. How to appreciate. How to feel.
What Maharaji offers is not so much a teaching as it is transportation to the place we've either been seeking our entire life or have given up on long ago -- the place of no judgment, the place of no doubt, the place of no worry, no fear, no problem.
Here! The place of remembering. And what we remember here is love -- plain and simple.
For love is the name of the game, no matter how we play it.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 09:46 PM | Comments (3)
May 08, 2011Thankfulness Is a State of Being
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 04:37 AM | Comments (0)
May 07, 2011Pass the Bus
Click here
for a new
posting of mine
just published on the
Words of Peace Global
blog.
It's all about
a moment
most of us experience
when we think too much
or inaccurately
about what's really happening,
a trick of the mind
in which we momentarily
forget
the beautiful place
of ease and love
inside.
Illustration: Sara Shaffer
More from the wopg blog
(click and scroll)
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:21 PM | Comments (1)
May 05, 2011Waiting
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've 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 he was throwing for his neighbors 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 describe 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.
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Another waitering experience
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 11:15 PM | Comments (4)
May 01, 2011Just to Put Things in Perspective
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:55 PM | Comments (0)
