The Heart of the Matter
August 28, 2016
A Laundry Room at Amaroo

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When I was a young man, I had a big desire to have cosmic experiences. The more cosmic they were, the better.

My assumption? That what I was experiencing, in my everyday life, wasn't quite "it" and I needed something more -- kind of like there was an extremely cool party happening somewhere else that I hadn't been invited to.

I am happy to announce that those days are over -- not because amazing experiences aren't still a good thing, but because I am coming to understand that everything is amazing, even the simplest, most mundane situations. That is, if I am in the right place to appreciate it.

Take this past week, for example, in a laundry room just 30 yards from the tent I was living in at Amaroo.

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It's a place I found myself inhabiting for hours each day since it was the only place I could find with the outlets I needed to charge my computer so I could post excerpts of Prem Rawat's talks on my blog.

It was a small room, maybe 8 x 14, with two washing machines, two dryers, a wall phone, table top, half a refrigerator, and a bunch of Australian outlets.

At first, I was cranky at having to set up shop there.

After all, I had just traveled 27 hours to experience something profound at this five-day retreat and here I was in a cold and crowded laundry room, hunting daily for an unused outlet, surrounded by people folding underwear, blow drying their hair, and asking if they could plug their iron into my already maxed out adapter.

Not exactly the scene that a younger, God-seeking version of my self would have called "cosmic."

But it was. Very much so. Allow me to explain.

You know the experience when you walk into a dark room from the outside, can't see a thing, and assume it's empty?

But if you pause a little and let your eyes adjust to the light, you soon realize that there are all kinds of things there. What seemed, just a few minutes ago, to be nothing, now reveals itself to be something. You can see.

This was precisely my experience in the laundry room.

For the first hour, it was just your basic laundry room, me impatiently waiting for my laptop to charge and enduring the sounds of somebody else's spin cycle.

But then, a curious thing happened: the laundry room became divine -- not because angels with trumpets were flying around. They weren't. But because the laundry room had morphed into something super animated, inspired, and delightful -- a classic scene out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera where everyone was perfectly playing their part.

Each day, for five days, when I wasn't listening to Prem Rawat, schmoozing, or eating, I was in the laundry room. Everything that I needed -- to know, to learn, to feel, or to see -- was happening there. Plus a hundred random acts of kindness.

Not because the room, itself, had any magical properties, but because the impact of my teacher's talks were so transforming that my experience of the room was changing before my eyes.

The first thing I noticed was that almost every person who entered the room was uncommonly at ease and relaxed, carrying out their seemingly mundane tasks with playfulness, focus, and grace.

If this had been a scene from New York, New Delhi, or Barcelona, it would have been a very different story, but it was none of those places. It was Amaroo -- the "Beautiful Place".

Spain was in the house. Italy, too. And Slovenia And Croatia. And Australia, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Brazil, and America -- all with different detergents, but the same twinkle in their eye.

The sweet feeling in the laundry room had nothing to do with what we knew about each other, but what we knew about ourselves -- the experience of what it is that all people share in common: love, gratitude, and the possibility of peace.

Yes, the washing machines were spinning and so were the dryers, but something else -- at the center of it all -- was very, very still.

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Excerpts will look something like these from 2015

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:29 AM | Comments (8)

August 19, 2016
Soaked!

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I wrote the following upon returning home from one of Prem Rawat's events, in Australia, a few years ago.

People ask me what it was like being with you 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 you said: "Get wet! Get wet!"

When the Rain Begins
Unspoken Word

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:18 PM | Comments (3)

August 12, 2016
A Sign of the Times

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Huffington Post review of SPLITTING THE ARROW
More about the book on TimelessToday

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 02:05 AM | Comments (0)

August 11, 2016
PEACE DAY IS COMING!

Peace Day is coming on September 21st -- a global phenomenon of millions of people stepping up, with one voice, to proclaim, in various ways, the need for peace on planet Earth. All around the world there will be celebrations, presentations, concerts, dances, picnics, and parties in service to peace. Online, there will be livestreams featuring a wide variety of inspiring peace expressions. One of my favorites is PeaceCast. Check out their PeaceDay promos -- in English and Spanish and Serbian.

Stay tuned! Heart of the Matter will be posting a series of updates from PeaceCast in the weeks to come.

Peace Quotes for your inspiration

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 01:43 AM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2016
Ponder This for a Moment

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PremRawat.com

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:30 AM | Comments (0)

August 09, 2016
How to Meditate



Thanks to Scott Cronin for this heads up

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:18 AM | Comments (1)

August 06, 2016
Prem Rawat's Recent Events in India with English Translation

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Chenai
Surat
Jaipur
Kolkata
New Delhi

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)

August 02, 2016
Announcing the launch of my new blog: UNSPOKEN WORD

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I am happy to announce the launch of my new blog: UNSPOKEN WORD: THE POETRY OF LIFE -- short blasts of inspiration, reflection, and gratitude accompanied by photographs, illustrations, and paintings from my Facebook friends and other unusual suspects. If you want to receive an email alert whenever there is a new post, simply subscribe (in the sidebar) and be sure to respond to the "verification" email that you will receive soon after. Enjoy!

Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at 10:53 AM | Comments (0)

Welcome to Mitch Ditkoff's blog about what's really important in this life: Peace, gratitude, love, joy, clarity, and the effort required to wake up and smell the roses. Enjoy!

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