The Gospel According to Eric

As I sit nine stories up on the rooftop of a prestigious hotel in Chennai, India, eating an amazing Mezza Platter and Aqua Salad along with a “detox” drink, the gentle breeze moving through my hair, keeping the sweat from the heat of the day out of my eyes, I smile at the stern law of causation: we reap what we sow and we sow what we reap.

Here I sit poolside, and below me is filth and starvation. Without understanding what the world is and how it works, I would be left crippled in despair at what my eyes reveal to me, a world that is both so cruel and yet so kind. Instead, I marvel in the ultimate knowledge, that I am not the man who sits perched up in a lounge chair and below me, they are not the poor who lay on the hot concrete as their bed. 

We are both the Self and we are both suffering greatly as we are lost in our ignorance. I earned my seat from all the choices I have made. They have earned their seat by their actions. We both sit ultimately in the same position, as we are lost in a world that only exists out of our illusions, confusions and delusions that stem from the misapprehension of our true identity.

I befriended the manager of the apartments where a few of us devotees are staying, and he insisted that I come to his home.

So my brother, Justin, and I ventured off in a rickshaw to his home to meet his son and his wife.  He was so  proud of his tiny one-bedroom unit, which sat on top of a street filled with noise, pollution and unbearable stench.

He insisted on giving us a present because in India the guest is god, and we did him a huge blessing by visiting his home.  Do I even bother discussing that philosophy versus the inconvenience most of us feel when someone is in our home? 

Needless to say, that little experience was truly a gift that he gave to us.  My wife and I have guests all the time. In fact, our home is like a hotel – people coming in and out, but we always feel we are being of service and not the receiver of the gift.

What I experienced today brought home everything Swamiji has taught me: the gift is in the giving… there has to be someone to “give to” in order to give. Therefore, the giver is grateful to the recipient for allowing them to do what brings the most satisfaction in life, giving!

I was left today with this thought, or I should say this question: Eric, are you involved in what you see in the world or involved in what is the source that makes you see? 

Am I involved in thought, perception and emotion, or involved in that which enlivens my thoughts, perceptions and emotions?  Have you ever asked yourself these questions? 

Your answer will reveal to you where you are and why I have my answer….

Peace, EP

The Ultimate Ceremony

Since February marks the month of love, thanks to a great marketing scheme known as Valentine’s Day, I would like to share with you a wonderful experience I recently had, co-officiating at a wedding.

A wedding at its heart is a uniting between two people, and the ultimate in ceremony.  I could talk about how today, weddings become about everyone else but the couple.  Or how they are about everything else, except the ceremony.  Families battling to get what they want or who they want, but why talk about that insanity? 

My recent experience featured a couple who made their wedding ceremony truly theirs.  They accommodated family and guests but never at the expense of their beliefs and the space they wanted to create to seal their commitment to one another.

I cannot begin to explain how profound it was for me to be so close to them at that moment, but I will try.  As I watched them, I realized that everything the two of them had ever done had led them to this moment.  

I did have the honor of knowing the bride, Leah, since birth; she is my 1^st cousin on my mother’s side.  I remembered random moments of Leah in her parents’ kitchen laughing; sitting in the back seat of a car; playing on the beach; all these moments leading up to this one moment that will define a part of her forever.  I looked at Fane, her husband, and not needing to know his history, I knew it had led him to her. 

Watching them look at each other, I saw them recognize the miracle in finding each other. I witnessed them “seeing” one another.  It is a look that cannot be described and it blew me away. In days to come, that look may never be recaptured. It may become clouded by life and all of its challenges. But it will never be forgotten.  For if they can remember it, then they will always be together.   

Parties, presents and hoopla are great – the problem is at the time when a couple should be preparing themselves for a life commitment, their focus is on the party!  Aside from your child’s birth, there is no greater moment and nothing as powerful as the moment you are standing beside your partner, looking into their eyes, making a lifelong promise.  Everything leading up to that moment has to be in preparation for it, so that one can live up to the promise they are making.   Sometimes the only thing that can hold together a marriage is that single moment shared together.  You do not want to miss it or obscure it.

This couple and their wedding,  perfectly prepared by themselves, executing with precision the environment they envisioned for their moment of truth.  They personalized the most personal experience that is done publicly. 

A marriage needs a witness only because of this magical law of nature: “The observer changes the observed”. Everything we do, with a witness present, makes us more attentive, more aware and more sensitive to our actions. 

Therefore, a witness for a couple getting married helps work the couple into a heightened state of awareness that they need when making a life commitment.  I cannot begin to explain how profound it was for me to be so close to them at that moment.  

A wedding ceremony has been a practice throughout the history of man.  We seem to have an inherent need to celebrate, articulate, and consecrate to help assimilate the moments and events that are important to us.  Sometimes, yes, we make too big a deal about things – but not when it comes to marriage. 

Marriage IS a big deal; make a big deal out of it! Take the time to prepare yourself, focus on the eye contact shared during your ceremony.  Soak in every minute and hold on tight – you are in for the ride of your life!

While you are on that ride, you will need a place to go back to in order to ground yourself.  You will go back to your ceremony and the clarity you had at that moment. It is that clarity and that pledge to one another that gets you through anything, IF you have this insight and knowledge at the time you say “I do”.

Beyond the wedding, vows and preparation, we must understand that if we do not know what love is, any and all relationships will be transitory, at best.

Know that love is sacrificial not preferential. Love is universal and not unilateral. Love is a permanent state of mind, not a temporary emotion. 

It is the life’s work for all of us to love. If we love in this way, the heaven we all are looking for will be right here on Earth! 

Peace, EP