OK. As promised, the story of how I met my Teacher. An excerpt of a larger story. I am finding that such stories want to come out of me and one story leads to another to another, until it seems a book is writing itself.
So I will try to give you an abridged version.
1999. I had had teachers. Tibetan Buddhism is what had called me up to that point. There were some amazing teachers that I met and learned from. Yet, somehow …
I even searched for a true teacher for my soul in my dance teachers at WAAPA – yes, I did that for 2 years. But, amazingly, did not find them there. When I realised that is indeed what I was doing it became clear it was time to get off that path. Anyway, I was making a nuisance of myself by complaining about it.
I then even kind of fell in love with someone who was also a teacher to me. That was enlightening, on several levels. But that too was not it.
Back then, in my 20s, I took a lot of teachings from my dreams. I wrote a lot of them down and I was amazed recently at how many of them I had recorded and how I used them as a kind of oracle. There was a lot of chaff there, a lot of trying to understand and creating fantasies.
One night, however, I had a gem of a dream. A clear one. A way-shower dream.
I was sitting in a room with a lot of mostly middle aged men. It was a committee meeting for the local Tibetan Buddhist community. Their voices were droning on, not chanting mantras but talking about business stuff. I sat there and felt distinctly bored. In Tibetan Buddhism white scarves are used in the wongkurs, the initiations. Sitting there in that dream, someone approached me very pointedly, consciously. This person had very blue eyes. They looked at me, said my name very distinctly (Jodie, back then), and handed me a rainbow coloured scarf. Then said, “See you in ….(garble garble)”.
I woke up. In my dream state eagerness to hear, I had missed the place name! I did my best to recapture it without my mind getting in the way but the best I could come up with was Poona. Poona. Place of Osho and his ashram, India. I was planning a trip to India. I had been reading about Poona.
OK. So on the map it went.
India. 2001. I followed my nose around it. I sniffed out the trail.
My dear sister, with whom I travelled for part of the way, met me in Calcutta. We moved around, going to a few places, before heading to Poona.
In Poona, we were not interested in the ashram scene. We were there with one mission in mind: find my Teacher. So we positioned ourselves in a chai stall and waited for him to appear.
It was ridiculous and hilarious, but also I had to do it, and bless my sister for doing it with me. We sat there drinking chai and smoking cigarettes and being available for my Teacher to find me.
After 3 days of this, he didn’t show. Maybe I got the place name wrong after all. Maybe it was just a wishful thinking fantasy.
On we went, following our noses and arriving in Tiruvanamalai – the home of the ashram of saint Ramana Maharshi. Ramana. Matchmaker. The ashram at the foot of the mountain Arunachala, Shiva’s mountain.
And there I did not meet my Teacher either, but I did meet my future husband. He gave me a Sat Nam Rasayan treatment – meditative healing art of Kundalini Yoga and I heard the mantra Ong Namo for the first time. I read words in a book, about 10 spiritual bodies, numbers and Sikh gurus. Words by Shiv Charan Singh, Beant’s teacher of numerology. They struck a chord.
Longer story short, my future husband and I find ourselves and each other in Varanasi. He leaves India. I travel more, then get ready to work in London, planning to “just visit” Beant in Berlin on the way through.
Once in Berlin, I do a reccy trip to London, to visit my friend, see if it could work to save money there (find out it wouldn’t). I have a book with me, the story of the saint poet Janeshwar, which I am to deliver to Shiv Charan Singh as a gift from Beant, at his place the Kriya Centre. Walking up the street to the centre, I am inexplicably very nervous suddenly, at the thought of meeting this teacher. A voice inside me says “It’s not time yet”. He isn’t there and I am relieved and leave the book at the reception for him.
Back in Berlin, 6 weeks later: I am pregnant! Not planned, though not surprising somehow. Though I am surprised how happy I am about it. Then off to the European Yoga Festival in France.. and I tell that story HERE.
But the main thing here is, that is where, finally, I met my Teacher.
We were wandering the bazaar, meeting people, enjoying ourselves, when we came across this man with a long ginger beard and blue eyes. With a turban, of course. It was not a case of instant recognition, fall to the ground, eureka moment. It was more, in that moment and in a conversation, guided by numbers, to follow, that it gradually began to dawn.
How incredible the navigational device of the soul. The accuracy of the timing. The precision of the play. There we were. His name, Shiv Charan, meaning at the feet of Shiva. At the foot of Shiva’s mountain I heard his words for the first time. And now, in my tent at night, I can’t sleep because I know my life is, again, about to change monumentally.
It was less of a flash of light moment and more like a slow dawning. Or like some pieces of the biiiig puzzle of my life slowly shifting and falling into place.
21 years later, I am still a student of Shiv Charan Singh.
I am infinitely grateful for the magic movements of life. I’m grateful to Ramana, for he truly was the matchmaker in more ways than one – another story lies hidden like an Easter egg in that one.
Be ready to throw away the travel guide, stop googling it and go in blind. Follow your noses, people. The nose knows.
