Ishvara Das / Al: Cloning, Beyond the Ashram
Morningland is a spaceship.
We're beamed up and infected with some of the master's DNA.
We're beamed back down and left to fend for ourselves.
But while this is happening, the DNA infected cells are growing and multiplying.
In time, we awaken one day to find that we've become Donato.
Cloning has taken place.
That's one approach to understanding the experience of the disciple who has been sent away from the ashram.
What it all means is this. We leave the ashram with a bunch of experience underneath our belts. Hours and hours of stories about the master doing this, or doing that. How they taught you to think, or feel, or see, or hear, understand, be. There were testimonies of healing and classes in divine sciences, there were lodge retreats and of course years of intense work on ourselves.
The experiences that we gain in the temple, and within the ashram mean more as time goes by. Not in a nostalgic sense, but they increase in their depth of interpretation.
In fact, I think that this growth is easier outside of the temple. When we get hip to the fact that trusting ourselves is the quickest path to discovering the master within, then we can freely make life decisions that may be inconsistent with the lifestyle as taught in the temple.
The important thing has always been to trust yourself, listen to your heart, do what you feel is correct. Not necessarily what someone told you in the ashram. I spent 12 years chasing a career only because it came up in one reading in which I was told that I'd "like it." I was completely out of my element and when I finally figured this out and made some career changes, consistent with deeper internal needs, my life got 100% easier and more effective overnight.
I began to follow my heart, trust my feelings and ignore the logic of external culture. Culture could be what we're taught to want as Americans, or single people, or married people, or men, or women. But culture is also the status quo of Morningland.
External culture can pull one off their true path and make an entire life a waste. The experience of discipleship at Morningland requires many lifestyle changes ranging from vasectomies to hair tinting. Should your heart suggest otherwise, its easy to assume that there is something wrong with you. You quell these urges and live a life inconsistent with the truth in your heart.
The most interesting thing to me is that the few disciples who did, eventually stand up and express heart-felt doubts, were the same ones who ended up closest to the master. I wish that I had had that strength at the time, but I didn't understand my feelings then, and only recently have I come to understand the wisdom in trusting what my heart is comfortable with and what I'm not comfortable with as a barometer of my truth.
As I continue to trust myself deeper and deeper, I find that I'm approaching life exactly as Donato did. I find that I understand the larger significance of the teachings that came from both Donato and Sri. I find that my own words are the same as theirs, only they come out in my way, not theirs. The truth doesn't change, only its expression.
The best thing about this happening outside of Morningland, is there is no need to water down the experience or exaggerate any part of it for the sake of public relations. This is simply who I am.
I realize now that I've been infected with the master's DNA and everyday, a little bit more of the master's presence makes itself known in my life, through my actions, my thoughts, my feelings.
This whole spaceship/DNA thing may be nothing more than a creative metaphor for a lady teaching me some astrology, which I then incorporated into my life.
That's okay. It doesn't matter, really. Everything is a metaphor anyway. Perhaps the spaceship is just a metaphor for describing the fact that Morningland is a vehicle. Just like any other path to the stars...
-Al/Ishvara Das. (1978-1981)
