One of the things that I would like to consider today is what is that force, that energy, that consciousness, that propels us to seek greater knowledge? What is the power and desire that propels us to seek to express greater love?  I was contemplating this and I found myself being drawn to someone that you know I'm very fond of: Saint Teresa of Avila. But I also found myself thinking that perhaps it is sometimes hard for us to relate to a historical figure, because we can find ourselves putting up a separation by saying, “How can I relate to her life because she lived so long ago? She didn't have to deal with the contemporary issues that I have.” 

I found myself being called to look at some people in our contemporary life, and there are many that are leading extraordinary lives. One time when I was channel-surfing I came across Mother Angelica. While her message is not necessarily something that I can totally relate to because her tradition is different from mine, she had a certain energy, a power of force, a sincerity that attracted me to her. When I Googled her she came up in Catholicism as one of a hundred contemporary figures that have affected that tradition dramatically. I also came across a biography of her life, and so I started reading about her[i].  

This is a woman that was born in the 1920’s, in a very poor area of Canton, Ohio. She was born to an immigrant family that was very much under the horror of poverty. Her mother was born in the United States; her father was entrenched in criminal activity. Shortly after her birth her father started roaming about and was unavailable to the family. Ultimately her mother divorced him when the child, Rita, was six. She grew up in a household where her mother suffered from significant bouts of depression and was on the verge of nervous breakdowns more than once, requiring institutionalization.  Rita became her mother’s caretaker. In addition to this, she herself had significant health issues. 

Now you would like to think that she was able to find solace in her community parish, but that was not true. Because her mother was divorced, the nuns in the parish where she had started school rejected her, and subsequently she moved to a public school. She was very bright but she had trouble in school, not only because was she trying to take care of her mother and her family situation, but she also needed to find work to earn extra money because her father, while being ordered by the court to pay support, was not doing so. 

By the time Rita graduated from high school she had such a debilitating digestive condition that she lost a significant amount of weight. By happenstance her mother was on a bus and talked to a woman who spoke of someone who was a healer, and so Rita’s mother took her to this woman. This woman was a Stigmata. For those who don’t know, a Stigmata is someone who at certain times will go into an ecstatic trance and will actually bleed from their head, their hands and their feet, depending on the degree of the embracing of the stigmata. This woman subsequently had a huge impact on Rita. She herself had suffered significant health issues and while she was hospitalized she had a spiritual encounter that subsequently led to this lifestyle. Rita did achieve a significant level of healing through this woman and this was a turning point for her, because up to that point she really didn't have a whole lot of use for faith.  

Rita started something akin to an apprenticeship with this woman. And I need to say this: this woman also lived in a poor part of town, and there would be literally hundreds of people that would line up and walk through the house just to have contact with her and to achieve a healing. This association changed Rita and she decided that her calling was to become the bride of the Christ. She also recognized that her mother would be completely unwilling to separate herself from Rita. There was no way her mother was going to let her become the bride of Christ, or the bride of anybody else, if she had her way. She wasn’t going to let Rita leave home - she needed her too desperately - and Rita felt a huge obligation to her mother. This was someone who loved her, who cared for her, and who clearly needed her, and yet this drive, this seeking, pushed her on.

She could not go into teaching because of her poor school grades, and so she went to the local bishop and was given permission to join a contemplative order in Cleveland. At the age of 21 she snuck out of the house with the help of her employer and joined the contemplative order. 

Now you would like to think at this point that things started to improve for Rita, but this really wasn't true. She had a hugely difficult time in this order, in part because of her health issues because it was difficult for her to kneel, but also because of her temperament. She had a certain level of “attitude” as we would call it today, and this didn’t go over well. But there was her calling that pushed her beyond her present circumstances, pushed her out of her comfort zone, and that charged her, despite her discomfort, to continue this process of transformation.  And it wasn't that she felt, “I’m here, I’ve made my bed, and I have to lie in it.”  She knew at any given time that not only could she leave, but that her family would be thrilled if she did. And as I said, this was not a comfortable situation for her, she wasn't getting any accolades, and it was a very strict order. But there was something that pushed her on. As the story is told she experienced miraculous healings, and yet she was always struggling with her health, and she had huge difficulties in the order with some of the other nuns. I had always assumed that the church paid for nuns’ accommodations, but this did not happen. An order of nuns has to take care of itself.  They have to find the financial means to establish their own property, and they continue to pay for their cost of living. 

In one of her visions Sister Rita was called to do something that was pretty radical, which was that she was asked to lead an order in Alabama. Now there are not a whole lot of Catholics in Alabama. This is the Bible belt, and in this Bible belt there are about two per cent Catholics. Not only that, but in her vision of going to Alabama she was told to pray for the blacks and the disenfranchised, in Birmingham no less, just as the attempt for integration was starting to take them to a boiling point.  On top of that she had to convince her Mother Superior to let her take a group of some of the best nuns down to Alabama - not to mention all of the other people she had to convince - and start a contemplative order, praying for black people, as a Catholic, in the middle of a Bible group that would just as soon shoot her as look at her – which by the way they did. They shot at her several times; didn’t hit her, but shot at her. Now I’m not saying that there were not other people who were glad to see her come, but I need to tell you that the greater tide was not exactly throwing roses in her path. Yet there she was. 

Now she had to raise money, and one of the things she did was to establish a business selling fishing lures -- in the context of being a contemplative order. They could not just sit around making fishing lures all day, but there was a three-hour time period during the  day in which they were allowed to do this particular work that would generate an income from the outside. When they were settled in Alabama the Order sold bags of peanuts. I’m telling you a true story, I’m not making this up; you can read the book. This woman was acting with a huge level of faith, the faith that called her to do something extraordinary – and the extraordinary part was that she followed her faith. Think about what I just said: she was called by her faith to do something extraordinary. I like the story because it demonstrates someone who was willing to live her faith, in extraordinary circumstances, without outside support. 

Her story continues that she was asked, in her meditations, in her contemplation, to create a community with her sisters and to expand that to the place that she ultimately was called to do broadcasting. She ultimately created a multi million dollar network. She was constantly doing things that by all fiscal levels of concept were not necessarily the smartest things to do. In the midst of all this activity there were some problems within the community itself where there were a number of the bishops that did not approve of what she was doing and they were in competition with her because they had their own broadcasting network. In the midst of all that her health challenges continued, and at times she had incredible, miraculous healings.  

She had a true and deep appreciation for the mystical, magical acts of healing. I was watching one of her shows last night and she was telling the story about a Father and his favorite fish.  Somebody caught his fish and fried it, and of course the Father was dismayed. The Brother that fried the fish presented it on a platter. This is a true story, according to Mother Angelica. The Father raised his hand above the fried fish, and this fried fish started to wiggle and came back to life, and was placed back in the pond.  

Now I saw that look! Aren’t we interesting as human beings?  Why would we accept and believe in the miracle of her healing, and yet not accept that somebody could raise up a fried fish and put it back into a pond?  What is that about? Do we have a miracle chart? If it’s on this end of the chart, fried fish – No! But miraculous healings are accepted! There is another story of a woman who was a mystical healer that came into Mother Angelica’s life, and Mother Angelica had become paralyzed from the waist down and this woman restored her to where she could walk, and there was no explanation that the doctors could give. So why not a fried fish?  By the way, Mother Angelica is still alive but she has had several major strokes. It is said that she is now able to speak again, and she often talks about the scenes of heaven that she has witnessed. She has moved into a visionary, mystical level.  

After reading about Mother Angelica I studied the life of a woman named Karen Armstrong.[ii]  Karen Armstrong is a little more contemporary, relative to our age group. In 1962 at the age of 17 she joined a contemplative order in Britain, but it did not work out for her. She stayed for seven years but she found it to be untenable. During that time she also started to experience fainting spells for which she was ridiculed, and from a medical standpoint these were just seen as regular fainting spells. In 1969 she left the order and tried to integrate back into secular life. She had begun studying at Oxford while still in the order, but she couldn’t fit in and she felt very isolated. In the midst of that her fainting spells became exacerbated and not only did she have these spells but she started to have sensory experiences along with the fainting, and it terrified her. No doctor was able to help her and so she started seeing psychotherapists and she was told that she had repressed sexuality. Her treatments continued for three years and during this time her condition worsened. Finally she withdrew from therapy, but she continued her studies, and she found some comfort in academic life, but she still felt isolated and at times bitter and frustrated.   

To relieve the stress of a bad financial situation she found herself living with a family and helping them with their autistic child. By the way, by this time she had become an agnostic, possibly even an atheist, but it was her contact with the autistic child that opened the door that led her back to look for something more. 

After years of progression of her illness she was finally diagnosed with a form of epilepsy. She also found herself called to write, and she wrote about religion and spirituality and started publishing her work, and this brought her full circle back into her spiritual life. Many of her contemporaries in the academic community were not supportive of her writing about spirituality, as she had chosen a field that they were not comfortable with. For instance she was writing about the Muslim tradition in a whole different way at a time in our society when there is a great deal of suspicion and resentment concerning Muslims. This woman has subsequently come to the United States and has taught before groups such as the United Nations. She is seeking to teach and embrace spiritual diversity and spiritual understanding. 

Another person whose life I was called to consider was a woman by the name of Suzanne Segal[iii], who in the early 1970s took Transcendental Meditation – TM – training, and fell in love with it. She subsequently took this to the place that she became a team teacher. But in the midst of that she became disillusioned with TM, and as she moved into the upper echelons of the movement she found herself having serious concerns about the organization. She withdrew from that community and went on to create a life for herself in Paris.  

During the course of a pregnancy she had an experience where all of her sense of identity fell away. All of a sudden the “I” wasn't there. She went into a state where she experienced infinite nothingness. It wasn't that she was unable to function, but she saw that all of the things that we call “I” are roles that we play, and it was as if she was following “herself” around. This state never left her, and needless to say, her experience of it was both fear and terror, which convinced her that this was not a spiritual experience. She turned to the medical community seeking help and guidance, and she went from psychotherapist to psychotherapist for ten years. There were various forms of treatment given her for disassociation, including medication, none of which worked. She became so disgusted with what she was getting in psychotherapy that she herself became a psychotherapist because she recognized that whether her treatments were well intended or not, there was something missing.  

Eventually she found someone who was able to help her understand what had happened. This was through a form of Buddhist consciousness and the theory was that usually you move slowly into this state of mind, but it was believed that because of merits from another lifetime she had been catapulted into it. This understanding moved her out of the wintertime of that experience and into being able to embrace it and understand the love and oneness. She became a spiritual teacher, and then in 1997 she found that she had an inoperable brain tumor. She died in 1998.  

I would now like to talk about Mother Teresa and her feelings of interior darkness. She was known to be such a holder of Light, and her work held great beauty, light, and profound faith, and yet by her own testament, as revealed through her letters to her confessors, she was entrenched in a feeling of darkness, separation and isolation. As we know she is in the process of beatification and so her letters have been gathered and made public[iv].  

Mother Teresa was born in Albania in 1910 and at the age of 18 she chose to enter into the life of a dedicated bride of Christ.  She felt compelled to enter a missionary order in a time when most people who did this never came back from the lands that they were sent to. And she chose an educational order because she wanted to make a difference in the lives of children. She went to Ireland for a brief period of time and from there she was sent to India where she entered a teaching monastery.  

There are accounts of her that show that she was a very dedicated sister, loving, energetic, dynamic, and very much imbued with common sense, and she was placed in a situation where there was great need. There were times when there wasn't any food for the children and she would leave the monastery and go out into the streets to gather food. There were times in which there was a great deal of upheaval, unrest and lack of safety and she would go out and do what was necessary to be an advocate for the children that were under her care. There is an account of a time when the children encountered a wild bull running through the streets and she put herself between the bull and the children so that they would not be hurt. There is another account of a thief who broke into the convent and single-handedly she drove him out. 

But the story that most of us are more familiar with was her train ride on September 10^th, 1946 when she had a mystical encounter with the Christ and she was directed to leave this community and to start her Missionaries of Charity in the streets of Calcutta, ministering to the poorest of the poor. To do this she had to leave the order and the community that she loved and to which she was dedicated, and which gave her a deep sense of satisfaction. She was called to be a light in the darkest of the dark. This was a European woman, and part of the communication was that not only did she need to leave the order, but specifically that she needed to dress like the rest of the community and live in a level of poverty that is inconceivable to us. 

During this time of the visions she spent more time than usual in the confessional booth talking to her confessor.  The other sisters, whom she loved dearly, became suspicious of her and reported her to the Mother Superior and she was sent away. She did not explain or complain, but she accepted the move with serenity and she trusted that this was part of something greater. The visions were telling her to be “a light unto the darkness” and to do it immediately, but in deference to her vows and to her commitment, she recognized the need for surrender and to work through the proper channels. She wrote many letters concerning this, but it took almost two years to obtain official permission to begin her Missionaries of Charity. When she left the community of sisters, she left alone, after taking off her religious garments and putting on a simple sari, sandals, no hose, and a crucifix, and going out by herself into the streets with only five rupees. At first she went to a hospital to learn the basics of nursing and then there was a period of transition where she needed a place to stay and she went back to the sisters, but they turned her away. She finally found a place to stay and she started her work, at first with just a few volunteers. 

As we know, the organization grew, and her work took her to areas of abject poverty, but by the time that her mission started taking off she was no longer having communications. In fact she described herself to her confessors as being dry inside, that she experienced great inner darkness and profound loneliness. At first there was a lot of confusion and she questioned whether she was doing what she was supposed to, and then she wondered whether she was being “purified”. During this time she continued her mission with an incredible level of beauty, grace, and of caring. And her intention was not to convert the people, many of them Hindus and Muslims, but to serve them. She cleaned and dressed wounds, she served the poorest of the poor without judgment, and she was a light. 

In one of her letters she described how she pulled two people out of the gutter who were dying and being eaten by worms. She had established a house for the dying because those that were helpless and hopeless were not allowed into the hospitals. After they had been made comfortable one of the men told her that his dying request was for a cigarette. Just that morning a rich man had given her a couple packs of the finest cigarettes, and so she said that God knew that this man would have a longing for cigarettes and she was fulfilling that longing. There was no judgment, but only the willingness to serve.   

And all the while she herself was feeling a huge, deep, profound sense of abandonment, of darkness, of pain, and of isolation, and yet wherever she went she spread the light. She inspired others to be the light. We know that she won the Nobel Peace prize, that more than a thousand sisters as well as brothers joined her, that she opened 355 foundations all over the world, and yet her own interior world was one of great suffering and of great pain. But she never revealed this, except to her confessors.  

There are many stories I could tell of Mother Teresa. At one point earlier in the mission, her sisters - members of her spiritual community - accused her of being a devil because, as the mission started to take off, there were the children that she had educated who were being drawn to the power of this mission, to serve these poor, and so they were joining the Missionaries of Charity versus becoming sisters in the order. And so she had a sense of being threatened. She was doing this great work and yet she was being defiled by the very people that she had trusted and that she had been in community with for 18 years. Her response was to pray for them, genuinely, truthfully, sincerely. Another great story is that she said that if she ever became a saint that she would be the saint of darkness, and that she would be away from heaven a lot, because she would go into the darkness to bring to that her light.  One of her qualities was that she asked for prayers, over and over again, prayers for herself, from her community, and from her confessors. She didn’t see herself as being beyond the power of prayer. 

What does it mean to be “a light unto this world”? What does it mean for us, who have made a commitment to our spiritual path and to ourselves as spiritual beings? We have to make choices, as she made choices - every day. She suffered misunderstandings in the outer community and she certainly suffered tremendous challenges in her own interior world, and she made choices concerning that.  And I'm inviting each of us to consider our choices.  At any moment of any day, do we choose to be a light unto this world, even when our own interior experience may be one of uncertainty and of darkness, when things do not go the way that we want them to, when others misunderstand or question us, or when we feel tremendous fear? 

She acknowledged that she was terrified. This European woman, a nun, went into the slums by herself, and she didn’t even have her habit to protect her! She was in a profoundly dangerous situation and she was terrified, but she did it anyway. One of the things that I read spoke of her temptation to walk away from all of this and to return to the order. How many of us have been tempted just to walk away from the struggle of our own spiritual life, to return to some mainstream situation where we're comfortable, where our friends or our social community are?  

In the last several years of Mother Teresa's life she had many health issues, yet despite that, she kept going. There were many times in which she had near death experiences, and then she would get back up and keep going. The night that she died there was a blackout in Calcutta. This was not an unexpected event in Calcutta, and they had two back-up generators. They had called in the priest and the doctor, and they were hooking up the machines that would keep her alive when both generators failed. But she knew it was her time to go, and she had told the sisters that she would do what she needed to do for them on the other side.  

I’ve shared with you four lives, and while the stories of what happened in those lives may be different to your story, there is not one of us in here that has not experienced at a deep level that same pain and sense of separation. It’s not something that you theorize about but it is something you experience in your gut, and you make the choice to find meaning in the pain. In all four stories each of these women has known fear, pain, and the experience of disappointment, and each of them stepped forward regardless - as each of you in here has chosen to do over and over again.  

What they did, we must do. We must push forward. We make a choice over and over again to love more, to seek greater knowledge, to go into that untenable, unknowable place, to have a living faith, a faith that says, “Yes, somebody can raise a fried fish from the dead.”  And I’m using that because I'm catching your attention, because we’ll accept that you can raise a person from the dead, but we separate life, we make these categorizations. It’s all life - every pain and every suffering, every joy and every hope. It is all God and that’s what I'm challenging you to accept. And that is living faith!  I’ve told you that in Sanskrit, the word faith is a verb. It is an active process. And yet in the paradox of embracing faith we must also embrace its polarity, which is that faith is also the still point; it is both - and beyond all of that. 

I know that there is always present and available to us a great stream of consciousness and a profound love. I am inviting each of us to open our hearts and to unveil our eyes as we seek the light within and the light without, as we seek to merge with the unceasing love and the will to good, as we seek insight, clarity and inspiration. 

In the story I was telling you about Suzanne Segal, at the end of her life as she was integrating the incredible experience of oneness, one of the things that she talked about and taught about - and there were hundreds that came to hear her lecture - was fear. She said that she had come to understand that fear was God too. She found that her experiences of the Divine included fear, but she compared fear to the seaweed that floats in the ocean of existence. It was a natural part of existence, but that is all it was. It didn’t define the ocean, but it belonged in the ocean! So part of our faith will embody fear, and it will embody doubt.  

But are we going to hang out in the seaweed and think that is what the ocean is, or are we going to let it float on past and see it for what it is?  It is part of existence and it's all a matter of perception as to what we choose to focus on. We can focus on our personal horror, our personal story, our personal sadness, and we can use that as a confirmation that things are not good, that everything stinks, and that there isn’t a Creator - or if there is one, this is not a smart Creator. Now don’t look at me that way, I know everybody has had that thought. But it’s all part of God, and it’s a matter of perception. 

We are called to go deeper into union, into faith, into that place of all pervading hope and potentiality and the manifestation of that potentiality, because another aspect of these women’s lives that struck me is that they nurtured those seeds, and part of the nurturing was in the friction, in their struggle, so that this potentiality could take root, and then each in their own individual situations could grow into the perfection of that potential. 

(Aeptha reads an excerpt from “Love Poems from God”, translated by Daniel Ladinsky) 

“My soul is a candle that burned away the veil. Only the glorious duties of Light I now have. The sufferings I knew initiated me into God. I am a holy confessor for men. When I see their tears streaming across their cheeks and falling into His hands, what can I say to their great sorrow?  That I too have known? The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness. Only the glorious duties of love we will have. The suffering I knew initiated me into God.  Only his glorious cares I now have.”