I joined the line to see Amma, at the Bearsville Theatre outside Woodstock, New York. Amma is an incarnation of the Divine Mother, from Gudur, India. Soon a woman in a white outfit came up to me, handing me an index card with the letter "F" on it. "Please write your request for blessings on the other side," she explained.
Requests for blessings? No one had ever given me this assignment before. What exactly would I like to bless? I found myself thinking of the sign:
BLESS THIS MESS.
Clearly all my inspirations come from comical slogans in souvenir shops. (Such stores also sell the more conventional:
BLESS THIS HOME
I recalled — which is also nice.)
How would the Divine Mother react if I handed her a card saying: "Bless the New York Yankees"?
Actually, I really do want to bless the Yankees. I’m not sure I’m asking for them to win, but those guys clearly need blessing. They have so much money, no one ever thinks to bless them.
Maybe I will just leave the card blank, I thought. Who can decide what to bless?
Later I was in the auditorium, waiting for Amma. I closed my eyes to meditate. Suddenly the phrase, "Bless all skill" came in my mind. But does that mean anything? Or do I just love the sounds of the words?
Four hours later, I was finally close to seeing the Divine Mother. I looked at the blank card, and wrote my Sanskrit name — Garuda — and: "Bless all skill."
I walked up to the guru, then stood obediently before her as she massaged my head. We were both silent for a time. Then she spoke, with a small smile. "That’s great," Amma said to me. "That’s a great desire."
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