Baba Supports the Arts
HIS CALL TO ME
My relationship with Shirdi Sai Baba arises from the pure miracle energy that he used to draw me close, that he surrounded me with in my first visit to Shirdi, culminating in him coming to me and cradling me in his arms in an experience of such high ecstasy that I was sobbing uncontrollably with the soul bliss of knowing my origin and his love.
Looking to Sai Baba is to experience being taken care of, in his timing, through many spontaneous alignments. These experiences resurrect an enchantment toward life that we have as young children. I will close with a recent experience.
A friend in Vermont proposed an art exhibition entitled “Healing Art and the Art of Healing” with proceeds used in part to fund volunteer work he was doing in his town community for at-risk youths and war veterans. He asked me to send back a number of paintings and attend the opening. Painting had become essential in my life, a meditative process of releasing control and self – that a resonance of sacred consciousness can manifest cleanly into form as a cohesive field of light and vibration. Through grace, this opened the discovery of self-healing through love that has been core to my recovery. The exhibition came together quickly. As I was shipping paintings shortly before Christmas, concerned about the expenses I was incurring for the project, a neighbor came by and wanted to purchase a painting. Initially intending to buy one painting, she could not choose between two and purchased both. The payment for the two paintings ended up exactly covering the shipping and travel costs for my participation in the exhibition.
As part of my participation, I led a healing meditation where I gave attendees a healing by applying a combination of sandalwood paste from Sri Kaleshwar and ash from Sai Baba’s dhuni in Shirdi. The sandalwood paste had been made in a special process in India, in which during an all-night session in a tent, we rubbed blocks of sandalwood against stones. In the middle of the night, there was suddenly a terrific storm with drenching rain, lightning and thunder. The beating rain, the blazing glow from lightening and the crash of thunder were breathtaking within the tent, as if we were in a cocoon within the elements.
The Vermont healing session went smoothly, taking over an hour. In ending the healing, I recited the closing Sai teachings mantra for the session and just as I finished with a moment of silence, the stillness was broken by sudden heavy, torrential rain that seemed to come from nowhere. We were on the top floor of a two-story building with a row of windows along the length of the room, and the drumming of rain on the windows and roof overhead was deafening. Then close flashes of lightning and tremendous thunder burst around us. I immediately knew the elements were connecting us to the sacred process in which the sandalwood was ground into paste, and the presence of the Masters now in the room was immediate, palpable, an affirmation of the power of the healings through their sacred divine grace. As I listened closely, the rain soon eased and by the time people were leaving, it was dry again.