Dedicated to Grace: Vidya Anderson

If you haven’t met Vidya Anderson yet, you really should. And you’ll get that chance soon because she’s coming back to the area for the last three weeks of September.

I first met Vidya a year ago when I was assigned to do a cover story on her and Gururaj’s work. Not only is she committed to helping new people find their way to mantra meditation, she is also committed to acting as a support to those who are working to make meditation a regular part of their lives. I have since come to call Vidya a friend, so we were interested in writing this story more from that angle rather than just, “When is she going to be here and what’s she going to teach?” But for right now, we’ll just let our conversation speak for itself.

Susie:  It’s great to be able to talk with you again, Vidya. This is your fifth trip here; what do you think about our FM community?

Vidya:  What I’ve experienced are people being kind, friendly, open and so grateful. People have come up and said, “Thank you so much for taking the time to come. Thank you so much for bringing these teachings to us.” There’s so much gratitude and appreciation expressed. I’ve just been quite taken by that. Fargo people are generous and kindhearted.

So, I’m all about resonating and connecting. I’m wondering how people find you and meditation. I’m thinking they find you by connecting on a higher level or higher plane, then see you and say, “Oh, that’s what I want to do.” There’s some higher part of themselves that recognizes you from someplace else, or recognizes the value of “this might be the next step in my development.” Do you think that’s possible?

I really do, Susie. Often we have a question rattling around inside us, then somehow we stumble across the right book. Or we’re standing there talking to a friend and they say exactly what we need to hear. Somehow we’ve attracted it to ourselves. We’ve put out there what we’re questioning and wanting, and boom – it shows up.

My teacher, Gururaj, and many other teachers, have a saying that when the student’s ready, the teacher appears. I think the teacher shows up in many forms. For example, the teacher can show up as a fox that walks across our path; we’re so awestruck by its beauty and are reminded of the beauty and surprises of life. Anything can be our teacher. I think if a person is drawn toward the meditation I teach, it’s just the right time to go inward and make a connection with a deeper part of themselves. 

This is my argument, not necessarily for God, but for a greater working force in the world, behind the scenes, that we’re not always aware of on the surface. What do you think about that?

It’s like an unseen push, the unseen finger that pushes us along in the flow of life. It’s how we end up at the right place at the right time, and we don’t know how. Or we’re talking to the right person at the right time. Things seem like a coincidence to us, but they’re not. Everything’s unfolding in its own order. Even if we’re late, we’re on time. Whatever is needed for us to learn will happen because we are here to learn in the school of life.

I’m noticing a lot right now that this frenetic pace can push us out of our flow, or get us doing too much. Meditation is one of the unseen fingers that might be helping us to get back into the flow of our lives…

Although we can be mentally lost, at a certain level we’re never lost. We’re always connected to the Divinity within us. Mentally we get distracted from it; we get lost in experience; we get lost in drama. We get lost in our stories of how we think things are, or how we think things should be.

We get stuck in the frenetic pace of life and forget who we are and we forget what’s important in life. Until we get exhausted and say, “Uh oh, maybe I need to go in a different direction.”

That helps wake us up. When you have a strong emotion it’s a wake up to call to take a look at yourself.

I’ve heard that German phrase meaning “in and out” – breathing in and you’re in the presence of God and breathing out you’re back in the muck. How can you keep that consistency? How can we switch our thinking, for those of us who are do-do-do, go-go-go. It’s such a hard habit to break.

It takes some commitment to yourself. It takes being steadfast and committed in some form of spiritual practice, whether it’s a meditative practice or something else. That’s the reason that I keep coming back to Fargo.

I come to teach meditation, but it’s more than just learning to meditate. One has to keep it up. I want to support those people who have already learned as well as teach new classes. I think the ongoing support is so important; we need reminders.

Do you think there’s a different connection when we meditate with others than just what we feel walking through our days down here on the physical level? Maybe that interconnectedness on that higher plane is closer to that feeling of unity. To me it feels like home – that pure, unfiltered connection. Down here we’re like, “Yeah, but you’ve got more money than I do, so I can’t connect with you,” or “We had that fight last night, so I still can’t forget that,” so it’s kind of muddied.

Yes, we experience ourselves in separate bodies. That’s what we have, so we generally experience ourselves as separate. When you do a practice that takes you deep within yourself, you experience at a certain level that there is not a separation. The long term goal is to experience that all the time.

It’s not about taking ourselves away to meditate, feel good in meditation, and then go out in life and speak unkindly to someone we’re angry at. The idea is to integrate the experience of our spirituality or our unlimitedness into our everyday life.

We’re completely unlimited, but we experience ourselves as limited beings. We experience ourselves as separate, small, apart from God, but gradually, over time, with regular meditation practice, we begin to integrate more of that spirit of connectedness on a daily basis.

Do you experience that all the time? Or have you met anybody who does?

Those are great questions. Gururaj was someone who did live that all the time. That’s why I studied and spent so much time with him. He was human and had his own personality, but yet he was completely free. He was completely non-attached.

He functioned in a very powerful way across the board – everyday life and in his interactions with other people. It was awesome to see someone who was completely free and awake to who he was inside.

And I think that’s the key. He was aware of who he was and aware of all the dimensions within the universe. And his teaching was, “You are the Universe. You are everything. The only difference between you and me is that I know who I am. Your journey is to wake up to who you are. And to realize one thing: I and my Father are one.”

As regards to myself, no, I don’t consider myself completely free. I meditate every day, and in addition to meditation, I work on self-awareness. Sometimes I go into places of flatness and sadness and see those as part of my path to wake up.

Gururaj talks about the universal symbol of the ocean, how there are the depths and quiet of the ocean, and then you have the crashing of the waves. We’re made up of both those things. We have the depths and silence of the Universe within us, but we also have that part of ourselves that’s always changing – our emotions, our thinking, our opinions, our bodies.
Being fully awake is living at both of those levels at the same time. Letting those crashes happen, letting experience happen and yet we learn to be the observer of it so it doesn’t control us. Life happens, but we’re not at its mercy. We can step back and watch it and see it as good. We can see it as all part of a bigger picture instead of responding, “poor me,” or going into a victim mode.

What makes this so hard? We have to unhook from old patterns, we have to wake up from feeling stuck in patterns of sadness, anger or aggression. We can work with it. It takes a lot of spiritual strength to look in the mirror and work with ourselves.

That’s what meditation and spiritual practices helps us to do. They help us access that spiritual strength so we can work on ourselves in daily life, and at the same time, unfold and wake up to grace flowing in our life every day and who we are.

So what is your definition of grace, freedom and unattached? I’m thinking they’re all interrelated. You said, “let’s do this interview from the standpoint of grace.”

What occurs to me in this moment, about grace is that I am not the doer. Do I, Vidya, have anything to say that could make any difference at all? Am I, Vidya, nervous about speaking in front of people or talking in an interview, because I think I, my ego-self, is speaking?

Becoming aware of grace in our lives is about allowing, rather than feeling that “I” have to be the doer. It is allowing the words to flow through, allowing the exchange between us to happen in a free and spontaneous way, instead of me trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do. Instead, we can trust our exchange is going to be perfect, whatever it is. So I don’t have to get in the way of it and block the flow of the river.

Grace allows us to get out of our own way?

Grace is the way, and trusting that grace is the doer of all things. I’m not even breathing. What is breathing? Inhalation and exhalation. I’m not even doing that. It is just happening. And this interview? It just occurred. All the pieces came together to allow it and it wasn’t because of you or me.

Awareness that there’s some higher force that moves everything takes the worry out of things. When I can step back and trust in grace, I don’t have to worry. Grace is flowing every moment of our lives; we just are not aware of it.

You and your husband both meditate. Are you both on the same wavelength? How does that affect your relationship? And how about those relationships where one person does do more of the active spiritual work and the other refuses? How can we keep moving forward when we blend energies with our loved one and we’re affected by them?

There are a lot of people I’ve taught to meditate where the couple comes to class together and it’s something they share. And in many cases it’s just one; just the husband or the wife. Sometimes eventually the other person can see a difference in their partner, so they begin meditation, either because they saw a difference, or because the partner wants to share it with them. And in other cases, it just doesn’t happen. One meditates and one doesn’t. I’ve never seen that to be a problem. Ideally, you meditate only 20 minutes, twice a day; that is not much out of a day.

I’ve known people who have meditated in secret because their spouse was afraid of it. But over time, things changed. Everything changes, nothing is static. Eventually the woman I’m thinking of was able to meditate at home, but for the first couple of years, she couldn’t let her husband know.

The couple came from a very devout religious background. The wife understood that the meditation practice was not a religion. Her husband was threatened by it, but little by little, things improved at home and there was more harmony. Eventually, she didn’t have to hide it anymore, but it took time. 

Any time I’ve come up against something I don’t know, or don’t have experience with, it was threatening and scary. I’d be wont to say it was bad or evil because I didn’t understand it. But meditation? Jesus meditated. It’s in the Bible. What’s the deal with meditation? I’ve heard prayer is like talking to God, and meditation is like listening, but now I’m beginning to think that meditation is just like hanging out with God.

It’s allowing yourself to be present within the depths of who you are. Energetically what’s happening is that you’re going into a very peaceful place, even though your mind is very active in meditation. You’re going into a very peaceful place, and everything emits vibration, so vibrationally we’re becoming very harmonious and pets will want to sit on your lap. Your cat will want to come sit by your feet; they all sense this.

I experienced this with my teacher, Gururaj. There was a peacefulness that he emanated, a beauty and kindness. The fear and agitation of people just dissolved in his presence. 

I wanted to tell you… guess where my cat is right now? He likes your energy, and he’s sitting right here, staring at me with this dreamy look on his face! Like he’s sitting in the sun or something. 

It’s so much fun when something like that happens. We will doubt ourselves and our own inherent goodness, and say, “I can never be peaceful, maybe that person over there can be peaceful,” and then something like that will happen. Our animals can show the way; we can be peaceful!

As opposed to our animals hiding behind the couch when we walk into the room?

Yes, and they reflect and show us what we’re doing. We put off very powerful, negative energy. Thoughts are things. We have to be responsible for letting thoughts go, not attaching to them, just letting them pass through. When we hold onto negativity, we give that to the world. That is what war is about.

If we want peace we have to start with ourselves.  We each create war in our minds when we believe our own negative, painful thoughts. We can become observers of our own minds; meditation helps us become that observer. When we’re agitated and negative, our little dog is going to hide behind the couch.

When you said “our little dog,” I thought of our own little inner dog. That would probably be a really good trigger for us: to ask, “where’s our inner dog right now? Is she out playing, is she bellying up somewhere, happy, or is she cowering in the corner?’

Is she afraid?

Or is she basking in the sunshine of our magnificence?

Is she biting somebody on the leg?

There’s like this hologram inside of ourselves for what’s going on in our outside world. What would we rather mirror — the divinity within us, or that war energy? What makes my inner dog growl and bark?

We’re made up of all of it. We are all of it. I used to think I just wanted to be filled with light and grace and love and peace; the hardest thing of all is to embrace that shadow side. We believe that it’s not okay to be angry; it’s not okay to have an unkind thought. But we all do.

Well, maybe you do, Vidya!

Maybe I do, but you don’t! [Laughter.] So, the key is letting the thought go past and not attaching to it. We can inquire: Is what we are thinking really true? It’s just a passing thought. We don’t have to get stuck there.

Acceptance is being aware “I’m made up of everything.” I can’t reject a part of myself because then I’m always running away from something.

Regarding life, I think it’s about discovering about what’s already inside of us. That’s what the meditation practices are all about. It’s giving a simple tool to start becoming more aware of who we are inside, of opening our awareness. When we have greater perceptions, we see everything in life differently. Over time our perception broadens so that we can see things from a different perspective.

There’s a story in the Indian tradition about a little musk deer . One day the deer smells this beautiful aroma, so she thinks, “Oh, I’ve got to find this.” She runs really hard to the east and doesn’t find it. She runs in all directions, hunting for this smell, and eventually she just falls down in complete exhaustion.

While she’s lying there on the ground, she notices this beautiful musk smell is emanating from her own navel.

The point is this: That which we seek outside of ourselves is only to be found inside ourselves. That peace, that happiness, that we all want and enjoy — we all want to be happy. We all want to be loved. We need to find it experientially inside ourselves. Meditation is a way to train us in that.

When we finally get tired of doing things, when we realize nothing else works, then we try meditation. Happiness is temporary; we’re talking of a deeper, internal joy that doesn’t disappear. The waves still crash in the ocean. Life still happens. There were tragedies that Gururaj had to live through in his life, but there was always this incredible deep steadiness and solidity within the man. 

So it’s “this and this,” not “this or this.”

Exactly. It’s both. It’s living in all dimensions simultaneously. The heat can’t be separated from the fire. It’s one. We can’t be separated from divinity. It’s one with us. We just haven’t become completely aware of that yet. We live in this world of change. But the truth is the mind is infinite and the infinity is inside us.

I’m just going to say again, welcome back to the FM area, Vidya. It’s going to be great to have you here, spending more time with all of us.

I’m looking forward to coming back to my Fargo oasis. It really is an oasis of wonderful people and an opportunity for me to share meditation practice.  I have a wonderful time when I’m here.

And all I can say is that our inner dogs are getting their inner dog treats with this interview, and they’re happy now!
For more information, visit http://www.americanmeditationsociety.com.

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