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Deep contentment fills me.
This is magical.
I’ve come full circle. This is…
Rapture.
Epilogue
DearAsh,
I decided to write all this down for you on paper because you were in no state to hear this when we were together out on the open sea. Gosh, you had so much going on.
As you are now reading this, it must be a big time in your life again. God bless you and may everything work out for you. Remember, Ash, you are very well looked after and guided. Call on your guides for help loud and often. I have seen few with as much support as you have and I have seen a lot of people.
Even if it seems the opposite sometimes, always remember you are very blessed.
I need to tell you about the paperweight heart. It’s a story that entwines your fate and mine.
Our story begins when I was in my late teens. Gosh, I was so rebellious, and put my parents through hell. They could not handle me; nobody really could. I hated everyone and ran away a few times. Much later, I came to understand they were only trying to help me.
But before that, I stole money from them and bought a ticket to India. I wanted to go there and get lost. I guess I could have gone to China, but I knew they didn’t speak English there, so India it was.
I trekked around the country and when my money ran out. I didn’t know what to do. But I had lived hard in the States, which made it an easier transition to living on the streets. So I lived as a beggar, but people were generous, so it worked. It had one unexpected benefit. I met the wandering ascetics, and you know they were the most fascinating people I ever met.
After some time, I made the acquaintance of an ascetic who had connections to an ashram up in the mountains. He told me that’s where I needed to go, that there were people I needed to see. So I went and was taken in as a bit of a lost sheep. They took care of me in a way I had never known before and opened my eyes to what they called proper living, which was a spiritual way.
They acknowledged my “gift of sight” before I ever told them anything about it. They said I was very lucky to have it. They made me work hard; I cooked and cleaned and washed and scrubbed and hoed and milked, and I had no real time to myself.
Sometimes I worked in the orphan school attached to the ashram and sorted out the donations sent to us from overseas. Some of these we used, and some we sold to raise money for the school. Even when I wasn’t working, I was expected to sit in the audience of the spiritual teachers. That calmed me right down.
It felt like my first true home, a place where I was understood. I stayed for two years and came to fit right in. I wanted to stay forever. But one day one I got a tap on the shoulder. At first I didn’t know what it meant. So I asked one of my friends, and he said it was time to leave.
I fretted for a week or more because I had nowhere else to go. But by then I had new confidence in myself. I knew I could do manual work, cook, clean and my “sight” had become stronger and more reliable. I had clothes, friends and was more worldly in many ways. And I was calmer.
The night before I left, I had my last audience with the wizened ones. I was upset because I was about to be out on my own again, but Master Sachinanda turned to me and gave me a small box. He said, “Take this and keep it with you.”
I asked what I was to do with it. As there was no answer, I was pretty annoyed. Then he said to me “Patience, Claudette.” That was all. Everyone always said that to me, “Don’t be so impatient.”
You can by now guess what it was they gave me. It was the paperweight heart.
I figured it had been sent from overseas as a donation to the orphanage. It’s actually a treasure-keepsake box, but it’s not obvious. The slit to slide in notes blends in well, and I didn’t see it for some time. You also had to smash the whole thing to reveal the treasure, and I didn’t want to do that. So I always used it as a paperweight.
This is where you came in eighteen years later.
I suggest you sit down now.
The night you bumped the heart and broke it on the floor I had like an electric shock. A shock “worth waiting for” I thought.
You are the lightest, most beautiful soul I have ever met. It’s a delight just being with you. You healed a part of me that felt that true goodness is impossible, but I saw it in you. Master Sachinanda was right. I just had to be patient. Life is a long game, Ash.
After you left my cabin, I noticed a small scrap of folded paper on the floor. You mustn’t have seen it when you collected the three pieces, but it had been inside the heart. I picked it up, and a huge vision appeared on me. It took some time to unravel it, and that’s what I will try to explain.
I sat on the floor of my cabin and laughed and laughed and laughed in delight at how intricately balanced everything in life is. There’s no escaping anything. It’s all perfectly playing out, just usually it’s not obvious to our eyes.
It was a handwritten note. It read,
To the orphan children of India. With love from Ma, Da, and Ella, age 8
