<\/p>\n\n\n
\nPart 1 – Meeting Mahadeva<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n \n\u201cMahadev,\u201d I thought, \u201cWhat a beautiful word for handicapped.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \nI was sitting in my friend\u2019s car. She was driving me home, sharing\nstories about her Buddhist upbringing in Sri Lanka, after we had\nattended a lecture by a Tibetan Rinpoche in Vancouver. Although I had\nenjoyed his sense of humour and quick wit, I was feeling a bit\ndisappointed; somehow, I knew that Rinpoche was not the teacher I had\nbeen yearning for, and Buddhism, though a beautiful tradition, didn\u2019t\nfeel like home. While Sabita continued sharing, my wandering\nattention drifted to the bumper on the van in front of us. Emblazoned\non that bumper was the word \u201cMahadev,\u201d nestled between two\nwheelchairs. Naturally, not being familiar at all with Sanskrit, I\nassumed it meant what was implied by those wheelchair logos, which\nare the universal sign for physical \u201cMahadeva!\u201d This next thought\npopped into my mind seemingly out of nowhere, and authoritatively\ndeclared, \u201cMahadeva is not a word for handicapped; it\u2019s the name\nof God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n My spine straightened, my focus sharpened, and, wondering where that had come from, I decided as soon as I got home, I would do a Google search for the word \u201cMahadeva.\u201d \u201cIf Mahadeva,\u201d I thought, putting emphasis on that last \u2018ah\u2019 sound, which was not spelled on the bumper, yet my mysterious inner voice had pronounced, \u201cis actually the name of a God, I\u2019ll start following him immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n That night, for the first time in this life, I saw Shiva. Through eyes made blurry with instant tears, I skipped right past the web results to the row of images my fateful search had generated: Nataraja dancing, Dakshinamoorthy under the banyan tree, Yogeshwara sitting in padmasana… I could hardly believe what I was seeing. The most beautiful paintings in the world were showing me God, and lo and behold, His name actually was Mahadeva. Looking more closely, my hands spontaneous moved into anjali mudra, and I whispered, \u201cThank You, Mahadeva.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n From that night on, having been introduced to the Lord of Lords in such a way that I couldn\u2019t possibly doubt the reality of who He was, without truly knowing what the religion involved, I started to call myself a Hindu. <\/p>\n\n\n Fast forward a few of months, and Existence had blessed me with a job doing something I really loved: reading Tarot cards in a mystical little shop in a touristy part of town. On my first day, a friend had gifted me with a deck that was made up of cards representing spiritual teachers from every ancient tradition- Celtic, Norse, Egyptian, Native American, Japanese, etc. Of course, my favourite cards in the deck with those from India, among which one, in particular, stood out: Babaji. The booklet accompanying the deck didn\u2019t give much background information about the master, it mentioned only that Babaji is also called \u201cMahavatar,\u201d meaning the greatest among all avatars, and that the message he brings is Yoga. What made Babaji stand out was the fact that every time I gave a reading, whether for myself or for someone else, the very first card pulled was always his. <\/p>\n\n\n \u201cBabaji\u2019s message to humanity,\u201d the first website said, when finally, one night, after a few weeks of amazement at Babaji\u2019s continuous appearance in my readings, I did my life\u2019s next fateful Google search, \u201cis this: if you\u2019re seeking enlightenment, chant the mahamantra \u2018Om Namah Shivaya\u2019 continuously.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n That\u2019s as much as I needed to read. Shiva, Mahadeva, was already my beloved God; and I was seeking enlightenment. From my first day on the job reading cards, I had started praying for enlightenment, deciding that the only way my advice would be useful for others was if it came from a place of divine consciousness. Since Babaji said that chanting Shiva mantra continuously would grant it, there was nothing else for me to do but start chanting. I turned off all the lights in my apartment, locked the door, unplugged the land line, switched my mobile to silent, then sat down on the floor and started to repeat, \u201cOm Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Throughout the next day, my inner chanting continued. Whenever I was alone, I chanted aloud; when I was in public, I chanted in my mind; when I had to, I would talk with other people, but as soon as I was left alone, I resumed what I now know is called mantra <\/p>\n\n\n At the end of day two, I was inwardly chanting the mantra on my way home from work, when suddenly something strange happened: I was on a crowded bus, surrounded by commuters at rush hour. I could see them talking on their phones, and I could sense commotion outside, but suddenly, I couldn\u2019t hear a thing. It was like I had been struck deaf, and the silence was so shocking to me that I forgot my inner mantra. Just then, a thought popped into my mind, not unlike the thought that had first introduced me to Mahadeva. It said:\u201cThis is Babaji, answering your prayer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n That moment, I turned to look out the window, and saw Him. Not the Mahadeva from the illustrations on Google, but a photo of an actual person. He was dressed in orange, with glowing eyes and a huge smile, and the caption beneath His picture said, \u201cKalpataru! Don\u2019t Miss It!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n Before the bus could drag me away from that divine sign, I pulled the bell, which I heard, jumped off, and ran back to look at Him more closely. I didn\u2019t stand there for more than a few moments before a door opened, and a lady dressed all in white, with a halo of curly hair and the bluest eyes I\u2019ve ever seen, reached for my hands and pulled me into a little shop saying, \u201cYou\u2019re here to do Paramahamsa Nithyananda\u2019s meditation. Please leave your shoes, turn off your phone, and come inside…\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n \n(To be continued…)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Part 1 – Meeting Mahadeva \u201cMahadev,\u201d I thought, \u201cWhat a beautiful word for handicapped.\u201d I was sitting in my friend\u2019s car. She was driving me home, sharing stories about her Buddhist upbringing in Sri Lanka, after we had attended a lecture by a Tibetan Rinpoche in Vancouver. Although I had enjoyed his sense of humour […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}