A big lesson

Once, I accompanied Swamiji on his entire Switzerland tour; I drove from one end to the other of the tour. There was a Satsang one evening and I wanted to give him a nice postcard. I’m always very excited when I have the chance to talk to him. A lot of people formed a queue after the Satsang and one by one they had a talk with him. I waited till the end of the line and went to him with a red face which was a result of my excitement. I wanted to give him the card but the only thing he said was: “The German people can come in Germany to me”. I was shocked and deeply hurt. A normal human reaction would have been to get angry. I was not angry at all.  I did not realize at the time that the emotion of hurt is actually anger turned inside toward oneself. I felt sad and there were tears in my eyes. I had the feeling that my heart was going to die. I started to meditate in order to try to understand why Swami had treated me like this.  I finally calmed down and slowly opened my eyes to see what he was doing.

I received the next shock.  A man from Germany was talking to him and they seemed to be having a lot of fun. That was too much for me. I closed my eyes again to meditate. It is impossible to describe how many emotions came up for me, but still I felt a lot of love for Swamiji and the only wish I had was to understand what he wanted to show me with this game. At the point of deep meditation and of self analyzing because of what had happened, I heard Swamiji laughing very loudly. Withoout thinking I looked up at him and saw him with his outstretched arm towards me. He gave me a sign to come to him. He asked me then, “What do you have in your hand?” I gave him the card that I had wanted to give him earlier. He accepted the card and smiled at me with a smile which I will never forget.  At that moment, I realized that all this was a big test for me.

Paari – Germany