Tell us About Yourself !!!

Hi. I'm a mess. I can't even begin to describe my life. Perhaps "roller coaster" would come close. But I have learned to live with it and be happy.

I am seventy-seven. A single woman living in the Florida, USA. In the sixties and seventies I was part of the "hippie revolution" in the USA. Which meant LSD and droppinng out of society. I ended up in a mental hospital in a catatonic state. Actually I was just meditating on the sound of one hand clapping, a zen koan.

When I finally came of the meditative state and began talking and interacting I was given a full scholarship to study psychology at the college. But I dropped out three weeks before graduation. My education seemed useless to me. Watching a rat go around and around in a cage? I wanted to know another kind of knowledge. The knowledge of the self apart from this temporary material world.

That was when I met my spiritual master, AC Bhaktivendanta Swami Prabhupada, and his followers. I moved into the ashram in Boston in 1971 and began studying Bhagavad gita and Srima Bhagavatam, Vedic scriptures, as his student.

I began traveling and staying in various ashrams around the US performing various services as a celibate student until my spiritual master disappeared in 1977. It was a shock to say the least and I felt orphaned. Many of my fellow students had married but I remained single and wanted to just serve in a simple way and not complicate things with family responsibilites and economic pressures.

I coud not find shelter in the ashrams anymore. I was too old in the mid 1980's to be a child-like student and not qualified to be a teacher. I had to leave and try to make a spiritual life in the world at large. Over the next twenty years I was able to start a free food progam, engage in college preaching, distribute my spiritual mastere's books, hold chanting sessions and travel throughout the US. I was invited to teach at a school for girls that had been started by one of my fellow students from the old days.

After a little while it became clear I would not be able to continue that service. My health began to deteriorate. After a pilgrimage to India I had developed serious digestive problems. Parasites and who knows what else. I was on the verge of death when one Christmas eve a neighbor knocked on the door. She had become locked out. Her son had taken their keys and was not home yet. It was near midnight. I was very sick. Lying on he floor thinking, "Ok, this it. I'm gone." She was a Seventh Day Adventist with connection to a church member who was practiced in herbal medicine. Her friend sent some herbs and instructions for what to eat and some other practices to help clean out my intestinal track. It worked. I didn't die.

There's a lot more. Crazy stuff. Probably because I am on a spiritual path. I am fortunate that in my old age I am able to live in a rural place, safe, safe and quiet. Lots of natural beauty. A garden and fruit trees and some good friends not far away if I should need help. And I'm sure I will at some point.

I practice bhakti yoga. Devotional service to Krishna. I chant regularly and refresh my mind everyday with the wisdom of the Bhagavad Gita and Srimad Bhagavatam. Becaue it won't be long..... Getting ready to go ...soon it will be "time's up."

Hare Krishna...

This is a link to the Bhagavad Gita. https://www.asitis.com/

Invitation to enter this contest... tell us about yourself...
https://steemit.com/hive-153970/@shiftitamanna/contest-tell-us-about-yourself
@impersonal @olivia08 @xiao-aine