Meditation at Golden Temple

The directions were to take some aspect of yourself that was challenging for you; whatever it might be, your fear, self criticism, addiction, whatever it might be; and put in into the center of the circle. We were on the roof of the Golden Temple. Me and Guru Terath and Yogesh and the 7 clients. We were sitting in a circle, attracting a crowd. It was a lovely meditation, chanting Guru Guru Wahe Guru, Guru Ram Das Guru.

I had not been having a good day. I was not centered or at peace. I was aggravated. I was being pulled in a number of directions (worries about home, pressures in the program, the manual, the future of the program). I was going along, but very little of me had been present on this outing. I put my aggravation into the center of the circle also my fears about the clients, about Carolyn’s health, about the future of the program. It went into the circle in the image of the exoskeleton of a locust-like bug. It was like shedding a skin. I felt it physically.

It was a weird feeling but a somewhat familiar image. As a child, I would sometimes spend a week with my grandmother (Grandma Nicolle) at her house in Covington, Louisiana. I have many fond memories of this time with her, reading on the swing on her front porch, picking vegetables from her garden, shucking black-eyed peas for
diner AND hunting these huge black and yellow and orange crickets (locusts?) in the tall grass around her house. (I was in elementary school, young, but these things were big. They must have been 4 inches long and could hop forever.) I would have a spring loaded dart gun (the kind that shoots darts with rubber suction cup tips.). I would take off the rubber tips and hunt the monster insects.
Anyway, that was the form that my tension/worries/stuffkeepingmecutofffrombeingpresentandfullyexperiencinglife took. It was an image, symbolic; the crusty, frozen, rigid, dead, defensive, cut off part of myself. As it went into the center of the circle that we were all chanting into on top of the Golden Temple, I felt such a beautiful release. I felt my self expand, no longer contained, freely expanding in the golden light of that special moment in that special place. Such joy, such freedom. It was as if I had become that Golden Light, limitless. Then, the image shifted. The Guru (or God or ???) had a Golden thread, from somewhere high above us; each of us in that circle was connected to that thread; As the Guru pulled on this chord, that exoskeleton (ego, defining-limiting mental structure; I don’t know what to call it,… giant cricket sheath,…) on each of us was pulled away and we were all radiant beings in and of Golden Light.