Taking Meher Baba’s name

 
    Taking Meher Baba’s name for one half hour today, May 24, to commemorate His car accident in Prague, Oklahoma in 1952. The group in Prague, where He had the accident, invited Baba lovers to join in what is called Jap, taking His name for all or part of the hours of the accident on that day.

     I found that at the beginning, I was going to stop, I seemed to be experiencing unpleasant and uneasy emotions.

     However, I felt that were I to continue, there could be some surprise or a benefit to me as well, and perhaps some relief.

      Then images and feelings more and more intensely manifested themselves within the center of my being. I felt the hurts from some people from the past, some that I had old disagreements with, and also with people who have disapproved of me. I had thought these old experiences had been previously resolved and released.

     Then, I began to take Baba’s name with more ease and felt an inner peace.

     Lastly, I remembered my cat, Simone, who passed on to Baba on April 2, 2015, during the Christian Maundy Thursday, one day before Good Friday. She had persevered although ill for several years, and her last day with me was a happy one, in the sunshine that is sometimes so rare here in the northwestern United States.

     After the time of my taking Baba’s name ended, I felt that He wanted me to know I had a particular story to write about Simone. That my caregiving for her and my writing of my years with her is beneficial work for Baba.

     I also felt that Baba was internally saying to me, that all suffering is not actually suffering, and that all the hurts and pain one lives through is more than we may perceive.

     (As noted by Mahoo Shahriari, about Meher Baba’s accident in Prague, Oklahoma, “The date of this event was foretold by Baba many years earlier. At Harmon on Hudson, in 1932, Meher Baba gave Elizabeth Patterson a small pink wildflower and told her to always keep the flower and write down the date, that some day she would know the meaning. It wasn’t until years after the accident that Elizabeth discovered the flower He had given her that day, and written next to it in her Bible, the date, “May 24, 1932,” exactly 20 years to day that she would be driving the accident vehicle.”

     I, Sharon, grew up in that town, which is now called Croton-on-Hudson.)