Sai Maa and me

To go with the principle of leaving no stone unturned on how to get better and also to please Emily, I went to a meeting last night where a noted Indian "spiritual master'' named Sai Maa Lakshmi Devi was speaking.

Between 40 and 50 people crowded into a living room in Latham to hear her thoughts on healing, spirituality, what happens after death and other matters.

Most of the people in the room, including Emily, were those who had helped arrange a weekend's worth of events for her in Albany, and their family members. Emily, in fact, traveled to Colorado last summer to attend a week-long workshop she conducted.

About 15 minutes later than scheduled, this small, slight, middle-aged woman in flowing robes and a beatific smile came gliding into the room. Sai Maa took her place at the front of the room and greeted us.

After a few introductory remarks, when she told us tidbits about herself like she sleeps only 45 minutes a night and eats only sparingly, she wanted to know about us. She called on several people, one of whom had recovered well from recent surgery and another who, along with her children, was struggling with the recent death of her husband.

She seemed to listen carefully and then gave out some advice, including how a grieving daughter might still connect with her deceased father.

I raised my hand and, in a response to the question of how I was doing, said I had been diagnosed with cancer three months earlier, and was generally scared, angry and sad.

Sai Maa responded that there was a reason I had been stricken, that it wasn't random.

How could that be? I asked.

She pressed me on what has been going on in my life for the past few years. After responding at first that I was just going through life like anyone else, I told her, tearily, about the agonizing death of my sister just over a year ago, my anger at that, as well as the sadness I still held inside me over the deaths of my parents.

She asked me what I wanted, and I told her I wanted to go back to a time when all of the people I loved were still alive.

She told me what I needed to do was to get thoughts of my sister's death, as well as my parents, out from inside me. She said I didn't need to forget my sister, but to separate the thoughts of her from her death. I had essentially let my sister's death invade my body, she said.

Her solution: take an inanimate object (someone handed me a small box of tissues) and consider that my cancer. Talk to it, develop a relationship with it, she said, then, after a week or so, cast it aside.

Sai Maa had me practice embracing the cancer (the box) and then thrusting it away. It was an emotionally satisfying thing to do, and I again dissolved in tears.

Then I went up to her chair and, at her suggestion, gave her a hug, as well as a kiss. She put her hands on my abdomen, moving them around until she found my pancreas (I had not mentioned the kind of cancer I was afflicted with) and stopped there, in what I am sure was an attempt to trasmit healing energy.

I returned to my seat with my new companion, the Kleenex box, which I have kept close by ever since. We're not friends yet, but I'm working on it. Sort of reminds me of Tom Hanks and his volleyball friend "Wilson'' in his movie "Castaway."

Hey, you never know.