June 4-10

Indralaya in the Mind

How many of you remember your first visit to Indralaya? Over the years there have been quite a few memorable stories of that first visit. For many there is a sense of having come home, or of feeling a different sort of noticeable energetic in the atmosphere.

For most of us, it is perhaps not so easy to know that we have been here for the last time. There is always the likelihood or at least a possibility of returning at some future point. Nevertheless, that last visit is an inevitability once one has discovered and experienced this special place for the first time.

At the Awakening Kindness program with Nawang Khechog a couple weeks ago, the final session on Sunday morning was composed of program participants offering their thoughts on the experience they had shared over the course of the weekend. One participant, a person who has been here many times, said that she was so glad she had come. She is older now and a little bit unsteady. She hadn't been sure that her knees would be up to the challenge of navigating the terrain. She concluded by adding that she felt that this could well be the last time that she came to Indralaya.

It was a poignant, yet also beautiful moment. It occurred to me at the time that it was quite a gift for her to carry this knowing with her while she was here because it allowed her to be present with that knowing and thereby live into it more fully.

Over the years, there have also been many stories of how the reoccurring memory of a particular special place at Indralaya helped to provide a sense of calm and stability in sometimes chaotic situations. As an example, aid workers in trouble spots around the world have told of the solace and comfort that memories of Indralaya have given while they were immersed in extreme situations.

Each of us carries some aspect of Indralaya with us in our hearts and in our minds. Each of us has the capacity when we are not here physically to return to those places that are special to us during our meditations as well as in the course of daily life. And in this way the presence of this place ripples into the world in subtle ways and helps provide some semblance of balance amidst the turmoil of an oftentimes chaotic world.