How the Universe Nudged (or Shoved) Me into My Life’s Mission
Searching for your mission? The Universe can help you too.
I’m sharing this story mainly because I believe the Universe can help you discover your unique mission, similar to the way it helped me discover mine. But I hope you’ll find it entertaining as well. As you’ll see, for the Universe to make sure I found my mission, it made use of a variety of synchronicities and mini-miracles.
Meditation conference in the Redwoods
It wasn’t my plan to become a meditation teacher, but apparently, it was part of the Universe’s plan. It was 1972 and I was living in Humboldt County — the heart of Redwood country in Northern California. For a few weeks each Summer, California State Humboldt campus hosted a conference of about a thousand meditators. The participants spent most of their time meditating and attending lectures by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the teacher who brought Transcendental Meditation — aka TM — from India to the West.
Janet — a force of nature
To make some extra money and gain access to the lectures, I took a job driving meditators who were staying off-campus to and from the conference. Among my passengers was a woman named Janet, a very outgoing and assertive individual, who adopted me as a friend. We would go to lectures together, where she always managed to get us seats up front. She was definitely a get-what-you-want kind of person.
I had been meditating for about six years and was starting to feel the urge to get in some extended meditation time. The next available opportunity for a meditation retreat was an intensive teacher training course being held in Southern Spain. I didn’t have the funds to attend the course, and to be honest, neither did I have a desire to become a teacher of Transcendental Meditation. But it just so happened that Janet was one of the two head coordinators of the teacher training courses, and Janet decided that I was going to that course.
The plan
The course was divided into three separate ten-week training sessions, and she arranged for me to work in the kitchen for the first two sessions to cover the tuition for the third. Despite my lack of interest in becoming a teacher of Transcendental Meditation, it was a no-brainer. I would go to the course, work for twenty weeks, and then get in ten weeks of serious meditation time.
This all came together so quickly, that I overlooked the fact that I didn’t have the money to cover my travel expenses. But as “luck” would have it, I received a small inheritance — just in time and just enough — to cover my flight and the rest of my costs.
Off to Southern Spain
So, along with Peg — who was my girlfriend at the time and who was also taking the course — I flew Icelandic Airways to Luxembourg and then took the train south through the picturesque countryside of France and Spain to the beautiful city of Seville. From there, we took a bus to La Antilla — a small fishing and resort village on Spain’s Southern coast where the course was being held.
When we arrived, we were assigned to our living quarters — comfortable stucco and tile cottages fronting the beach and the vast Atlantic Ocean. Maharishi was not a proponent of spiritual austerities, and I was definitely okay with that.
And so began my twenty-week career as head dishwasher of the course kitchen. And since Maharishi’s nightly lectures were open to everyone — 2000 or so meditators from all over the world — I would go to the lectures after the 2000 or so dinner dishes had been washed.
You just never know.
Despite my decision to not put any time into learning the teaching material, my attendee friends and fellow kitchen workers all kept telling me, “Since you’re here, you might as well learn the material. You just never know.” So eventually I gave in, studying a little bit every day, and by the time I finished my stint in the kitchen and started the course, I was pretty familiar with the material. However, it was still not my intention to get the teacher certification.
10 weeks of bliss
So after 20 weeks of washing dishes, my 10-week course began. During the course, I would get up, meditate, do some yoga, eat breakfast, meditate some more, do more yoga, meditate, eat lunch, walk on the beach, study, meditate some more, eat dinner, and go to the lecture. It was a blissful 10 weeks.
Guru Puja
At the end of the course, it was time for Maharishi to certify those who had met the requirements to be teachers. They had pitched a huge royal blue tent on the beach for the occasion. The plan was for all the trainees to go into the tent, and as a group, perform the ceremony used in the “initiation” of new meditators. The ceremony, called a “guru puja,” is very peaceful and uplifting. It’s sung in Sanskrit, while fruit and flowers are offered up as a show of gratitude to the lineage of gurus who have handed down the teachings from ancient times to the present.
Crunch time
I had learned all the material and passed all the tests, but believe it or not, when I walked into that blue tent, I was still undecided about becoming a teacher. To understand my ambivalent state of mind, it might help to know that I was very much of a rebel regarding organizations and their politics, I was only 25, and on top of that, all that meditation had made me pretty spacey.
So I’m standing there in a big blue tent on a beach in Southern Spain, performing a Sanskrit ceremony, part of me feeling very peaceful and elevated, while another part of me was struggling to decide which direction my life would go.
When we finished the ceremony, it was time to get the official certification from Maharishi to become teachers of Transcendental Meditation. But I had made my decision: No… I’m not going to do it. So I began to walk out of the tent.
But “fate” and Mother Nature had decided otherwise. It had rained the previous night and there were scattered puddles on the floor. I was barefoot, and after a step or two toward the exit, I stepped right in one of the puddles. The brisk water immediately snapped me back to my senses. I had come all this way and learned all the teaching material… of course I was going to go through with it! I got Maharishi’s seal of approval, and — thanks to a well-placed puddle — stepped into my mission as a meditation teacher.
Afterward
Despite my rebelliousness, I managed to spend a few years teaching within the TM organization before cutting the cord and becoming an independent meditation teacher.
Trusting the wisdom of the Universe
I learned quite a bit from my adventure. But the main thing I learned, was that the Universe has an extraordinary capacity to orchestrate the events necessary to help us find our missions. So if you feel that you have a mission and haven’t yet discovered what it is, I suggest that you stay receptive, and trust that the Universe will make sure that you find it.
