Charlie

Charlie is a peacock who appeared to me two months ago in my backyard.  As you will hear, Charlie came after I prayed to my Guru, Gurumayi Chidvilasanada, who used peacock feathers to bless us as we bowed to her.  I spent many years in her Ashram, and I had a great connection to this Master. 

This episode is about the power of prayer.  I had been so despondent, filled with despair.  I prayed to Gurumayi for help, and she sent a peacock to me.  You will hear about this in the following episode.

Transcript

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I spoke about Charlie the Peacock, but I didn't s name it name him as a peacock or her in my last recording. Because even when these miracles happened to me, I doubt them immediately. And this appearance was a miracle. You know, peacocks are royal, royal cobalt blue. And when I was in India in 1989 and 1990, the Hindu tradition, the Vedas say that God is blue. That's the color, and it's magnificent. I knew that was true because when I went to India after my huge awakening, huge, huge, huge, I would see these scintillating blue lights in front of my eyes all the time. I I scratched my eyes and I couldn't get rid of them. They were, it was annoying and weird. And then I read in the Vedas and in some spiritual literature when I was in the ashram that the world is pulsated from a shimmering blue dot. It expands and contracts, it expands and contracts. Well, that's what I was seeing. These blue dots, the blue pearl. Years later, 20 years later now, whatever it is, 30 years, 40 years, I don't have any concept of time. I don't have a concept of time. I just feel better all the time, and I'm I don't know. But I saw it and I saw this, and in the last 20 years, I've really, really gone into quantum physics. I'd started it a while ago. I started it, started it after college and graduate school, because uh Cornell, a physicist, came and spoke to us once, and I got fascinated by these little microscopic particles, quark, muon, neutrino, all these, I just couldn't believe how beautiful that was. Now, I don't get the math. I mean, I do sort of get the math. I haven't learned all these symbols, but it is very powerful to think that this scintillating blue light, when it's just stabilized in your vision, it becomes a world. And as you know, most of you know, quantum physics says that a particle becomes a wave when observed. A wave becomes a particle when observed. To me, that is the blue pearl. Get it? Get it? Let me tell you about Charlie now. In India, my beautiful teacher, Gurumai Chivilasananda, would bless people in the Darshan line. People would wait to bow to her, that's called Darshan, bowing before a great being. And I mean there'd be thousands sometimes lined up. And she would bop. It was a blessing to bop people with peacock feathers. I mean, not hard, I mean just touch them. Peacock feathers are very auspicious. So about two months ago, when I was in one of many dark nights of the soul where I can't find connection, I can't find anything. And I am in such despair. I put on the happy face because I've been trained to. I see my patience. I go to these networking, I do whatever I can to not make everybody else suffer because of my despair and suffering. Dark night of the soul is a profound experience. Now I'll get back to the Charlie in a minute, but I just tell you what dark note dark night comes from. It comes from St. John of the Cross, who was imprisoned during the Spanish Inquisition under a latrine in the 1700s, no, it must have been earlier than earlier than the 1700s. But for two years, and this is written about, I'm not making it up, he couldn't lie down, sit down, or stand up for two years. And he suffered the dark night of the soul. But I believe what happened to him, and it's happened to me once with great suffering, physical pain, is that it becomes so awful, so awful that it pops into its opposite and it turned to bliss. It turned to bliss. I will in another podcast tell you about my it's awful, which I was in the hospital. I'll just tell you, I was in the hospital once with belly surgery, and instead of giving me shots of painkillers, demerol, they were giving me vitamins, and I was, I couldn't speak, I couldn't breathe. I was supposed to be on a morphine drip, but they came in every three hours with these shots, and I couldn't speak. I would get onto the floor, I would try to stand up, I would try to scream, I would try, and it went, I don't know how long it went on. But it was so exquisitely painful with my belly ripped open with no pain relief, that suddenly I popped into every human, maybe even animal, being that suffered like that. And I became a woman on a riverbank, dying from being wounded and raped. I became somebody in a cave, being scratched, being hurt. I became all beings that suffered the way I did. And it was so incredible. I don't know what was happening. I don't know if I was dying, I don't know. But we cannot tolerate agony for too long. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't last. Another subject, another little segue. In New York in the nine early, no, late 80s, I guess, I studied a little bit with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on death and dying and Stephen and Andrea Levine, who were just the most incredible teachers. And I'll never forget, I don't know if it was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross or Stephen who told us about a man, I think it was Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. A man had been in a car with his family going on a vacation, three children, a wife and him, and a semi hit them, and they all died except for him. And he came to this workshop of Elizabeth. Now what I it wasn't when I was there, but he came to this workshop of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. And I don't think he could speak. I don't think he could speak, but apparently she facilitated, or it happened, where he screamed and made these he screamed for 16 seconds. And Elizabeth told us, Dr. Ross told us, that no human suffering, if experienced in the human being, can last longer than 16 seconds. And I saw, I read about it. He went into acceptance, bliss, awareness. He went into it and he didn't say, Why me? Why me? Why did they have to go and not me? I don't believe he did that. I just think he experienced the suffering so completely that it's by its nature of yin and yang, opposites pulled him into something else. That is available because it happened to me, it's happened to others. So just when you think the suffering is never going to end, go so fully into it that you will come out the other side in a different way, I think. You see, people repress, we bury, we push away. We don't want to feel those feelings. Well, feel them. Feel them. Back to Charlie. So, as I said, a couple of months ago, I was in this despair, and I really it was bad. And I go for walks every day, and I was walking up the street towards my house, and I heard this horrible sound from an animal. It sounded like an animal was strangling or something, and I thought, oh fuck, now I have to go see something gross. Always about me. Forget the animal. But it wasn't any animal struggling or suffering or screeching or in my backyard, in the beautiful greenery, was a peacock. I named him Charlie, I don't know why. Now remember the guru, the symbol of peacock feathers. And the day before this happened, I prayed so hard to her to help me, to help me get past the pain. And so she appeared in the form of a peacock. I know that's true because it I saw it. I I was just, I'm never speechless. You know I talk a lot. I took a bowl of water to Charlie, and he hopped down off the little uh stone place where he was like two feet of a terrace, and he came into the yard and he drank the water. I think he ate some peanuts that I put out in the shell that I had for Sam, my crow. You know how they you you take it, they take it down, and then the gizzard chews it up in their stomach. They they don't have teeth. Duh. And Charlie stayed. I don't know when he left, but I truly want you to hear that I have been better since then. So all these meanings, prayer works, gurus, teachers, suffering, ecstasy, these are stories I'm telling that happened to me. I maybe they'll happen to you, I don't know. But these are true stories. I'm talking true stuff. Just true stuff. I'm not scripted as you can tell. And I curse, yeah, yeah, yeah. I lived in New York City for 21 years. What can I tell you? Charlie. Sam. I named all the bucks Ralph and I think um, I can't remember their names. I used to pray the Buddhist prayer. God spare all sentient beings from suffering. I think not God, but may all beings be free of suffering. That's what it was. May all beings be free of suffering. And that includes everything. And I wonder how selfish it is, because I don't want to suffer either. So am I really extending with empathy and compassion? Or is it really just to assuage and help me not feel so horrible all the time? I don't know. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings be free of suffering. I won't say all this love schmuck I used to do because I think this is a time in 2026 that sucks. I think all you have to do is look at this time. It's vibrationally horrible. I'm not being metaphysical. I'm not like that. I don't I don't do that. But I see a lot of people in my psychotherapy practice every week. I see a lot of people in the supermarket, I see a lot of people in the meetings I go to. It ain't good, honey. It ain't good. We are supposed to keep God alive in our hearts because the outer world is going to stink. It's dishonest and horrible, and I I'm telling myself not to involve myself in it so much. Because I can be in the world, but not of the world. The Sanskrit word for is bhav, b-h-a-v, and it's sort of where the third eye is, where you are looking out but also looking in. It's a great, great spiritual attainment. And sometimes I can do it. Wow. What a time this is. What a time. I won't say we're lucky. I don't know what anything's, I don't know anything anymore. But I I just wanted to tell you about Charlie.