I arrived to work gifted with three gifts in a row. They were simple gifts, but the timing was impeccable. One friend who shared with me the Om Mani Padme Hum experience, gave me the gift of three sticks of incense she got while in India, blessed by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
The second was cleaning out her kitchen and gave me a mini scraper she thought we could find useful at work. The third gave me a Canadian penny for the next time I was in Canada adding "I think they stopped making these, right?"
I went home to read a few more pages from my new book I purchased on Saturday evening, which happened to be about a swami who has more in common with me in regards to my inability to settle on a spiritual belief that I could have imagined. On my back porch, a hawk landed on my neighbor's shed, just over the fence line. I said "Hello, Krishna." A moment later, it flew away. It had accepted my acknowledgement. I then spent the next two days sick in bed. I wondered why and what I needed to be in bed for. After all, everything seemed to be kismet lately.
In between my rest and awake state fighting off a fever and migraine, I emailed a Krishna devotee for the mantras sung at the weekly celebrations. He kindly said, he would get them to me. Meanwhile, I found out that Radhanath Swami, the author of the book I was soaking up, would be in New York in the summer, to which I asked to be put on the list when details were available. An email then popped into my mailbox from a Buddhist monk seeking to hold a meditation and Q&A at my studio. He would be in the area in June.
On Friday morning, I awoke from yet another dream. A man I knew to be Krishna sat on a large white lotus flower. Soon in his place, the symbol Ohm (the sound or name of God) appeared. Next, a see through geometric shape that I could only see the purple outline of was in front of the lotus. In my waking state, I could not draw the shape if I wanted to. It was intricate and long like a diamond. I knew once again this must have a significance.
My day was well and my body was healthier than in the past two days. As I left work, my co-worker showed me a picture. I could not believe my eyes! I asked her, "Where did you get this picture?" She had lived recently in an apartment building with many Indian families, and knew many people from her stay in India. She said the baker at our work had made it. "Isn't it beautiful?"
The cake was made for a child's celebration. Full of color and animals, it said "Hare Krishna." While I did not know about the giraffe or the lion, Hanuman (Hindu God in the body of a monkey, a devotee of Lord Rama) and Ganesha (Son of Shiva and Parvati with an Elephant head) , too, were there on that cake.
I do not know what my future holds, but like a stream running into a river, the water is flowing. And I am following.
