Amma in Granollers 2010 - My Second Personal Encounter

This year I was surprised that Amma came to Granollers to give darshan. The sports hall where she came is a ten minute walk from my house.

I spent all of my free time there. I didn't receive darshan this year. I didn't feel like I needed it. I was just happy to see her and be apart of the crowd.

If you don't know much about Hinduism, perhaps it all looks a bit like a circus. People running around in white robes and unfamiliar music being played and people bowing. it can be a bit overwhelming.

I used to feel like that going into a church when I was younger. That I didn't fit in, that I didn't know the rituals and it seemed like an alien place.

And yet, if you have the patience to look beyond all of the circus you will see the most amazing person I have ever laid eyes on. Amma is sweetness personified. She is loving, generous, intense, personal, wisdom personified. She puts all of her idealism into practice, making her true to her word and honest through and through.

I don't know about her devotees, and I don't know what other people want from her. I just know that when I see her smiling face and when I sit nearby watching her take strangers into her arms as though they were her own children, I am truly amazed. A few hours with her help to erase so much of the negative programing we receive in every day life. The 'me first' mentality, the pushing and shoving, the selfishness, the lies of the media, the fear in people's bodies. All of this is shoved aside.

Amma makes it all seem so simple. I am not a devotee. I am an ardent admirer and supporter of Amma's life purpose.  If you get the chance to see her, take it!

My First Meeting with Amma - A Personal Story

The first time I went to see Amma I received darshan, the hug. This is an incredibly personal thing, so everyone feels something different. This is my story only.

Amma hugged me, and it was as if time stopped. I was in ‘space’. It was like a vacuum, and it was deep inside of ‘me’, where ever that was. Deeper than I have ever consciously been before. It was black. It was quiet. It was still. It was alive.

And this tiny sensation (everything happened in sensation, not in words, so its not the same as what actually happened) began to resound through the space, outward in waves.

And it hit upon something I didn’t know existed.

I was pulled away from Amma, and she smiled into my eyes and a sweet was pressed into my hand and I mechanically picked up my bag and walked to the back of the large hall with tears streaming down my face.

Then I remembered that she was soft. That she hugged with no reserve in her body. She had no fear. And she whispered ‘cara mia’ over and over in my ear.

I sat in a daze for about 40 minutes and every time I went into the moment of ‘space’ I had a sensation of falling and pulsations racing through my body that made me tremble with fear. In her embrace, I felt freedom. You think that when freedom is offered to you, you’d leap at it. But I didn’t. I trembled and hesitated and realized I wasn’t sure if I wanted what she had to offer.

In her embrace, in the depth of my being as I knew it, Amma revealed to me that I was loved. It sounds ridiculous. But it was freedom. Terrifying freedom. And all of the things that I had not done, that I had not fulfilled, were based on the illusion that I was not loved, and my reaction to this feeling.

If I was loved to the depth of my being, then there was nothing to stop me.

That was my first meeting with Amma in 2009.