In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Swami Paramananda entitled “Origin of All.”  I’ve written the following  reflections inspired by this selection.

Stealing in My Dream

 
Thou art the Giver of all blessing, of all understanding.
Thou art the origin of all. Thou art all.
—Swami Paramananda
 

Sometimes I think about a watch I had, a necklace watch, gold with an inlaid blue stone. I bought it for $160 in Switzerland, on an orchestra tour. It was one of my most prized possessions.

I wore it every day for years, until it stopped working. Eventually, I got it fixed, but by then I was wearing another watch. Still, I loved it. I planned to start wearing it again.

I kept it with me when I moved in with an elderly woman one spring after spending over two months in a group home. Her granddaughter lived there too. She’d been in trouble with the law.

Sometimes, I would just hold the watch in my hand and look at it, remembering better days.

By mid-summer, I needed treatment again. I left the house one day, took a long drive, and never went back. I spent three to four months in two hospitals halfway across the country in New York.

When my parents came to pick me up, they had news. They’d gone to the woman’s house to collect my things, and some things were missing. The watch was one of them.

I was devastated to lose such a treasure.

I tried to be all holy and think of the woman’s granddaughter as an emanation of God. I tried to wish her well and wish that she enjoyed my things.

I already had a death wish from spending a year in and out of the group home and mental hospitals. The loss of my things made it worse, especially losing the watch.

I prayed to God for comfort and had a dream. I was living in a large home and one of the residents had left suddenly, leaving behind all her shoes. I went into her room with one of my friends and started taking shoes. I kept saying, “She left. She’s not coming back.” The woman who owned the home looked upon me with disapproval. I didn’t really care. I wanted those shoes.

The dream made me realize that the woman who took my things wasn’t thinking about hurting me, she was just thinking about herself. I knew she owned next to nothing and couldn’t afford the kinds of things she’d taken—the iPod, the digital camera, the watch, the other jewelry. And somehow, I was comforted.

Years later, I try to imagine how God could be the origin of all things, the origin of all blessing, the origin of all understanding, how God could be all things.

And I think, God is the origin of the watch. God is the origin of the woman who took the watch. God is the origin of me. God is the origin of the dream. God is all of these things. I try to be all holy and wish the woman well, the woman who is as much me as I am, even though we are individuals in consciousness.

I never truly had the watch. I never truly lost the watch. It just passed in and out of my consciousness, while it remained in the consciousness of God, who is me.

The watch was a form in a world of changing forms. The watch is an image that remains in my memory.

I think hateful things sometimes. Wishing I’d filed a police report. Wishing the woman had gone to jail. Wishing I could see her again and confront her for what she’s done.

Would I wish to report on God? Would I wish God to go to jail? Would I wish to confront God for what God has done?

What I wish for is peace. The peace to release the past. The peace to let go of the watch with grace. The peace to see that that woman is really no worse than me. It was me, after all, stealing in my dream.