Terry Kristen Strom

Through the soft chatter of my fellow gurubais [fellow disciples], as we all sat in Wayne and Naomi Palmer’s living room finishing our suppers, I heard Wayne toss his voice in my direction. "Terry, you’re up," he said. I looked over at him and stared, then remembered. At the last lay group meeting I had volunteered to be one of the first speakers at this session.

Now I wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. And why had I forgotten the moment after I said it? The memory began to come back. I had felt that Divine Mother had urged me. "Go ahead, speak," she said. "Talk about your gurubais and what it means to be home." Oh my. What it means to be home.

I got up and slid onto the piano bench, to be visible to everyone, figuring that if I was going to make a fool of myself, I might as well approach it head on. I looked around at the gentle eyes, softened by untold life times, peering into mine with love and ready forgiveness for shames done over countless eons.

"I never wanted to come in to this life time," I said. "I remember my birth and emerging wet, heavy, confined and cold to the bone, enough to turn my usual good nature into blood-red rage. Then I looked down at my mother on the delivery table and felt a flood of love rush into my bones. I seemed to know and love her and realized that my being there was not her fault, not in the ultimate sense.

"But there I was, in full, healthy body. What was I going to do? The choices seemed limited. After all, what was so exciting about a childhood re-training of my mind and body for another worldly experience? ‘God, let me outa here,’ became my mantra from the very beginning. And as far as I can tell, I spent a large part of my first three years traveling outside my body to other planes. While I was out there, I visited friends and fueled up on a few comforting last minute lessons by those more advanced than I. I probably did a lot of pleading too. I can just hear it now,

"‘Please Babaji, let me stay, don’t send me back, pleeease!’" Obviously, it didn’t work.

"Nevertheless, as I grew, I never forgot my cosmic friends and family. One evening after a particularly rough couple of years, I was pumping my legs like fury on a stationary bike I had set up in a second bedroom. Tears bathed my face as I rode. I looked up. ‘I want to go home,’ I told Divine Mother, without really knowing what or where home was. ‘I want to go home! Take me home. Now. Take me home.’ I didn’t want to die necessarily, I simply wanted to be home with my loved ones.

"I rode on, night after night, when I got home from work each evening, indulging in emotion until I was so weary I barely felt like getting up in the morning to brush my teeth. But one evening I got on the bike and as the old mantra kicked in, a booming voice swooped into the right side of my brain.

‘MAKE HOME HERE,’ It said. There was no mistaking this message. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ was my automatic and almost involuntary reply. Are you kidding? Who would dare refuse such help? I can use every ounce of help I can get!

"Not long afterwards, a friend walked me to my car as we discussed an up coming psychic fair for which someone had asked him to do readings. ‘You know, Terry,’ he said, his light blue eyes driving into mine with intensity, ‘you’ll find your friends and family within five years.’ "His vision gave me hope, but I didn’t think too much about it after that, knowing that it’s very difficult for seers to pin point events in time. And besides, I knew my life would change according to my next action, and the next and so on.

"Then one day, several years later, I walked into Ananda on California Street in Palo Alto. The first person I recognized from other life times was Robert Clark, sitting with the choir in front of a harmonium. I stared, transfixed and convinced that somehow I knew him well. Then the speaker, Asha Praver, stood up. Yes, another dear one!

"By now I was so excited I scanned the whole room. There were others I knew, David Praver, Jacqueline Snitkin, Norman Snitkin, and the list went on. And there was my beloved Babaji right up front, of whom from somewhere out of the depths, came a memory.

"For months I didn’t say a word, but sat mute in the back, joyful in tears but barely holding back the sobs of relief, at every service. Now I don’t cry at service, but all the rest is the same, blessedly the same, except that I keep meeting more beloved gurubais. Some are familiar, some seem new, but all are dear souls."

I searched the faces again in the Palmer’s living room. There was not a single person there that night I didn’t recognize from however many life times ago it must have been. "I don’t live in the community," I said, "but in a sense it doesn’t matter. I am so grateful that you are here with me; to be in the same room with you, to sit near you, hear your gentle voices and feel your hearts embrace mine.

We are, indeed, dancing together. "Thank you Divine Mother, for bringing me home."