Listen to the inner voice

It was a beautiful sunny Games Day at our annual August Celebrations in New York. The teams were North America against Europe, playing soccer, a game Guru used to play at the Ashram and encouraged his disciples to play to foster dynamism, oneness and good old discipline.

It was an intense game and I was playing defence. One of our players pierced the defence of the European team but the goalie made a beautiful save and the European team made a couple of very fine passes. Suddenly one European player broke away and was coming towards our goalie. I was running after him as I had gone forward to help on the last play and was caught off guard. I ran with all the speed I could gather up and caught up with him. As he was about to kick the ball, I also swung my right foot to block and we both hit our own foot and collapsed on the ground. The game was stopped momentarily. My brother-disciple seems to have gotten the better of it as he was OK, but my foot had inflated in size. I had pulled something, probably a tendon.

I had to limp off the field and exit from the game and I think the European disciples won that game by a goal. Guru was informed of the situation and I was immediately grateful for that. For some reason, I felt I should walk on my foot, but everyone was giving me advice as to what to do and what not to do, which was not to walk on my foot. I inwardly felt all the time that I should be walking on my foot and it was a very powerful feeling. I felt uncomfortable all afternoon for not listening to that inner voice.

Later that evening I went up for prasad and Guru saw me walking with one foot off the ground and the other taking the whole weight. Guru motioned to me come and see him. I went up to Guru and he told me that he had put a very strong force on me and asked me why was I not walking. I apologized to Guru and went back to my seat walking quite comfortably on both feet. The pain and whatever the problem was had disappeared, and voila – a truly incredible instant miracle cure had occurred.

From that day on I learned a very precious lesson, and that is to listen to one’s inner voice, especially with the calibre of Guru we have.