Offering my humble pranams at the divine lotus feet of our beloved AMMA Sri Karunamayi. Do each of us realize who our first worldly teacher is? For a fact, it is common knowledge that one’s worldly mother is the first teacher. In the role of being our first teacher, she is the one who points us to our worldly father, teaches us to take those first toddler-steps in our journey of life, without faltering or hurting ourselves, and, inculcates the precious good habit of praying daily to God for protection from internal and external harm through her disciplined training.
In the spiritual world, any guesses who our first spiritual teacher and guru, is?!! Yes, you guessed right, none other than our loving AMMA Sri Karunamayi.
Looking back at the way our beloved AMMA has brought us up with tender love & care, similar to my first worldly teacher, AMMA has pointed us to our Divine Father, Mahadev, through letting us learn and chant the mesmerizing Sri Rudram, post the pandemic.
Reflecting on my family’s humble beginnings 15 years ago, in 2011, when we started preparations to receive beloved AMMA and HER devotees at the home that hosted HER holiness in Phoenix. My better half was involved with helping AMMA’s host prepare food for HER holiness and HER devotees, while I was involved with the work of assembling bricks for the Homa Kundas(fire-sacrifice-urns). Little did we realize that loving AMMA was building us our homes, while we kept building these urns, year after year.
It was sometime in 2016, while we were busily engaged in such preparations, my better-half happened to talk in passing, about my work situation and believe it or not, AMMA worked her way into getting me my present job through a couple of devotees, almost instantaneously. This was a gentle reminder of HER myriad ways of taking care of our faltering toddler steps of spiritual sadhana, binding us closer to HER divine family and setting us up to get ourselves set for spiritual sadhana (austere practices) with a relaxed homely feeling, even at work. Until then, I may have faltered, taking half-a-dozen or more steps in moving through an equal number of jobs and never being able to focus on our individual spiritual sadhanas.
Another correction with our faltering steps, was our decision to move to Florida. Situation demanded that we make the move. However, during HER darshans when we told AMMA about our move, HER holiness had casually mentioned, that we would be back in 3 years. Little did we realize the potent of this divine utterance. Lo and behold, though things looked rosy in Florida, circumstances forced us to take the route back to HER beloved family in Phoenix.
Such is the potency of HER word.
Smt Anupama and Sri Sreedhar Reddy
