The Hidden Path (WINNER OF THE BEAUTY AWARD for Spiritual)

Money And Other Issues

The mind questions, The mind answers, But the mind is never satisfied With the answers.

- Sri Chinmoy

During the following weeks, the Centre Meditations were filled with organizational activities. Well, naturally not the meditations as such, but the time afterwards.

Which had – so far – been a peaceful period. A time for happily nibbling on my prasad, without a care in the world.

But not any more. (The 'without a care in the world' part, not the 'nibbling on my prasad' bit. That one I still enjoyed very much. Somehow, problems had unfortunately never been able to curb my appetite. Which I found a bit annoying, as they would otherwise have served at least one purpose. . .)

To my growing distress, the costs for the halls and the prasad were soon joined by hostel-fees and the necessity for gas, to keep our cars running for all those hundreds of kilometres.

The last blow to my quickly dwindling bank account had been the fact that we also needed food. (Who would have thought...?) The disciples organizing the concerts were happy to provide one cooked meal a day for us - in case we wanted to have one - but we would have to pay for it, of course. Which would still be considerably cheaper than going to a restaurant to eat, but. . .

Realizing that I was slowly freaking out, the usually stern and frowning Trude graciously restored my faith in the doability of the journey by slipping me an envelope containing a very (!) generous amount of money. Which I found incredibly sweet! Honestly, I would never have expected anything like it, especially from her of all people.

And it had come at the perfect time, too, since I had really needed some kind of reassurance at that point. Although the feeling of dread concerning the costs of the trip usually lessened somewhat as the days went by and I had had some time to get used to the thought. 

After all, the amounts of money in question were only frightening to me, because I still compared them to the quantity I used to have as a pupil living with my parents. I was not used to the higher costs of living on your own, yet.

I sighed deeply. At least, this has to have been the last attack on my account!

*****

"I feel that you two are ready for the next step," Surya told Beni and myself the subsequent Thursday. The three of us, still all dressed in white from the class we had just returned from, were lounging comfortably in our living room slash bedroom. Spread out on the soft, light green coloured couch and matching loveseat, we were enjoying a cup of tea before calling it a night.

Surya was going to stay in our apartment once again.

Our new apartment.

Since Monika, after having returned from Canada, had not been too thrilled with having Beni and me as her flat mates, she had politely asked us to move out fairly quickly. I suspect that – secretly - she had always fancied Beni and had therefore found it too hard seeing him with me all the time. 

In the end, it had worked out well, since we were now living next to the centre of town, only about five minutes walking distance from our meditation meetings and much closer to the university as well as my job.

Besides, I personally found this new apartment much cuter than the other one. Especially the living room that - with its slanted, wooden ceiling holding two fairly big windows - had a very homely feeling.

Although at that moment, my attention was focused on our guest more than on our surroundings. As always when he spoke, I was fascinated and intrigued and couldn't wait to hear more.