07/25/2025
She lay in the hospital bed in extreme pain. A bad fall had shattered her ankle, and she’d been taken to a small, nearby hospital. The night was stormy, with many medical emergencies, and the staff was scrambling to care for the twenty-one patients in their nine-bed hospital. Because of the seriousness of her injury, she was eventually given a bed, in a room with an elderly woman whose slow, labored breathing made it clear that she was dying.
With this woman was her adult son, who was loudly crying through his tears, “Mama, Mama, don’t leave me!” This continued throughout the night. The intense pain from her ankle, combined with the tragic scene unfolding beside her, made it impossible to get the sleep her body so desperately needed.
The woman with the broken ankle was our friend, Nayaswami Uma—one of Ananda’s spiritual lights, now serving in Ananda Assisi. I had been concerned about her, and finally a few days ago, we talked and she shared her experience with us:
“I was immobile and in a lot of pain, and at first the elderly woman’s labored breathing and her son’s crying were difficult to deal with. Then I thought, ‘What can I do to help?’ I immediately began praying for them. I prayed throughout the night, and began to feel light and grace surrounding them and others waiting for medical care. The son began to calm down, and his mother quietly left her body.
“The following morning, the hospital staff bought to the bed next to me another dying woman. Still in extreme pain, I began praying for her, and felt her soul lifted into the light as she passed. Shortly afterwards, a few of my friends came to visit me, and were distressed to see the dead woman lying there in the room. ‘We must call the staff,’ they insisted. ‘You can’t be in this room with her body lying there.’
“‘Don’t worry about me,’ I told them. ‘I realize now why I broke my ankle, and was brought to this hospital.’ It felt like a dark force had been pressing down, and prayers were needed for many souls. Over the succeeding days, as I continuously offered prayers, I felt increasingly filled with joy, and the darkness lifted.”
Transcendence and self-forgetfulness are the answers to every problem that life presents us. Blame, self-pity, and anger only deepen our suffering. How often do we think, “This isn’t fair. Why do I need to suffer like this?” But if we ask, as Uma did, “What can I do to help?” then we break the hold that darkness and suffering have on us.
The intricacies of past karma and suffering—both personal and global—are difficult to understand or reconcile. But if we live with faith in God, and do our part to bring His light into the world, we can experience the divine hand in everything.
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