Integral Yoga Magazine with Kia Scherr

January 2010 – Winter Issue

The True Test of One’s Spiritual Practice

An Interview with Kia Scherr

 In November 2008, Master Charles Cannon (founder of Synchronicity Foundation in Virginia and a friend of Yogaville) led a group on a spiritual retreat in India. The peace of their stay was shattered by the Mumbai terrorist attacks, yet their spirits would not be. Kia Scherr, whose husband, Alan, and daughter Naomi were gunned down in the attack, stunned world audiences for refusing to condemn the terrorists, speaking instead of compassion and forgiveness, unconditional love and the affirmation of life. In this interview, conducted soon after the one-year anniversary of the tragedy, Kia talks about how, following a global outpouring of support and appreciation, she and Master Charles formed the One Life Alliance to lead others to recognize the value of life as sacred.

Integral Yoga Magazine: How did you get involved with meditation?

Kia Scherr: I started meditating, Transcendental Meditation (TM), when I was 17. I was so inspired by my experiences that instead of going to college, I decided I wanted to be a meditation teacher. So, I went to France and began the TM training with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Maharishi was adamant about regular practice. My husband, Alan, and I were very regular in our practice. Even when I had babies, when they watched Sesame Street, I’d meditate; while they napped, I’d get in my meditation session, so I kept up a daily practice. That regular practice integrates the experience of meditation into one’s daily life. At first you get the experience of peace in your meditation session and then as that builds, you take that into your life. It’s the analogy of dipping the cloth in the dye. You dip it into the dye, take it out and it fades. You re-dip it and it fades. You re-dip and, after awhile, it doesn’t fade any more. Just as the cloth becomes color fast, with steady practice we get stabilized and established in inner peace. 

IYM: How did you get involved with the Synchronicity Foundation? 

KS: Alan loved any free samples, and Synchronicity was offering their high tech meditation CDs, so Alan got them. I was resistant to technology and happy with my TM practice. Alan decided to try it with his regular TM practice. He loved it and suggested I give it a try, which I did. My meditation went deeper, faster and it stayed there longer. Look at the times we live in, there’s all kinds of interference and negative, vibrational frequencies and waves. Holding the peace is harder. I realized that using the headphones was like having my own personal cave and I was hooked. 

IYM: Did you feel like you were leaving Maharishi for another tradition? 

KS: No, it felt like an appropriate transition. Maharishi said that, at some point on one’s path, you need a personal teacher. Master Charles was available and accessible for the more personal guidance we wanted, so we moved there. Maharishi’s teaching is Vedic and Master Charles’ teacher is Swami Muktananda, from a Kashmiri Saivism tradition. The teachings were totally compatible and both are holistic models of reality, wherein meditation is the means and there’s one source consciousness as the basis of all experience. Meditation is the means to experience that absolute, unified field of being, or whatever your words are for that experience. In meditation you can contact that and integrate it into your daily experience and then, ever increasing integrative wholeness arises.

We became resident staff so we could intensify our practice as a family. Naomi was three at that time and she was raised here. We were able to have a deeper meditative practice in this modern ashram and have a more inward journey for 11 years. Naomi was the only child in the community; she was home schooled and she flourished. She was very gifted and we didn’t have the resources to support all her gifts, so Master Charles suggested we look into boarding schools. We found the Emma Willard school, and Naomi got excited about this school because on their website there is a quote from Mahatma Gandhi about “being the change.” They train girls to be leaders and they have such a life affirming focus. Naomi decided it was the school for her, and we were confident that she had the foundation and she was integrated enough, to be able to go. 

IYM: What was life like just prior to the tragedy?

KS: We enjoyed going to the library in Charlottesville on Sundays. There was a section I liked to browse on spirituality and religion. This particular Sunday, there was a book on Sri Ramakrishna that I found. I pulled it from the shelf and inwardly ask if he had a message for me for the day. I opened the book and there was a story: Sri Ramakrishna told his disciple Kshab, “You’ve lost your tail Kshab. When the tadpole loses its tail it can go up onto the land. You can go out into the world and maintain your awareness of God.“  I ran to Alan and Naomi and said, “Here’s this message. It’s so perfect. Naomi is like the tadpole who lost its tail.” Two weeks later, Alan and Naomi were in India. My whole life changed and it became clear that the message in the book was for me. I was soon seated at a press conference and, for the next year I was speaking to nearly every media outlet and traveling all over the country. I was going out into the world. I’d become the tadpole that lost its tale.

IYM: How did you find the strength? 

KS: I was in the most extreme experience of my life—the deepest grief and pain you can imagine. We were such a close unit. We lived, worked, meditated, took retreats together. We did everything together and it was a huge loss. How do you know how integrated you are? When the tests come. I’m 53 years-old and I began to meditate when I was 17. Thankfully, that foundation gave me so much strength and balance. I had to go through the deep sadness and loss and experience it fully, but, I couldn’t let it drown me. I had to wade through it. And, it wasn’t just me being tested. Helen (Prema) Connolly, an Integral Yoga teacher and Synchronicity member, was right there when the gunshots were going off. For most of her adult life, Helen has been a meditator. Alan had the presence of mind to yell to everyone to dive under the tables. She assumed the child’s pose and begin repeating, “OM Shanti, OM Shanti, OM Shanti” aloud. This was the test of practice. She took hold of Alan and Naomi’s hands. Helen was the only one who wasn’t shot; a bullet just grazed her thigh.

Master Charles kept in touch with the whole group in Mumbai while they were trapped for that 48-hour period. He noted that they were hyper-alert, but calm; no one freaked out. After, Master Charles went to the hospital to visit the injured. Linda Ragsdale had been shot and had a two-and-a-half-foot wound on her back, along her spine. The first thing she said to him was, “We are not victims of terrorism, we are victors over terrorism.” I think this is a great example of the benefits and value of meditation. And thankfully, Linda survived and was not paralyzed.

On the human level, I was experiencing the loss. But, I felt there was a larger message of peace, forgiveness and compassion to share. The media found that hard to understand. The would keep asking me, “How can you forgive the terrorists.” They were almost offended by this notion. This interview now is pretty much the only one in which that question didn’t arise. Why? Because we know that our spiritual practice leads us to oneness, to wanting to move on and focus on something positive. 

IYM: Is this what led you to founding One Life Alliance? 

KS: Strangers reached out—Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews—and it felt like family members sending words of comfort and love. I no longer felt like I was living inside an ashram and all the other people were part of the outside world; I felt one with them. I was filled with a feeling of being deeply connected to the rest of world. The conversations I began having when I was traveling had to do with the sacredness of life.

So, as a result of the outpouring of love we received, we knew there was more to this story, and Master Charles and I wanted to continue the conversation.

We formed the organization to provide a context for this message, which is to honor the sacredness and oneness of life—first in oneself and then in each other. We started by creating an interactive website. The people who are part of the conversation, like Linda, whom I mentioned earlier, will create the activities of One Life Alliance. She was very close to Naomi. Linda is a children’s book author and she was going to teach Naomi to draw a dragon. To fulfill that promise, she created the Peace Dragon Art Quest for children. On the International Day of Peace last year, we went to a school in Canada where we taught 450 kids to draw peace dragons. We plan to take this project around world and eventually have an art exchange between kids of different countries, especially, those in conflict, like India and Pakistan.

Master Charles and I are in the process of meeting with the Indian and Pakistani ambassadors. We want to meet both Virginia senators and begin to have conversations and garner their support and blessings. If people invite us to speak, we’ll go there. We have developed One Life training seminars. in which we create a meditation process for participants and during which we explore the conversation on oneness. We’d like to collaborate with other organizations, spiritual leaders, humanitarians and musicians, creating a big event maybe at a sports arena. We want to invite everyone to join the conversation and share his or her inspirations.

Kia Scherr has been a meditation teacher for more than thirty years. She serves as president of One Life Alliance, devoting her full-time focus to inspiring the conversation of honoring the sacredness of life in all areas of the world. Previously she served as the national executive council member for the Synchronicity Foundation, directing hundreds of people through intensive retreat protocols as retreat coordinator, presenter and mentor. For more information or to get involved, please visit: www.onelifealliance.org.

 

 

 

 

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