Reverently To You I Say...

Reverently To You I Say...

Daniel Aaron | 07 May 2024

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, yogis and yoginis…

For many years that’s how I often began the “dharma talks” at the beginning of my yoga classes. 

Now, with this communication, addressing y’all as “Brothers and Sisters” feels more fitting. 

Here’s how and why I’m coming out of the closet.

Actually, it’s not accurate to say that I’ve been in any closet, in this regard anyway. I’ve never hidden it, if also never shared it. 

It is a name, a moniker, and the meaning it has for me, which may or not mean something or matter to you. 

Thirty years ago I was ordained as a minister. While that process meant a lot to me then, and indeed I “performed” some of the activities of a reverend, I never took on the title. 

Some years later, amidst my studies with Thich Nhat Hahn, I swore Buddhist vows.

My own journey into spirit, healing and service continued and deepened, as did my faith and conviction that—as Rumi said—”there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”

Jump ahead several more years through the peeling away of many more layers of pain, of my past, and yet I dove into another oath. This time my deepening dedication to the Divine came in Hindu/Sanskrit form by “taking sannyas.”

A sannyasin is usually thought of as one who has renounced the world, though the meaning that my teacher conveyed to me then was more that I was swearing my obedience to a vision of our world guided by and suffused with love. 

Dig! That I could be 100% down with. 

On this occasion I also changed my name. My poor mother. It was hard enough for her to transition from me from Danny, to Dan, to Daniel. Come to think of it, she continued to call me Danny until she transitioned from this earthly plane.

So, now, you, like me, might wonder why I write this to you, and why some thirty years later I return to that ordination I mentioned. Why do I take on that title now? 

To be accurate, it’s not the commission that I received back then that I’m taking on now. That never disappeared. Every moment of the last thirty years I’ve done my best (failing miserably at times) to uphold my vow to do what’s right, my top priority being the continual awakening to deeper levels of divinity and greater service to others in the same.

Here’s what I know now: my attempts to serve and embody the perfect peace and infinite love that is our potential have been far from perfect. 

From the moment that God whacked me upside the head with a celestial 2 X 4 in August of 1995, I’ve known fully in my heart and bones that separation is illusory, no religion or dogma has a lock  on Universal Truth, on awakening into Oneness. 

And while the human animal, survival, egoic part of me has at many times been running the show, directing the movie of my life; and while that’s resulted in drama and the awfulness of me passing pain on to others, I always return to the abiding truth of Unity. I seek forgiveness and the greater ability to live and serve from love. 

The Sun is always shining even when clouds obstruct our view. 

The word reverend means different things to different people. It comes from ​​the latin reveri, meaning to revere.

During one part of my boyhood, I frequently walked by the historical house that was once Paul Revere’s. In the U.S. he is a symbol of freedom and independence. 

The symbolism for me of now coming to use the word reverend with my name is to remind me of my reverence for Spirit, Love and Oneness. 

It’s with humility and respect that I am telling you, and not to impress you. It is to continually impress upon myself the vows I’ve taken, that the purpose of my life is to love and serve. 

Of course the ideal and potential of that vision will continue to be beyond my reach, and yet with radical reverence, reach I must. 

With the greatest gratitude I owe it to God who loved me enough to grab me by the hair and lift me to see the world anew. To the gracious and generous teachers and mentors who have poured into me, at times even through my resistance, reluctance and recalcitrance, my debt shall never be paid. 

Most of all it’s to you that I hereby pledge and promise my reverence. 

You, me, my daughter, our dog, the trees and the tornadoes; the rocks and the Rockettes: Taoism refers to the world of ten thousand things, the many and infinite physical forms of the divine. We are creation continuing to create. 

It scares me to communicate this to you. Fail, flounder and fall, I know I will. Yet, like Yoda, speaking I am—as another reminder (to me) that try is a lie and that the only true failure is giving up. 

All that said, and whether any of this comes across as nutty, noble or nonsense, I commit. I declare.

Hopefully I’ve painted the picture and indicated the quest I deepen into. I invite you along, too. If you see me veer, please let me know. 

Loving you, loving me, loving all of us, thank you. I love you.