A Crisis of Frustration

Robyn spent the next year virtually on retreat in her house, where she lived with her intimate, her sons, and a few other devotees. She remained communicative with Beloved Adi Da, Who sent His "Love and Blessings" in response to her letters. Her relationship to Beloved Adi Da was the core of her life. She stopped working at her job and devoted herself to the health regimes she had chosen and to study and meditation.

For a long time, Robyn felt she was beating the cancer. It was not until March 2001 that she really felt a decline. By late April, the tumor had made her right lung completely dysfunctional, and the fluid that was accumulating now in her left lung had to be drained regularly at a hospital. The doctor's prognosis was only weeks.

However, an opportunity was offered for Robyn to participate in clinical trials under the auspices of a hospital in Melbourne — the first human trials of a new treatment that had shown promising results in animals. These trials held out real hope to Robyn and her friends and family that there might be a last-minute miracle. Avatar Adi Da Samraj encouraged Robyn, if she felt well enough, to pursue the possibility. In His Words, "You fight for your life as long as you can."

Beloved Adi Da also Called Robyn to attend to the primary matter:

In fact, the Melbourne trials could not begin until July, and by the beginning of June the procedures to drain Robyn's left lung were coming so close together — three or four days apart — that she despaired. Her body was no more than skin and bone, and her doctors told her that at any point she was entitled to say, "no more drains". In that case, they would medicate her so that her breathlessness, caused by the build-up of fluid, would no longer be distressing and the body could give up easily.

I would speak to Robyn every day on the phone, and the moment came when she asked that I express to Beloved Adi Da her desire to cease the lung drains and release the body. Beloved Adi Da felt her situation more deeply than any of us. He sensed that she had come to the point of utter frustration and simply wanted to bring an end to the ordeal. While He was more than compassionate in His response to her, He was not altogether satisfied, from a Spiritual point of view, that this was the auspicious moment for her to relinquish her life. Yet Beloved Adi Da did not say what she should do one way or the other. He left it to her and her doctors. Robyn considered the matter further and decided to have the lung drained once more.

When I arrived in Sydney a few days later, I could see that there was still a great deal of strength in her body and her mind was completely clear. Apart from the lungs, her organs were strong. She confessed that she had become so angry and frustrated with her condition that she wanted to take control and choose the moment of her death herself. Surrender into the utter, uncontrollable mystery of it all, as well as surrender to the possibility of an indefinite number of future lung drains, was not a gesture she could make.

Yet now a greater understanding was awakening. She saw that she had been making first death, and then life, "the enemy". She wrote this understanding to Beloved Adi Da, and from that point He helped her more and more to feel beyond the limits in her surrender and in her Spiritual practice altogether. It was the most amazing process in which Beloved Adi Da, Robyn's Spiritual Master, guided her through the minefield of fear, sorrow, anger, and anxious thinking to a truly happy and accepting disposition.