Christine's Blog

My name is Christine.  I grew up near Buffalo, New York in the small village of Elma.  My parents, Rose and Alfred, were from Germany and Lithuania.  They both moved to the United States in the 1950's and met each other in Buffalo.  When I was very little, I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather as my parents both were working.  My grandfather was a pastor in a Lutheran church in Buffalo.  As a child, I never felt religious or any draw to the church.  However I was very attracted to mysticism, rituals, magic and art from a very young age.  I always felt different from other children; out of place; and was considered by most others as strange.  Perhaps it was my German upbringing that made me stand apart from the other children in such a small town.  As an only child I lived in a fantasy world, especially through my own drawings and paintings.  Many people felt I was going to become an artist.  But as I grew up, I also felt this deep love of nature and I would spend the days by myself playing in the woods and streams around our home; playing with imaginary friends and many wild animals that became my pets.  By the time I was in high school, my magical world had disappeared and I no longer wanted to paint and be by myself in nature, but wanted to understand more the world outside of me.  So I was drawn to the sciences, especially earth and geological sciences. 

I was deeply attracted to geology and plate tectonics, so as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, I specialized in Earth Sciences and then went on to do my masters at Stanford University in Marine Geology and Geophysics.  I was fortunate to have worked with some of the leading geophysicists at the US Geological Survey in California and as a consultant for a geophysics project through the Government of Puerto Rico.  Shortly after working in these careers, I walked into a contemporary art gallery in San Francisco and again felt this powerful draw to art.  I became obsessed with the artists and their visions, finding a deep attraction to be in their energy.  So I took an internship at a gallery which led me to realize that I did not want to work in the sciences anymore, but to work more with artists.  I found a position as an art consultant at a San Francisco gallery and after 4 years I was transferred to New York City to work at a famous Russian art gallery; Eduard Nakhamkin Fine Arts.  I began traveling a lot to Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia organizing art exhibitions and to work with many private collectors.   After a few years I opened my own gallery on Prince Street in Soho – the Mimi Ferzt Gallery.  This became a successful gallery of contemporary Russian art, and where I worked very hard for over ten years.  I also continued to bring exhibitions to Asia, working closely with the Four Seasons Resorts in Bali, Singapore and Malaysia.  I feel a very deep connection with Asia, especially connected to Bali.  My life back then was like a dream – but with no spiritual path.  However, I felt this powerful connection with Asia which kept me coming every year; perhaps something from my past lives as I feel so comfortable in these exotic places.   

Then 9/11 happened.  I was by myself on a roof top in the East Village, watching as both towers fell.  I had never felt such a powerful jolt of pain in my heart as when I witnessed this.  My entire life shifted at this point.  The Gallery and SoHo were very close to Ground Zero, and never again did they recover to have the same energy as pre 9/11.  Also just a few months before, I was experiencing the karma's ripening of my years of selfish, superficial, overindulgent living, and was experiencing deep depressions and finally, a serious break down.  I was definitely on a downward spiral and nothing seemed to be able to help me.  I felt that there was no more reason for me to live.   Finally at my lowest, I had a “white light experience” – a spiritual awakening.  Something deep inside me shifted and in an instant, I began to see the world in a different way; from doom and gloom to magical once again.  It was a huge awakening – I felt a higher force in the Universe much greater than me, and this was the beginning of my own surrender to a higher power. 

The gallery survived, and still is doing well today, but I was changed almost overnight.  I made the decision to leave the art world and pursue a more spiritual life.  I wanted to learn about the things that I realized in that “white light experience” and that I knew now were more important than any material life and possessions that I could accumulate.  I left the gallery to find out my real purpose in life.  Why was it that nothing could keep me happy?  Why was everything beautiful ripped away from me?  Why was I so self destructive when I had so many good things going for me?  Why did I constantly create the same habituated patterns – mini-cycles – in my life – knowing that these would always end in suffering?  Why is there so much suffering in my world?  Can I change this?  Why am I here if only to suffer and die?  Is there anything I can do to stop the pain in this world? 

I have heard that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.  I was definitely heading for insanity if I had not had this shift in my perspective.  I started to question Why?  and What is my purpose? rather than just existing selfishly as if I had only one life to live.  Thank God for this low point in my life as this was when I was able to allow the angels to come into my life and help me. 

From there on my life started to show signs of again being magical – perhaps something beyond what I could ever convey now in writing.   I began meeting amazing spiritual beings, and started to read a lot on different spiritual paths, especially attending many Buddhist teachings in New York.  I followed the Dalai Lama, and had several powerful experiences in his presence.  I was obsessed with learning the philosophy of emptiness – a way of looking at my world with a new view and trying to retrain my mind to see that experiences were not coming at me, but that everything in my world was projecting from me, forced upon me by my own past deeds.  I began to realize how my outer world was being created by my inner world – and that I could change my future into a paradise if I watched my mind, kept my vows purely and worked hard to help other beings.  I realized that my first steps to happiness were taking care of others and living a pure life.  I felt I had known all this before but had just awoken from a long sleep.  Everyday I was being guided somewhere new and magical on my spiritual path.  I was on a pink cloud.  Now I see how all living beings are indeed angels – guiding me – healing me.  I didn't even know what a powerful impact all the Buddhist teachings were making on me back then, leading me on an upward spiral.  I would go to a Buddhist temple in New Jersey and sit through many long hours of teachings in Tibetan that I could not even understand.  In the beginning I was barely able to sit more than a few minutes in one place, but I would stick it out, telling myself that I wouldn't come back again, but only finding myself the next day, wanting even more teachings.  

In 2004, I met Geshe Michael and Lama Christie McNally when they came out of their three year retreat and were starting a new Buddhist school in Arizona; Diamond Mountain University.  I had this realization that I should be a part of the beginning of such a powerful spiritual vision, and I sold everything and left Manhattan for Bowie, Arizona.  A beautiful nun and one of Geshe Michael's first students, Lama Ani Pelma, was skillfully guiding me out of my misery to my future paradise.  The first semester at Diamond Mountain had just begun and I came out for a workshop on Tibetan Heart Yoga.  At this time I had taken only a few of the Asian Classics Institute (ACI) courses in New York at The Three Jewels, Geshe Michael's Dharma Center, and had also begun to realize my deep love for yoga. 

I left Manhattan thinking that I would spend a few years at Diamond Mountain University mainly to learn Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan yoga and then come back to the New York art world hopefully a better person, and to bring with me an understanding of karma and emptiness to my world.  By the third semester I was accepted into the Tantric program and have been studying now for five years.  We live in a house in Bowie, ten miles down the road from Diamond Mountain.  We call this house “The Three Jewels Bowie”, and every term around seven students live there with us.  It has been a 180 degree shift in my lifestyle since Manhattan. 

For two years I travelled with Geshe Michael and Lama Christie on their world tours and then started to teach as well, especially on the subject of Spiritual Partners, which I am very drawn to, as by this time I was totally mystified by how to keep any partnership going, seeing that so many just sifted through my fingers like sand.  Learning about the laws of karma and emptiness finally made me see how there was some sense to my life and that the habituated mini-cycles that I have created in my life could be broken.  I loved to pass on the wisdom of my Lamas and this lineage, and try to help others with their problems, especially with their relationships.  It is an amazing feeling to make a positive change in someone's life, and I feel I was able to help several friends with the knowledge that my Holy teachers passed on to me.  I knew that if only I could learn these lessons much deeper then I could benefit people even more.  I saw directly how my own life had changed dramatically and how now I feel that my life is worth living for – that I could actually help others in a much more significant way, and that if I truly embodied these teachings even more, that I could be of much more service to humanity. 

While touring with Geshe Michael and Lama Christie, I began teaching in Thailand, Japan, and China, where I again felt these deep connections to Asia.  I would truly love to continue teaching much more there in the future.  However in these last years I also began to feel that the best thing that I could really do is to become a more powerful teacher by embodying these teachings.  I began to realize that the three year retreat would be the most powerful thing I could do with my life – to help get myself into deeper states of meditation and a deeper understanding of Buddhist philosophy and yoga by studying the scriptures in more depth.  These feelings have since become stronger, and now I am confident that I must do the three year retreat – in order to truly benefit all beings.  At this time I don't feel I could make a deep enough contribution to humanity, that I truly feel I have the capacity to make. 

Geshe Michael and Lama Christie recently recommended that I not go on the world tours as of this last summer, 2009, but rather stay at Diamond Mountain and help build the 3 year retreat cabins.  Especially I am helping to build a Peace Garden and Peace Shrine where Geshe Michael will do his own three year retreat in, and where he will meet with retreatants that are going through difficult times; something which is bound to happen.  I have been concentrating on this project since last summer – such an honor to help organize the building of my Holy Lama's retreat site.  I attach a separate proposal on this blog for this Peace Shrine and Garden, and welcome you to please take a look at it and possibly help in any way you can.  We need to start building this Peace Shrine and Garden now, and although we have Diamond Mountain students volunteering to help us with the actual building, we still need to get more materials.  We plan to build the Peace Shrine out of recycled paper adobe blocks.  Please check out this video for more information on the Peace Shrine and recycled paper adobe block projects:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm4I0H1eRno 

Since my decision to do three year retreat, many different feelings have come up, especially about my parents.   They are older now and in their seventies, and will be relying on me as their only child to take care of them in the future.  My father has the onset of dementia, so it is very difficult for my mother to think that I may not be there for her when things get difficult.  But she has also been very supportive of all my decisions and trusts that I am doing the best that I can with my life.  I told my parents about three year retreat one year ago, and so we have been very open with each other about our feelings.  They know that I want to use my life to its fullest in order to help as many beings as I can, including them.  I really have very few friends any more that are not into yoga or spiritual philosophy, so they are supportive of my dream to do the three year retreat knowing it is the highest I can do.

I am writing this proposal here from a Manhattan studio in November 2009 – during Geshe Michael and Lama Christie's teachings on the Bhagavad Gita.  After these teachings, I will go back to Diamond Mountain to start working on the Peace Shrine and Garden, and continue working on plans for a cabin for Site #21.  My spiritual partner, Daniel Garcia, is working by my side all the time.  We are working to create the causes for us to do this powerful retreat together.  Much of our time now is used to help serve others in many different ways, in order to create this karma.  We also began to work on site #21 last summer, and have our architectural plans, our site cleared and the septic already put in.   Site #21 is a beautiful site next to a stream wash with many trees.  We are resuming work on the actual building of the cabin in the Spring 2010.  Below I include a few designs of our cabin plans.  Originally we wanted to build the cabin out of adobe from the Arizona desert and recycled paper, but now we are looking for a more economical way to build.  Time and funds are running short so we are working with a builder to create the most economical cabin out of wood.  The builder has some great ideas we will implement for this self sustainable cabin.

Along with going deep into meditation, yoga and our studies in this retreat, I want to perfect the spiritual partner practices that we have received from Geshe Michael and Lama Christie over the past five years.  These teachings have changed my life and many others so dramatically, and helped so many to find, to keep, to be happy and to go higher with their partners.  They are the key to success for any relation and can be found for free on:  http://www.dmes.org/index.php/SpiritualPartners .  Daniel and I are committed to embody these holy teachings in depth so that we come out of retreat and teach them perfectly. 

I also have an interest in food; eating very healthy, especially raw vegan foods, and I look forward to really practicing a healthy yogic lifestyle.  We plan to plant a garden and try to live off of this garden as much as we can and not rely too much on outer foods that are not grown in the immediate area. 

For now, Daniel and I will focus on building the Peace Shrine and Garden for Geshe Michael, and to help Lama Ani Pelma and Kat Ehrhorn with their own retreat cabins, as much as we possibly can.  So I ask you again, please take a moment to look at the proposal for the Peace Shrine and Garden on this blog, and to also help support Lama Ani Pelma and Kat Ehrhorn, by visiting their blogs, and contributing something - even the smallest thing - to their 3 year retreats.

Thank you very much for reading this proposal.  I feel that this retreat will be an opportunity for all of us to help the world in our own way.  It is a great team effort, and I look forward to doing my part in it.

Sincerely,

Christine Sperber