In Memoriam
Murray Korngold
January 1, 1920 – January 16, 2017
Hallie Ruth McGonigal
May 4, 1970 ~ January 19, 2011
Hallie Ruth McGonigal passed away peacefully at home on January 19th.
Born May 4, 1970 in La Jolla, she was a graduate of York School and San Francisco State University.
Hallie Ruth was a poet, photographer, champion horseback rider, a student of meditation and a beautiful and conscious person. She suffered through pain with grace. In her own words,
Start the day out fresh
with death.
Then love is all the rest.
Hallie Ruth will be missed every day by her mother, her brother, her sister-in-law, her two little nieces and the loving friends she made during her time among us. She will always be remembered and loved.
1998 Hallie with the Europeans at the Stinson
Hallie Ruth was a dear sweet heart. Although she suffered greatly with her body, her love of truth always shone through. She was funny, bright and deeply well-intentioned. Her love was strong and true.
– Eli ( Hallie worked for the Leela Foundation when it first opened its office in Stinson Beach in 1996
Hallie and Kris
Hallie and I discovered together what it was like to work for a non-profit organization dedicated to world peace and freedom through universal Self-Realization. Having received the transmission of the teaching and experiencing the passion of her beloved teacher Eli, she served this end with such dedication and quiet joy.
Hallie Ruth derived a great deal of satisfaction in her creative art, in computerized graphics and in the written word. Her expressions revealed the depth of her inner most feelings, which she did not express openly. But her sweetness, sensitivity and dry humor were available to everyone who came to know her. She shared her gifts and helped give Leela it’s birthing in the late1990’s in Stinson Beach, Ca.
I just now remembered that her favorite desert was chocolate pudding and how I would make it and then we savored it together at the office!
A lover of Truth she was. It was her grounding on this earthly plane. The connection to Love always brought her back from any issues in her life that would seem overwhelming. I love her and she was an inspiration to me always.
– Kris Martin
Hallie and I met at Gangaji’s Satsang in Mill Valley back in 1997. I was on my way back to India at the time but she strongly encouraged me to come and meet Eli in Stinson Beach first. She had a brilliant mind and a truly beautiful heart. Her expression of Satsang was so clear as evidenced in her poetry. I am so grateful to have met her and for the precious time we spent together.
-Sean Kelly
Poems by Hallie
Bones as Ballast
The great machine
That generates mind
Reflects upon itself.
The nameless magic,
This wordless
Lightening bold of life,
Looks at it’s own reflection
And sees the empty,
Silent ground of being.
Heart as channel.
Bones as ballast.
Seer as seen.
Love is the constant
I am everywhere
In the multitudes
and variations
hiding from myself
Is pointless.
Love opens my eyes and chest
with a still burn,
like an acid bath to the skin –
Life is death
death is life,
They work
the same street.
Death is a special feather of life,
a holy instigator
the great initiator
a continuation
more magic of the Self to trust
a sacred switch-off
Life’s open-armed absorption.
Reckoning
It is a horrible, painful kind of constant bliss this being alive
Rising to the occasion of it meeting it everyday, every hour, so much -
Like a million volts through a sixty watt bulb,
a constant,
coursing electric life energy,
unstoppable,
unrelenting,
until the day the shell just breaks –
and what reckoning that is.
Love Remains
I close my eyes so I can hear the voice of god, my own heart the truth-
Let the crowd pierce it wide open.
Let them all in.
I take the greed of solitude and let it burn.
Such a holy fire!
When avarice has turned to ash,
love remains
Letter from Hallie to Eli
