Bhagavan Brouhaha

It was a spiritual pilgrimage and I was ready. I was thoroughly hydrated. I preventative potty-ed. My person carried a well-worn copy of David Sedaris, explicit Hop Stop directions printed in color (with a back-up digital copy on my Blackberry,) lipgloss, iPod, a whole pack of Trident and the mindset for a marathon. Had I not known there would be a buffet at the destination, I might have carbo loaded. I told them I was going to go, and oh, I was going to go. I am a woman of my word.

It was one of my teacher’s (one of my gurus, if you will) birthdays, and although he resides in India, there was a celebration for him in New York. (That’s what happens when you reach Guru status; global hooplah is the norm…) The event was in Queens. An hour and ten minutes out into Queens. Past BOTH New York City airports. On THE LAST STOP of the E train.

If you don’t know me well enough and haven’t already realized it, I have a slight co-dependence issue with my neighborhood.

As my two girlfriends and I walked to the subway, I believed I was acting quite noble, valiant even, selfless. But apparently I have a much higher opinion of my self-sacrificing poker face than others because a bestie traveling with me poked, half jokingly, half admonishingly—“Margaret, you’re such a snob.”

I’m sorry, is this new information? Did I ever claim that I wasn’t? Although “snob” sounds sooooo Upper East Side. I prefer princess—that’s so much prettier.

It’s not that I think Manhattan is the best place in the universe (although, well, I do) – it’s more that I don’t like to be far away from my bed. In any circumstance. If I were hiking in the Himalayas, anxiety would come not because I was far away from the West Village but because my tent was out of my sightline. I am not one of these people that can plop down and just sleep anywhere. I always marvel at my friends who have the ability to be the proverbial sack of potatoes. People who stay out late and say “oh, it was 3am so I just slept over on the couch.” …What?... I cannot do that. I need to be home, in my space, at the end of the night. Sit anywhere? Be comfortable anywhere? Make friends anywhere? Yes, absolutely. But sleeping is snobby, private time. I feel perfectly fine with that. I’ve done the whole deprivation for spiritual realization thing many times, in many countries, and I’m grateful for those experiences and look forward to more. Pratyahara is a valuable practice. But if I can have comfort in my day to day, why should I choose otherwise? It’s not like I had a say in the matter; God built this bod for tempur-pedic. I am at peace with that realization.

My reticence towards our adventure also had a bit to do with overcoming a touch of past conditioning. You see, we were going to a traditional Indian party, celebration, satsang. I love a good satsang as much as the next gal, but Indians REALLY love satsang. Many festivals and rituals in India go on not for hours, but days and days on end. I remember the first Ganesh festival I went to in Goa with some new international buddies... Whereas at first I was ecstatically pulled into people parade (do-si-doing with the village children, raising the roof to the large plastic Ganesh) and everything was rich, colorful magic, by hour nine of day one, my enthusiasm had somewhat waned. And that was only day one.

Although I’m sure I’d have infinite patience if I were Oprah, this is more of a cultural difference. Indians are just super into their festivals and devotion in a way (and for lengths of time) that Americans are not accustomed to. (And this doesn’t just go for Hindu festivals. On a completely separate trip to Goa I dragged all of my friends to a packed Catholic midnight mass for Christmas. Their equanimity expired at hour three and the church hadn’t even gotten to the mass portion yet. Needless to say, even on Christmas, the friends were hard pressed to keep me in their good will for that less-than-genius spontaneity.) In the Hindu tradition, there is a meaning, an intention, significance for every mantra, every puja item and there are quite literally thousands of them. Since I don't formally follow Hinduism myself, my attention tends to wander after a couple of hours of this, if not sooner.

So we get to this hall on the outskirts of Queens, and it is pretty much as I expected it. A big poster board cutout of the Guru is in the middle of the room, surrounded by garlands and elaborate puja accoutrements festooning the spread. Fire, countless baskets of fruit, rose petals everywhere. 75 or so Indian people, 80% of the women in saris. Bhajans (devotional songs) are being sung. The majority of people sit cross-legged on the floor. I anticipated this and wore my leggings but my girlfriends are in jeans, so we opt for chairs.

I sit down and close my eyes to tune in. It’s like taking an energetic thermometer of the room. Hard to describe, but it’s high, it’s beautiful and light. Something’s going on for sure. I do this for about half an hour. Every so often my girlfriend taps me to ask what’s going on and I explain what very little I know.

Soon the bhajans start to grate. Perhaps it has something to do with the quantity of people and noise to overcome in their native land, but Indian people also like things loud. Like, really loud. So there is a gigantic speaker the size of my front door blaring super high-pitched singing across the hall and it’s unnecessarily fortissimo. I forgot to mention I’ve been flirting with a cold for a couple of days and I rarely, if ever, get sick, so what might normally be mildly uncomfortable is now projected to ear-splittingly piercing. We intended to stay three hours and after 30 minutes I’m negotiating how long is an appropriate appearance re: time investment taking the train out here.

There’s a swami of course. He’s like, the dad. We take a break from the bhajans for him to speak and I really vibe with his discourse so that’s a bit of a respite. When they start back up again, it’s a little easier to find that tuning in, loveliness space. We are here to celebrate our Guru’s birthday, after all, and it’s like a big family. The swami here is the dad for this particular family, where the Guru is the overriding Dad for all of us. And this group of people are our loud, colorful, foreign, distant relatives. We don’t get out to see them much, cause, ya know (I mentioned it was the last stop on the E train, right?,) but we love them all the same.

I see a woman going around with a bowl of rose water taken from the makeshift altar and she is dripping the liquid on top of people’s heads. I think back to when priests used to splay us with holy water midst-mass. In Hindu pujas, I have sipped water offered to my hands, but never had the sprinkler effect. It is supposed to purify our souls.

I head back to meditation and so when I feel the sudden wetness on my cranium and subsequent rogue cheek river, I am not surprised. I say a silent thanks and then ten seconds later, inexplicably my mind is blown.

The best description I could possibly give, while still trying to understate it, is that I enter into a wormhole and then for a solid five minutes I am in a parallel universe. I’ve had out-of-body (or perhaps inner body) experiences like this before. Alone, for brief flashes, when guided with a group and shamans in the mix, there have been transportive experiences that have literally altered the way I view reality. But I have never felt something so fast, so deep, so outrageously gorgeous, and certainly not from a couple of droplets of rosewater on my head. The beauty is so vast it brings instantaneous tears to my eyes. I shy away from detailing these sorts of experiences because it’s akin to describing sex to someone who has never tried it before—it is not something to be talked about. It deals in a realm that we have no vocabulary for on this earth. Words are too confining for the magnificence that it is. And it shows you that if THIS exists, there’s a whole lot more going in life than a petite persnickety village princess who gets cranky outside of her zip code. It is, simply put, an expression of divine grace. And although it’s not what I expected, on some level it is what I came for.

The rest of the evening feels effortless and warm. We get a ride back as far in as the Bedford stop in Williamsburg so that makes the return trek much more bearable (thank you birthday boy.) Although I’m not priming to get the most value from my metrocard anytime again soon, it just goes to show that when the effort is put forth, grace will come to meet you. Even without my unexpected wormhole benediction, beautiful friends and generous, welcoming extended family make for a splendid Saturday evening. Nice to know that even a little princess can get her holy on… and yet still crawl back into her own bed.