f*@# spirituality

I’m so over the word spiritual. If I never heard the word spiritual again in my life that would work just fine with me, and yet even as I write this I know it will escape my lips within the next 24 hours because our vocabularic landscape has not yet birthed a new paradigm of words that can erase the societal interdependence associated with “spiritual.”

One of my dearest friends is a seriously advanced yoga teacher and ex design exec, a cynical brit, who juxtaposes sense and spirituality—(ugh, I couldn’t even go a couple sentences) perhaps more tactfully than anyone I’ve ever known. He regularly sports a “fuck yoga” t-shirt. It’s provocative in refusing to be attached to and/or dismissing any ideas of what we think that is and should be. Refusing to be judged and labeled as a yoga “teacher” and what that should look like.

The yoga teacher’s pregs future wife, Adriana, is my current India dorm roomie. Not only roomie, but older sister, mentor, I’d even go so far as to say divine goddess sexpot guru. Brazillian, brillz, stunning in that way that makes you curse the injustice of the world because Brazilian women even exist in the first place. A non-judgmental intellectual and voracious researcher who loves mascara—this, and many other things bond us, and brought us together four years ago in India. She is the reason I am here this week. The “fuck yoga” teacher who lovingly impregnated her? He’s the Brit I thumbed to in Mysore four years ago, whispering “I think he likes you…” We’ve been a fam since.

What we are doing here this week in India is indescribable magic on many levels. I don’t have the words, no one on the planet has the words to demystify or illustrate what is happening because it’s of a plane we can’t perceive. We’re drawn here; we show up, our lives change. We give it up to faith and hopefully have the groundedness within ourselves to judge what works and what doesn’t.

That being said, last night we closed a pretty special day one of a full on trainer course with 200 other people from a dozen different countries; we have five translators going at all times it’s so big. After deeksha’ing it up, we were told to hug the person next to us. This broke out into a spontaneous hugging/laughing/ecstasy session of emotion for everyone else involved for the next 10-15 minutes. Dri and I hugged. I told her I loved the feel of her 5-month bump when she pressed her tiny body to mine. (She says she’s taller—she says this to people we meet. I think I am. The fact of the matter is we are both very small brunettes, both eyes wide with the aforementioned mascara.) We stopped our hugging and looked around at that spontaneous emotion that erupted around us, seemingly apart from us.

We were in the front row, in a prime position. She said quite simply, and I couldn’t love her more for this: “This hugging is lasting quite long… should we sit and pretend that we’re done?... (20 seconds later, still awkwardly standing)… wow, that’s a lot of hugging.”

I don’t want to sound like a hugging curmudgeon. Of course, everyone has the absolute right to express this love in whichever way they feel, but on some level, I feel like I want to take back the woo a notch for those who wouldn’t feel comfortable hugging 30 strangers from different countries. (Imagine Obama hugging 30 random people—just not really his style, nor would we want it to be. We wouldn’t want it of Jon Stewart either, I’d imagine… I don’t think that the kind of guy I want to end up with would want to hug 30 strangers. Not a judgment, different strokes.) This resistance is not a bad thing; it is called discernment, which is also a valuable “spiritual” practice. A week ago, going over a thousands of years old meditation for some peeps, one of the key words was discernment, and I feel like this is being lost in this world of woo “seeking.”

As you know, although I draw from this tradition and there is much beauty there, I am not some zen Buddhist master who resonates with “nothingness” as the ultimate enlightened state. That’s too cold for me. I need sparkle. I need color. I need fire.

Earlier today, I stood, my feet so happily soaking in the softness of the white marble floor of a temple that I had wanted to come to for years. On the top five list of my life: children, husband, career success being three of the others, coming to this temple has been on my priority to do list since I heard it was being built. It was the screen saver in my blackberry for the last nine months and when I got here, all I could do was to marvel at how soft the white marble felt. I didn’t know it would be marble against my bare feet. I didn’t know it would be soft. I didn’t know that that would be a most delicious discovery.

There was a ceremony this morning, and I clapped, I sang, I raised my hands in prayer and gave thanks and soaked in the love—I participated willingly, happily, gratefully. I had some pretty awesome out-of and in body connections but I’ll gloss over those; I don’t want to brag. In my mind’s eye, this did not mean I had to go hug everyone in my path several hours later. (Although they call this place a “university” I’ve seen looser Ashrams. The teachers are dubbed guides, but in their language it is "dasas," monks with vows and the like… they are not allowed to hug and supposedly they are already feeling oodles of love with humanity. Discernment for different reasons, but still: Discernment.)

The most beautiful sentence someone could say to me in the whole world would not be, “Take my hand; let’s go to the ashram.” It would sound something more like: “We have 8pm reservations at (insert delectable downtown manhattan restaurant here; ) wear heels.”

We are so collectively…no, let me go back. Who am I really talking to here? I’m talking to the cool kids, the intellectuals, the pragmatists, the realists, the urbanites, the urbane. Which, is also, to some extent: us. And I find we are collectively terrified of the woo. We are terrified of something that is there to guide us.

A few of the people closest to me are dynamic and successful men with absolutely no spiritual bent. I cherish these relationships perhaps most of all because they challenge my beliefs and my faith (at this point impossible, sorry boys) but also provoke and confront my interpretations of these ideas forcing me to juggle semantics and explore scientifically and practically what I am really doing. I love these discourses, these challenges, these debates because they push me to clarify what this means for myself and helps me to express it in ways to people who might not otherwise listen. I would rather coax a banker to feel a minute of love than bring a yogi to three hours of ecstasy. The yogi doesn’t need me. Neither does the banker, but hey, I can be a fun gal to have around.

I rant about this now, because I want to claim this for my own, for our own, because if you are reading this, presumably we resonate with the same mindset in one way or another, on one topic or another. I want to find a new word for “spiritual” because this connection to yourself, to this peace, to a capability for love, and really that’s all it is, is for each of us. And not tapping into it is like having a million bucks in a bank account and not wanting to know the pin code to access it. It’s there. Whoever you are, whether you believe it or not.

A friend texted back an opinion about this optional sacred ceremony I have the opportunity to participate in here, that she did while in India. “It’s lovely, but not necessary.” For all of us: coming to India? It’s lovely, but not necessary. We can find those stolen moments of love, of peace, of generosity, of connection just as easily in a downtown restaurant. It doesn’t need to be spiritual. We don’t have to hug it out. But it’s there. It exists. In you. So look out for it. Because it’s there for you and only you. And the more you notice it, the more it shows up. That’s the way it works.