The final leg of my pilgrimage in India was a trek to Babaji’s cave in the Himalayan foothills outside Ranikhet. As we made our way from Delhi by train and bus, everything I had gathered on pilgrimage swirled within me, making organic connections and subtlety rearranging me. Just days before in Kolkata, two older women gave me misguided advice and my usual defensiveness was accompanied by the realization that I was being made out to be a victim and that story simply wasn’t true anymore. I didn’t need to convince them or impress them – just recognize it for what it was and walk away. Being free to feel inside and chart my own course was making me stronger in myself and my own path, and emboldening me to exercise my freedom to choose what and whom to associate with. I was beginning to feel tired and bored of watching the same egoic patterns play out in me over and over again. My insecure compulsion to be center stage was becoming dislodged, lessening the impact of both praise and criticism, belonging and rejection. And the resistance I had felt to Ananda was softening as I realized this path is deeply personal for all of us and no one is taking it without questioning.
The five-hour train ride to the base of the road to Ranikhet passed in a flash. I was absorbed in conversation with Ishwari, thirsty for whatever she had to give and drinking it all deep within me. She explained to me that under duress, we all find ourselves on one of two parallel lines, vacillating between responding as either a Victim or an Intimidator, or as an Interrogator or Aloof. Understanding my tendency towards victimhood is my key not only to navigating challenging relationships, but to regaining the power I need to fully share my gifts and ultimately transcend reactivity entirely. The truest surrender, Ishwari revealed, is not within ourselves, but when we allow ourselves to dissolve outward into Divine Mother whose vibration is creation itself. When our bus paused in its winding journey up the mountains to visit Neem Karoli Baba’s ashram, I prayed to be purified of that part of me that still wishes ill on others when I am hurt or frightened. I suddenly realized that opening my heart presents no inherent risk and does not require me to do anything but relax and trust. And then I felt the first spark of joy in surrender.
During our full first day at the hotel in Ranikhet, 25 Indian pilgrims joined us for a deeply moving day of silent retreat. We had never met before, and had hardly spoken the night we arrived, but passing each one, looking deep into their warm eyes and exchanging Namaste, hands at our hearts, I felt as though I knew each more profoundly than many friends I have scattered bushels of words around. That afternoon, we walked together among the hills Lahiri Mahasaya had wandered before his unexpected, but fated encounter with Babaji. I answered an inner call to leave the trail and lie with my spine on the ground, short pines framing my view of blue sky. Everything was fresh and invited touch. I remembered that no one needs to teach me how to find god in nature. My heart ached for him in the concrete grime of cities, but here I could feel the nobility of the peaks filling up the distance. I recalled Babaji tasking Lahiri with inspiring others to the householder’s path of liberation and I felt moved to serve that mission. I asked that when I approach the threshold of that calling that I be given the sensation of a light and open heart as a sign that I have arrived.
In the evening, we gathered together on the stone terrace of the hotel. I faced a pile of flaming logs nearly as large as myself, sparks scattering into the darkness. Behind me, obscured but tangibly present, were the peaks of the high Himalaya. We chanted that now familiar ancient Sanskrit prayer, offering ourselves up to the light and asking for our limitations to be burned away, but instead of the usual bits of rice, we flung handfuls of pungent earth towards the flames, dusting the tiles as our impurities disintegrated. And in that space, I found my own way to surrender, crashing onto the flames and bursting into ash, into a thousand drops of mist. What space there is, I realized, for grace to flow through me when I am no more! I gave myself willingly and poetry emerged through that opening as though my essential nature is a prism bending light into words. I felt the fire filling me with every warmth I have ever felt – my mother’s embrace, the kiss of a new lover, a hot bath after a chilly night under the stars, the sunbaked asphalt driveway warming my bones. And in the center of the shining glen that appeared in my mind, across the mossy banks and between the dimly shadowed trunks, arose a flaming tree and within it the outline of Divine Mother, welcoming me home.
The next morning, as others buzzed with anticipation and mutual encouragement on the path to Babaji’s cave, I kept my inward silence. The beauty of the trail – each stone, stream, patch of flowers, smiling woman in a bright saree – touched an ancient part of me, answering a longing beyond lifetimes. I breathed the thin air deeply, taking each step with meditative determination. And when I reached the top, I climbed up to a quiet spot under a huge rock out-cropping to await my turn and then crawled into the cave to find my spot among twelve others. We were shoulder to shoulder. The air was close. And I prayed for Babaji to show me something to deepen my faith. I drifted into a state between sleep and wakefulness. Each time I began to doze, another pilgrim coughed and I was jolted back to alertness, each time both deeper and more focused. The space was silent and spacious, dark and empty. I began to focus on my third eye and as the pressure mounted, I began to feel as though I was spinning and falling. A whisper of anxiety rose within me, but I prayed to endure and receive what was coming. The nausea slowly passed and the movement gathered into waves through my core, my breath becoming a shallow panting, my eyes glued upward like Babajis’ and their lids trembling.
I was still fully gripped by this powerful vibration when our lead announced our time was ending. I crawled, weak and trembling, to touch the altar, carefully picked my way to a spot just outside the cave, and shielded myself with my shawl as my body shook in cycles of long waves forward and back through my torso, followed by tiny tremors from side to side. Slowly, my breath settled, the movements slowed and passed, and I became still. Sound came back to me and I removed my veil. I knew better than to try to understand. I simply looked at the distant hills, a deep sensation in my core of the vast space before me and all the intricate things contained within it, and the sense that I stood just on the threshold of seeing it all. I felt no sensation of joy or love, no ecstasy or insight. I simply felt a pleasant sense of emptiness. And in that state I left the group early to hike down alone, and found myself sitting on the roadside, gazing at a pair of pristine farms, watching the plowing and gathering and hearing no sound but drifting voices tinged with laughter. A thought came: “This is how we are meant to live.”
My journey home began at that moment – days spent in silent absorption of the pilgrimage, bus rides down the mountain, trains back to Delhi, planes back to Oregon, cars back to Laurelwood. But two more gifts awaited me. The next day, I received a guided meditation on the hang sau technique and realized I had been doing it incorrectly for eight months. When focusing the energy not on my third eye, but through it, I relieved the tension I had felt in Babaji’s cave and experienced an energetic sense of surrendering myself outward into all that surrounded me. The movement in my body returned more subtly each time I practiced this technique, and I realized that in response to my prayer, Babaji had deepened my faith in the teachings he resurrected by giving me a direct experience of the energy they channel. And on the train ride back to Delhi, I sat with an Ananda minister and newly dear friend who helped me understand that when we move emotional energy to our third eye, we are not denying or repressing the feelings, but retaining and refocusing their energy into a channel for divine contact. I told her of how deeply I had been touched by the easy devotion of our fellow Indian pilgrims, and my own work to open my heart, and she paused with a gentle look of surprise. “I experience you as having such a big heart,” she said warmly.
In this final cycle of purification, no illness found me. My tummy began churning in the Delhi airport at about 2am, but forces far more powerful had already cleansed me. After all my grief and doubt over cancelling my previous trip abroad in order to stay at Laurelwood, I had finally fulfilled my original longing: to dissolve out in the world. It had come in a much more profound and unexpected way, deepening my experience of myself and my faith in these teachings. Every one of my Vedic astrologer’s predictions for the pilgrimage had come true. I had felt deeply lonely and also had a profound sense of home. I had received both psychic and kundalini experiences. And I had been presented compelling visions of every worldly satisfaction that has ever truly tempted me, resisted impulsive decisions, and found my way back to a deeper and more enduring experience of purpose and fulfillment.
What remained was anticipation over how I would be when I returned home. How could I be both powerful and sweet, allowing within me both the leonine presence of Sri Yukteswar and Yogananda’s gentle tears of longing? Would the jealousy and doubt and resistance I had been cleansed of return? Would I be able to continue to find my way deep inside through divine mother in the flames, through the energy in my spine? What has changed for certain is that I am now acquainted with the power that can move through me when I surrender and I know a line of ever-loving, wise, and infinite beings are eager to work for my greatest good the moment I am willing to let them in.
Nancy
“The birds have vanished in the sky and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.” – Li Po
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