Constant Home of My Devotion:

A Sunday Story on Returning to the Golden Heart Within

I got there when the temple was about to open, knowing that there were limited spots in the puja, the ceremony and prayer that I came for. I brought offerings but I realized perhaps leaving chocolate for Ganesh would be a mess. It was Kuaui after all and it was hot and humid and I wondered: Would ants eat the chocolate and it make a runny mess? I decided to tuck it into a spot that wouldn’t leave a sticky brown pile of goo, and I decided that the ants eating it was perfectly okay.

Kauai Hindu Monastery, Shutterstock

Tourists used the complimentary sarongs to cover their shoulders and legs. But I knew better than to come to a Hindu temple half naked. I was clothed. Belly bump slightly visible but barely. Shawl resting upon my shoulders. A monk with a high bun and an orange sarong rang a bell and we followed him. No, I am not Hindu. But yes, I have been praying to Hindu gods and going to Hindu temples for 20 years. Why is that? How does that happen? Well, the short answer is that I would say I am poly-theistic, that I believe in the presence of a great many masters and beings and deities and I like having relationships with many of them.

Once when I was 20, in Scotland, a woman accused me of having a “grocery store spirituality” where I pick a choose what I want from where I want. Her words stung my baby mystic heart back then. Perhaps because there was truth. I was leaving a Protestant Christian background and finding yoga and finding the Goddess and I was selecting what worked for me. But at the time those words felt like a curse. And as I slept in her home that night with my friend, couch surfing in 2005, a storm came and the wooden shutters blew open in the room blasting a cold December howling wind, and we crawled into each other’s twin beds, terrified of the Scottish curse.

Edinburgh, Shutterstock

In the morning the woman barged in and said “You’ve missed your train and there’s not one other for a day! And the town you were going to is flooded. You will have to stay here.” The sky was dark. We got the hell out of there and booked a hotel and it took us a day to shake off the energy of that woman and place. We didn’t know how to manage fear and projections yet. We were baby witch yogis…open-hearted and innocent. At the airport my friend’s passport slipped into the conveyor belt at security and we nearly were stuck in Scotland. We went to use a pay phone, and there was blood on the phone and when my friend pressed it to her face blood marked her cheek and she looked like an ingenue in a horror film. Were there demons and dark forces circling us? We thought so. So we prayed. We prayed to our Hindu gods. We sang to Ganesh to clear these obstacles, we prayed, and we meditated, we took it all very seriously, and we left Scotland.

Back in Kauai, some nineteen years later, here I was at the feet of Ganesh and Shiva again. Still not a Hindu. But still looking for God. The monk talked us through the ceremony before we entered. We left our shoes and things outside and we quietly entered the beautiful temple filled with sandalwood smoke and statues.

He began to ring a bell as we all hushed into a silence. He rang that bell for what felt like eternity. It made a trance that I slipped into like a rushing stream, I caught a ride on its momentum, and my mind changed frequencies- different station all together.

He began to do the puja for the Shiva Lingam. Yes, Shiva’s cock, if you will. A sword or emblem of consciousness, one that I had seen in temples and random places in India. Nothing really sexual or suggestive about it at glance. People prayed to it left and right. This monk bathed the lingam in honey, I watched it slowly drip onto the dark stone, as he recited mantras. Again and again and again.

Shiva Puja from Kauai’s Hindu Monastery site

He threw pink flowers upon the lingam. Again and again, and again.

He lit butter candles and incense and circled the lingam again and again and again.

And his devotion and the devotion in the room started to do something to me, I wept, and I wept, and I wept. I had switched channels from iPhone and instagram and casual and:

“Is there enough gas in the tank?”

And: “What’s for lunch?”

To: “Oh my God, thank you, thank you, thank you.”

To: “I am so honored to be alive, I bow to the Mystery.”

To: “We really know nothing, but I do know I can feel this Love.”

My devoted heart was cracked open, relieved of its constant orientation towards doing and getting things done, and sucked into a path that was mine.

A path my soul knows.

A path of deep devotion.

I wept, and wept, and wept sitting in this crowded temple on the stone floor.

To be with others who are devoted to the Unknown, The Sacred, the Energy that made Us, the Gods or Goddesses, not the intellect, not the productive, but the devotional jar of honey Love in the heart that is infinite and tastes like heaven….

To be in that field of energy again, was superb.

As I pressed my forehead to the temple floor, I offered as much as I could to these ancient deities.

I said thank you again and again for the budding baby girl in my belly that had come to us with such ease.

I said thank you for the man in my life who brings me deeper into the heart of devotion every day.

I left flowers, I left my tears, I left my soul’s song.

As I went to get into the car I wept even more. Silent tears breaking into sobs which I shared with my Beloved:

“I remember who I am again. I’m remembering! I don’t want to forget again. Please don’t let me forget amidst the busy and the mundane.”

The paradox: we remember truth, or love, or devotion, or the Sacred, we wake to it, and then we often forget again, as modern western life sweeps us into its field. we get caught up in the day to day of bills and emails and then something- awe, or wonder, or pain pulls us into deep devotion, where we land again in the mystery, like a mushroom revelation, like witnessing a small miracle:

“This is it! This here and now. How could I ever forget how glorious it is to be alive and to feel God and to Love? How dare I make this life casual? It is magnificent. Let me always remember and sing to trees and leave offerings by the sea and pray to the Unknown Forces that hold me.”

And so we just keep trying to remember. With our altars. With our mantras. With our practices. With our hearts. Sometimes it is messy. Sometimes it does seem like grocery store spirituality. But then we remember all paths lead to the same Center. If we come with honor and reverence how can we be wrong? Amidst a world oriented often towards money and commerce and industry and productivity, we attempt to stand for something else. And when we forget and start to devote only to iPhone, and Instagram, and bank account, and calendar, we gently remind ourselves to come home. By way of retreat or practice or song or dance, or however we can. We try and turn away from the next episode on HBO, and the online shopping, and we mine the heart for its liquid gold, it’s pathway to something so ancient, so delicious, a place that feels like home.

*Title inspired by an old song by Beach House: Home Again from their 2008 album Devotion.