it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God.
I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses
itself on water.
58585858My prayers are becoming more deliberate and specific. It has occurred to me that it's not
much use to send prayers out to the universe that are lazy. Every morning before
meditation, I kneel in the temple and talk for a few minutes to God. I found during the
beginning of my stay here at the Ashram that I was often dull-witted during those divine
conversations. Tired, confused and bored, my prayers sounded the same. I remember
kneeling down one morning, touching my forehead to the floor and muttering to my
creator, "Oh, I dunno what I need . . . but you must have some ideas . . . so just do
something about it, would you?"
Similar to the way I have oftentimes spoken to my hairdresser.
And, I'm sorry, but that's a little lame. You can imagine God regarding that prayer with
an arched eyebrow, and sending back this message: "Call me again when you decide to
get serious about this."
Of course God already knows what I need. The question is--do I know? Casting yourself
at God's feet in helpless desperation is all well and good--heaven knows, I've done it
myself plenty of times--but ultimately you're likely to get more out of the experience if
you can take some action on your end. There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor
man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint, begging,
"Dear saint--please, please, please . . . give me the grace to win the lottery." This lament
goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue comes to life, looks down at the
begging man and says in weary disgust, "My son--please, please, please . . . buy a ticket. "
Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be
bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the
benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and
well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless,
floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift. So now I take the time
every morning to search myself for specificity about what I am truly asking for. I kneel
there in the temple with my face on that cold marble for as long as it takes me to
formulate an authentic prayer. If I don't feel sincere, then I will stay there on the floor
until I do. What worked yesterday doesn't always work today. Prayers can become stale
and drone into the boring and familiar if you let your attention stagnate. In making an
effort to stay alert, I am assuming custodial responsibility for the maintenance of my own
soul.
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship--a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.
Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions
will show measurable consequence. Man is neither entirely a puppet of the gods, nor is he
entirely the captain of his own destiny; he's a little of both. We gallop through our lives
like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the
horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to
ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about
because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?
There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under myjurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of
finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I
share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and
study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my
life--whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't
rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I
can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of
voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.
This last concept is a radically new idea for me. Richard from Texas brought it to my
attention recently, when I was complaining about my inability to stop brooding. He said,
"Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select
what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want
to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should
be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master
your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever."
On first glance, this seems a nearly impossible task. Control your thoughts? Instead of the
other way around? But imagine if you could? This is not about repression or denial.
Repression and denial set up elaborate games to pretend that negative thoughts and
feelings are not occurring. What Richard is talking about is instead admitting to the
existence of negative thoughts, understanding where they came from and why they
arrived, and then--with great forgiveness and fortitude--dismissing them. This is a
practice that fits hand-in-glove with any psychological work you do during therapy. You
can use the shrink's office to understand why you have these destructive thoughts in the
first place; you can use spiritual exercises to help overcome them. It's a sacrifice to let
them go, of course. It's a loss of old habits, comforting old grudges and familiar vignettes.
Of course this all takes practice and effort. It's not a teaching that you can hear once and
then expect to master immediately. It's constant vigilance and I want to do it. I need to do
it, for my strength. Devo farmi le ossa is how they say it in Italian. "I need to make my
bones."
So I've started being vigilant about watching my thoughts all day, and monitoring them. I
repeat this vow about 700 times a day: "I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore."
Every time a diminishing thought arises, I repeat the vow. I will not harbor unhealthy
thoughts anymore. The first time I heard myself say this, my inner ear perked up at the
word "harbor," which is a noun as well as a verb. A harbor, of course, is a place of refuge,
a port of entry. I pictured the harbor of my mind--a little beat-up, perhaps, a little
storm-worn, but well situated and with a nice depth. The harbor of my mind is an open
bay, the only access to the island of my Self (which is a young and volcanic island, yes,
but fertile and promising). This island has been through some wars, it is true, but it is now
committed to peace, under a new leader (me) who has instituted new policies to protect
the place. And now--let the word go out across the seven seas--there are much, much
stricter laws on the books about who may enter this harbor.
You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague
ships of thoughts, with your slave ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts--all
these will be turned away. Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving
exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate
prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways--you may not come here anymore, either.Cannibalistic thoughts, for obvious reasons, will no longer be received. Even
missionaries will be screened carefully, for sincerity. This is a peaceful harbor, the
entryway to a fine and proud island that is only now beginning to cultivate tranquillity. If
you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my
mind--otherwise, I shall turn you all back toward the sea from whence you came.
That is my mission, and it will never end.
59595959
I've made good friends with this seventeen-year-old Indian girl named Tulsi. She works
with me scrubbing the temple floors every day. Every evening we take a walk through the
gardens of the Ashram together and talk about God and hip-hop music, two subjects for
which Tulsi feels equivalent devotion. Tulsi is just about the cutest little bookworm of an
Indian girl you ever saw, even cuter since one lens of her "specs" (as she calls her
eye-glasses) broke last week in a cartoonish spiderweb design, which hasn't stopped her
from wearing them. Tulsi is so many interesting and foreign things to me at once--a
teenager, a tomboy, an Indian girl, a rebel in her family, a soul who is so crazy about God
that it's almost like she's got a schoolgirl crush on Him. She also speaks a delightful,
lilting English--the kind of English you can find only in India--which includes such
colonial words as "splendid!" and "nonsense!" and sometimes produces eloquent
sentences like: "It is beneficial to walk on the grass in the morning when the dew has
already been accumulated, for it lowers naturally and pleasantly the body's temperature."
When I told her once that I was going to Mumbai for the day, Tulsi said, "Please stand
carefully, as you will find there are many speeding buses everywhere."
She's exactly half my age, and practically half my size.
Tulsi and I have been talking a lot about marriage lately during our walks. Soon she will
turn eighteen, and this is the age when she will be regarded as a legitimate marriage
prospect. It will happen like this--after her eighteenth birthday, she will be required to
attend family weddings dressed in a sari, signaling her womanhood. Some nice Amma
("Aunty") will come and sit beside her, start asking questions and getting to know her:
"How old are you? What's your family background? What does your father do? What
universities are you applying to? What are your interests? When is your birthday?" Next
thing you know, Tulsi's dad will get a big envelope in the mail with a photo of this
woman's grandson who is studying computer sciences in Delhi, along with the boy's
astrology charts and his university grades and the inevitable question, "Would your
daughter care to marry him?"
Tulsi says, "It sucks."But it means so much to the family, to see their children wedded off successfully. Tulsi
has an aunt who just shaved her head as a gesture of thanks to God because her oldest
daughter--at the Jurassic age of twenty-eight--finally got married. And this was a difficult
girl to marry off, too; she had a lot of strikes against her. I asked Tulsi what makes an
Indian girl difficult to marry off, and she said there are any number of reasons.
"If she has a bad horoscope. If she's too old. If her skin is too dark. If she's too educated
and you can't find a man with a higher position than hers, and this is a widespread
problem these days because a woman cannot be more educated than her husband. Or if
she's had an affair with someone and the whole community knows about it, oh, it would
be quite difficult to find a husband after that . . ."
I quickly ran through the list, trying to see how marriageable I would appear in Indian
society. I don't know whether my horoscope is good or bad, but I'm definitely too old and
I'm way too educated, and my morals have been publicly demonstrated to be quite
tarnished . . . I'm not a very appealing prospect. At least my skin is fair. I have only this
in my favor.
Tulsi had to go to another cousin's wedding last week, and she was saying (in very
un-Indian fashion) how much she hates weddings. All that dancing and gossip. All that
dressing up. She would rather be at the Ashram scrubbing floors and meditating. Nobody
else in her family can understand this; her devotion to God is way beyond anything they
consider normal. Tulsi said, "In my family, they have already given up on me as too
different. I have established a reputation for being someone who, if you tell her to do one
thing, will almost certainly do the other. I also have a temper. And I'm not dedicated to
my studies, except that now I will be, because now I'm going to college and I can decide
for myself what I'm interested in. I want to study psychology, just as our Guru did when
she attended college. I'm considered a difficult girl. I have a reputation for needing to be
told a good reason to do something before I will do it. My mother understands this about
me and always tries to give good reasons, but my father doesn't. He gives reasons, but I
don't think they're good enough. Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing in my family
because I don't resemble them at all."
Tulsi's cousin who got married last week is only twenty-one, and her older sister is next
on the marriage list at age twenty, which means there will be huge pressure after that for
Tulsi herself to find a husband. I asked her if she wanted to ever get married and she said:
"Noooooooooooooooooooooo . . ."
. . . and the word drew out longer than the sunset we were watching over the gardens.
"I want to roam!" she said. "Like you."
"You know, Tulsi, I couldn't always roam like this. I was married once."
She frowned at me through her cracked specs, studying me with a quizzical look, almost
as if I'd just told her I'd once been a brunette and she was trying to imagine it. In the end,
she pronounced: "You, married? I cannot picture this."
"But it's true--I was."
"Are you the one who ended the marriage?"
"Yes."
She said, "I think it's most commendable that you ended your marriage. You seem
splendidly happy now. But as for me--how did I get here? Why was I born an Indian girl?
It's outrageous! Why did I come into this family? Why must I attend so many weddings?"
Then Tulsi ran around in a frustrated circle, shouting (quite loudly for Ashram standards):"I want to live in Hawaii!!!"
