People say a person’s relationship to a therapist can serve as a model for all other relationships that person may have. I think one can say the same for the Guru-disciple relationship. For me, it’s been a long journey toward self-acceptance and self-worth. Anyone who has been in a relationship where you feel nothing you do is good enough, nothing you say is right and the other person is the one with all the power can certainly relate. It’s a common and problematic relationship dynamic for many, yes, but it also happens to be how I often felt while practicing Siddha Yoga. That euphoric, ethereal high that everyone else seemed to experience around the Guru was somewhat elusive to me. Not that I didn’t have some golden moments - in the temple, at intensives, chanting - but somehow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that everybody else knew something that I didn’t. Everybody else was capable of drinking in that “nectar” in a way that I wasn’t. And I am happy to report that I no longer believe that’s true - and I no longer care. I just needed to position myself atop the pedestal on which I had placed so many others - including Gurumayi - to get a proper view of things. To get a proper view of myself.
HOW I FOUND SIDDHA YOGA…
I was introduced to Siddha Yoga in 1995 by my then boyfriend, Jim* (*Not his real name…but close.) Jim was much older than I was. When we met, I was 25 and Jim was 48. I didn’t come from a broken home, nor did I have an absentee father. No, Jim wasn’t rich. These were answers to some of the inevitable questions when a young woman dates an older man, like: “Why? Why him?!” I guess I was intrigued - it was a new experience and I was always into those. Small-town girls chase excitement at an early age, often recklessly and for the sake of having a good story; one less thing to regret when you get older and settle down.
On the other hand, I wasn’t a kid. I had been through some heartache with a couple of other boyfriends and here was a man who wouldn’t be out partying with his young posse on Saturday nights, leaving me to worry that I would get cheated on or dumped or forgotten. So, in addition to having an adventure, I was also “safe.” Interesting paradox...
More than anything, I think I was hiding. I was hiding from a real relationship. I was hiding from my real life and my real goals. I was hiding from a real support system - people who could really know me and, therefore, leave me feeling vulnerable. I didn’t feel successful at that time and I think I was afraid of being judged. It’s hard to open yourself up to another person if you don’t really like what’s there to show. In any relationship, that sort of feeling of inadequacy will impede real intimacy. My own insecurities certainly had an effect on my romantic relationships and most definitely had an effect on my relationship to Siddha Yoga.
I never felt like I really knew Siddha Yoga intimately - even after years of practice. There was always another tier - another mysterious door or group or seva to which I was not privy to enter and know. And Jim wasn’t great with answers - seemed it just wasn’t our business what the heavyweights did behind closed doors. That type of exclusivity has always been intriguing to me, but at the same time - particularly in a spiritual environment - I resent it.
Both Jim and I lived in Manhattan and so we could drive up to Shree Muktananda Ashram in South Fallsburg, New York, on weekends - just for the day or a few days for an Intensive - whenever we wanted to or could afford it. Our relationship was always volatile. He was an eccentric, stubborn creative type with a lot of disappointment in his life. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. And I was very immature and unsure of myself. I was an actress. I liked drama. He was pushing 50 - an age for a man that has often been compared to the age of 40 for women. People take closer looks at the status of their lives and evaluate. But I was too young to understand any of that. I had no idea what Jim might have been going through and I had even less of a clue as to what it was really going to take for me to have the life that I wanted. That understanding wouldn’t come for another decade - that wishing and hoping and chanting and praying just doesn’t cut it. Not on its own.
So, basically, in 1995 I was lonely and scared and unsure that I would ever succeed at anything. Siddha Yoga seemed like it might be magic medicine - a direct line to God. I agreed to go meet Gurumayi with Jim.
Let me interject here and say that Gurumayi was Jim’s #1 woman. Those were his words, not mine - he made it clear. Anybody else would be a close second. When I met Jim, he had just had his heart broken by a woman who went off with another woman. So I felt like I was competing with two women. Maybe three. I don’t now - it’s a bit of a blur now, but I do think Jim liked that I felt very #2 or #2b. (I don’t think I quite felt #3 because Gurumayi wasn’t a sexual threat.) But Jim was a true devotee. His entire apartment was devoted to Gurumayi and the entire SY lineage - pictures everywhere, but in a very spare and organized way. When I stayed over, we slept on the floor on a roll-out futon mattress that he would roll up every day when his apartment would be used as his work studio. There was definitely an economy to it. It’s not like I was totally enamored of his lifestyle, but I was so unsure of myself and our relationship that I lost a sense of autonomy - something I would struggle with for years. It’s hard to be in an intimate relationship if you don’t know who you are. And when you don’t know how to be a leader in your own life, choosing an outside leader to follow can be disastrous - especially if that leader is the embodiment of God.
That’s one of the problems with faith - the ones who have a good sense of themselves are the ones who “get” the idea that everything you need is already in you. The ones who don’t might never get that. But they’ll keep coming back and spending their money trying to get it - all the while putting the power and the answer outside themselves. It’s why so many people are disillusioned by religion, I think. The practice of following seems antithetical to the message itself, doesn’t it??
Okay, so now you see how my hyper-over-analytical mind works. Man, I was setting myself up for a fall, but I felt something in my life had to change. Something had to give because it wasn’t just Jim who getting under my skin - it was everyone and everything. My head was torture. Maybe the all-powerful-all-knowing Guru could fix me. I was off to see the Wizard…
FIRST DAY IN SOUTH FALLSBURG: THE GURU CUSSES…I SWEAR.
My first visit to South Fallsburg was a rollercoaster. Jim neglected to explain proper Ashram attire so I arrived in South Fallsburg in a long, loose black wrap skirt (good) and a sleeveless white wrap shirt with eyelet holes throughout (not good). Bare shoulders and the hint of midriff. It was not bawdy or cheap - that was never my thing. But it was sassy and youthful. I was, after all, in my twenties and a dancer, too. I was used to showing off my body. I wasn’t the kind of girl who wore tiny halter-tops and short shorts, but I always did like my arms and shoulders and I often accentuated my waist. Not very Ashram-appropriate. A woman sitting next to me that day in the program was kind enough to loan me a shawl. I was so relieved. I might be “indie,” but I’m not a rebel. I like being appropriate - particularly when I’m on someone else’s turf. It’s respectful, right? And I’m always respectful. At first, that is. Then, when the curtain reveals the Wizard to be a fake, well, I guess I get angry.
It’s possible that I was a nonbeliever from the start. That I was never open to buying in. And it’s possible I was angry about being there in the first place, but Jim made me even more aggravated. He left. He disappeared for what seemed like hours. Darshan had started and he was nowhere to be found. Did he just assume I would find my way around? Know where to go and what to do? I was anxious and angry for much of the day. I think I might have even - in a fit of antagonism - taken Darshan alone - my first Darshan ever! Of course I said nothing - just got bopped with the feather and went on being angry with Jim. I had no idea where to go - I think I ended up in the parking lot, back in the car, thinking I would just wait for him to finish up whatever it was people like him do at an ashram. But that was taking way too long. A typical devotee might say: “Ah! Perfect! Your independence was being tested - you were being asked to grow!” Yeah, yeah, sure - but yoga or no yoga, there’s something to be said for manners.
With Jim still not appearing - even as Darshan continued - I hunted down the “meditation cave” he’d told me about. It wasn’t so much a cave as it was a carpeted room. Despite my literal-but-inaccurate interpretation of the word “cave” in this context, I grew to love Mahashunya in my SY years - even did an intensive down there when the Main Hall was full. I would always, always visit Mahashunya. Maybe I grew especially attached to it that day the way a toddler who’s lost his mom at the mall might grow attached to a soothing, kindly security guard. It was womblike - all soft and enclosed. Dark. Quiet.
We all have to leave the womb sooner or later and meet Mom, and so I did…for a second time.
Somehow Jim and I reconnected and he insisted on properly introducing me to Gurumayi at Darshan. He really wanted me to enter the practice properly. We went back down to the Mandap and hopped on line. When we got to the front, and kneeled down, Jim said, “Gurumayi, this is Betsy.” He was so nervous, I’m not even sure he managed the ‘this is’ part - probably just nodded in my direction and said my name. Like a grinning schoolboy getting ever closer to Santa’s lap. Gurumayi said, “Betsy.” And I guess I was sort of dazzled, too. She was the Guru. She was a superstar. And she said my name. I don’t know that she looked at me. I don’t remember.
I do remember desperately wanting individual attention from her - eye contact, words - intimacy that I would never receive over the years. I always blamed my pathetic ego and neediness. I blamed me - just like I did in my romantic relationships. It must be me - something’s wrong with me because it looks so easy for everyone else, I would think. I’m too needy. I’m too much. I reasoned that when I stopped wanting personal attention from Gurumayi, she would probably give me all the attention I wanted. Of course, Jim was having his own experience of that Darshan moment that I couldn’t possibly know (I secretly thought she might have been mocking him for having a girlfriend so much younger than he was.)
Then Gurumayi swore! The Guru cussed! During that first visit in the summer of 1995, when Gurumayi was giving her talk on that Saturday, she actually used the word ‘crap.’ Everyone laughed and clapped, I think. Afterword, Jim chuckled and blamed me. He said I must have been thinking it. And he was serious! He seriously thought I tainted the Ashram that day. Who knows? Maybe I did.
Despite his apparent embarrassment about me - his too-young girlfriend who was just a little too “city” - Jim seemed to like bringing me up to SF. I stayed in all the buildings at SF at one time or another - I always admired the tidyness. Everything was so clean and orderly. Jim had mastered this in his living space - there was a neatness and sleekness to it all. It wasn’t rich modernism; it was spare economy. Of course, the Ashram could be both spare and luxurious depending on the corner or the room. For me, every corner could both soothe me and make me feel bad about myself. Codependency incarnate. Most of Jim’s friends were older and either worked on staff part-time or full-time. They were ‘into it’ like Jim. When someone needed a pen, I dug in my purse - I apologized that it wasn’t a great pen or anything… No matter. According to them, that was the pen Gurumayi wanted them to use. That’s what the Shakti had produced. That’s how they talked. I thought it was sort of pose’y.
I was raised Jewish. Maybe Jews are protective of our heritage and connected to our identity for better or worse. There were lots of Jews in Siddha Yoga, but my point is that the ultra-obedience of Siddha Yoga and the following of everything the Guru does and says without question never quite reached me fully. It was so totally foreign to me. Jews in rabbinical school are encouraged to debate and question - it’s one of the basic tenets of the religion that I respect even though I’m no longer a very observant Jew. Debate. Question. There’s a grounded-ness and earthiness to it. Not to mention a confidence - as if the religion itself is saying, “Go ahead and question - ask anything! We can take it.”
My own tendency to question and my general curiosity was not met warmly. After my first visit, I wanted to know what and where Gurumayi ate. Where and how she bathed. Did she go to parties? Did she date? Did she have sex or poo? I just couldn’t seem to get that that wasn’t the point. To question the Guru, Jim and others intimated, was to be in a constant state of misery. Huh?
SIDDHA & THE CITY
Melding my spiritual pursuits through Siddha Yoga with my day-to-day girl-in-her-twenties-in-New-York-City life would prove challenging - if not impossible. I work and write in comedy. I think a person can be upbeat and optimistic without losing irony and edge. It’s fundamentally who I am. I love to laugh and I love to hear others laugh. But at the Ashram, I never found anyone all that funny. I found myself laughing at talks and programs but I think I was just going along with everyone else. I found myself cheering and crying at chants, but maybe I was just crying out for my own emptiness - my desperation to connect and to have so much in my life that I did not have - love and success. Maybe it was like “The Blair Witch Project” - for that movie they took those young and inexperienced actors up into the woods for two weeks and scared the crap out of them - of course they would cry buckets for the camera! The physical and emotional exhaustion alone can make a person lose it. Maybe I was experiencing something similar during intensives. Outside the ashram I seldom got out of bed that early. But in South Fallsburg you sleep for four hours, sit for four hours, eat only a little, sit for four more hours, maybe another two in the Temple after that…stands to reason you’re gonna feel “zapped” by something. But then…is that really so bad?
It is if you can’t find a way to own it - to bring the feeling you think is so magnificent, intense, magical and Guru-induced into your day-to-day life. And somehow, I just never could.
Sometimes I wonder if Siddha Yoga was what derailed my personal evolution - the normal benchmarks of maturation that happen for women approaching thirty. I felt guilty a lot. My thoughts were never pure enough and my practice not steadfast. I was so attached to my worldly desires and my goals and I somehow thought I wasn’t supposed to be. I was supposed to just trust and love in the Guru. That’s what Jim said. That’s what the books said. Jim, it seemed, liked having a close hand in my practice. Sort of wanted to “tame” me. Jim once told a group of women in our SF carpool that I was in a “constant Kriya.” I think he often felt like he had to make jokes or apologize for me even though I was mostly quiet around everybody at the Ashram, never questioning or expressing doubts in mixed company. Never ever asking any of my silly questions about Gurumayi to anyone out loud. I was always respectful. The Ashram is clique-y. I’d never had much of a problem inching my into an ‘In’ crowd, but in South Fallsburg, that was way, way out of my reach. So I settled for not attracting attention. I was often afraid if someone looked too closely, they would catch me faking my love for the Guru. Or wondering if she was poo’ing. I could never seem to locate the line between fascination and disrespect, so I kept all of this to myself. My ashram visits were very internal experiences. And every good relationship is really about sharing, isn’t it? That just wasn’t happening for me - at the ashram or with Jim. Or for many years and many relationships that would follow.
Jim and Siddha Yoga were not something I shared with anyone. His life was so different from mine. I never invited him out with my friends - never invited him to see me perform. I considered him kind of old and weird. I was embarrassed. For the entire situation. He could be blunt - as though time and life had eroded the smooth edges that help most people get along with others. I also did sketch and improv. comedy at the time and I didn’t think he’d get it anyway. Jim was bright in his own way, but he had flunked out of college and got sent to Vietnam. This was a man with regrets and demons, though he was clean and sober by the time we met. I kept him separate from my “real” life, just like I kept SY separate - not secret, but I had no one but Jim to share SY with. Looking back, there was a heaviness about his spirit I should have run from. But then, there were probably a lot of people in South Fallsburg with similar weights and regrets.
It seems the more I now read other personal accounts of Siddha Yoga, the more I hear in everyone’s story a certain longing. A sense of hiding. A sense of giving power away because sometimes it’s just plain fatiguing trying to live up to one’s potential. Maybe that’s why the powers that be at the Ashram liked trotting out celebrities - if these people - these rich, beautiful and successful people - practiced Siddha Yoga and followed Gurumayi, then it must not be for the pathetic or the weak or the sad or the lost.
In actuality, there were many bright and talented people at the Ashram. But no one quite like me. Not that I could find. Many were intellectuals - former journalists and professors. I was smart, but not that. Many were nice. I was nice, but I had edge. I once ran into a girl I knew on a bus up to South Fallsburg, but even she - someone my own age with whom I had a couple of contacts in common - wasn’t really like me. And Jim’s friends seemed sort of angry to me. But they had the Guru, so they were “lucky.” Advanced. On to something the rest of the population wasn’t. The rest of the population, apparently, was miserable.
Funny, but the rest of the population - non-SY-ers - didn’t look so miserable to me… They looked like they were having fun. Just living life without all the extra thought and analysis. Not so self-punishing. Not so glassy-eyed.
I continued to visit and do intensives with Jim that summer and fall. We broke up shortly after I accepted a job offer to go on tour with a show in Europe for most of 1996. I had never even been to Europe and now I was able to go for free - to make money! I packed my SY pictures and books and CDs - I envisioned myself chanting the Gita in my hotel room every morning, showing gratitude for my new and wonderful opportunity. And sometimes I did do that. But my friends in the show were also in their twenties and into the kinds of things twenty-something ‘showfolk’ do on the road: drinking, partying, laughing, joking, whining, crying, screwing around, etc.
Jim had been the one to suggest we see other people when I was away. I protested, but went along with it. I cheated on him pretty quickly but I reasoned it wasn’t really cheating - according to his rules it was allowed. My first visit home with Jim was fine. I don’t remember much about it. I’m sure we had sex, Chinese food…maybe even went up to South Fallsburg. He had taken me up before my trip to get a graceful send-off. It was winter and the ashram was nearly empty. I didn’t mind going up in the dead of winter, when I could have spaces all to myself and avoid a crowded shoe room and Amrit. The atmosphere still felt sacred to me - I believed Jim when he said it was loaded with Shakti - every square inch of the carpet - everywhere Gurumayi has stepped and sat. I felt something on that carpet in the temple…
Or maybe I was just basking in its luxuriousness and soft, clean wall-to-wall carpeting having spent much of my adult life living on New York City hard wood floors that are impossible to keep clean. See? I could always twist it into something skeptical - some logical, mundane explanation. Was I a non-believer? Was I just afraid to give over? Could I just not be intimate with the Guru and give it up to her like everyone seemed to? Jim said I had issues with intimacy. I did. But who doesn’t? It’s not easy. He claimed my putting an ocean between us was evidence of that. Wellll…I wasn’t about to pass up a great opportunity in favor of a relationship fraught with difficulty and delusion. Seemed an easy choice, to be honest.
When I went back out on tour, I had had another affair - this one longer - in Milan, Italy, and this time I was sure I wanted things between Jim and I to be over with. My ridiculously high phone bills alone were incentive to split. I went home yet again to have my wisdom teeth pulled, after which I recuperated at my parents’ house up in CT. After that, I went into New York to spend the night with Jim before I flew to Berlin. My parents offered to drive me in, but I didn’t want them meeting Jim. He was so much older and weird and poor and…I know that must sound awful, but it’s the truth. I remember saying a nasty goodbye to Jim after we fought over the break-up. He could be very dismissive - even cruel - he liked to hit a teeny bit below the belt. I just couldn’t take it any more. On the plane, I watched “Up Close And Personal” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford; crying as Celine Dion sang its theme ‘Because You Loved Me.’ G-d, I was a piece o’ work… The plane took off and I was content to be on it. I didn’t much feel like being grounded. Not yet.
I still semi-practiced Siddha Yoga on the road. I even tried to locate the Hamburg, Germany, SY Center, but there was an outgoing message in German. I had my Company Manager interpret but I think the place was closed. I really wanted to practice with others in Europe - I thought it would be so cool. But it wasn’t to be. I got distracted. I fell in love again - with a German man. Closer to me in age but it was one intense roller-coaster ride in and of itself. The distance - the longing. The intense “I love you’s” all too quick. Whenever I was without him I was completely forlorn. I prayed to the Guru to help me through it. I bought Swami Anantananda’s book “How am I feeling?” - well-written and especially useful for its chapter on Infatuation. But none of it healed me. I always felt a little fake - a little ridiculous - praying for things in Bade Baba’s temple. I would bow down - all the way down sometimes - offer a coconut, walk the clockwise circle, meditate, pray, beg, pray, beg, meditate, chant…but deep down a part of me knew that I already had the answers that I needed - that I would have to take more action in my life - that I would have to choose better men and work harder at my craft to get ahead. Sometimes life reveals itself to NOT be the grand mystery we make it out to be. But can one feel that and see that and still follow a Guru? Could I really ever follow a Guru? That was the real question that I was always afraid to answer.
Over the years, I read tons of books I bought in the stores at the SF Ashram. When I first started with SY, I borrowed tapes from Jim but he discouraged me from making copies - better I spend the money for the Guru’s grace. Okay, I guess I can understand that. I never had any money, but somehow I managed to buy CDs, books, oils and intensives. I always had a profound experience at an intensive, but I was never quite certain that I received Shaktipat. It put a damper on the whole experience - the idea that I was somehow left out. There was an answer for everything, though, in SY. If I felt left out, it was because of my own doubt. I wasn’t open enough. If I didn’t trust the Guru, it was because I didn’t trust myself. The Guru was a mirror. The Guru is us. To worship the Guru within is to worship one’s self. How much love you can accept from the Guru is how much love you can accept in life.
And that’s where I do get something big from SY: This is where I understand faith on a whole new level and if I was able to take anything away from these practices it is that God does dwell within you as you. I used to take this so literally - I would over-think it, turning it inside out, unable or too afraid to really honor myself. If the Guru is the Guru…then how could I be? And if we are one and the same…then what do I need an intensive for?
I’ve never been a fan of fundamental interpretations of religion. In fact, I think ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘interpretation’ are sort of opposite. If I’ve had any success in my understanding, it’s been through applying the “God dwells within you, as you” more practically. And that was always frowned upon in SF - some devotees seemed to suggest that you weren’t supposed to ‘reduce’ the teachings to your boring everyday goals and desires. That was ‘ego.’ I disagree. I believe that the extent to which you can experience God - your Jesus, your Guru, your Allah - in every day life is the extent to which you can achieve happiness. And I do think that can be achieved in mundane relationships. Sex and passion. Children. Money. Success at work. A great dessert. A great pair of shoes on sale. Whatever! It’s about loving yourself enough to believe you deserve to be happy and pursuing that happiness without fear of failure or retribution or some Guru-enacted trickery. Jim used to suggest that the Guru loved to play with people that way - knock them down just when they got too full of themselves. He thought this was a good thing - what we all needed.
It was just utterly exhausting for an already over-analytical, worrisome person like me. To this day I am still afraid to say out loud that I love something: a job, an apartment… for fear the Guru will swipe it out from under me to teach me a lesson. What lesson might that be, you ask? I have no idea.
Most of us are never going to become monks or nuns or Swami’s, but our silly little lives DO matter. That’s what I could never reconcile - my desire for success was always getting tripped up by SY admonitions that what was worldly was not spiritual and, therefore, worthless. I’m not all too sure that Gurumayi meant for that interpretation. She seemed like a lady of luxury and success and finer things to me - a modern, independent gal livin’ the good life. Sort of what I always wanted to be. Maybe that was my problem - I didn’t want to worship the Guru - I wanted to be her. I wanted to be a star!
Anantananda’s chapter on infatuation touches on that - the idea that infatuation is a reflection of not just wanting to be with the other person, but wanting to be the other person.
I always dreaded the trip back to my awful, un-starry life in New York City. But slowly, as I explored my comedy…moving away from my half-talents in musical theatre, toward my truer talents in comedic writing and performing…I found some ground that I could really stand on. And my doubts about SY started screaming louder and louder…
THE BEGINNING OF THE END: THIS IS NO PLACE FOR A SINGLE GIRL…
The clincher was probably the last summer I visited the ashram in SF - 2000? 2001, perhaps? There was suddenly a heavy emphasis on families. What was that about, I wondered? Recruitment, perhaps? Get ‘em in while their young?
Suddenly the ashram seemed like it was specially designed as a family retreat. The rest of us non-family people skirted around the perimeter. I was going through one of my disastrous break-ups - this time with an exceedingly good-looking, intense, troubled soul who happened to be really, really good in bed. If Gurumayi was aware of my plight at all, she was probably zapping me with her laughter at my ridiculous choices in life. But any shot I might have had at lightening my load and finding peace was usurped by the fact that everything suddenly catered to families, which only served to make me feel more depressed and isolated; as though Gurumayi - like the rest of society - had no use for single women without children.
I just couldn’t seem to find what everyone else seemed to find up there - peace. I found doubt and anguish and skepticism and resentment… Sure, the atmosphere was serene and the incense smelled great and the food was some of the best I’ve ever tasted. But it was a lot of work. And like any long-term relationship with its issues, one has to ask one’s self: how much work is too much work?
That night, in 2000 (2001?) when I got back into the city I did something that I had never done after a visit to SF - I went out. Usually, I stayed in - tried to absorb and hold on to my connection to the Guru; the smell of incense; the “Simply Wonderful” cookies I would bring back from the Amrit and keep refrigerated and untouched for as long as I could stand it. But this time, I thought - what the hell. I’m going through a break-up and I don’t want to be alone. That night, I drank and I snorted something that I thought was cocaine but now nobody is really sure what it was because one snort and I ended up on the sidewalk, faced down, passed out in front of an enormous picture window at a restaurant opening night party I’d attended. I couldn’t get back. I thought I was dying. I really, truly thought: “This is it. Oh well. Didn’t think I’d go this way, but…”
I don’t know what happened to me drug-wise that night, but it found its way out of my system (and not in the prettiest of ways). And I’ve become super-duper-careful-and-conservative about such things since, but…what was that all about? Did Gurumayi zap me? Was she trying to teach me a lesson? Was she working all my bad choices out of me? My G-d, was she trying to kill me?? Eh, I was probably just malnourished. But I had hit a wall - emotionally, professionally, socially. I was getting tired of New York. I used to cherish having access to South Fallsburg. Now I didn’t much care. I had had my share of disappointments and tiny triumphs and it was time for something new…
I ♥ L.A. I DON’T ♥ SEVA. (THERE. I SAID IT.)
I don’t remember if I had any time to say goodbye to SF before I headed off to Los Angeles, but I’m pretty sure I did. Probably meditated a little, walked around a lot, burned some prayer sticks… This would have been winter time; no Gurumayi. Just quiet time for prayer and wishes. That’s how I had come to view SF: as a really good place to make a wish. And I’m sure if I found myself back there now, I’d burn a prayer stick or two. Why not? I used to flick pennies into the fountain at the local mall growing up. Adjacent to a t-shirt store and an Orange Julius. Why not make wishes at a place of prayer and clean carpet and incense?
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was starting life fresh. I was incredibly high on the newness and the optimism I felt having jumped in my car and been awarded immediately with a writing job not an hour into my trip. I felt so sure about the direction I was taking so I immediately looked up the LA SY center and went about doing Seva. After all, I reasoned, I have the time right now. This would be local - a half-our-to-forty-five-minutes away as opposed to up in SF (two hours from Manhattan), so it was more regular participation, Seva-wise, than I’d ever done. I’d be a real devotee - in the mix! I couldn’t hold myself back from giving it one last shot in a new environment - after all, that’s what I was doing with my life all the way around.
And like every aspect of my life from that point forward, it was time for reality. Time to be a grown-up. Time to face things in a big, big way. I had no idea what I was in store for in my coming years in L.A., but initially, I really liked it. I liked L.A., but I didn’t like Seva.
Michael, my supervisor, was super-nice - a really great guy, actually - and some of the others were nice, too. All interested in my work and writing. But I still felt out of place - like my ‘real’ friends were elsewhere. I don’t really have any SY friends. But tell me where volunteering in a hot kitchen for two hours doesn’t earn you at least a free cup of coffee or a cookie??? I always felt we should have gotten free dinner, to be honest, but we got nothing. I realize this is the Seva way - we do the service for the Guru. It’s an honor. It’s a gift. But this was a center, not an ashram. And I drove from North Hollywood (and then Hollywood) to Santa Monica, often through traffic, on expensive gas, to get there and…gosh, I don’t know. I was hungry! I guess I never really got it. I always had an issue with ‘selfless service.’ I started to think about all the other causes in the world for which I could volunteer such selfless service. Many, many worthy causes…
One day I just couldn’t deal with driving across town so I called Michael and I stopped my seva. I quit. (They probably coulda kept me for a few more weeks if I had a free meal to look forward to.) I guess practicality won out. I used to race home to watch the first season “Nip/Tuck” - not exactly a spiritual pursuit. But I didn’t much feel like beating myself up about it. (I have a DVR now.)
In the end, I find it odd that a place considered so plastic and vacuous as Los Angeles has offered me the grounding and sense of reality and real introspection I so badly needed. It’s taken reading, soul-searching, therapy and friends, but I have grown in ways I never grew in New York - and never at the ashram in SF. But maybe SF was designed for reflection - not growth. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be in that place at such an important age - those years from mid-twenties to early-thirties, when a girl can really come into her own.
Or maybe it was an integral part of the journey. To this day, I can’t decide if Siddha Yoga is one of the best things to happen to me or the worst. Did I gain greater capacity for self-reflection and understanding or less? Did it help me grow more sure of myself with time or did it rob me of precious identity-forming years?
These are like questions one asks after a romantic relationship has ended. And usually, one finds a way to reason that there was a real good reason to have had that failed relationship. I mean…those years couldn’t all be wasted, right? It had to mean something, right? RIGHT???
EPILOGUE: STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS
About a year after I quit seva, I wandered in to the Los Angeles Siddha Yoga Meditation Center after a meeting and I ended up in evening Arati. It was interesting. Years had passed. I had finally been legitimized in my work in ways I had always longed for in New York. That’s one of the reasons I always felt like such a fraud in SF - like suddenly I was all happy and blissful over a chant when the things I really wanted in life were still not mine. But now things were different. That day in 2006, I wandered in to the Center and wrapped a shawl from one of the bins around my jeans. I borrowed a beat-up old prayer book. I knew the drill. I knew the rules all by myself now. I was a big girl. There was a time when I would have wanted to use my own prayer book - with its light green silk cover specially purchased in the book store in SF - so that everybody knew I was an ‘experienced’ devotee, with my wooden beads and my special pins from past SF visits and birthday celebrations for the Guru - an accumulation of war medals I used to decorate my nametag with pride.
But now I didn’t care. I finally understood that here and elsewhere, how you carry yourself and how you feel about yourself is everything. You’re worthy because you say you are. You believe you are. Maybe that’s all Baba and Gurumayi were ever trying to teach me. Some of my friends back in New York never felt ashamed of their financial struggle; their restaurant jobs; their endless auditions like I did. And I imagine that other devotees always felt swell about their relationship to the Guru in ways that I didn’t. But that day in 2006 - that accidental visit to the L.A. Center temple - I had the Arati - and I didn’t worry about how many words I missed or mispronounced. For me. It was sort of what had been missing all along, for I used to get really hung up on all that flash and trend - who had a super-fancy asana, who was wearing all-white because they were part of the prestigious “month-long” course, who was known by Gurumayi by name. But I suddenly didn’t feel resentful that I would never be part of her inner ranks. Deep down - like the musical theater world - I think I knew I never belonged there. Like dating the wrong guy and finally admitting to yourself that you don’t want to marry him and he doesn’t want to marry you. And it’s perfectly okay.
Shortly after that, I came across the LeavingSiddhaYoga.com website by accident and was astounded that people were sharing their experiences of SY so candidly. I felt a little guilty and scared all over again. Could the Guru see me reading - devouring - this stuff? Did she somehow know that I was sullying my mind with this “garbage” (that’s the word Jim used way back when I came across The New Yorker article - it’s “garbage.”) Back when I started practicing, the Internet wasn’t quite as prolific, and there were so many secrets and unanswered questions. Marta Szabo’s blog got me hooked immediately and I was thrust back into the world - the doubts, the fears, the excitement, the elation, the New Year’s messages…
Before I knew it, I was missing it. Marta wrote of an early-morning Seva in the dark blue light of Bade Baba’s temple…his chant playing low…I nearly gasped. I missed it! It was like I was back there and LOVING it! Wait! This wasn’t supposed to happen…
The past few years have been a journey back to self-worth and my true identity. And what’s really interesting is the thought that maybe I sold SY short - maybe I just didn’t get it because I wasn’t evolved enough. Maybe I resented it because I received it through Jim. Maybe I resented the hierarchy because I didn’t feel worthy or capable of the climb. Like the feelings one might have looking back on a failed relationship or marriage - did I give up too quick? Did I not appreciate it for its inherent value? Could I have done more to keep it together? Again - can you grow into yourself as a person and still give over to a Guru? But isn’t that the challenge of intimacy? To give fully without surrendering your entire self? Is that even possible?
Is that what Siddha Yoga came into my life to teach me? The answer to that conundrum? So maybe…maybe now that I get that…I’d have a shot. A shot at being a real devotee - one with light in her eyes. One without doubts and fears and shame… One whose hair and make-up was just so. One with an expensive asana and prayer shawl - a lady of luxury livin’ the good life. Like Gurumayi.
I haven’t been back to the center since 2006. Okay, maybe once. Yeah, I think I wandered in again. Damn! She is hard to shake. It’s so odd how much I still think of Gurumayi. Sometimes I think the more I come to love myself and really accept myself, somewhere…out there…so does she. I have never been able to shake the notion that she is always watching. That she knew I defected - that I quit. Somehow, I still care too much what other people think - including a woman named Gurumayi who only addressed me by name once. But if I marched into a program tomorrow, I don’t know that I’d feel anything. And that’s everybody’s sad-happy story of a break-up. I put a lot of thought, judgment, worry and anxiety into relationships that I knew were never right for me.
But like the glow and excitement of first love…you always miss it just a little bit, for the magic of misguided innocence is not a luxury we have when we become the people we always wanted to be. Remember Swami Anantananda’s words if you find yourself infatuated with something or someone: You might be wanting to be that someone. And you might just be worthy. But don’t go knocking them off their pedestal just so you can get the better view.
Pull a pedestal up beside them. Try seeing the good view together.
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