Is it possible for a great experience to get better? Many pilgrims who have traveled with us previously reported that this particular pilgrimage was the best they had experienced in all of the nine years that we have been conducting this annual event. Jackie Grimmet, one of our fifth timers, remarked: “Each year this experience gets better and better, and just when I thought that this couldn't get any better… it goes “whoosh”, way over the top”. Shortly before we left the ashram, a rather serious and conservative monk drew me aside and said, “Among all the groups who visit our ashram, yours is undoubtedly the most prayerful. Keep it up!” Then again, another monk, this one a liberal, commented, “It is very inspiring to see you all practicing with great sincerity the spiritual disciplines that we engage in, and then some. Thank you”.

While it feels somewhat boastful to share such comments, they are powerful affirmations of the effort that goes into our pilgrimage. Such effort is not ours alone, as organizers for this pilgrimage, but equally that of all participants who prepare most earnestly for this life-changing experience. They bring with them to India all the sincerity and consciousness of a well prepared mind and heart, which is what impresses upon those who witness our journey. In our previous year’s report, Ambassadors of the Sacred, we mentioned similar comments, except these came from locals observing us. It moves us deeply to know that we impact India, as much as India impacts us!

Having conducted this experience for almost a decade, we are now seeing the crystallization of various components of the journey, particularly in the design of the preparatory process and its undiluted application by all of our participants. The majority of pilgrims who travel with us each year spend a substantial amount of time in mental and spiritual preparation. In fact, almost all mention that that their journey begins from the moment they receive their preparatory materials. Their loving cultivation of inner dispositions results in the special combination of intention, preparation and grace that best characterizes our Journey to Find the Other Half of the Soul.

Since this is a journey of magnitude and complexity, it is always possible for things to go contrary to plan, however much one may prepare for the unexpected. This is why we differentiate very clearly between "expectations” and “intentions” in our preparation. Expectations invariably set us up for disappointment, for we have in our mind a picture of exactly what is supposed to happen, how it is supposed to happen and when it is supposed to happen. Intention, on the other hand, places the emphasis on inner conditions of spirit: clarity of our vision, depth of emotion and the appreciation of beauty, regardless of the façade. “Seeing different”, for that is the objective of the journey, puts us in touch with the other half of our soul, that hidden, invisible half. To discover this other dimension is like finding a long lost friend, and what better place to reconnect with an old friend than in India, with its ancient charm and magic?

One thing we try to do each year, whenever possible that is, is adventurously explore a new temple. We had heard about this beautiful Shiva temple in a remote village and so we set out, shortly after breakfast, after anointing ourselves with sacred ash, the supreme symbol of Shiva himself. Representing purity of mind and heart, ash is symbolic of that which remains after the divine flame of wisdom has utterly transformed the ego. It was a beautiful drive through fields of rice and sugar cane, along narrow roads with only an occasional tractor or bullock cart passing us by. Finally, we arrived in the village, the sort of "don't blink or you'll miss it” type of town. In sharp contrast, towering above the tiny village square, were the huge gates to the temple. However, they were bolted shut!

The errand boy we sent the previous day to inform the temple priest of our arrival informed us that we should get there by 9:00. So there we were, at 9:00 a.m. sharp, standing in front of the closed doors of the temple. There was a family emergency, some helpful villagers explained. Well, please go and tell them to open the gates because we are here. A small contingent of villagers together with one of our drivers set out to let the priest’s family know that the North American group had arrived. In India, one never knows what to expect. One may tell a person, or an organization, that one will arrive at a certain time on a certain day, but no one never takes it seriously because it is okay not to arrive and it is equally okay not to inform the other that one is not arriving. No one ever gets upset because they had to wait, even a day or two. Alternatively, one may arrive and the host may be gone, as was the case here at Shiva’s abode. This is not a criticism: it is simply a different way of seeing. And please, don’t let this isolated incident cause you to assume that the entire trip is filled with situations such as these. However, this is precisely the sort of situation where our preparation made all the difference.

Not one of our pilgrims was upset, or disappointed or impatient. It appeared as though we had collectively shifted into a state of indigenous mind. For a short while, some of us hung out in the village square while others went to check out the sculpture on the temple walls. And then it struck me that this was an extraordinary metaphor for all those times when we shut the gates of our own heart and close ourselves off from people, from creation and from the Divine. One of my favorite statements from the great German mystic, Meister Eckhart, is, “It is not so much that God does not dwell within us; it is we who have gone out for a walk!” I shared this with our group and we all sat down under the stone portico that made up the village square and started to chant the mantra Om Namah Shivaya, meaning “we offer our homage and adoration to the One who is auspicious”, and determined not to stop till the gates opened.

Several of the villagers, most of them small children, gathered round and watched us do what we love doing. This, after all, was a chanting pilgrimage, and it was our intention to chant in temples and caves and on the banks of holy rivers. So there we were, in the heart of rural India, chanting outside the closed gates of a Shiva temple. We chanted, slowly at first, and then building up the rhythm. Forwards and backwards we chanted the holy phrase, churning up our energies and releasing all of the frustrations buried deep within our psyches. Shiva is, after all, the great destroyer of negativity, the one who transforms our ignorance into spiritual wisdom.

More children gathered. We were chanting the village into the square, like the pied piper of Hamlin. These precious people might never have seen a bunch of white people chanting their most sacred prayer phrase, and that too with such passion and fiery devotion. I was in an altered state myself, only minimally aware of the goings on in our surroundings, and then, suddenly, there was sound of the crack of a bolt. As I opened my eyes, a small window opened up within the large door. It was like an eye, Shiva’s third eye if you will, and I could see straight into the far recesses of the sanctuary. Darshan! What an extraordinary moment of blessing! All that waiting, chanting and letting-go made perfect sense, for the moment filled with an enormous sense of presence and deep fulfillment.

One of the priests stepped in through the small opening and opened up the large doors from the inside. We jubilantly walked in, through the large gateway, symbolic of entering sacred mystery, that threshold at which we leave the known behind and enter consciously into the unknown. We walked around the precinct, placing ourselves in harmony with all of creation, and all of the cosmos, and we became the body of God. In that fullness of divine consciousness we entered the sanctuary and began to chant once again, our voices bouncing off the stone and echoing around the small chambers, shrines to the cosmic powers associated with the Great Transformer, Shiva. It was glorious! A stream of ancient devotional hymns poured out from me in a spontaneous torrent of emotion. I had not sung these songs in perhaps twenty years. The ancient remembered!

Together we participated in a ritual, breaking coconuts and waving fire and incense. The priest, ensconced in the inner sanctum, chanted powerful mantras while offering leaves and flowers to the stone lingam, a symbol of the formless power of the divine that manifests in the energy of creation as Shiva’s cosmic dance. We too chanted and danced, turning round and round in the stone hallway, arms wide open, heart wide open, ecstatic, vibrant, transformed. Can you feel the pulse of Pilgrimage 2007? Care to join us in 2008? This is an extraordinary journey, to say the least, and we are committed to making the best better.