This is the part where I get to write about something for which there really are no words: spirituality and my spiritual quest.

My spiritual awareness began the traditional American way, in a Methodist Church. Sunday school introduced me to religious idealism and attempted to provide understanding through Bible stories. My family was not "religious" and-halleluiah-nothing was crammed down my throat. Attending church was a socially expected practice. We went because what would people say about us-a prominent family in a small Midwestern town, population: 1,100-if we didn't?
           
(Tell me this: Why were men excused from this tradition? How did they get away with not showing up in the family pew? Only once do I remember my grandfather attending. He snored loudly as my grandma elbowed him. Daddy was unfit for church. He couldn't sit still for an hour without creating some mischief. I only remember him attending weddings, sitting near the back so he could slip out, if needed-for a smoke, a nip, maybe to check on the horses to see if the bets were coming in... Oh, didn't I mention? My mother was a schoolteacher. My dad was a bookie. But I digress.)

The blessing of a not overly religious family was that it allowed a vast space around me to find my own way. Not in Sunday school, but alone, down in the pasture and along the creek, I could "see" Jesus. We talked, walked. I felt his arms around me as though he was the big brother I never had. My experiences were my answers. I kept quiet, not telling anyone about these blissful and sacred meetings. But I remember, as I climbed the dirt road back to the house, I was glowing with a secret.

These experiences began to fade as I grew older. I married a good man, and we co-created two gorgeous kids. After six years of a marriage I had outgrown, we parted, and I moved to L.A.  I discovered a new spiritual avenue walking around Sunset Boulevard flashing the peace sign, dropping LSD, and contemplating the sunset over the Pacific Ocean.

It took years before I began to integrate the idea of Love One Another and Do Unto Others, and the authentic expression of these ideas as a daily, conscious practice. It began to make sense during my mid-thirties, suddenly thrust into a life of spiritual awakening after an honest-to-God epiphany. I had been reading, dabbling, and dipping my toes into many available spiritual modalities. Then, my true spiritual teacher appeared on my path in the form of an Indian guru, Sathya Sai Baba. It was 1984.

I had read and experienced a bit of Eastern thought, philosophy, religion, and practices, and though I felt a resonance with much of what I learned, I had always considered people who went off to India on a pilgrimage to be a little on the strange side, and India sounded scary and far away. But to delve into the spiritual teachings of Sai Baba was not a choice.

Sai Baba says that his devotees do not choose to follow him, but that he chooses us. This has to be true, for in 1984 I didn't understand my magnetic attraction to a large photograph of a dark-skinned, short, barefoot man in an orange robe with one big halo of an Afro. He was looking straight into the camera and as I stared in awe, it was as if he were looking right into my eyes and way down into my whole being. I was caught. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. I began meeting devotees of Sai Baba everywhere. While browsing in a bookstore on Main Street in Santa Monica, a book fell off a shelf at my feet. I picked it up and on the front was bushy-haired, orange-robed Baba. I bought the book, Sai Baba, Avatar, by Howard Murphet. I took it home and read it from cover to cover in one sitting.

I was told there was a Sai Baba Center in Hollywood. "What's that?" I asked. "You go and sit on the floor, chant and sing bhajans." Yeah-right. I found myself going that very Friday night, tentatively entering the back door of a bungalow just a few blocks from Hollywood Boulevard. There was a shelf right inside the door to leave our shoes-weird, but okay, since I never wore shoes anyway. I just followed along and smiled back at people who were eager to welcome me.

When I entered the main puja room-in Western terms, a small sanctuary-I gasped inwardly. Everyone sat on the floor on cushions, the men on one side of the room, the women on the other. Nervously making my way to a cushion, my yoga-trained body melted down onto the pillow. What am I doing here? I looked up at a stunning altar with photographs of Sai Baba draped with garlands of marigolds and hibiscus blossoms, vases of flowers arranged amid candles, smoking sticks of nag champa incense, and loose rose petals scattered about. Everyone was settling onto his or her cushion in silence and as strange as it all was to me, I felt expectant. Then, there was the drone of a musical instrument I had never seen or heard before: a harmonium. The sound, the tone, the vibration of a note penetrated me to the core. I felt my throat tighten and my eyes fill with tears and I didn't know why.

We started with oms, chants, and prayers in Sanskrit. Then the bhajans (devotional singing) began. Bhajans are sung in call-and-response style, where the leader sings a line and then the group repeats it. I fumbled through the blue-bound book in my lap, trying to find the song and follow along in a language I'd never before heard, let alone sung. Other instruments joined in with the harmonium: tablas (Indian drums) and other percussion instruments-a tambourine, bells and shakers, and sometimes a flute or a violin. The songs built in tempo and soon everyone was clapping in time with the flowing, energetic songs. I began to feel indescribable sensations up and down my spine, vibrations in my head, pressure on my heart chakra, and realized I was laughing and crying at the same time, still stumbling through the blue book until I gave up and just faked it.

Afterwards, finding my shoes, I left smiling and silent. As I made my way across the street toward my car in the chilly, mist-filled night, my body seemed to be floating. My mind was without thought, and the vibrations from the music were sizzling through my whole being. I drove all the way home on the Santa Monica freeway with a goofy smile.

Of course, the next day was like any other "day after." What happened last night? What did I do? Was that real? Did that really happen, or was it just my imagination? I had fallen in love, but I didn't yet know that's what I was feeling. I began to negate it all, telling myself: Oh, this is too strange and I don't belong in that place with those smiling people. But they were so nice to me and, oh, that music! But I don't think I'll go back. It's just not for me.

I went back every Friday night. I gathered books and pictures and began listening to people's travels to India and their experiences of being with Baba. I noticed changes in my life. Things began to seem easier and more effortless. I noticed a kind of sheen or aura around things, and I was happier.

For two years I immersed myself in everything "Baba." I read every book about him. The awesome array of his experiences and stories repeatedly moved me to tears or gave me goose bumps. Bhajans began to play in my mind constantly. The music captivated me and moved me in a way I never thought possible. I began singing-out loud.

During this time, I was involved in a year's training to become a breath-work practitioner (a.k.a., rebirther). My second six months of study took me to San Diego, where I gladly moved, ready to get out of Los Angeles. I was in for a treat. The San Diego Sai Baba Center was huge, and I began meeting a lot of people like me.

Devotees from Baba's ashram in India were always coming and going. There were social activities associated with the Center with opportunities for discussions, for listening and asking questions, and enjoying informal bhajan sessions. Being a closet singer, I finally got up my nerve and led a bhajan. When I sang Manasa Bhajare Guru Charanam, something amazing happened: I felt powerful energy flowing into the top of my head and through my whole body and the voice that came from me in song could not have been "mine." It was full and deep, free and uninhibited. After the song, my entire body was tingling and vibrating-and, boy, was I high! I soon acquired my first harmonium, and there was no holding me back now! (A harmonium is a wind instrument that looks like a wood box about the size of an ice chest. It has a keyboard on top, and an opening where the player pumps air through bellows that pushes it through metal reeds. It sounds similar to a small organ. Having learned piano as a child, I was comfortable with the keyboard and it was easy to learn).

Another boon to learning Baba's teachings and seeing the example he sets of a truly divine being, was awakening to other mystics, saints and enlightened ones. The words of Jesus I had learned as a child suddenly made perfect sense now, as did that feeling I had carried of not being alone.

I began having vivid dreams of Sai Baba, dreams that differed from your normal, average dream. Baba says that when we dream of him, he is visiting us. Many people who go to Baba's ashram and gain a most-desired audience with him, will report that Baba said, "I came to you in a dream." He then proceeds to accurately describe the dream of the dreamer. I believe it, for after dreams of Baba, I would feel as if I had been with him and I would be in bliss for several days. After two years of learning, experiencing, and immersing myself in the mystery and bliss of being a devotee, I was ready to see him in person. In September 1986, I found myself on a Malaysia Air flight to Madras (now Chennai), India. I was exhilarated and terrified. I knew when I got on that plane in San Diego that my life would never be the same again.

And it hasn't been. That visit was the catalyst for an enormous spiritual opening that it seemed I had waited lifetimes to happen. Since that first trip in 1986 (and two subsequent trips in 1990 and 1995), my life has taken a journey with twists and turns, ups and downs, and given me unimaginable experiences-not easy, but worthy with potent life lessons. Being under the umbrella of Sai Baba's divine love, and learning to apply and practice his simple but difficult teachings, has made Life make sense. I feel incredibly blessed that this has been my path and my way home to myself.

Today, I still sing and I have acquired a beautiful tambura, a tall, four-stringed instrument made out of a large gourd for resonance, with a long wood neck and mother-of-pearl inlay. This instrument is usually used as a background sound in classical Indian music, and plucking the four strings in a certain way creates a mystical drone. It is used for chanting and meditation, as its sound penetrates the senses and allows a listener to shift easily into a meditative state of consciousness.

As for my relationship to Sai Baba, in twenty-two years it has changed. In the beginning was the Divine Romance, a gift of bliss and expansion. After my first trip to India, the honeymoon was over and the real test began. I always feel the presence of Baba with me, yet my expression of that has become much more subtle and internal. Baba teaches that our love, devotion, and desire to merge with the Divine is not about his form, but is about finding these qualities within ourselves. In other words: "God" is not "out there" somewhere, but is within us and we only have to realize it's been there all along.

Baba encourages his followers to be active in the world. Cloistering ourselves away in meditation and silence can be a wonderful spiritual experience, but the true expression of our spirituality comes from serving others and reflecting the divine love within us through our words and actions, our radiant smiles and our soothing voices. Baba has spent his life in service to his country by building universities and hospitals (all free of charge), and establishing water projects that insure poor rural communities have water for agriculture and livelihood. He travels in India extensively, always on a mission, meeting with government officials and others who can implement his teachings, spread his message of service, and improve living conditions in his homeland.

I can only aspire to acknowledge that every day is a meditation, every breath is a prayer. I try to practice gratitude for all things and to remember to look into the eyes of others and offer a smile. I am in constant rehearsal to think good thoughts and to practice kindness. And I hope-somehow-I can remember to send prayers of mercy to George W. Bush.

- Realize the Heaven within you and all at once all desires are fulfilled, all misery and suffering is put to an end...The greatest cause of suffering in the world is that people do not look within; they rely on outside forces.

Writing Naked as Spiritual Practice

To me, being alive is a spiritual practice. A continuing path of learning-or unlearning-chiseling away at all the layers of untruths about ourselves in order to get to the core, the heart, the soul, the beingness.

I've been spending time lately with the teachings of Eckhart Tolle, who so brilliantly and simply defines spirituality as being totally and completely present. There is only now, and our practice is to become completely conscious and awake to the present moment. His first book, The Power of Now, is an eloquent introduction to a simple state of being, attained by diligent awareness of our thoughts and actions. He replaces the word "God" with "beingness" and "consciousness," which I find to be a clear description of what I feel. To me, beingness implies unity with all of life, dissolves separateness, and gives way to the concept of "God" as within and without. To embody the bliss of consciousness is truly our natural state of being.

How I "be" in the world gives me the opportunity to choose to experience any situation as a spiritual practice. Practicing kindness under stress in the grocery store is a great teacher for me to learn to be present, conscious, and to notice my thoughts, especially when I'm feeling impatient and grumpy. Watch. Witness. Notice. Without self-judgment, I'll try to observe my criticisms and how impatience brings up our shadows. Wanting to get through the line and just get the hell home-Damn, this checker is on another planet, will she ever get it together and stop flirting with the bag boy and just SCAN?-proves that, for me, to practice beingness, kindness, and presence, I don't need to go to church-I need to go to Ingles!

So! How does all this fit in with describing Writing Naked as a "spiritual practice?" Connecting and finding our common ground, exercising compassion, patience, non-judgment, and supporting one another with love and grace in the arena of a circle of women, is an awesome place to open to the idea of presence and beingness. Experiencing an environment where we are allowed and provided the space to do something we love, to feel inspired by ourselves and each other, to be fully alive and aware, is how we want every moment of our lives to be. We can begin this in the Writing Naked environment. And from there we take it with us, out into the world, right into Ingles!