A WINTER PRACTISING HINDUISM

I have been practising Hinduism for a little while now.

When time and inclination conspire,
– of a Friday evening –
I make my way to a studio in Islington,
to gather with a hundred or so others.

To sit together.
To share.
To chant.
To move.
To be.

I am not Hindu.
Nor Christian,
Buddhist,
or Muslim.

I think it was the rigidity of ‘identity’ 
– the need for certainty –
– for pinning your colours to a single mast –
which sat near the root of my resistance.
And my eventual rejection.

I attended church.
I studied the texts.
I said my prayers.
I sung the hymns.
But I did not ‘know’ god.

As I neared my 30th birthday, 
I threw off the gown,
and threw out ‘religion.’

I was angry at the church,
– at ‘god’ –
and thought life would be smoother without them.

What I did not know then was that this act also meant discarding my connection to self.

To hope,
to depth,
to ease,
to love,
to possibility.

This wilderness is known in mystic scripture as a Dark Night of the Soul.
A crises of faith.
A total absence of spirit.
These mystics say that such a period is punctuated by ‘confusion, helplessness, and stagnation of the will.’
I can attest as much.

Since realising this essential need of the soul,
I now meet ‘god’ most days.
I meet them in footsteps through a blanket of frost,
the chatter of a robin,
the arms of a friend,
the rush of a river,
the eyes of a smile,
the flow of my breath,
the calming of my body.

This is not an intellectual access,
but a somatic one.
Where ‘god’ is not taught, 
– nor ‘owned’ –
but experienced.

An intangible,
– undeniable –
presence,
that cannot be quantified,
captured,
or explained.
It can only be felt.

When I listen to the Christian choirs,
talk to the Muslim merchants,
chant with the Hindu singers,
or sit with the Buddhist teachers,
I am all of them,
and I am none of them.

I find this label-less nomadism an easier fit,
for me at least.
It allows me to follow this most essential yearning.

To explore that which sits beyond my physical form,
my personality, 
– that changeable, malleable, and inherited concoction –
my ego,
– that fragile, and foolish form –
and,
– perhaps – 
beyond this ‘one wild and precious life.’