At the ashram, you are extra careful with god. When sitting, you keep the soles of your feet tucked safely beneath you. You circumambulate clockwise, stir the yogurt clockwise, sweep the temple clockwise. When trusted with the words of god - the Bhagavad Gita or another holy text, you use it only for reading, never for taking notes on top of or inside of, or to prop open a door or a cell phone for a selfie. You wouldn’t use it as a plate, unless you were offering your meal. God, whomever she is, is presumed to be particular about these sorts of things. You repeat her mantra with Japa mala in one direction, with precise finger movements over and over. You sing her song again and again until you can’t make sense of a thing, and then the words sing you.
There is something beautiful about reverence - about taking care to honor and respect. And also my personal lived experience is shared with that of Anne Lamott - I most often find God in the bathroom (and when living at the Ashram, I had to sneak away on Sundays and find her at the Starbucks). I’m less of a public mourner, or one who can grieve or crumble in a respectable and reverential way, and so often times my most intimate moments with God are those that unfold above or very near to a porcelain throne. Why else do the toilets flush clockwise in the northern latitudes if not as their own subtle prayer??
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