Devotion Read Free Page B

the years of packed lunches and piano practice and rushed dinners—and wonder where it all had gone?
    I told myself that I could sort this out—right here, from the central command station of my life. What good would it do me if the answers ended up being out there ? I wasn’t out there! And what’s more, I knew that anything I might learn by going away would disappear in a flash once I was back home, sorting the dry cleaning from the laundry. I wasn’t in a shala , or a zendo , or a shrine, or temple. I was here in my house—and I needed to figure out how to work with what I had.
    After all, some of my greatest moments of clarity—those little eureka moments of truth—had happened in unlikely places: wheeling a cart down a supermarket aisle, driving along an empty stretch of highway, lying in bed next to Jacob as he drifted off to sleep. And I knew from my yoga practice that those insights are already fully formed—they’re literally inside our bodies, if only we know where to look. Yogis use a beautiful Sanskrit word, samskara , to describe the knots of energy that are locked in the hips, the heart, the jaw, the lungs. Each knot tells a story—a narrative rich with emotional detail. Release a samskara and you release that story. Release your stories, and suddenly there is more room to breathe, to feel, to experience the world.
    I wanted to release my stories and find what was beneath them—I wanted to work with the raw materials of my life—but I wasn’t sure how to do it. I felt like I was sweeping these ideas and concerns, like dust motes, into the corners of my days.
    8 a.m.: school dropoff
    9:30–11:30: magazine deadline
    12:00–3:00: spiritual awakening
    3:15: school pickup
    3:30–4:30: piano lesson
    5:00–7:00: more deep inquiry
    7:00: dinner on the table
    No—I quickly realized—I needed help. A jump start. I needed company, fellow sojourners. I needed teachers. And maybe this was where the shala s, the zendo s, the shrines and temples, came in. But I had never been much of a joiner. At the edges of any group—from the playgrounds of my childhood to the cocktail parties of my adulthood—I always felt like an outsider, my nose pressed to the glass. And anyway, where was I supposed to go? And when? And who would take care of my family? They might go naked, not to mention unshowered, and eventually starve to death without my constant presence. And besides, I didn’t likegroups. And I needed a private bathroom. And I was afraid I’d be homesick. Did I say I’m not much of a joiner?
     
    Still, most mornings—between the highly evolved practice of checking the Amazon sales ranking of my latest novel and lustfully tracking down an unaffordable pair of stiletto-heeled Jimmy Choo boots—I found myself on the Web site of Kripalu, a yoga and meditation center in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It was only a ninety-minute drive from my house. I studied Kripalu’s calendar for a retreat that didn’t strike me as too scary. “The Ecstasy of Sound: A Music and Healing Workshop” sounded way too woo-woo. As did “The Masks of the Goddess: Ritual, Theatre and Stories of the Sacred Feminine.” I was highly suspicious of the smiling people with their gray, kinky hair, loose yoga pants, and Birkenstock sandals. They looked like they had migrated directly from Woodstock. Who were they? Could they possibly be as contented as they appeared to be? I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to join them. I put up all kinds of roadblocks, conducting endless loopy conversations with myself.
    Who are you kidding? You can’t do this.
    Why not?
    It isn’t you.
    Well, whatever me is, it isn’t working.
    What do you want?
    More. I want more.
    So what you’re saying is—
    I’m not sure. But I want to go deeper.
    Deeper into what?
    But then something would disrupt the train of thought. A UPS truck heading up the driveway. The new puppy at the door, scratching to get out. An urgent e-mail from a