- To have found a living spiritual master.
There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The uni-
verse will shift, destiny’s molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon in-
tersect with the path of the master you need. It was only one month after my first night of des-
perate prayer on my bathroom floor—a night spent tearfully begging God for answers—that I
found mine, having walked into David’s apartment and encountered a photograph of this stun-
ning Indian woman. Of course, I was more than a bit ambivalent about the concept of having
a Guru. As a general rule, Westerners aren’t comfortable with that word. We have a kind of
sketchy recent history with it. In the 1970s a number of wealthy, eager, susceptible young
Western seekers collided with a handful of charismatic but dubious Indian Gurus. Most of the
chaos has settled down now, but the echoes of mistrust still resonate. Even for me, even after
all this time, I still find myself sometimes balking at the word Guru. This is not a problem for
my friends in India; they grew up with the Guru principle, they’re relaxed with it. As one young
Indian girl told me, “Everybody in India almost has a Guru!” I know what she meant to say
(that almost everyone in India has a Guru) but I related more to her unintentional statement,
because that’s how I feel sometimes—like I almost have a Guru. Sometimes I just can’t seem
to admit it because, as a good New Englander, skepticism and pragmatism are my intellectual
heritage. Anyhow, it’s not like I consciously went shopping for a Guru. She just arrived. And
the first time I saw her, it was as though she looked at me through her photograph—those
dark eyes smoldering with intelligent compassion—and she said, “You called for me and now
I’m here. So do you want to do this thing, or not?”
Setting aside all nervous jokes and cross-cultural discomforts, I must always remember
what I replied that night: a straightforward and bottomless YES.
Eat, Pray, Love
dana p.
(Dana P.)
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