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This morning, I overslept. Which is to say—sloth that I am, I dozed until the ungodly hour of
4:15 AM. I woke up only minutes before the Gurugita was to begin, motivated myself reluct-
antly to get out of bed, splashed some water on my face, dressed and—feeling so crusty and
cranky and resentful—went to leave my room in the predawn pitch-black... only to find that
my roommate had left the room before me and had locked me in.
This was a really difficult thing for her to have done. It’s not that big a room and it’s hard
not to notice that your roommate is still sleeping in the next bed. And she’s a really respons-
ible, practical woman—a mother of five from Australia. This is not her style. But she did it. She
literally padlocked me in the room.
My first thought, was: If there were ever a good excuse not to go to the Gurugita, this
would be it. My second thought, though? Well—it wasn’t even a thought. It was an action.
I jumped out the window.
To be specific, I crawled outside over the railing, gripping it with my sweaty palms and
dangling there from two stories up over the darkness for a moment, only then asking myself
the reasonable question, “Why are you jumping out of this building?” My reply came with a
fierce, impersonal determination: I have to get to the Gurugita. Then I let go and dropped
backward maybe twelve or fifteen feet through the dark air to the concrete sidewalk below,
hitting something on the way down that peeled a long strip of skin off my right shin, but I didn’t
care. I picked myself up and ran barefoot, my pulse slamming in my ears, all the way to the
temple, found a seat, opened up my prayer book just as the chant was beginning
and—bleeding down my leg the whole while—I started to sing the Gurugita.
It was only after a few verses that I caught my breath and was able to think my normal, in-
stinctive morning thought: I don’t want to be here. After which I heard Swamiji burst out laugh-
ing in my head, saying: That’s funny—you sure act like somebody who wants to be here.
And I replied to him, OK, then. You win.
I sat there, singing and bleeding and thinking that it was maybe time for me to change my
relationship with this particular spiritual practice. The Gurugita is meant to be a hymn of pure
love, but something had been stopping me short from offering up that love in sincerity. So as I