Integrating

Well, I've been back for, oh my, only two and a half weeks. But damn it feels like months and months, how can that be?

I'm using all the skills in my arsenal to keep my mind in a good place and I think I'm doing it but there are some major things I'm missing. The food, I miss the food, I don't even want the options that I have here. I just love the local food in Mysore, I may not have at first, but its become what my body craves. I've written about it many times so I won't elaborate any further.

Biggest thing I miss is the temples. I've never been a religious person so I'm not sure why this became so important to me but I'm going to write a bit and see if I can't work through it.

When I was young and had moved away from home, to St. Louis. It was probably 1989 or 1990, I was invited to go to some gatherings that I realized were coven meetings and so began to explore the life of a Wiccan. I loved that it was practical and put you in touch with the cycles of the moon, with the ruling of the god during the winter and the goddess during spring and summer, which was my first foray into the divine feminine and masculine, I'd never thought of them as options before.

When you start breaking down the aspects of the divine it seems to be easier to relate to it as something "real" or something more tangible than you'd thought before. Not some old man with a white beard living on a golden chair up in the clouds, but as something that is part of the trees surrounding you, the ground and grass you're walking on, the stream you just hopped over... It was a revelation to me to start seeing it this way.

Some years before that in like 5th grade maybe I'd studied Greek mythology and when I became Wiccan, or was around them for a few years, I realized that this was maybe another version of these gods I'd studied as a very young person. So things started to click.

Now that I'm older, I'd been to India, been reading about the gods over there since 1999 or 2000, but it some 14 years after that, I watch the show Vikings. Known for their violence I wasn't that interested but once I realized how spiritual they were, they were doing almost everything to please their gods, I started studying up on Norse mythology. I didn't realize I'd known a lot of it because as a child I'd read so many comics and Thor and Odin and Valkyrie were always in the Marvel universe and their stories in there corresponded to the stories I read in the Poetic Edda. Sids note, that is how I began an interest in Greek mythology too, the Marvel and DC comics also included a lot of Greek Gods.

So on further reading about the Norse gods, reading their stories I felt they were very similar to the Indian Gods, and they were. Other than the fact that each Indian god has so many aspects and each aspect has a different name and depending on what region of the continent you're in they have different names, so it ends up being in the hundreds of thousands of gods and names for them. So when I went back to India last fall I really had a different story going on my head about their religion. It had connected itself back to my pagan roots and so therefore I was much more interested in exploring it. Plus this trip I would be living with a very spiritual Indian who had a degree in religious studies, so even more opportunity for me to explore some of that stuff.

And that I did. I was very interested in the Ganesh temple I'd gone to often the last trip, so started by that. Then I discovered there is a little temple behind that one that people also visited and it was to the Nava Graha, the embodiments of the nine planets. Which led me to discovering there's always a peepul tree around almost every temple and there is always a naga garden around the peepul trees. Then I started thinking about Shiva, who I'd always been drawn to and where I could find s Shiva temple, then I found one and had a most profound experience in it when they began playing the drums and blowing the conch shell as part of the opening ceremony. In the Shiva temple there was also a murthi(statue of the god imbued with the aspects of that divine being) for Parvati, Shiva's consort, so I studied her, found out she was also known by many other names depending on the deeds she had done, one of them being Chamunda for which a humongous temple was there on top of Chamundi Hill where she was supposed to have slain a few demons.

This all led me back to a book someone had given me the last trip, Yogic Secrets of the Dark Goddess, which was all about Kali and her aspects but also applied to the divine feminine or Devi as they call her there, and so I reread that book while there. I also discovered that when I would enter temples solely dedicated to the Devi, no matter which aspect or version of her it was for, that the energy would be very different, much more palpable. Almost dense and it would change you while in there if you stayed long enough and were open to it. This is originally why I kept going back into that little Ganesh temple in Gokulam, because the energy was just that different in there. Well, his mothers energy was that much stronger and intense and through this exploration I found out that the shakti is where all the strength and power are, the Shiva, or the male aspect of divine energy, is the calm centered focus and its really in the balance of the two that you thrive. I also read the Devi Mahatmyam, all the stories of the Devi slaying asuras or demons and her deeds that made her great which made me realize she really is the powerful aspect of the gods, the male is the less active, calmer quieter part of it all. Does that make me Goddess worshipper?!? Maybe so! haha...

Then I discovered through my chanting teacher that there are different gods favored to be worshipped on each day of the week and so figured out which one was for each day, then also realized that many of the days of the week were named after Norse gods and that linked them back to my earlier studies. Through this process I discovered some gods or devas as they are called in India, that I'd never heard of and so studied their stories.

Each one I found a temple for and slowly started integrating going to that temple that certain day of the week where it was auspicious to worship said god. This process was a very slow unfolding over the course of the 4 months that I was there, and was just at its peak when it was time for me to leave so its been something that I keep exploring now that I'm home, not in a physical way because there is only one Hindu temple here and it houses many many different gods, but its also pretty far out in the county, so is not super accessible to drive to each day.

So keeping this worship going even though its in my bedroom at home, rather than out in a temple where many hundreds of people visit the deity each day and bring that energy with them, has actually helped me integrate back here. Not in the same way I did before at all, but in the way that I'm bringing who I've slowly become over this last trip to bear here, I'm not trying to go back to who I was before I left, and I think I was doing that before. This time I'm allowing the new me to become more full here. What an interesting concept, evolving. And yet I am doing that, but also its brought me back to my old pagan roots, coming full circle and I feel more whole. Not complete because to me that would be when I'm ready to leave this body, never complete, but whole none the less.

Yes, I'm missing the food, I'm missing being able to walk everywhere and have grown a big distaste for driving even though I'm fine doing it all day long because I have to, I'm missing that being closer to the earth that walking gives you, so I go to the park and walk (but can't wait until it warm enough to do it barefoot to feel the earth under my feet), and I'm missing my temples but am remembering the old pagan ways of just worshipping those gods within the trees, or the ground, or the streams themselves instead. So its bringing a new depth to my worship. Starting to finally experience and see everything as sacred is good, and is making me happier, and yes helping me integrate...