An Ode to Waiting

December 2024

Sitting in the corner of my dressing room is a large cardboard box, stuffed to the gills with beaten and worn journals. Some have spiral binding that’s becoming undone, others are marble notebooks that remind me of elementary school, and some are those pretty hardcover ones you find in troves at Home Goods. It’s a partial archive of my life up until this point, full of thoughts, tears, revelations, heartbreaks, stories, memories, and dreams.

I look back through the old pages and remember the things that felt so big at one time or another. One of my favorite things to discover are old lists for what I dream for the new year, my goals, manifestations, and hopes to realize in the upcoming 365 days.

For years, I penned a dream that this year finally came true- to go to India. A student of yoga for over 13 years, I was eager to visit this Motherland to drink from the fountain from which yoga was born. But as the years went on and the dream appeared on list after list, I started to feel like maybe it would never happen for me. Maybe I wasn’t meant to go. Maybe my dream was wrong.

Why not me? Why can’t I have what other people do? Am I doing the wrong thing, dreaming the wrong dream? Is God mad at me? It’s kind of embarrassing to write these questions that have crossed my mind, but it’s unfortunately honest. When things don’t immediately go my way, it’s easy to lose faith that the divine is listening. It’s more than just this elusive trip, but this year I’ve found myself stewing in the fear that the cosmos, the forces of nature, the divine, God, that power beyond comprehension, had turned it’s back on me. Like reaching out for a lover who has moved on, the distance stopped fueling my longing, and eventually started to sour my heart. This year I’ve had bouts of feeling stoney, distant, and closed off. The question consumes me, is anyone really listening?

If there is one thing this trip to India gave me, it is a profound trust in the timing of things.

For the first few years I was trying to manifest a month long trip for a particular teacher training. But after those years, I found that I had some real issues with the teacher and what he was teaching. Then I imagined joining a group retreat led by some yoga teacher or retreat guide. Later on, I talked with a friend who helps on these sort of things and revealed to me the stress of the personal dynamics of the groups that come together. Sure, these trips, had they come true, would have been beautiful in their own way. But they wouldn’t have been it.

Earlier this year I said to Adam, “You know, if I ever get to go, I’d love to just go with my friends. Maybe go see Maa while we’re there, something like that would be my ideal trip.”

My friends, that is exactly what I received. And it was a trip that has filled me, nourished me, opened me, challenged me, and warmed me.

I boarded the plane at JFK with my friends Vasudev and Kalpa, India veterans who showed me the way and took all the guess work out of the journey. Sitting beside them, my heart was at ease. Together, along with even more (!!!) friends from New Jersey and New York, we spent 6 days at Maa’s ashram by her side, deep in practice, eating incredible ashram grown food, singing, dancing, praying, waking up way before the crack of dawn, playing our ektaras deep into the night.

When we finally drove away from the ashram, I looked out the car window to savor their singing one last time. The small ashram family of sevaks and Maa sang and waved until we became invisible. Tears welled in my eyes, I said to my friends, “I would have waited even longer for this.”

I consider how much pain I experience in my stubbornness about time. How I want to know how it’s going to turn out now, how I want to know what I’m going to be, who I’m going to be, how I want to have life figured out and hit all these milestones right now. But I wonder, how many more moments will I have when I pause and say, “I would have waited even longer.”

If our dreams are big, if our aspirations are lofty, it seems only natural that time will need to work her magic. In the Shakta Tantra tradition in which I practice, time itself is viewed as “an ornament of the Goddess.” (Soundarya Lahari) The beat of a heart, the passing of a day, like the jingle of the bells adorning her feet. As I watched Maa dance, jingle, and sing, I knew the Goddess put me there, she had saved this seat for me until I was ready.

Time has blessed me in more than this one way, and yet still I lose trust in it’s process. My heart aches for the vulnerable reality that is surrender, that is waiting for our hopes and dreams to come to form. How bold and courageous for us to forge ahead towards that thing, and like a trek through a midnight forest, moving ahead without full vision. Putting faith in each footstep as it meets the earth.

I would have waited even longer for this trip, because who I am now is a person who was ready to receive the depth of experience I know my heart yearned for. Over the years I’ve become more clear about what is meaningful to me, what I value, and the spaces in which I want to be. When I was younger I was a lot more interested in the glitter, the pizazz, the Instagram trip. There was a strong desire to be seen in this place, as if it would validate me and earn me a credit as a “good yoga teacher.” This year, I arrived empty, ready to be filled.

I found a home in West Bengal. For years now I have been dreaming of a very specific temple in Assam, a Shaktipith that houses a particular form of the goddess. On this trip we made a pilgrimage to a different temple, a special place called Tarapith to pay our respect to the Goddess. Over tea the next day, Maa tells us, Tara and Kamakhya are sisters.

Isn’t it a wondrous thing, for our hopes to weave in front of our eyes without our even knowing? How there is always a web being formed to hold us, and just because we don’t have the vision to see it doesn’t make it any less real.

Back home in Lancaster, I am taking refuge in this magic of timing, resting in my own not knowing, walking forward step by step. I feel more uncertain than ever about what’s next, where things are going, how and where I want to show up. But of course, there is a wisdom to it all , to every stage of the journey. So I will be a little lost for awhile, and wander until the path solidifies under my feet and I look up and realize I’ve been walking on it all this time.

I do know that Maa is the teacher I want to be near, I do know that my practices have expanded and improved my experience of life, I do know that I want to live a life full of devotion, I do know that whatever I do, I want it to feel meaningful. I do know, that I’ll never fully know, and that that itself is part of the excitement of human life.

My heart longs to return to West Bengal, to Mother India, to be by her side. For all this time that I’ve wondered if God is listening, this trip was her embrace. Once again the distance has become fertile, and I will nestle up in this longing and one again do my best to let it open me, season me, and inspire me. My hope for each and every one of you is that your prayers are answered in their own perfect timing. And for all the days you wonder if you are heard, let my own little testimony serve as proof that yes, there are ears listening, and weaving a tapestry so beautiful for you that it just takes time.

To the Mother Goddess as the form of time, I bow to you, I bow.