Just Living is Enough

NOTE: the following letter is from the Salon webpage dedicated to SYDA's response to the recent article on Gurumayi and Eat, Pray, Love. I'm reposting it here because as I read it, I wondered if maybe I had written it myself while sleepwalking, it so encapsulates my experience. Thank you, Lucid 2010 for so eloquently stating what so many of us have gone through, finally putting the path in our rear view mirrors.

just living is enough

I began my slow departure from SY the day after Gurumayi delivered her 2004 New Year’s address. My exit wasn’t dramatic and didn't occur overnight. It took years to become involved with SY and its taken years to move away. The fact that I’m reading and posting in forums like this tells me I’m still going through the process.

My main reason for leaving? The short answer is one day I finally felt strong enough to stop suppressing my intuition and listen to what the voice inside me had been trying to tell me for years: despite the wonders of the path and my largely positive experience, there was something sinister at SY's core.

I decided I no longer needed to know, see, or have some traumatic “direct experience” of what was rotten about SY. I decided it was more important to honor myself, my intuition and the voice I’d tried so hard to silence that kept telling me it was time to go.

It’s wrenching having to end your relationship with the ultimate parent, let alone discard your entire spiritual belief system. It is a death, to be sure. I was a shell for a year. But gradually I re-grew from the inside out and am back living comfortably in the world now, both feet on the ground.

It’s funny, “the world” was the term we used to use whenever we referred to anything outside of SY. All the mishaps and human foibles that occurred in “the world” provided Gurumayi with an endless stream of anecdotes for her talks. And we all laughed right along with her because we were all in on the joke. Though we did feel pity for all those poor souls out there who were still “asleep," we also knew we had been blessed. We were the lucky ones who understood the difference between life in “the world” and life with the guru. And in SY there was never any question about which was the better side to be on.

But, for all it’s horrors and yes, joys too, now I’m back out here I’m kinda digging it. My day-to-day existence is no longer dominated by some belief system I must incessantly adhere to in order to avoid dropping off into the abyss of delusion. The world isn’t a bubble that can be ruptured. The world isn’t a sets of beliefs that can be threatened by an article at a website, or shattered by some secret someone's hiding.

The world is too old and too big for all that.

Once I got some distance from my SY experience, and reached a middle point somewhere between true believer and total skeptic, the entire thing became far more fascinating to me than when I was involved. For me, the whole SY phenomenon is far more interesting when viewed from where I am today (halfway through my life, having traveled, worked for a cultish corporation or two, and become a parent) vs. where I was when I encountered SY (a depressed teenager, desperate for a “way out,” open to/with absolutely no frame of reference for anything).

When you are in SY you can spot others who have “met Gurumayi” (a designation, by the way, which doesn’t require having actaully met her in person). Today, although it’s rare when I run into someone I recognize from my SY days, I can always tell whether or not they’re still practicing. It’s a guru-dar that apparently continues working even after you become a non-believer. People who’ve practiced SY intensely long-term have those unmistakable “ashram eyes.” It’s a look that privately spooked me even when I was involved in SY, but back then I told myself everyone had their own personal relationship with the shakti – some more intense than others – and I tried not to judge.

But what I notice now when I encounter these people today is the disconnect. And I’m talking here about devotees who’ve spent 15+ years in SY, lived in ashram, done tons of seva. Devotees who’ve been through all the wars and still stayed committed. For all their dedication, to me, kind and thoughtful as may be, these people seem less “present” not more. Even when I was in SY, the hard-core “sevittes” as we called them, seemed to in no way emulate their guru. For reasons I could never find the answers to, her good qualities didn't seem to rub off on them. Gurumayi supposedly embodied ultimate example everyone was aiming for, yet the entire time I was in SY I never met any long-term devotee who was anything like her. (And by her, I mean Gurumayi’s public persona, which is all I ever saw, and all the positive attributes that came with it.)

It’s a challenge to have much of a conversation with anyone still in SY. Heck, it was a challenge when I was in SY, if the topic of conversation wasn't in some way related to Gurumayi. There is now of course the elephant in the room that they’re still in SY and I’m not – something neither side can speak about. But mainly, because we’re no longer both on the same path, there simply isn’t much to say.

I have no regrets whatsoever about my participation in SY. I had to learn what I had to learn and there are far worse things I could have done with my time.

Would I let my own child go anywhere near SY, or something like it today?

No way in hell.

I’ve not read all of “Eat, Pray, Love” and won’t see the movie. There was a time in my life I’d have been first in line for both but now I have no interest in either beyond the conversation that’s occurring here.

I don’t meditate, chant or pray anymore.

Just living is enough.