Have you ever found that spirituality is not linear, or even measurable?
Last year I was at the Brooks and Dunn concert with my father. They started to play “I Believe” (which happened to be the same song we danced to at my wedding) In the arena filled with hundreds of strangers the lights from cell phones blazed bright through the dark rows. Voices soared and I grabbed tight to my dad’s hand. I yelled from the top of my lungs to him, “WE ARE ALL GOING TO HEAVEN! EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US!”
Now, I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know why I said that. But six months later he was the first to show me it was true. As the lyrics foretold…
If there was ever anybody deserved a ticket to the other side
It'd be that sweet old man who looked me in the eye.
That’s spirituality! It’s confusing, sometimes painful & overwhelming for the mind to process. Certain things about it can take time to acquire taste for or to even understand. What works for you year-to-year can shift as quickly as Ohio weather. You may go to church consistently for years and then suddenly find it falls flat to give you all your soul is needing or vice-versa. You may yoga yourself into a pretzel and gain the physical physique of those guys in the small loin clothes, only to wake up to the realization that you may have torn your rotator cuff and you’ve never felt more out of balance.
Back in October, a small group of us took a trip to see Krishna Das, a student of Neem Karoli Baba who is a beautiful guru & saint of India. It was one of the few times I have experienced Live Kirtan. Kirtan is a spiritual practice where you sing the Divine name over and over using ancient mantras. You sing until it feels like forever and the only thing your entire being is focused upon is God/Universe. In my experience, for a few brief moments when chanting, time completely stops. All the bullshit. All the walls. All the stories. All the drama. All the opinions I have within myself, about what is “good” or “right” or “heavenly”. I found myself again looking around at all these people, from all these walks of life, focused on ONE thing and I thought, “This is Heaven.”
But wait.
What do Nationwide Arena & Sacred Kirtan have in common?
What’s the common denominator?
Well, all I can gather is when we sing, even terribly, we let go of something. We let go of our need to be something. We don’t sing in a crowd to be the one to be heard (unless you get stuck next to that girl or guy). In those moments, the divine spontaneously emerges without warning or expectation and smack! You Are in the middle of Heaven. From what I’ve found, spirituality functions outside the rules of space and time. I have found that, maybe heaven is not a place but a state-of being and seeing.
I mean, who knows? Maybe that moment at Brooks and Dunn was the REAL THING. Maybe I was getting a glimpse of what it will be when I see my dad again? And the real “good news”?
You were all there too!