What’s In A Seeker’s Heart?

The thought of you fills me with joy,
I miss you like a child misses their favorite toy.

Everyday I wish to see you soon,
Instead you mollify me with a boon.

I won’t be pacified long,
My heart knows where it belongs.

I can’t wait to be home

My journal is filled with “poems” like the one above, their number and sheer desperation has grown in the past two years. It’s the longest its been since I’ve visited the ashram since well I’ve known of the ashram. I do acknowledge that it’s not an individual experience many across the world have not been able to go Home, yet it feels like such a personal experience or in Gen-Z lingo a personal attack.

I was 16 and laying on my childhood bed, in the only bedroom I had ever known. It was a cool summer morning, I was staring at the fan above rather thoughtless and then I had this urge in my heart. A voice in my head said, “I want to go home”. I was dumbfounded.

I was home, this is the only home I had ever known. I’d never lived anywhere else even though I often begged my parents to move. We’d lived in this house since the day I was born. Unlike my brother I hadn’t even changed rooms. I had always just known this house, this room, as home. Then what did my mind mean when it said, I want to go home? Four long years later I found the answer.

After the first urge to go “home” while being home, it became a periodic feeling. Somewhere deep down I knew this was related to Bhagwan, so I threw myself in Hindu literature, visited temples, and asked friends about their Gurus and visited some too. Yet the yearning didn’t go away.

Then I moved to the US, when I was there I again started wanting to go “home”, there it was easy to pacify myself by counting down to my flight to India. I’d tell myself I wanted to go to my parent’s house. I remember being home for my first winter break from the US and still having the urge to go “home”. I was restless from this yearning, so I went and I snuggled with mom. The mind settled but the heart knew this isn’t what was being yearned for.

As previously mentioned, I love romance books and do somewhere believe that love like that does exist. In all those books it’s always stated that a “person” is your home and so my mind wondered maybe that was it? I had to find my soulmate to get this yearning to calm down.

But like a true romantic, I believed, if it’s meant to be it will be, I expected this soulmate to find me. Yes, I’m indirectly saying I made zero efforts to find a significant other. As a part of me knew this soulmate quelling the yearning was another technique conjured by my mind to mollify my heart.

A year later, through a series of events I’ll elucidate at a different time, I landed at the Sri Badrika Ashram in time for the evening aarti. Growing up, we only did an aarti on Deepavali, I wasn’t really sure what an aarti was and unlike most Hindus I can’t say I’d ever registered what the Hanuman Chalisa was let alone claim to have known the words.

When I’d gone to the ashram, I don’t know what I’d expected, I hadn’t really known what an ashram was because I’d only been to a few as a child more as a day outing instead of a religious expedition. I remember, forcing my family to take me to Akshardham as an eleven year old because I thought it was an amusement park.

At Sri Badrika, when I entered the mandir and saw Swamiji and Sri Hari, I finally knew what this place “home” my heart had yearned for was. Before then I’d never known bliss as I felt there, I remember having this grin on my face the whole two days I was there and refusing to leave like a stubborn five year old. I was crestfallen, heartbroken, and angry that I had to leave.

Since then I have taken a few trips and spent many days alone in the ashram but it’s never enough. Now one would think knowing what is “home”, where my heart yearns to be would make life easier. Somehow it made it harder. Now I knew where my heart wanted to go and not being able to visit often gnaws on me.

Every time I visit India, irrespective of the duration of the trip I must go to the ashram. Even if I’m in India for just a week, it’s non-negotiable, my friends and family know I’ll be in the hills for a minimum of three days. Thus, this trip I haven’t been able to go and now that I’ve booked my return flight to the US, I’m cranky, and irritable.

I can’t digest the fact I’ll go back to the States without having visited home. It feels wrong, incomplete, especially not knowing when I’ll be able to visit the ashram next. Visits to the ashram fill my cup with love and kindness, “We love because He first loved us (John 4:19)”, I’m afraid to return with this empty cup.

My heart feels empty without you,
My existence feels lost without you,
oh Hari,
For in you I have found my home,
For every time my mind asks to go home,
Oh Hari,
I now know for sure,
You are the despairs cure.