by Nick Deez

Endings are never easy. But neither are beginnings. I got myself out of bed at three in the morning today and that pressing feeling weighed on me. I am leaving the ashram today. For the past two wonderful weeks, this place has been home to me – a place of refuge. Each day has been a gift – an intertwinement of self reflection, expansion and deep interactions.

In essence, my entire experience here can be summed up by the name of the program – seva sadhana. Seva means selfless service. While sadhana is a personal spiritual practice. I am not a morning person but I found myself waking up at 3am most mornings to go to the Gudwara for sadhana. What exactly happens in the gudwara? It starts off with morning chanting then a kundalini yoga class followed by singing and the Gudwara ritual. This all happens between 3:40 and 7:00am. I’ll admit it felt like an absolute challenge the first few days but eventually, it became the opposite – it felt energizing and cleansing. It was like I couldn’t get enough of it. The shifts were subtle but I would notice even if I had a few hours of sleep, I would be able to go through the day with so much clarity and passion.

And this is where the seva parts come in. We usually meet at 8:30am and sit in a circle. All our meetings begin with an eleven minute meditation to raise and align our vibrations. Ram Krishan, who leads the program reads an inspirational or thought provoking excerpt from a book. Afterwards, he asks all of us to reflect on a question like what is our vision for the world or what does creativity mean to us. Every one of us gets a chance to answer. He talks about the activities we have for the day then we’re off to start our seva.

Our seva changes from day to day. It ranges from working in the garden, putting compost on the soil, picking cucumbers to helping in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and mixing huge pots of soup and rice. Every Wednesdays it’s karma yoga which means we all have to clean our respective houses since all the men stay together and all the women stay in another house. This means doing a deep clean of every nook and cranny of the living quarters.

Every Sunday, we clean the Gudwara. We take out all the carpets and all the other decorations then we sweep the floor and pour buckets of water all over. We get on our knees and wipe the marble floor with our bare hands. We get towels and run them on the floor to absorb the water then squeeze out all the water back to the buckets.

You would think it’s simple menial work but this is where I believe the magic happens. Every stroke and movement is a meditation – a metaphor of your inner world. As I wiped away on my knees, the noise in my head came to a halt. I was cleaning my soul – melting my karma and washing away the labyrinth of stress and anxiety.

The thing about the modern world is that we’re programmed to think that we need to simply work on ourselves. It’s always geared towards the self. The irony is that the real healing and growth begins when you start looking outside yourself. I was in awe with the sensations I would feel when I would prepare food for the community and serve them during langar lunches. It was so humbling yet so empowering at the same time.

The kundalini yoga classes and workshops are just a feast for the mind, body and soul. Being in the presence of teachers who have been serving for decades was incredible. You could just feel the wisdom in the tone of their voice. The brevity of their words were piercing. Prosperity was a recurring topic during my stay at the ashram. They explain how prosperity comes when we stop chasing what we think we need and deserve. In fact, we attract prosperity when begin to serve others selflessly and allow ourselves to be open to the gifts of the universe. It was such an awakening to experience it firsthand. We all have that innate power and gift. All we need to do is tap into it.

I’ll never forget the long dirt road I would walk at 3am to get to the Gudwara. The chilly breeze would meld with the cries of wolves and chirping crickets. The crackle of twigs, stones and sand would echo as my feet pressed into the ground. A faint white ocean of moonlight spilled over the horizon. As I walked silently under the glistening constellations, I felt a deep feeling of infinite love and peace. It was one of those rare moments of utter perfection and I only have humble gratitude for experiencing it.