My aunt, a devout evangelical Christian, once mentioned to my mother her fear for the fate of our souls. Namely she was afraid, because of our universalist taste in religion and frequent visits to the temples and shrines of non-Christian gods, that we weren’t going where she was. She said this out of deep and sincere love for us, but for me, it elicited frustration, consternation, and some laughter.
I was never terribly religious growing up. Sure, I attended chapel with all the other students at my denominational high school. I was forced to church every Sunday, confirmed, and reluctantly signed up as an acolyte for the better part of my teen years. But the faith tradition I grew up in was a social construct chosen for me rather than a spiritual commitment made by me. My recent interest and initiation in the meditative approach to spirituality has brought me the closest I’ve ever felt to God. So I would have thought this new twist on my path would delight my friends and family who spoke with Him regularly on Sundays. Instead, they were puzzled and even afraid for—or maybe of—me.
Quickly, I learned to gauge who I could tell, when, and how much. Around some people, I avoid mentioning that I have ever been to or am going to India. With others, I call my time at the ashram a “vacation.” For those more curious, I’ve developed an easy-to-swallow explanation: I regularly attend a meditation retreat. This is normally followed by the assumption that I will be doing a lot of hatha yoga. (Hatha means physical yoga—or what Americans just think of as “yoga” —though in India, “yoga” refers to any exercise, physical or otherwise, whose purpose is union with the divine.) Often, I let other people guide how much I tell them. If they ask questions, I answer them honestly and in as much depth as I think they are looking for. I never lie.
I’m not trying to establish a veil of secrecy around my practice, but I have to wonder why I have no problem telling strangers that I go to church (I still do, though not regularly), yet there are people who’ve known me for months or even years who don’t know I meditate. At first, I think, it had to do with me. I was loathe to be boxed in as the New Age hippie, pitied as a lost soul, or worse, dismissed. Now, as I’ve answered the questions so many times and watched others’—and my own—reactions, I realize my reluctance to talk about the topic is increasingly more for their comfort than for mine.
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