First day off!

We get one full day off a week, and today is that day! even though it has not been a full week yet, I am still so grateful. I am getting used to the schedule, but I just feel like i need time to absorb everything!

But what an amazing day off it was. I got to nap, go to the beach, do laundry, talk to my mom, and I got a massage. I think the massage was the real game changer. I have felt nearly euphoric ever since. A lot of people who saw me after remarked that I looked brighter. Oh what a good massage can do. 

I am hoping to carry this feeling into tomorrow. Tomorrow we begin reading the Bhagavad Gita. It's interesting to feel so immersed in Hinduism, when most of the people present are not Hindu. This morning we participated in a puja (devotional ceremony) to Ganesha. Ganesha is the elephant-headed god, and in the puja we called upon him to remove any obstacles that we will face. In India, elephants have been used in clearing the jungle and in wars to trample down the enemy's settlement. I guess that is the connection. We did some chanting, and then we all got in a line to make an offering and burn incense. I felt a bit uncomfortable, not knowing exactly what was supposed to happen and what I was meant to do. I don't think I bowed enough. Oh well. Swami Saroopananda explained it after we were finished. It would have been nice to get the meaning before. It kind of felt like pretending. 

The way the Hindu deities have been explained to us, each god that we call upon in our chants is an avatar of one true god (Brahman). But you call upon the different deities or manifestations of god depending on the situation. Swami Sivananda said that all religions are the same at their essence. There is one true god, one ultimate supreme reality, but we can worship him/her/it in all its names and forms. There are symbols of different religious traditions all around the ashram. So gradually I have accepted that I am not here to be converted to Hinduism, but there are a lot of things to be learned from Yogic philosophy (which I am not even sure is the same as Hinduism). So I can participate in the Ganesha puja not because I believe in Ganesha as a god, but because I am asking a higher power for some support in clearing the crazy jungle of my mind so that I can truly benefit from the TTC experience.