Contemplating Peace

I was less than a year old when my parents walked me into the Thiruchendur Murugan Temple for the first time. It’s an ancient structure that was erected three hundred years before I was born and will be probably be standing hundreds of years after I am gone. The greyed stone is worn with ages, stretching toward the sky courtesy of the many pillars keeping it standing tall, despite all the weather and human destruction that comes with time.

Festivals are still held there, but when my parents took me, the occasion was all about me and the tradition of having a young boy’s head shaved for Hindu ritual. I don’t remember most of the experience but the feeling of quiet, the thick presence of tradition as my Hindu father and my Christian mother presented me to the priests, that I remember.

There is a calm that comes from spiritual spaces, a feeling that everything is still in the universe for a split second. But that has nothing to do with the religious people who occupy the space or the rituals they participate in. It’s just where the universe happens to hold its breath.

I’m not the only person who feels that way, though everyone tends to articulate their experiences in a manner unique to them. We all have the same message ultimately. The spaces where we connect to the universe, to some higher power, those are the spaces that we feel a sense of peace. Though I’m not a religious person in terms of organized religion, I am a deeply spiritual person and there is some truth in spiritual places.

I returned to the temple from my youth on my last trip to India. It had been 41 years since I’d last been there, since the day I’d had my head shaved. It was crowded more than usual that day, hotter too. After what seemed like eternity, we went inside.

Surprised at the relative quiet I found there, I breathed in the smell of burning incense and sweat as it rose around me like a musky perfume. As I approached the place I’d been forty-one years before, my thoughts slowed. Peace followed. It was like the universe was whispering directly into my mind a command I’m too mortal to disobey, “Quiet. Relax. Reset.”

The religious devotion I saw around me didn’t move me, I’d seen plenty of it outside. No, what moved me to the profound place I found was the echo of what had come before me and what would come after me, like the past, present, and future were all in the same room at the same time.

The experience proved to me what I have believed for a long while now. Just because you aren’t participating in ritual doesn’t mean you can’t connect and experience the spiritual space around you. Maybe sacred spaces have little to do with religion and more to do with the history of a space. Maybe there is a thin place between the streams of time where we are somehow able to connect to the age beyond us, simply because so many had gathered there to worship before.

But, what about those who manage to create a sacred space in their homes? What explains the ability to carry spiritual intensity to a new space?

I’m not sure there is an answer but it’s interesting to think about and it’s all more than I can write in one blog. If you’re expecting something profound, you’ve probably come to the wrong place. After all, I’m a businessman, not a spiritualist.

To be continued…