Welcome to this week’s edition of The Source!
You might of already heard this story before, of my own spiritual pilgrimage through India in search of the guru. But I thought that it tied in with this week’s theme about experiencing a profound connection to Source, like my guest star in the video shares.
While in India, after essentially uprooting my entire life and career, I trekked thousands of miles south down India’s belly to the Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple in the 2,500-year-old city of Madurai. Within the vast walls of this huge ancient structure the size of a small village and honeycombed with statues, lined with shrines, prayer halls, and adorned with thousands of colorfully painted deities, a room with one thousand pillars (it’s actually called the hall of 1,000 pillars and in reality only contains 985), and a sacred pond, I was squeezed among a rapturous, barefoot throng of more than 20,000 devotees of the Hindu god Lord Shiva and his wife, the goddess of compassion, Parvati.
As the waves of devotion washed through the crowd, I suddenly found myself totally alone before the holy pond, not another soul in sight! It was if the swarm of pilgrims had abandoned the city for the moment. Slowly, a figure stepped from the shadows and walked into a beam of sunlight. His silhouette had a corona around it, radiating so brilliantly that I had to shield my eyes. He introduced himself as Mr. Jinghan, a Brahmin priest who had traveled 1,500 miles south of his Punjab village in the north on a pilgrimage to meet me. That’s right… me!
To this day, I cannot explain it. But he leaned down to me, extended his hand, and in the softest and sweetest voice he whispered, “Mr. David, we’ve been waiting for you a very long time. Shall we sit together?”
I looked behind me to see how many of the 20,000 pilgrims had found their way into the sacred shrine. But miraculously, we were still alone. In this vast stone-encased hallway where billions had visited, prayed, and meditated over the last thousand years, there were only the two of us and the sound of our beating hearts. And without ever meeting each other before, he claimed he had traveled all this way to see me! I closed my eyes and bathed in the warm radiance Jinghan projected into the room.
We sat for a few minutes as he chanted a prayer to the Divine Mother to awaken the feminine creative power in our hearts. Within moments, his mumblings drifted into the ether, and I slipped into the gap, a place beyond space and time. The last thing I remember was feeling my heart gently crack open, a warming, comforting sensation wash over me, and then going deeper than I ever had before as everything merged into one. When I opened my eyes, I was alone.
Tears were streaming down my cheeks, a profound sense of well-being rippled through me, and Jinghan was gone. As I looked around, I wondered out loud, “Was he even really here?” But then something caught my eye on the tile beneath my knee as I uncrossed my legs. Looking down, I spied a magnificent gold locket in the shape of the elephant-headed god Ganesha. The gold-faced, so-called Remover of Obstacles was suspended from a black cotton cord. Jinghan must have placed it next to my knee while I was drifting through the cosmos. I lifted it to eye level and bowed my head in reverence. Then I bent my head into it as if being anointed and slid on the necklace.
Like a halo, it surrounded me and fell gently around my neck, heralding this moment of profound connection to Source.
How cool was that?!? I still get chills thinking about this amazing experience. Of course, I’ve had many, many other instances over the years in which I’ve connected deeply to Source, including during my meditation bookends of the day. But this one was pretty special.
Now I want to hear from you — what are your experiences connecting to Source? Leave them in the comments below. I can’t wait to read them. Namaste. -davidji