Om Shut

“The Om meditation lady is very strict, you know, she shuts the door if you are 5 minutes late!” I was told by one of my fellow “patients”.

The following day I decided to wake up in time for the first program.  Om, after all, is quite powerful in terms of its vibration influence on the body, as I was told.  It wasn’t hard to wake up, as the scratching and banging on the doors next to mine was audible at before 5am.  Yet, somehow magically, despite the fact that I was awake before my alarm, my last glance at the clock as I was finally washed, dressed and on my way out revealed that it was 5:29am.  I locked my door and raced down to the meditation hall.  The university was wide awake with sounds of action from every corner.  Water splashing, gargling, doors opening, people rushing back and fourth.  

As I reached the meditation hall with its big neon electric OM sign, where the Torah would be in a synagogue, the screen door was open, but I saw or heard no hit of other patients.  I tried the door, and it was immobile.  It did not move even a centimeter, did not rattle in its lock, but was firmly immobile, like the OM mediators seated inside.  The hall was completely full, the session has begun.

Walking back to my room, I remembered that there was something about discipline in the opening address the day before that I must have blinked through after 15 hours on the bus.  Looking through my notes, I found a whole section:

“You have to get used to discipline and you will, because it is natural.  Discipline is health!”

Sitting in my blue yoga cell, I was wondering if I will be able to survive until next Friday.  My little cage with bars on the windows, a metal bed, a plastic chair, a wooden closet and cheery multicolored sheets was perhaps the most austere accommodations that I’ve ever experienced in a building format.   No reliable internet.  5am wake u.  No inspiring, dynamic yoga.  A yoga intensive with no intensity. 

The tools for learning were laid out in front of me. The books I needed neatly stacked on my marble table of near perfect height.  My new yoga was mat hanging above the clean blue tile floor, the open space just large enough for a careful practice.  The room was comfortably quiet 99% of the time.  Outside, good, clean satvic (pure) food was being cooked 3 times a day.  Walking trails wound their way around the campus like ribbons.  People engaged in rigorous yogic study or relaxation pursuits were already on their way to their goals and it was not even 6am yet. 

I wondered if I would find discipline in my nature or run away and spend my last few remaining days in the country scattered in tourist chaos.