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Two Weeks of Devotion to God/Hindu Practice Update

Howdy guys.

So, two weeks ago I had a interesting experience after worshiping an image of Kali.

A very strange Kali Experience

TLDR, I bowed down to an image and had a intense experience which caused me to take a two week break from certain substances and focus on two weeks of devotion.

I have to say I feel good, and I’ve had some more experiences. I have been chanting various mantras over and over. Mostly Hare Krishna and Om Namah Shivay but I would also chant mantras for Durga and Kali. I have been chanting so much that the cheap malaa beads I got broke. I have a much sturdier set of beads coming in the mail.

For reference I was doing at minimum 1080 repetitions of both Hare Krishna and Om Namah Shivay a day but that is on the low end. I think the highest I got to was around 5400 of both over the course of the day but I am going to be honest and say I am not 100% on that number. I just know it was well over 3,000 and am estimating based on how often I was chanting.

I would often listen to mantras while driving as well just because it felt rather natural. I have gone through the Bhagavad Gita 10 times in that period as well. I would be incredibly hard pressed to not say I have not fallen in love with the Gita and these aspects of God.

I have also been fortunate enough to be recommended videos which lead me to discover a new favorite swami, Swami Sarvapriyananda. He has a bunch of talks which I have found very helpful. Thanks to him I have a few books on Kashmir Shaivism coming in and have been learning more about Advaita Vedanta.
Where I work right now, I have a lot of time alone at night to do what I want in an empty building. I just must be on site in case something happens. I have been using this time to study and pray. I had an intense experience where I was just listening to a song and enjoying myself. When the next song came on something about the lyrics just felt like I was talking to lord Krishna suddenly.

For reference the song was Reach out by the Four tops


Something about that moment when they first say reach out for me made me instantly see Lord Krishna offering his hand to me. It is a good thing I was alone because I started to cry. It felt like I had been heard for the first time in my entire life. It was hard to hang out at work after that lol. It was something so very hard to describe in the moment and even thinking back on it I’m tearing up a bit.

I suppose that might seem a bit silly but what can I say? It fit so perfectly, and I just could not deny what I was feeling at that moment.

Negative thoughts still come but it is strangely easy to shut them down. I feel calmer and just happier. I feel smiling as I walk around a lot of the time and well, I am not sure what to say about that other than it feels good.

Another experience I had was during a time when I was sitting and struggling to meditate. Suddenly I had Durga appear in my mind and look over me. I could feel myself gaze up at her and it felt like a tightness I had not noticed before was just gone suddenly. On another occasion I found my mind full of some hateful thoughts due to some stuff that had happened in my life when I just paused and thought of Kali and Durga.

In an instant I saw myself standing surrounded by strange things trying to drag me down only for the pair of them to crush and slash their way through each one of those things. I just bowed because I could not think of what else to do. When I looked up at the pair of them it was like looking at my real mother for the first time.

In all honesty I do not know what to make of a lot of these and I know just a few weeks ago if someone told me about experiences like these, I might have thought they were nuts lol. The truth is though that the intense emotions, the love and so much else I felt in those moments left me feeling like I had come home.

Now because I have talked about all of that I will also mention some stuff I have struggled with.

Reading the Bhagavad Gita has come naturally but I have found the Vedas thus far to be more than a little bit of a slog. Simply put I do not get the same sort of insight I do with other texts. In some sense it feels very alien to me.

I have also found that a good portion of the Hinduism I have learned about outside of the Gita and a few other texts feels very much like it is steeped in culture. This is not always a bad thing, but I found some of it feels like it is disconnected from a deeper reality. It feels too stuck in ancient rituals and culture.

I am still skeptical of gurus as a rule. I understand this path often relies on gurus and other spiritual teachers however I have seen plenty of crazy things justified. I have heard one guru saying that a genocide was deserved because the people in the area ate fish. I have heard some saying that fighting Muslim people in India today is justified and something lord Ram wants.

Those are some of the more extreme examples. I have also found quite a few gurus and swamis which seem like they are only interested in serving up easily digestible feel-good nonsense for corporations. Frauds abound and I feel like in many cases I have seen far more frauds than legitimate spirituality.

I think I can sum this up by saying on some level it feels like a battle between my head and my heart. Well maybe not a battle because both my head and my heart feel the connection and understanding I am gaining. The issue is trying to figure out what I can take from this tradition and what part it will play in my life.

Though most of my worship and devotion has been towards deities we might consider Hindu as of late I have still found a great deal of meaning in other teachings. I have been revisiting Buddhist teachings, Taoist philosophy as well as other spiritual paths. Though I can feel my devotion to certain deities leading the way I have to say that the image of God I have is still cosmic and beyond these things. They help me in my worship, but they are just part of something much vaster and more complicated.

I can also say I have seen God in other images during meditation that are not exactly Hindu in nature.

I suppose this all comes together to say I have had some amazing experiences in the last two weeks and feel like I am gaining quite a bit lately. However, I am not 100% sure where these leads. If someone asked me if I were a Hindu, I do not think I could say yes.

Of course, this not the end of my journey. For two weeks had passed I figured it would be good to update folks. Also, I got a slightly new shrine set up. I had an amazon gift card I had not used so figured I would get an image of Durga and Kali. The image of Durga was a little bit bigger than I expected when it arrived lol.

I decided to post this to interfaith instead of the Hinduism DIR so that it could be a bit more open cause why not?
 

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