Ch. 10 -India. Dying into a Peaceful Space of Nothingness in Ashram

I know this might sound like every cliché American revelation story, but India shattered my heart open and changed my life forever. Maybe it’s the way our minds are conditioned in the Western world—so when you enter the East, the peace that lives in the air cuts straight through the hardened walls we’ve built around what we thought life was supposed to be.

Before India, I was part of a meditation group in San Diego that I attended weekly during one of the hardest periods of my life. That group felt like family. They were the only people I knew who practiced the same style of meditation, who spoke about existence in a way that felt wide, honest, and unafraid. Deep in my heart, I knew I would go to India someday. I didn’t know when or how—but I knew.

When the trip finally aligned, it happened with almost no planning. I had no desire to go to Rishikesh or any of the places Westerners tend to flock to. We have this uncanny ability to westernize spaces that were never meant to be Western—to bring our comforts, our expectations, and make everything “ours.” I didn’t want that. I wanted to be raw in the culture—completely lost, completely new. I wanted no trace of Western lifestyle. I wanted to see how else the world functioned, because our culture is not the only one that exists on this planet. I wanted to know more.

The meditation group practiced in the lineage of Ramana Maharshi, a great saint who awakened at seventeen during what began as a panic attack. He later meditated for years in the caves of South India, often absorbed in deep states of samadhi. Eventually, people gathered around him, drawn to his presence and words. From his teachings emerged the practice of self-inquiry—asking, “Who am I?”—the very question I had been asking long before I had language for it.

I wanted to go directly to his ashram. I knew the people there would understand. Maybe I would find a home there, I thought. Or maybe I would finally find a home within myself. At the same time, I knew it would burn my heart wide open—just as so many people in my life had told me it would.

I sent an email.

And just like that, I was accepted for ten days at the ashram, free of charge.

I see it now—I already knew where I was going. I just didn’t realize the path had been written long before I understood it.

I arrived in South India, four hours away from the ashram. A taxi driver picked me up and drove me the entire way for about thirty dollars. As we traveled deeper into the landscape, something in me softened.

India carried an unmistakable motherly presence—loving, vast, ancient. At the ashram, people looked at you with deep presence. For the first time, I didn’t feel like a person trying to prove my worth or my identity. I simply felt like a being—among other beings.

I spent long days meditating in quiet bliss, eating ashram food from banana leaves in silence with the community. Everything felt simple. Sacred. Enough.

That’s where I met Janet.

She was—and still is—a huge part of my life. The sangha back in San Diego had connected me with a taxi driver and told me I’d meet someone named Janet when I arrived. I imagined an older woman.

Instead, on day two, a barefoot blonde girl from New Jersey pulled up on a motorbike.

What??

Janet whisked me through town, showing me hidden chai huts, places where people gathered to dance, sing, or pray. I was in awe. I felt completely at home.

Every morning, we went together to see the guru and sit in silence. This was the first time I had a best friend who practiced in the same meditation lineage as me. Elisha had brought me to Janet. And Janet showed me how to live on this Earth.

We joked about how even the food was God. We laughed about our very human struggles—relationships, trauma, confusion—while holding it all lightly. Our friendship had an effortless rhythm. We’d collapse in laughter on the floor of tiny cafés for NO reason because life was just weird and FUNNY, we ate simple meals, no phones in sight.

People there ate alone—and were content. Truly content. Just with themselves. It was so different from America. And I’m not saying all of India is like this—but this town was special. Rooted in beauty, devotion, and the joy of consciousness.

I would show up to bhajans and sing soul-deep Sanskrit songs with a community that understood the questions at the center of everything: Who am I? Why are we here? For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by an entire town of people asking those same questions—not as theory, but as lived experience.

The people I met there are still close friends to this day, because we shared something rare. It was heaven on a dusty, cow-poo road. Every morning—meditation with friends, laughter over chai, basking in our own being.

This was what it meant to live freely. To live from the soul. To be in a place where everyone around me was doing the same.

I wish everyone got to experience what I felt here. It is important that one day you go to a place where the culture is so different that you truly understand the nature of life.