My favorite drug (medicine for the soul).

Photo by pan xiaozhen on Unsplash

I arrived in India on Saturday morning.

My purpose for being in India is multi-fold. I have close friends who are disciples of a guru here, and their annual pilgrimage to India drew me in, captivated my curiosity, and gave me a good excuse to come to a country which I've been curious about for years but had, up until yesterday, never visited in the flesh.

When I arrived I immediately knew that I had been here before (perhaps in a past life, perhaps in another dimension of time) and I instantly felt at home amidst the organized chaos that is India.

I also ate the best dosa of my life on the side of the road on my 7 hour taxi ride to the town I'm staying in. One deep truth travel has afforded me is the awareness that some of the best meals on the planet are found on the side of highly trafficked dirt roads in third world countries, and cost under $3. I love a delicious Michelin star meal just as much as the next lady, but the tendrils of Anthony Bourdain that will forever live deep in my soul will always favor street food over gourmet for this reason.

Anyway, well-fed and well-slept after 24 hours of travel that got me right here to the banks of the Holy Ganga where there is *very* loud kirtan playing in the background nightly and monkeys fighting all day long in the trees, it felt only natural to wake up the following morning...to do seva.

Seva is a form of "selfless service" which originates from the Sikhs, and it's my very favorite thing.

Usually seva involves cleaning, organizing things, and otherwise devoting all of your energy to other and environment.

If this sounds insane to you, I get it. There was a time when it did to me, too.

I was introduced to seva at my first personal development retreat, where I had already paid a hefty sum to be there. My first response at that time was "didn't I pay someone else to take care of this stuff?"

I quickly learned that not only was that thought totally entitled and a product of some unhelpful conventions running rampant in the world that I was living out unconsciously, but it was also robbing me of a powerful therapeutic drug (or soul medicine, as I like to call it) I didn't know about, and which I've since learned gives me quick and swift access to god:

Humility.

You see, we can fancy ourselves spiritually evolved and superior and advanced and all those things. But if we see ourselves as being above basic human tasks like cleaning and being of service to others, we literally miss out on the most important element of our own spiritual evolution.

To be humble isn't just about the words we use and how we talk about ourselves to others. It lives in our behavior and our actions (and is particularly visible in our blind spots). The word humility has the same root as the word human: HUMUS. Which means: of the earth. And as I was reminded Sunday morning while scrubbing cow dung off an iron gate for fun: we all come from dirt, and we all go back there. In that way, I am the cow dung I was scrubbing off, and god is in all of it, on a particle level.

Being reminded of this deep, very earthly, truth was the absolute most ideal way to start a spiritual sojourn in India, as far as I'm concerned.

Humility is a medicine like no other. It levels the playing field instantly, and seva is a fantastic and very therapeutic gateway to this deeply spiritual experience.

I had a teacher years ago who used to talk about this phenomenon by distilling it into two words: LOVE OUT. So many of the problems we see in the world are not a result of lack of love, but rather of love constipation. We are scarce about our love, and so we withhold it.

But what we often don't realize — something seva makes abundantly clear — is that we when truly believe we have nothing left to give, and we love out anyway, give anyway, share all of ourselves generously anyway, love anyway, we discover just how much more is actually available within us. That "more" is inevitably shrouded in humility because of the experience required to get there, and sharing THAT is one of the greatest forms of spiritual expression there is.

You may not relate to the world seva, but I wonder if you have a form of selfless service practice in your life. If you do, I'd love to hear what it is. Maybe it's ironing your husband's shirts or bathing your children (though maybe you didn't think of it like that until just now!). I'm always looking for new ideas to get access to my favorite drug, and would love to hear what you see as selfless service in your life.