On a monk’s trail…

The true story of an accidental monk…

I was laying down after meditation and I started to have a very peculiar feeling as if I was recognizing some order to my life, some sequence in my otherwise indecipherable path.

About ten years ago one december, I was asked to be in a meeting with my boss at a European investment bank so that we could do a yearly review. I had been working there during the two years since graduating college and had quickly been given increasing responsibilities. My life had become that of the business executive I had always dreamed of.

At the meeting I was given the option that every business student dreams of. I was told, “The directors are very happy with your work and we would like to support you in any project that you would like.” This was not, of course, a blank check, but a great pat in the back.

I considered his words and looked at my life. Over the past year I had been traveling to Europe so often, that my body never really had a clue whether it was time to eat or sleep. I had a great apartment that I barely spent any time in, and I had bought many of the things I had always wanted, that were supposed to bring me happiness and they didn’t. Aside from that, as of January my salary was about to nearly double and I felt no excitement about it.

So I looked my boss in the eyes and quit my job. I had not thought about it before the meeting, and I sat in my car afterwards and wondered what in the world had possessed me. I had a long conversation with my father later that night and he was completely dumbfounded. He asked me what I planned to do… as if I had a plan.

I sat on the phone listening to my father and thought about it a little bit. I had, just a few months before, gotten out of a relationship, the second one in my life, and had decided that I was done with that for a while. I would only venture in that direction if it was the most perfect and compelling experience. I was aware of my latin heart and my desire for love, but I was ready to wait however long true love would take to appear.

In the midst of these thoughts, when my father pressed for an answer, I told him that I was going to devote myself to helping the world. I told him I was thinking of joining Purusha, a group created by Maharishi for those that wish to deepen their experiences in meditation and devote themselves to a monk-like lifestyle. It was an ideal that I had heard about all my life, and something I would often think about doing. But my heart had been so enamored with love that it had never seemed like a real option for me.

My father, a very hard working, practical man, had a good laugh at my naivete… and then he said, “If you want to help the world, start with your own family.”

Less than two weeks later, as if nature was laughing at my failed attempt at controlling my life, I met a girl and found love at first sight. I did not fully understand it at the time, but I surrendered my heart completely in that instant. There was no logic to it, in fact my mind had plenty of logic against it.

Even though nothing concrete came from that meeting, and while I did my best to deny any of the emotions that I felt, I could not in all honesty commit myself to a life of a monk. My heart began, for the first time in my life, to call the shots.

Unfortunately, the heart never seems to consider that love aught to be returned. It doesnt place a very high value on the logic behind the affection and when it gets going, it is nearly unstoppable. At least in my case.

And while, in looking to express this affection I was ultimately turned back, I must confess that it did grant me some of the most beautiful and inspiring moments of my life. I did not know at the time the devotion that my heart would hold or the unconditional nature of my love once surrendered.

After a while, wounded and bewildered I turned to my Father’s advice and went to Colombia to help my family in some business ventures.

There I did my best for a few years to lead a normal life. I tried to work with my family and I tried to have relationships. But my heart was never in it. I found a constant lacking in both experiences and found myself as if lost at sea without any sight of a shore. I never gave myself completely to anything or anyone. And of course, I never found any kind of fulfillment or success.

That was my life for the next eight years until I traveled to India to say goodbye to my spiritual teacher Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in early 2008.

As I sat there meditating in the room where his body was being kept I wondered to myself how I could have wasted the last eight years in such a mire of self doubt and disappointment. How could I have given up so easily on my desire to help the world?

So I very innocently, having nothing to my name, with only my broken heart to give, offered myself to Maharishi if I could be of any use to him at all.

The very next day, a man I had never personally met, one of the great leaders of Maharishi’s movement took me under his wing and gave me a purpose and a home.

I have been giving of myself, as much as I can, to help bring Maharishi’s beautiful knowledge and his proven programs to under-priviledged people all over Latin America. I live on a campus in Holland in the middle of a beautiful forrest where I spend most of my time in my room meditating and working on my own and go out only to eat or have chai in the dinning hall about fifty steps away or go for a walk amongst the trees…

So today I was laying there realizing that in a very strange way, and through a most unusual path, I have found myself in that place that I envisioned years ago. The surrender of my heart was complete and it has, to this day, never been able to truly open itself to anyone else… so in essence it’s still hoping for that true love…

I may not be a monk, at least not officially so, though I am working and living with many men who are on that Purusha program.

Yet I am quietly and innocently on that trail… not having chosen it, and still somehow living it and benefiting from it…

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