Ram Das Puri Eyes
Ram Das Puri Eyes
By Shabad Kaur Khalsa, LCPC, LMFT, E-RYT 500
When I was early on this yogic path, back when Women’s Camp was held in the Espanola valley, we would travel up to Ram Das Puri for the Khalsa Youth Campers’ final presentation for the parents and the Siri Singh Sahib. I was stunned by the incredible brightness and clarity in the children’s eyes up there. They had just completed being on the mountain for two weeks by then, or three weeks if they had also attended Solstice with their families before the Youth Camp.
Then when I began attending Summer Solstice regularly, year after year, I would notice the same thing, now, everyone’s eyes were extraordinarily clear and calm by the end of the week! I named the phenomenon “Ram Das Puri eyes.” Earned by the ones who travel the 8-mile mountain road. Who keep up during 3 days of White Tantric Yoga. Who do the healing walk. Who taste the elixir of perfect mung beans and rice that you just can’t duplicate at home. Who endure the ‘dust devils’ and searing heat of the desert mountain terrain. Who (maybe) catch a few hours of sleep and rise for sadhana under ‘Nature’s own festival of lights.’
The whole 10-day experience is called a sadhana (daily spiritual practice), and I understand why.
Sadhana incorporates a practice that nourishes your mind, body and soul. The components are lived viscerally here on the mountain. Stimulating the mind: classes by teachers who I always feel privileged to meet, whose integrity is palpable and my imagination fires up with new ideas and knowledge. Meditation in Tantric lines, smoothing the thoughts, releasing urban stress, clearing my psychic field.
For my body temple: lots of Kundalini yoga, the physical embrace of greeting hundreds of friends, being nourished by blessed meals, touching the red land, absorbing the sun. Breathing the freshest air, second best in the whole U.S., according to the American Lung Association’s website! Oh, and the water, the water, the water! No wonder the ladies would always encourage me to grab an empty water jug to take up when we’d go up for those Khalsa Youth Camp performances. We’d fill up and bring back such amazing drinking water.
And my spirit? (How long can I make this blog…?) My soul literally sings here, chanting mantras, connecting to the ethers, to the Earth, to the Sky. By the end, I never want to leave the mountain.
How do you capture light? One year on Peace Prayer Day I met a professional photographer who was hired by 3HO to document the day. While everyone was dancing joyfully in the Tantric Shelter as they returned from the Sacred Healing Walk, she showed me that her camera was giving her a reading she had never seen before: “Light Too Bright!”
In our eagerness to introduce our infant son Amar Dev Singh to this sacred land as his second home as much as it was to us, I walked him straight into a cactus needle as we headed towards our tent in the dark. (Hence his early reference to “Prickly Solstice” as he grew into toddlerhood.) Of course he survived and also loves and respects this land. But that’s the point, a sadhana pokes you, provokes you, confronts you and finally uplifts you.
There is always something new to discover at Solstice. A grief to release, a new insight to celebrate, a new friend to make. I see your eyes, as clear as your heart. Do you see mine?