My recent spiritual journey began just as most do. It begins when the train cart is jolted with loss.

As the train cart on the Maya Express barrels along we spend more and more time with those we love inside. The longer we are on the train without stepping off, the less we think of our spiritual path.

Sometimes we sit at tables that specifically designed to not think of God or our spiritual path at all. So, we don’t even think about stepping off.

The Impact of Loss

Like many of us when we experience loss, we start looking for deeper meaning of why we feel the way we do.

It doesn’t always immediately bring with us the attention to our spiritual path, especially if we have been on the train cart for an extended period of time.

For others it’s more of darkening the windows of the train cart and not wanting to feel anything at all.

Each time we experience a type of loss in life, it becomes a moment in time we either can be sparked into building our spiritual life or darkening the windows of the train cart.

Lost and Found

When my father-in-law moved train carts……… it jolted me so hard. I had experienced loss before. Including my own distant biological father. Nothing prepared for losing the man who taught me HOW to be a father and grandfather.

It sent me flying across the cart. But it also knocked a little dirt off the windows you could say. In doing so, just for a second, I saw just a glimpse of my Friend on the dirt path shining a light into my dark train cart.

It’s funny how I look back now and see the little hints along the way that light sparked. Where God literally sent Their presence into my train cart saying, “remember how you were just going to say “HI”?”

It started shortly after that when I came across a punk rock yoga instructor i started taking video classes from. Men’s 30 day yoga program hosted by a former Hindu monk named Raghunath Cappo helping me overcome some serious long term back pain.

Like the Buddhist monk trinket salesmen, in an alley, in Boston, who gave me a bracelet with what I didn’t know at the time was the symbol for Om on it. The origin sound, some say the sound of God. I never wore any “jewelry” until then. But oddly enough I wore those beads for years, still do.

Discovering the album Avalon by Sully Erna and the spiritual level and vibrations that echoed in my bones. It connected spiritually in my heart and sparked the strength to clean the dirt of the cart windows more.

Then there were the many, dietary explorations that led to my almost vegan lifestyle now. That actually is a hallmark of my spiritual path of Bhakti. I started it, well before I found my actual spiritual path.

The process from his moving to another cart and me stepping back onto my path, wasn’t some overnight revelation. It took four years from his death to me stepping onto my true path with God.

Grief is different for everyone

I think the hardest thing for all of us when it comes down to this Path of Loss is that while we all are on the same train, the level of darkness and dirt on the windows is controlled at an individual level.

We can try, and sit there, and scrub the windows of the heart for our loved ones when they experience such a loss. The window may look like its becoming clean to us. But to them it could be dark & dreary with years of dust built up.

It doesn’t mean our efforts go for not. Until the person walking the Path of Loss truly, deeply, wants to connect back on their path with their spiritual guide, the light doesn’t shine in as brightly.

Light does glow through however dimly. That’s where prayer comes into our life. That is where the real power of prayer can be its strongest.

The Real Power of Prayer

We tend to treat prayer as some telethon goal. If we fill it up, the reward is the prayer answered. That if we all just pray enough, it will go away or fix things.

Prayer isn’t supposed to be about fixing the problem with whatever the person is going through on the train cart.

In the end the final result doesn’t depend on some meter being filled, but the true connection to the spiritual guide and the spiritual path of the individual being prayed for.

When you truly, with full intention, pray for someone, you never pray for God to fix them.

You can only pray for Gods light to shine bright enough to guide them back onto their own individual path. God and the individual being prayed for ultimately decides the result.

What Comes Next?

The first step off the train and back focusing on my spiritual life was exhilarating. What I wasn’t prepared for on my spiritual journey though, and what EVERYONE warned me about was what comes next.

To step off a second time, requires you to walk the Path of Loss…………..again

But first, it’s time to party on the Maya Express like never before because we found the Path of the Golden Retriever!!!!!

Yours forever Grateful.