This is what everyone has come here for.

When I initially wrote that sentence, what I meant by it was: "This is why these one hundred retreat participants from all over the world have come to this Ashram in India." But actually, the Yogic saints and philosophers would have agreed with the broadness of my original statement: "This is what everyone has come here for." According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of a human life. This is why we all chose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile—just for the chance to experience this infinite love. And once you have found this divinity within, can you hold it? Because if you can . . . bliss.

I spend the entire retreat in the back of the temple, watching over the participants as they meditate in the half-dark and total quiet. It is my job to be concerned about their comfort, paying careful attention to see if anyone is in trouble or need. They've all taken vows of silence for the duration of the retreat, and every day I can feel them descending deeper into that silence until the entire Ashram is saturated with their stillness. Out of respect to the retreat participants, we are all tiptoeing through our days now, even eating our meals in silence. All traces of chatter are gone. Even I am quiet. There is a middle-of-the-night silence around here now, the hushed timelessness you generally only experience around 3:00 AM when you're totally alone—yet it's carried through the broad daylight and held by the whole Ashram.

As these hundred souls meditate, I have no idea what they're thinking or feeling, but I know what they want to experience, and I find myself in a constant state of prayer to God on their behalf, making odd bargains for them like, Please give these wonderful people any blessings you might have originally set aside for me. It's not my intention to go into meditation at the same time the retreat participants are meditating; I'm supposed to be keeping an eye on them, not worrying about my own spiritual journey. But I find myself every day lifted on the waves of their collective devotional intention, much the same way that certain scavenging birds can ride the thermal heat waves which rise off the earth, taking them much higher in the air than they ever could have flown on their own wing-power. So it's probably not surprising that this is when it happens. One Thursday afternoon in the back of the temple, right in the midst of my Key Hostess duties, wearing my name-tag and everything—I am suddenly transported through the portal of the universe and taken to the center of God's palm. Eat, Pray, Love