I Didn’t Expect Devotional Singing To Affect Me This Deeply

I want to start by saying I'm still uncomfortable with some of this. The devotional language took me years to make peace with. I'm not sure I have, completely.

I was angry for most of my adult life. Not the loud kind. The kind that hides inside being good at things. I grew up in a house where everyone interrupted everyone and nobody apologised for anything, and by my thirties I was extremely competent and emotionally airless.

A colleague invited me to a kirtan in Lisbon in 2021. I almost laughed when she said it - devotional singing was the last thing I could imagine doing. I went because I respected her and because I'd started to notice my own life felt like nobody was actually living in it.

The first evening I stood at the back analysing everything. But there was an older woman next to me who started crying quietly during one of the chants. Not dramatic crying, just honest, and nobody around her did anything performative about it. She just got to be sad in a room with other people. I think that affected me more than the singing.

I kept going. Over time, I started watching Paramahamsa Vishwananda's satsangs online too, mostly in the evenings. What changed wasn't my beliefs - I still question things. What changed was how much energy I was spending bracing for arguments that weren't happening. I started actually listening to my mother when she called. We talk now in a way we never did. That alone, honestly, justifies the whole thing.

I still don't always know what I think about the guru part. I keep showing up anyway.