From time to time, I feel the pull of Yosemite National Park, and I must respond to it. So I have returned to this park on many occasions.

Two moments, across two different visits, stand out for me. One came in the full light of morning, the other in the depth of night. In the first, Yosemite gave me everything. In the second, it asked me to surrender everything. Both remain among the most sacred moments of my life.

I wrote about the first experience in the opening words of my book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. In 1992, I had driven to Yosemite for the first time at night, knowing nothing of what the park held, having never seen any pictures of it. I had fallen asleep at my friends’ campground in the pitch of darkness, imagining we were in a simple meadow ringed by hills. When I stepped out of my tent at dawn, I was awestruck—granite walls surging toward the sky, a waterfall roaring down, green in a thousand hues, vistas upon vistas. I had entered into and slept, unknowing, in paradise. I recall feeling I was in the presence of something divine.

That first morning, Yosemite revealed itself through grandeur—through all that the eye could behold.

The second experience came seventeen years later. My family and I found ourselves at Yosemite on a particularly busy day. A long line of cars jammed the road, so we decided to park our vehicle and walk. In the evening, we boarded a shuttle to The Ahwahnee, a grand old hotel set in the middle of the valley, to end our day with dinner there.

After our meal, we needed to get back to our car. The shuttle had stopped running for the night, so we decided that I should walk to the car—perhaps a mile away—and return to The Ahwahnee to pick up my family.

As I stepped out of the hotel, I surveyed the landscape and noticed a shortcut: if I left the road and cut across a broad stretch of grassy meadow, I could reach my destination much more quickly.

So that’s what I decided to do, turning away from the road and into that bit of wilderness that seemed to be drawing me in.

The farther I walked, the more the bustle of The Ahwahnee fell away behind me, and the darker and quieter the meadow grew. The lights of the hotel thinned to a faint glow, and then to nothing at all. The grass brushed cool against my legs; the night air carried the scent of earth and pine.

I had no flashlight with me. Ahead of me lay a large expanse of darkness.

My mind told me, “Hitendra, turn back. Go back to the road, and walk along it to your car. You are courting danger if you keep walking in this uncharted land. There are bears in this park, and perhaps other wildlife too. Besides, you could slip and fall in the dark, and then who would come to rescue you?”

So I paused.

But the pull was so, so strong.

The pull toward silence. The pull toward darkness. The pull toward the unknown.

On one side lay the comfort and safety of civilization, with its paved, well-lit path. On the other side lay the call of Spirit, beckoning me to open myself to a deeper journey.

My soul told me, “Walk into the darkness, Hitendra. Let Spirit wrap you in its quiet, cosmic embrace.”

My mind might have won on most days. But on this night, the call of the dark was irresistible.

I felt no agitation, no compulsion. Only a deep bond with Creation—with the land, with the stars, with the air.

So I knelt in the cool grass, lifted my face to the stars scattered across the sky, closed my eyes, and prayed for a few moments, to more fully feel the presence of Spirit. Then I rose, and walked on into the meadow.

There were moments when I had to feel my way around a shrub, or caught my foot against the root of a great tree. And there were moments when a rustle somewhere in the wild made me wonder who was watching me.

But mostly, the next twenty minutes were filled with a beautiful, silent communion between soul and Spirit. With each step, the grip of my mind loosened a little more, and something older and gentler settled in its place.

“My son,” I felt Spirit telling me, “you get so caught up in the theater of life—in this conversation, in that concern. Tell me, what is it that you are experiencing now?”

“Oh, so much more, so much more. What can I say? It is as though I am touching infinity, eternity, serenity.”

“That is my nature—and that is your nature too, behind the veil of your earthly form. Tell me more.”

Tears of love and joy were streaming down my face. “I feel the same river of life flowing through everything. I feel us humans as the waves, and you, Spirit, as the ocean.”

I was in a state of sweet surrender, my life wholly placed in the hands of that vast, living Intelligence that permeates all of creation. So I poured the deepest yearnings of my soul into that darkness. “May I never forget You, nor forsake You. Hold my hand and take me wherever You wish, in this life and beyond.” In the stillness, I felt those prayers gently gathered up and received.

The mystics speak of a dark night of the soul, a desolation in which Spirit seems to have withdrawn. This was the dark night’s other face: a powerful presence that felt so much closer once the last of the lights had gone out.

At every step of my passage through the meadow, I felt myself being accompanied by a Divine usher. Eventually I reached my car, and the familiar grip of civilization closed around me once more.

The experience was too profound, too intimate, too magical to inject in any ordinary conversation. So I stayed mostly silent for the rest of the evening, waiting until the following day, when my family was gazing with awe at a beautiful vista, to finally share with them what had transpired the night before.

~

So much of our lives is paved and lit and carefully manicured—and there is a quiet mercy in that. Yet every now and then, we are called into the wilds, into a silence that fills us.

Not every pull deserves our surrender. There is a pull that comes from adrenaline, a rush that can put life and limb at risk, and it asks to be questioned. But there is another pull that comes from the soul. It does not excite us; it stills us. What we feel is not a rush but a hush—calm, centered, connected.

If we heed that call, life’s bustle grows quiet for a while. Spirit steps out of hiding to meet us. We enter into communion in the wordless language of the soul. And when we return to the world, we do so with the quiet certainty that we are never walking alone.

We do not have to travel to Yosemite to have such a transcendent experience. Spirit is waiting just past the edge of our well-lit passages in life. Whenever you feel that calm pull, my wish for you is that you find the quiet courage to follow it and let that gentle usher lead you home.

Until the next pull,
Hitendra

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