Well, thank goodness for the high-speed Internet access in most hotels these days, for I’m sitting by my lonesome in a Holiday Inn. It’s eleven o’clock at night, and after reading and sipping spring water in the Columbia, South Carolina, airport for five hours this evening, my flight back to New York was cancelled due to weather-related delays. When the pilot announced these grim tidings, many passengers whipped out their cellphones to relate to loved ones how shabbily the airline was treating them. The woman next to me was understandably in a high state of nerves since she and her husband were scheduled to close on an apartment in New York tomorrow morning. A nanny from Connecticut called her boss to say that–whoops–she wouldn’t be able to take the kids to school and dance class tomorrow.

I tuned in to all this and remained surprisingly calm in part because I blog for a living and don’t have to attend any important meetings tomorrow, but also because I happened to be reading a neat new paperback,
“Pathways to Joy: The Master Vivekananda on The Four Yoga Paths to God,” edited by Dave Deluca.

At a Parliament of Religions confab in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda became the first Hindu saint to bring India’s ancient spiritual wisdom and yoga practices to the West. That’s more than a hundred years ago! And when you connect, as I did, to the ardor of this man’s teachings, you’ll understand why a mere change of flight plans didn’t shake my reality. Master Vivekananda once said:

“All these small ideas that [you are] a man or a woman, sick or healthy, strong or weak, or that [you] hate or love or have little power, are but hallucinations. Stand up then. Know that every thought and word that weakens you in this world is the only evil that exists. Whatever makes us weak and fearful is the only evil that should be shunned. Stand as a rock; you are the Infinite Sprit. Say, ‘I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, I am He,’ and like a lion breaking its cage, break your chains and be free forever.”

I eventually had to pause this heady delirium to phone Mr. C. and say that Bliss Absolute wouldn’t be home until tomorrow, and that he’d have to pack school lunches again for the charming young Chatterings.