By Barbara Briggs
The source of courage and inner strength springs from the one unified source of power, wisdom and energy in the universe.
It was four o’clock in the morning when I stepped outside the front door. No one heard me leaving the ashram. The street was dark. My heart beat rapidly as I walked toward Shankaracharya Chowk in Hardwar. I was determined to bathe in Har-Ki-Pauri ghat before sunrise and to be back in the temple in time for the aarti because today was Mahashivaratri. I drew the azure shawl closer around my shoulders as I approached a driver sleeping in his bicycle rickshaw.
“Om Namah Shivaya.” I said loudly.
The driver opened his eyes and peered at me as if in a daze.
“Yes madam?”he murmured, still half asleep.
“Ganga bath, Har-Ki-Pauri, please,” I said in a pleading but firm tone of voice.
Sitting up on the seat, the driver looked into my eyes. He must have guessed that it was important to me.
“Thirty rupees,” he said. I knew it was double the price.
“OK.” I stepped up onto the seat.
The bicycle rickshaw moved slowly through the dark deserted street. We passed through narrow alleyways then open fields enveloped in shadows. Onward we rode, one, two, three, maybe four kilometers toward the sacred ghat. Once or twice as we passed a dark field, the thought came that I could be killed, raped or robbed and no one would understand how or why it happened. But I dispelled these fears and instead intoned in silence the mantra: Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya, Om Namah Shivaya – unknowingly but intuitively invoking the protective power of the Lord.
What is it that imbues one with the courage to risk, even one’s life, for the sake of an ideal, into the great unknown, in spite of the inevitable risks, possible dangers, threat of loss of security, comfort and even life? Where doe