Magical Cuisine and Counsel

Dena is a graduate with Honors of Columbia College in NY, USC’s graduate school of Journalism, Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, and is a certified yogi, meditation instructor and energy expert. Her customized retreats, seminars, and extraordinary private programs create success and well being from the inside out. She has coached and cooked for CEO’s, celebrities, educators, lawyers, creative professionals, doctors, and entrepreneurs for more than a dozen years. Named “Hollywood’s Success Coach,” and featured in a variety of TV and print media, including “Essence,” The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, BBC, ABC’s the View, Aquarian Times, Fitness, Body and Soul, The LA Sentinel, NY Business Journal, and Dysonna. Dena enjoys freeing her clients’ minds and feeding them, body and soul.

Dena Crowder

“Magical Cuisine and Counsel”

The Eighty Fourth Step

When I was in high school, my psychology professor, Dr. Richard Soo, told me  matter-of-factly “Dena, you have skipped an important developmental step,” referencing a well-known story about my toddler years. “You never crawled. You just stood up and walked. Ah-ha, Dena, this will catch up to you later, “ he paused, a crooked, though not malicious smile creeping across the edges of his mouth. “I promise you.”

He went on to explain to the entire class that one UNnamed day in MY Great Future, I would stumble, fall and be forced to crawl. I would have to learn, he insisted, as all of us must, what it feels like to be down on all fours, struggling with the forces of gravity and the frustration of being slow and ungainly when we want nothing more than to stand erect and move with confidence and grace. I would have to learn, he said, how to be human. And the only way to learn that was to take one tedious step after another.

“I don’t crawl” was my ready reply. “I don’t understand it.”

Dr. Soo would always smile–a smile pregnant with “Just you wait.” –before turning away.

I finished high school, college and graduate school. I entered the wide, bustling world.

But I was still walking. Still upright. Still adroit. Days passed. Seasons changed. I became a Success Coach. I started the Essential Woman. I lived, loved, laughed and cried.

“I am still walking,” I mused one day, not long before my trip to India. I had not yet learned to crawl. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps in India…

Once there, I immediately felt drawn into her surreal embrace. A foreign and often frightening environment, India doesn’t speak, it shouts! Its voice is simultaneously that of a woman scorned and a woman adored; it is soft and lilting, like roses on a humid porch, and pungent, like meat left too long in
the open air.

India enfolds you, caresses you, repels you, spits in your face, and then cries your tears for you. It is a destination of soul–amazing to the spirit, hard on the body, and mystifying to the mind. There I was, being seduced and repulsed all at once by this matrix of ancient and modern consciousness when I heard
about the steps.

At first, I said, “yes, I’ll go.”

I said it to myself alone. “ I will go with them to the steps. I will clean my karma. I will see what its about; just in case the steps are as powerful as they describe.”

Then, I changed my mind. “I am not going to the steps. I do not need to go. It is too arduous. I will stay in my plush hotel room and share a cup of English tea with Julie. We will talk of home and food. And we will forget about the steps.”

The night of departure arrived. All who were taking the excursion to the 84 steps busied themselves with preparations. Warm clothes, woolen blankets, water in unbreakable containers, food, dry towels. They were foraging with long faces.

“I am so glad I am not going there,” I thought, as I walked towards my hotel room.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” The voice was clear and unmistakable. It belonged to a woman who had come to India especially for the steps. This was her second time.

“Hello, my dear, “ she said with a genuine smile. “Are you ready? Are you all packed?”

Oh God! This was one of those Oh God! what do I say moments. “I, um, well,” I was stumbling. I don’t like to stumble any more than I like to crawl.

She repeated the questions.

“I’m sick, “ I blurted out. “Yes, very sick.” It was actually true. Three days earlier I had noticed the first signs of walking pneumonia.

She did not budge. “Yes. I know. Me too. I am sick and getting sicker. Its just the mind. Its just your resistance. Why did you come here? Did you come for the mind? Or did you come for the soul?”

She waited. Uh-oh. I was expected to answer.

“The soul,” I replied weakly. I was losing ground fast.

“The soul will win.” She leaned in to me–and with unwavering clarity and precision, fired her missile. “Your soul is going to win. This is why you came here. For the steps. Now get your things.”

I was licked.

I arrived back at my room, unsure of what force was now propelling my legs forward. “Julie, Julie,” I whispered, entering the darkened room, calling to my roommate. “Julie, I am going to the steps.”

I did not sleep a wink. The steps had overtaken me. Those 84 steps. I would be cold. I would be miserable. My pneumonia night get worse. I might die on the steps in India.

One-o’clock. Two o’ clock. Three o’clock. 3:30. Time to awaken. I stuffed three towels, water, bananas, my only food, and a blanket into my bag.

The steps.

We drove off, myself and about 20 others, close to 5:00 a.m.

It took us an hour and a half to reach Goindwall. The rest, what happened between 6:30 a.m. and 8:00 a.m., when my friend Sadhana Kaur and I sat on that first step, feels like slow motion. I know how one must feel when he hears “DEAD MAN WALKING” as he makes his way to the execution chamber.

Goindwall is a gurdwara, or Sikh temple. Several hundred years old, it was the first temple in India to offer the tradition of lungar–a daily ritual of feeding all who come, regardless of religion, sex, color or caste. A revolutionary concept in its day, lungar is an experience of being equal in the eyes of God. Goindwall is also the home of the steps, which Guru Amar Dass, one of the first Sikh Gurus, built along with the nectar tank.

A nectar tank is a pool of water. In India people literally believe that the water in the nectar tanks is sacred and healing. Much like Catholic holy water, nectar tank water is used to cleanse away impurities. The tradition of Goindwall is linked interchangeably with the stories of its tank. Here’s how it
goes: if you say Jaap ji, a Sikh prayer on each step, then dip in the pool after each prayer, you will clear thousands of lifetimes of karma. What makes the process so challenging is that after each dip (in cold water) you must climb to the next step and repeat the ritual of Jaap Ji and dipping.

To do the steps is to engage your karma. To face the steps is to face your self.

Step One. We begin, standing knee-deep in the pool. It is November. We are freezing. We are chanting Jaap Ji.

“Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam, Karta purakh Nirbhao Nirvaiar Akall Moorit Ajoonee Sai bang Guru Prasad Jaap. Add such Jugad Such Hebee Such Nanaak Ho see be Such.”

There is One Creator. This is the truth. Without fear, inimical to none. Undying, Unborn, illuminated and ever compassionate. Repeat His Name. True in the beginning. True throughout all ages. True now and always.

“I am not going to last. This is only step one. Fifteen minutes each step? That’s twenty-one hours just to say the prayers. Is that a??? It is! It’s a dead mosquito floating in the water. Mosquito. I know how to spell that.
M-A-L-A-R-I-A. Oh! Why didn’t I take the malaria medicine? Is that? It is! An Indian farm woman peeing to my left. Right into this holy water. God! What am I doing? I am going to die this second–on step one. I am not going to make it up these steps.”

Cough, cough, cough. The pneumonia. Cough, choke. I can barely say the prayer.

Step two, three, four. I am shaking from the cold.

Five. We’re out of the water. I start again: Ek Ong Kar…” I can breathe. I can actually breathe.

Suddenly, mysteriously, beyond any comprehension, my cough left me. The choking stopped. I inhaled deeply and there was no congestion. In that instant, I knew that my pneumonia–a condition I’d had four times as a child and twice as an adult–was gone; never to return. In that instant, I transcended the pain of those steps, the cold, the smell, the hunger, the lack of hygiene, the exhaustion…I transcended it all, and said only “Thank you.”

Six, seven, eight, up and up, we climbed steadily. “ This ain’t no crystal stair.” After each prayer, we’d return to the pool, retracing our footpath, down the steps, to dip in the water. Then, back up, to tackle the next step of consciousness.

Each step was a fresh state, a new condition of being; and I faced each ascending step with increasing vigilance and strength. Twenty. Twenty-Five. Thirty.

After Thirty-one, Langston Hughes’ poetry echoed in my ears.

“This ain’t no crystal stair. All the time I keep climbin’ and reaching landings.”

Forty. Forty-one. Forty-eight. Fifty.

“and turning corners. And sometimes goin in the dark where there ain’t no light.

Keep climbin. Keep climbin.”

Pulling my blanket closer to my damp skin, I buried my nose in its heavy folds. I didn’t want to smell the crowds of women on the steps. I didn’t want to smell India.

Fifty-two. I start the prayer: “Ek ong Kar” but am interrupted by a woman who places a glass of Chai at my feet. She pushes the glass towards me, motioning emphatically with her other hand for me to drink. I shake my head, “no, no thank you.” Mystified, she continues to push the glass. I know what she is
thinking: “Why doesn’t she drink? Why doesn’t she accept my gift?” That was just it. I didn’t want her gift.

“No, thank you very much.”

I have hurt her feelings. I’m sorry, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. Chai brewed under unsanitary conditions leads to dysentery.

The woman looked at me with piercing eyes, took in a breath, and then knelt at my feet. Raising her right hand as if to bless me, she placed her hand around my heels, saying , “Wahe Guru. Wahe Guru.” I was still on step Fifty-Two. That was the moment I fell backwards in time; backwards to a time before I knew how to walk.

In that moment, I lost my sense of uprightness. This woman with her blessing, brought me all the way down. I realized how ungrateful I’d been, how haughty and how closed.

This woman’s lightest touch broke me wide open, laying my soul bare. I sobbed. Women, total strangers, paused on the steps above and below mine to whisper their prayers and blessings. The more they blessed me, loved me, sent me their compassion, the more broken I became.

So, I crawled. For the next thirty-two steps I patiently, steadfastly ascended. One step at a time. Without fear, without expectation, without anger, without resistance. In this way, I surrendered and reached the eighty-fourth step.

There was an unexpected cry from the top of the stairs: “ Bole so Nehal” It traveled at light speed from eighty-four to one. “Sat” the sound was deafening, unbelievabale..”Siri,” they were answering back! The crowd of women was answering back…for me. This was for me! “Akall.”

Spontaneously, Wahe Guru sang through me. I felt an invisible hand touch the back of my head, pushing it down, forcing it, towards the ground upon which I sat. Without thought, my lips kissed the ground, my entire being continued to vibrate “Wahe Guru,” tears streamed down my face…

No longer a separate identity, recoiling from the people, shrinking from the mosquitoes, protecting myself from hidden germs. After eighty-four, I had lost me: I was the steps themselves.

I was India. Greater than the greatest and smaller than the smallest. There was no separation between me and India because there was no longer any separation between me and my very own SELF.

Through self-effort and Divine grace, I experienced the truth of teachings I had long espoused but never actually felt: I was and am one with all that is. There is Love moving through all beings and all actions at all times. We are always “That-“ that Divine Love and Truth-no matter what our human eyes see; no
matter how different our mind tells us we are from another-we are truly “That,” them, they, we, us.

What a heavenly stair I had climbed to achieve this state of unimaginable grace. Taking the steps, just like Dr. Soo predicted, has been my salvation.

Dena Crowder

” Magical Cuisine and Counsel”