Hello,
I am new here and I joined because I have some questions about Sanatana Dharma. I am from the UK and was born into a catholic family who did not practice. From a young age though I was curious about religion and felt drawn to spiritual practice.
Even though all my family ate meat I became vegetarian when I was about 12 and am still vegetarian over 20 years later. Also I never took up drinking, smoking, or drug use as was common amongst my peers. None of this was out of any conviction it just always felt very natural for me not to do those things, even to the point where drinking coffee (any caffeine) and eating eggs make me feel unwell so even though I was not opposed to these things my body seemed to dislike them.
I also naturally would never kill anything, not even a bug. Again, this feels very natural and proper to me but to those around me my family and peers killing insects was all very normal and I remember my mum would be very angry with me when I did not vacum in a certain area because a spider had built her web there and I could not bear to destroy it.
Later in my 20's I came to Yoga and fell in love with this practice. I again noticed that while many people around me in classes were put off by any of the spiritual aspects of yoga and prefered to focus only on the excercise part of yoga. I felt the opposite, if I went to a yoga class and found that the yoga teacher made no referance to sanskrit asana names or to the spiritual dimension of yoga I felt like I had not really done yoga at all and would be disappointed and would actively seek out teachers who gave those teachings.
Now more recently I have been practicing mantra meditiation and starting to read texts such as the Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.
When I first started reading these I almost felt a kind of vertigo as what I found in the pages were reflected many things I myself had intuited on some level even as far back as childhood and here were these ideas reflected back to me in these sacred texts. Of course my ideas and understanding were very limited and only partial but it was immense to me to find such a clear connection between my own personal experience and a spiritual path as ancient as the Sanatana Dharma.
Recently talking with a friend they suggested that I am now essentially a practicing Hindu in all but name. I am not sure about that but at the same time it feels a very natural path to me although one which is at the same time very far removed from my heritage even the part of the UK I am in has very few Hindus.
I think I am happy to continue as I am, so far it has all been a very natural and organic unfolding and I am in no rush. I have no expectations of enlightenment or anything everything just seems to be as it should be which is wonderful in and of itself I do not know if I am "official" or not and I tend to think it does not matter so much as long as I do my best.
I think there are perhaps a couple of noteable "odd" instances in my childhood which may have some bearing on my attraction to this path but they could just be coincidence and not really evidence that I have been on this path before but who knows!
Anyway I would be curious to know if you think that the above is a way to practice Sanatana Dharma or if you have any advice?
Thank you so much for reading!
Namaste
Shimada
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