Chapter 2 – The Years of Distance

Shiva & Me: Lost in Maya

Featured Image created with AI and creative direction by author

After my spiritual foundation was laid during my visits to Haridwar, I became lost in the most beautiful illusion God has ever created, the illusion that we all witness, breathe, and live within every single day. This illusion is so captivating that we often forget there is a Supreme Being, God, who created us and sent us here for a purpose. And here, my friend, I am referring to Maya.

A Quiet Change

When I was around 15 or 16, my father and I stopped visiting Haridwar every year. Slowly, things began to change. It wasn’t just because I no longer visited Haridwar; it was because I was growing up. School, studies, and worldly responsibilities gradually took over my life, and that’s perfectly normal for all of us.

Like everyone else, I had many worldly desires, and I began working to fulfill them. Although I still carried the beautiful memories and stories of Haridwar in my heart, Maya had started revealing its true influence.

There is a saying that a child up to the age of eleven is considered a form of God because they remain untouched by worldly understanding. But after that age, a child gradually develops worldly awareness and becomes involved in life’s responsibilities — studies, friendships, social interactions, and countless other obligations. This is the stage when God welcomes us into His greatest creation — Maya — and silently watches to see whether we become trapped by it or eventually find our way back to Him.

The Pull of Maya

As I became more involved in worldly responsibilities, Maya slowly took complete control of me. My life revolved around school, studies, tuition classes, and spending whatever time remained with my so-called friends.

I began giving people an importance that they never deserved, as though my happiness depended entirely on them. Being an extrovert, I constantly craved gatherings with friends and relatives. I loved spending time with them and unconsciously sought validation from them.

Instead of visiting Haridwar during my vacations, I started spending my holidays at my aunt’s (Bhua’s) house with my cousins, where we played together and enjoyed all the carefree activities of our teenage years.

From the age of 15 until around 25 or 26, I spent almost my entire life depending on people for my happiness. I believed they would fulfill my emotional needs and complete the emptiness within me.

Whenever I wanted to go somewhere, I would call someone, hoping they would accompany me because I believed experiences were only meaningful if shared. I constantly longed for family gatherings and get-togethers. I remember inviting friends and relatives to my home just so I wouldn’t feel alone, and I would cry when they returned to their own homes.

But the truth is harsh — people cannot stay with us forever.

Eventually, all these expectations left me with nothing but disappointment and an ever-growing void inside me. Due to conflicts within my family, I became emotionally dependent on others, believing that only people could make me happy. That belief slowly turned into self-sabotage, damaging me more deeply than I realized.

I often wondered, How could God make me happy when He isn’t physically present to spend time with me? Because I needed someone to be with me physically to love and cherish me.

Yet, despite everything, that quiet inner calling never left me. It stayed with me throughout those years and, perhaps, was the only reason I never completely lost myself.

Searching in Different Places

As I became more familiar with the world, I realized that money attracts people, while what many call love often consists of fake smiles, hollow laughter, comforting words without sincerity, and relationships built on personal gain.

I met countless people, both online and offline, believing that somewhere there had to be someone who valued honesty, loyalty, straightforwardness, clarity, and closure as much as I did.

But the deeper I searched, the more exhausted I became. Instead of finding myself, I slowly started losing myself. I began wondering why God had created me in such a way that no one seemed to truly understand or appreciate me.

Didn’t I deserve someone who could love and cherish me the way I was willing to love and cherish them?

That search continued until my soul felt completely crushed. I lost my sense of self and deepened the emptiness that already existed within me.

The Inner Emptiness

This was the emptiest phase of my life.

At one point, I even became depressed, believing that God didn’t care about me — that my Shiva hadn’t blessed me with even one person who truly loved me.

I witnessed a broken family, experienced relationships where my efforts went unnoticed, and began seeing myself as a complete failure.

Sometimes, after months of staying away, I would visit a Shiva temple and quietly ask,

“I thought You loved me. Then why have You filled my life with so much misery?”

By then, the void inside me had grown so large that I no longer enjoyed spending time with anyone. Deep down, I had already convinced myself that everyone would eventually leave.

The only thing my heart truly longed for was someone who would stay long enough to know the real me and genuinely understand me. But perhaps that was asking too much from this world.

Still, during that period, I met a handful of people who genuinely resonated with me. Being around them filled the void within me, even if only for a while. Their presence felt like a blessing, and I often thanked Lord Shiva for bringing them into my life.

But, as time passed, they too drifted away, and I found myself caught in the same cycle once again. I would meet people, become emotionally attached, place my happiness in their presence, and then watch them leave. Every goodbye reopened the same wound, making the void within me deeper than before. It was as if life kept repeating the same lesson until I was ready to understand what Lord Shiva had been trying to teach me all along.

A Whisper

After spending a long time alone with my emptiness, I realized that what I truly wanted wasn’t temporary happiness — it was something genuine, meaningful, and lasting.

Only then did I begin to understand that Lord Shiva had allowed me to experience all of this for a reason. He wanted me to witness the world exactly as it is. He wanted me to experience His greatest creation — Maya.

Maya had consumed me so completely that I had become disconnected from the spiritual foundation that had been laid during my childhood visits to Haridwar.

But there was a purpose behind it all.

He wanted to test me.

He wanted to see whether I would choose Maya — or choose Shiva.

The decision, ultimately, was always mine.

Either I could continue the hollow search I had been so deeply invested in, a search that was leading nowhere, or I could surrender everything to Him, stop searching, stop worrying, and trust Him beyond everything. The choice was between chasing what Maya could offer me or placing complete faith in Shiva’s plan for my life.

And as I began thinking this way, it felt as though a gentle whisper arose from within me:

“My son, you have faced what I wanted you to experience in this world. Now it is time to stand stronger than you have ever fallen.”

From that moment onward, something changed within me.

I began looking at life differently. I slowly started rediscovering the spiritual foundation that had been buried beneath years of attachment, expectations, and pain.

And that was the beginning of a new chapter — the chapter in which I truly met Him, not merely as a deity I worshipped, but as the eternal presence I finally surrendered myself to.

“I spent years searching for God in people, only to realize that people were the lesson, and God was the destination.”

Many Paths, One Calling

Apart from feeling empty and devastated by worldly disappointments, I also began worshipping other deities during that time. I remember when I started praying to Lord Hanuman, Shri Krishna, and several others, believing, quite naively, that worshipping every deity would complete me.

But, to be completely honest, it left me feeling overwhelmed.

As a person, I have always believed in the power of singular devotion. Just as a husband has one wife, and each of us has one mother and one father, I felt that the heart finds its deepest connection when it is devoted wholeheartedly to one divine form. Although Lord Hanuman, Shri Krishna, and all other deities are manifestations of the same Supreme Divine, I realized that my heart longed to worship only one deity with complete love and surrender.

When I noticed that I no longer felt the same depth of love that I had always experienced for Lord Shiva, I began wondering if this, too, was another test from Him.

I still remember something my uncle once told me while I was speaking about another deity whom he deeply revered.

He smiled and said,

“I know that deep inside, you carry the Trident of Shiva.”

His words left me speechless.

At that moment, I wasn’t even talking to him about Shiva. I was simply sharing what I admired about the deity I had recently started worshipping. Yet somehow, he saw something within me that I hadn’t fully realized myself.

Later, I heard similar words from a few other people as well.

Slowly, I began to understand.

Perhaps I was always meant for Shiva.

Not because the other deities were any less divine, they are all expressions of the same Supreme Consciousness, but because my soul naturally found its home in Him. Looking back, I believe Shiva Himself guided me toward those other divine forms for a reason. He wanted me to experience them, to learn from them, and to understand that every path ultimately leads to the same Truth.

In the end, the countless roads before me gradually merged into one.

And that one road led me back to the One who had been calling me all along — Lord Shiva.

Next Chapter - Shiva & Me: Signs Before the Storm

“Om Namah Shivaay” “Har Har Mahadev”