[Shivani Devi]

There was also one point in my life, back when I was 14, I had all the same ideas going around in my head, looking for a label that fit this thing I believed in - a nice little box to put it all into so I could pack it away somewhere and shut my mind up.

I don't know if it was because I was reading The Tibetan Book of Great Liberation at the time, or it could have been something Shirley Maclaine said in 'Dancing in the Light' while I was following the antics of Carlos Casteneda throughout South America...

However, I still didn't know what 'religion' or even 'spiritual thing' I was...

So, one night, I sat down with a pen and paper and a heart full of prayer and 'got serious'.

I made a list of all the beliefs and philosophies my heart/soul 'resonated with' - I liked Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism, Animism and Wicca...

Now what 'religion' had all that going for it? I wondered...

In the end, there was only one and I had already experienced the joys of it throughout my childhood and teens...it was called Agama Hindu Dharma. It was the official religion of the small Indonesian island of Bali.

It is Hinduism before the whole commercialisation of it, so I set to work learning the language, studying it and learning all about Hinduism in the process - it just seemed like it was meant to be, when from ancient Balinese, I went to Buddhist Pali, then to a South Indian language called Kannada, then to reading Tibetan, which settled me down enough to start learning the 'Language of the Gods - Devanagri - Sanskrit. All of that kept me pretty busy...

...but I knew the choice of 'what I was' had already been made and when I saw my first picture of Shiva...I knew...I just knew and after that point, I couldn't turn back. I had reached the point of 'no return' and that's how I knew that I was a Hindu, above anything else I may believe in.

I hope you find your own answers and my story helped.