The retreat ended two days later, and everyone came out of silence. I got so many hugs from people, thanking me for having helped them.
两天后，静修结束，大家走出静默。许多人都过来拥抱我，感谢我帮他们忙。

"Oh, no! Thank you," I kept saying, frustrated at how inadequate those words sounded, how impossible it was to express ample gratitude for their having lifted me to such a towering height.
“喔，不！该道谢的人是我。”我不断重复地说道，懊恼这些词句无法恰当表达我对他们的谢意，感谢他们让我提升到至高境界。

Another one hundred seekers arrived a week later for another retreat, and the teachings and the brave endeavors inward and the all-encompassing silence were all repeated, with new souls in practice. I watched over them, too, and tried to help in every possible way and glided back into turiya a few times with them, too. I could only laugh later when many of them came out of their meditations to tell me that I had appeared to them during the retreat as a "silent, gliding, ethereal presence." So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Host-ess—only then could I become The Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple, after all?
一个星期后，另一百名信众前来参加另一场静修。再一次领受谆谆教导、致力于内心的努力、体验无所不包的寂静，只不过实行者是另一批人。我仍负责照顾他们，尽力提供协助，有几次也与他们一同回到“第四境”。后来他们当中许多人在禅修后对我说，静修期间，我在他们眼中似是一种“沉默、飘飘然、超凡脱俗的存在”，真让我哭笑不得。这就是道场对我开的最后玩笑？学会接受自己响亮、聒噪、社交的天性，全心拥抱内在的“主招待”角色之后——唯有此时，我终究才能成为“寺院后方那位安静的姑娘”？

In my final weeks there, the Ashram was imbibed with a somewhat melancholy last-days-of-summer-camp feeling. Every morning, it seemed, some more people and some more luggage got on a bus and left. There were no new arrivals. It was almost May, the beginning of the hottest season in India, and the place would be slowing down for a while. There would be no more retreats, so I was relocated for work again, now placed in the Office of Registration, where I had the bittersweet job of officially "departing" all my friends off the computer once they had left the Ashram.
在我待在这儿的最后几个星期，道场充满类似夏令营最末几天的哀伤气氛。每天早晨，似乎又有另一批人、另一批行李搭巴士离去。没有新来的人。已将近五月，印度最热的季节即将开始，道场的节奏即将慢下来一阵子。不再有静修活动，因此我又被调往别的工作，这回是注册处，这是一份苦中带甜的职责：在我的朋友们离开道场后，一一在电脑中的文件里向他们“告别”。

I shared the office with a funny former Madison Avenue hairdresser. We'd do our morning prayers together all alone, just the two of us singing our hymn to God.
我此刻在办公室的同事，从前在麦迪逊大道当美发师，是个逗趣的人。我们两人一同晨祷，只有我们俩对神唱颂歌。

"Think we could pick up the tempo on this hymn today?" asked the hairdresser one morn-ing. "And maybe raise it to a higher octave? So I don't sound like a spiritual version of Count Basie?"
“今天我们试试加快颂歌的节奏？”一天早晨美发师问道“或许还高个八度音？会让我听起来比较不像灵歌版的贝西伯爵（CountBasie）吗？”

I'm getting a lot of time alone here now. I'm spending about four or five hours every day in the meditation caves. I can sit in my own company for hours at a time now, at ease in my own presence, undisturbed by my own existence on the planet. Sometimes my meditations are surreal and physical experiences of shakti—all spine-twisting, blood-boiling wildness. I try to give in to it with as little resistance as possible. Other times I experience a sweet, quiet con-tentment, and that is fine, too. The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing—Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood.
现在我有很多时间独处。我一天大约花四五个钟头待在禅坐洞。我现在可以一次单独坐数个小时，怡然自处，坦荡面对自身的存在。有时我的禅坐是超现实、生理上的“莎克蒂”经验——筋骨扭拧、热血沸腾的狂野状态。我尝试听命于它，尽可能不去反抗。有时则感到某种甜美、安静的满足，也很不错。词句仍在我的脑子里成形，思维仍卖弄风骚地手舞足蹈，但我现在已经十分熟悉自己的思维模式，不再受到干扰。我的思维已成了老邻居，虽然有点讨厌，却又是最亲爱的人。王先生和王太太以及他们的三个傻孩子，等等，等等。但他们不会扰乱我家。在这个街坊邻里，人人都有自己的空间。