Me

tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes, the people will all gather together and start to pray. That will be their way of facing what lies ahead. But you . . . you are going to sit and find the sound of silence. You will feel the divine vibration in your body and you will see the pendulum. The world may be crumbling around you, but you will be focused and in peace.”
    Never again did I feel what I experienced with the swami, maybe for lack of practice, but what did remain vibrating inside me was his profound teaching. Applying what I learned on that trip, I feel that the real significance of his words was that it doesn’t matter how much noise or how many people may be around you; if you are balanced and in peace you can be sitting and talking with someone and still find the sound of silence. If you allow it, a police car can be passing right by you with the siren wailing at maximum volume, and you won’t even hear it. A plane can land on the roof of your house and you won’t even notice. That is the power of the sound of silence. As you hear it, you can disconnect from your body and at once connect with your soul.
    Before going to India, I seldom spent time alone or in silence. When I walked into a room I would turn on the television right away, but not to watch it, just to have some company. The noise, the sounds, anesthetized me, and this way I kept myself far away from whatever was going on inside, as I was scared to see the ugly things I might discover. But when I returned from India, I began to search for the opposite. I wanted silence. I needed silence. Every morning I would spend thirty-five minutes to an hour practicing yoga and meditation, and I’d do the same in the afternoons. Those moments became a sacred portion of my day, and knowing that I had them helped me to feel calmer when I was in the midst of all the chaos. They taught me to face myself, so that I could begin to destroy, one by one, the very fears that made me escape from my own truth.
    Unfortunately, when I had been home for a while, I went back to my old routines. If I normally gave myself thirty minutes to an hour to meditate, slowly that turned into twenty, then ten, until I stopped meditating altogether. Could it be that those moments in silence brought me too close to my truth, the truth that I would sooner or later have to face? Maybe. But if anything is obvious, it is that it still was not my time.

THREE LITTLE GIRLS
    MY SECOND ENCOUNTER with the magical teachings of India came at the end of 2000. I had been working incessantly for two years: Since my last trip to India, I’d had the Grammy Awards, the release of Ricky Martin (in English), the success that came from “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” the recording of Sound Loaded , and all of the promotional work for that second album in English. Now I was in the midst of my time off, not really knowing what it was I wanted to do next.
    Once again, I didn’t have much time to think about the matter because destiny had already mapped out my next step. One day while I was at home—one of those days when I was feeling particularly sad and listless—I got a call from a colleague who was living in India.
    “Ricky, I want you to see what I am doing in Calcutta,” he said to me. “I have started an orphanage for girls.”
    During those days I wasn’t in the mood for anything. All I wanted was to stay locked up at home in my pajamas, watching films, listening to music, and sleeping. Today I realize how badly I was really doing; I see photographs taken of me during that period and I almost don’t recognize myself. My eyes are glassy—they look completely empty—and my smile looks completely fake.
    However, the prospect of going to India gave me a jolt. I don’t know—maybe it was because of the deep sense of peace I had felt there before, or because I was starting to connect with myself, but something inside me made me say, “You have to do this.” It was almost as if, on some organic level, I knew what awaited me there.
    “Wonderful!” I said to him with a renewed sense of enthusiasm. “I’m coming!”
    Within days I was boarding a plane to Calcutta. I arrived in India, but this time I was not remotely ready to find what I discovered.
    The orphanage was a stunning place, beautifully painted and decorated, and it had plenty of room to play and study. There was a music school and a primary and secondary school; and they offered cooking classes for those who didn’t want to study.