What? Are you Hindu now?

Once, a friend asked me, “So… what are you now? Hindu?”

It wasn’t hostile. It wasn’t unkind.
It was the kind of question people ask when they’re trying to place you somewhere familiar.

I laughed it off at the time, but the question stayed with me. Not because I didn’t know how to answer it, but because the question itself didn’t quite fit what I was experiencing.

Later, I told the story to an Indian friend. He laughed.

“In India,” he said, “when you tell someone you practice Sahaja Yoga, they ask, ‘So… what are you now? Christian?’”

That’s when it clicked.

This confusion wasn’t about religion.
It was about labels.

When experience doesn’t come with a category

We’re used to experiences coming with names. If something matters, we expect it to slot into a recognizable identity: Christian, Hindu, spiritual-but-not-religious, something we can explain in a sentence or two.

But some experiences arrive without a label attached.

Sahaja Yoga didn’t feel like adopting a new belief system. It felt like encountering something already present. Something quiet, interior, and difficult to explain without reducing it.

That made conversations awkward.

People weren’t asking out of judgment. (Well, not completely.) They were asking because they needed a category. And I didn’t have one that fit cleanly. (Still don’t.)

The pressure to explain yourself

If you come from a Christian background, this pressure can feel especially strong.

There’s often an unspoken expectation that your spiritual life should be legible to others. That you should be able to say what you believe, where you stand, and how everything fits together.

When meditation enters the picture, that expectation doesn’t go away—it intensifies.

Friends and family want reassurance.
Sometimes they want certainty.
Sometimes they want you to calm their own unease.

And suddenly, a very personal, interior experience becomes something you’re expected to explain or defend.

What I eventually realized

The question “What are you now?” assumes that spiritual growth always requires a new identity.

But what if it doesn’t?

What if some paths don’t move you sideways into something else, but inward, into greater stillness, clarity, and humility?

I didn’t stop being a Christian when I began meditating. I didn’t replace prayer or abandon faith. What changed wasn’t my label, it was my ability to connect with God through silence.

That kind of change doesn’t announce itself neatly.

Living without a tidy answer

Over time, I stopped trying to give people the answer they were really asking for.

Instead of explaining, I learned to say less.

Not everything meaningful needs to be categorized right away. Some things need time. Some things need privacy. Some things need to be lived long before they can be named.

If someone asks, “So… what are you now?”
It’s okay not to rush to answer.

Sometimes the most honest response is simply continuing to live the fruit of what you’ve found—peace, steadiness, compassion—without insisting it fit into a box.

If you’re in that in-between space

If you’ve felt the tension between experience and explanation, between what’s real inside you and what others expect you to be able to say, you aren’t doing anything wrong.

You’re standing in a place many people pass through quietly.

You don’t owe anyone a label before you’re ready.
You don’t have to resolve everything out loud.
And you don’t have to choose between honesty and belonging.

Some experiences don’t ask to be named right away.
They ask to be tended.