Love May Be The Most Demanding Spiritual Practice Of All

She spent decades shopping for God. Then she fell in love. Part spiritual adventure, part passionate love story, and razor-sharp memoir, To Be Here Is Immense follows one woman's fearless search for meaning through ambition, addiction, activism, ecstatic devotion, and devastating loss.

Raised in the violence of a working-class existence, Clare Simons grows into a fiercely independent woman with an irrepressible sense of humor, a skeptical mind, and an unrelenting hunger for what is true.

From Manhattan's glittering ambitions to California's spiritual marketplaces, she spends decades testing every promise of transformation —while refusing easy answers. Then she meets Mata Amritandamayai, Amma - the Hugging Saint.

But every time Clare thinks she's found the answer, life asks a better question.

A great man woos her with laughter, intelligence, and glorious, rock-star passion. Their romance culminates in a seven-minute Hindu wedding officiated by their guru. Together they build a life filled with reverence, Vedic rituals, and journeys through India on the 108 Temples To See Before You Die Tour, until their paths lead them in separate and dangerous directions.

What happens when the sacred asks for everything?

For listeners of Mirabai Starr, Anne Lamott, and anyone who has ever wondered whether the sacred can survive heartbreak. To Be Here Is Immense is an unforgettable memoir of courage, longing, laughter, and the wild grace of continuing to ask life's biggest questions. Simons is funny, fearless, sensual, raw and To Be Here Is Immense is unlike any memoir you've listened to.

Clare writes about devotion without sentimentality, faith without certainty, and grief without looking away. She can make you laugh out loud one minute and quietly undo your heart the next. This book reminds us that the most profound journeys rarely lead where we expect.