I was not looking for my guru. I never even meant to find one. Some times I wonder if, in fact, I have found Him. But ancient tradition says that the guru finds you; who am I to question ancient tradition?
My husband and I moved to India for money. Straight and simple it was a great opportunity to wipe our financial debt slate clean and make some good money. My husband had always been what I called a "reluctant emigrant" from India. He didn't move to the US looking for an American wife but that's exactly what he found, and pretty quickly at that! I knew he wasn't 100% comfortable in the States. He was never going to be one of those guys that waves goodbye to Mother India and never looked back except for holiday every 5 years. I knew he wanted to, or needed to, go back at least for a while.
As luck would have it, his company really wanted him to move to India and presented us with a financial package no one in their right mind would have refused. So, seven years into our life together and one year, almost to the day, after our son was born we boarded a plane to India to begin a new chapter in our life. A chapter that really was only supposed to last a few years. Hmmm....that was 2007.
One evening, before we had moved, we were discussing this exciting adventure we were about to embark upon. I even remember where I was standing in our house, because the words that then came out of my mouth were beyond odd. It has turned out to be one of those defining moments in life for me.
I said, "What happens when I don't want to leave India?"
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Tuesday 17 January 2012
I follow a blog from Sadhguru called blog.ishafoundation.org. Thought it was supposed to show up on my page here, but I don't see it. Anyway, this morning I read his new post entitled "Life is Movement" and it is so amazingly, shockingly timely.....
Yesterday I went to a friends' house here in Goa who has a dog with serious health problems. We both recently met a new homeopathic doctor who also treats animals so she was going to my friends' house for a consultation about the dog. I was invited to sit-in on the consult.
When I arrived, the consultation had already begun but the moment I stepped in the room I was shocked to see how the condition of the dog had deteriorated so extensively. My very first thought was, "Oh, this dog is dying. What is there to discuss?"
Well, it turns out there was plenty to discuss, but I won't go into the details. What I observed and experienced is what matters right now.
The dog was laying on the floor on a bed my friend had made next to her own bed. The doctor was sitting on my friend's bed and my friend was standing next to the doctor. I immediately sat on the floor next to the dog and got very, very quiet. The dog was sleeping, or at least resting, and was very still and I wanted to, not so much enter into her still space, but I didn't want to disturb it. Stillness is a huge part of the dying process and should be respected. That space was almost sacred.
Some people would call that environment "depressed" or "sad" but that interpretation is simply an avoidance of the experience. The vast majority of people today would do anything to avoid stillness or silence. The first thing they do when walking in the house is turn on the t.v. or some music. Something to "fill" the emptiness. It's a compulsion. It is not done with consciousness, it's a compulsion driven by an extreme discomfort and is an automatic response.
As I sat with this dog in a very meditative state I realized that I was having a hard time maintaining my own stillness. Part of the reason may have been that there were two other people in the room talking (quietly) and I felt a bit self-conscious, wondering if they were thinking, "Why is that woman meditating next to the dog?" So I would try to keep my eyes open, which is WAY too advanced for me....gotta shut off that visual stimulation.
Then I realized I was trying to support the dog in her stillness and help somehow to pave her way out of "here." She had a very, very strong life-force and was almost like the Terminator; programed to live. Period.
On top of that DNA programing you have the emotional attachment that pets and their owners develop, so as the result the whole situation becomes quite entangled. But there I was trying to enter into my own space of stillness and I was having a hard time. It was like this little internal timer kept going off and shaking around inside my body. Then I witnessed an interesting thing.
The dog woke up and my friend took her outside while the doctor and I observed her from the window. After a few minutes of re-orientation the dog started walking in clockwise circles. She had been suffering seizures off and on for a while and clearly they had taken their toll on her physical and neurological condition. She had been doing this circle walking for weeks, sometimes walking around the boundary of the house, sometimes the boundary of a room, but now she was just walking in circles.
The strangest thought came to my mind: she is trying to run out her life force via sheer exhaustion gained from repetitive movement. Energy moves in specific patterns and circles are important patterns...cycles. This dog is totally emaciated and there she is compulsively walking in circles with a driving force that is coming from God only knows where. She is not done.
Later that night when I was home alone I noticed how jumpy I was inside. I would try to sit quietly and focus on some reading but I kept jumping around inside my skin; my mind was flitting around I realized that I couldn't control it, couldn't focus it. This compulsiveness is something I noticed in myself years ago, a compulsion to move to a different place, to be "out and about" or better yet "participating". It is understandable considering where I come from and my cultural up-bringing. In the US if you aren't super busy "doing" something then you are considered lazy and basically worthless.
But in the context of what I had witnessed earlier in the day, and the juxtaposition of stillness and movement, experiencing the compulsive jumpiness of my mind took on a new dimension. That dog is compulsively walking in circles holding on to life, or trying to run out her life, I'm not sure which...and there I am with my mind totally out of control spinning around, grasping on to any and everything. Somebody please get me off this ride!!
This morning in his blog Sadhrugu says, "Movement is pleasant only to a point. The planet earth is moving gently in such a beautiful manner — it is only changing seasons. Tomorrow, if it just speeds up, throttles up a little bit, then all our seemingly balanced minds will become imbalanced, everything will spin out of control. So movement is beautiful only to a certain point. Once it crosses that point, movement becomes torture."
I'm not kidding. Synchronicity is really just like this.
There is a relationship between physical movement and the mind. Maybe you've heard about techniques of meditation that utilize repetitive motions to get a person into a meditative state. You use movement to get to stillness. It really works and maybe you've experienced this when you're doing some repetitive movement like jogging, or doing the dishes, or vacuuming. You may suddenly find yourself in a very still, quiet place.
I haven't heard from my friend this morning but it definitely seemed that the movement had become torturous for her dog. Movement on many levels becomes torturous for plenty of people too. I hope they turn the coin over and find Stillness.
Yesterday I went to a friends' house here in Goa who has a dog with serious health problems. We both recently met a new homeopathic doctor who also treats animals so she was going to my friends' house for a consultation about the dog. I was invited to sit-in on the consult.
When I arrived, the consultation had already begun but the moment I stepped in the room I was shocked to see how the condition of the dog had deteriorated so extensively. My very first thought was, "Oh, this dog is dying. What is there to discuss?"
Well, it turns out there was plenty to discuss, but I won't go into the details. What I observed and experienced is what matters right now.
The dog was laying on the floor on a bed my friend had made next to her own bed. The doctor was sitting on my friend's bed and my friend was standing next to the doctor. I immediately sat on the floor next to the dog and got very, very quiet. The dog was sleeping, or at least resting, and was very still and I wanted to, not so much enter into her still space, but I didn't want to disturb it. Stillness is a huge part of the dying process and should be respected. That space was almost sacred.
Some people would call that environment "depressed" or "sad" but that interpretation is simply an avoidance of the experience. The vast majority of people today would do anything to avoid stillness or silence. The first thing they do when walking in the house is turn on the t.v. or some music. Something to "fill" the emptiness. It's a compulsion. It is not done with consciousness, it's a compulsion driven by an extreme discomfort and is an automatic response.
As I sat with this dog in a very meditative state I realized that I was having a hard time maintaining my own stillness. Part of the reason may have been that there were two other people in the room talking (quietly) and I felt a bit self-conscious, wondering if they were thinking, "Why is that woman meditating next to the dog?" So I would try to keep my eyes open, which is WAY too advanced for me....gotta shut off that visual stimulation.
Then I realized I was trying to support the dog in her stillness and help somehow to pave her way out of "here." She had a very, very strong life-force and was almost like the Terminator; programed to live. Period.
On top of that DNA programing you have the emotional attachment that pets and their owners develop, so as the result the whole situation becomes quite entangled. But there I was trying to enter into my own space of stillness and I was having a hard time. It was like this little internal timer kept going off and shaking around inside my body. Then I witnessed an interesting thing.
The dog woke up and my friend took her outside while the doctor and I observed her from the window. After a few minutes of re-orientation the dog started walking in clockwise circles. She had been suffering seizures off and on for a while and clearly they had taken their toll on her physical and neurological condition. She had been doing this circle walking for weeks, sometimes walking around the boundary of the house, sometimes the boundary of a room, but now she was just walking in circles.
The strangest thought came to my mind: she is trying to run out her life force via sheer exhaustion gained from repetitive movement. Energy moves in specific patterns and circles are important patterns...cycles. This dog is totally emaciated and there she is compulsively walking in circles with a driving force that is coming from God only knows where. She is not done.
Later that night when I was home alone I noticed how jumpy I was inside. I would try to sit quietly and focus on some reading but I kept jumping around inside my skin; my mind was flitting around I realized that I couldn't control it, couldn't focus it. This compulsiveness is something I noticed in myself years ago, a compulsion to move to a different place, to be "out and about" or better yet "participating". It is understandable considering where I come from and my cultural up-bringing. In the US if you aren't super busy "doing" something then you are considered lazy and basically worthless.
But in the context of what I had witnessed earlier in the day, and the juxtaposition of stillness and movement, experiencing the compulsive jumpiness of my mind took on a new dimension. That dog is compulsively walking in circles holding on to life, or trying to run out her life, I'm not sure which...and there I am with my mind totally out of control spinning around, grasping on to any and everything. Somebody please get me off this ride!!
This morning in his blog Sadhrugu says, "Movement is pleasant only to a point. The planet earth is moving gently in such a beautiful manner — it is only changing seasons. Tomorrow, if it just speeds up, throttles up a little bit, then all our seemingly balanced minds will become imbalanced, everything will spin out of control. So movement is beautiful only to a certain point. Once it crosses that point, movement becomes torture."
I'm not kidding. Synchronicity is really just like this.
There is a relationship between physical movement and the mind. Maybe you've heard about techniques of meditation that utilize repetitive motions to get a person into a meditative state. You use movement to get to stillness. It really works and maybe you've experienced this when you're doing some repetitive movement like jogging, or doing the dishes, or vacuuming. You may suddenly find yourself in a very still, quiet place.
I haven't heard from my friend this morning but it definitely seemed that the movement had become torturous for her dog. Movement on many levels becomes torturous for plenty of people too. I hope they turn the coin over and find Stillness.
Sunday 15 January 2012
Avoidance and iPhones
Vishal gave me an iPhone for Christmas and it's sitting right here on my desk, with no sim card yet. I've had it for a couple of weeks now and still haven't managed to get a sim card. Sounds silly doesn't it? Unless you've lived in India....
Last year (or the year before...I don't remember exactly ) the government here created some insane regulations for mobile phone companies to follow when signing up new customers. It was presumably an anti-terrorism measure, some attempt to keep better track of who is getting sim cards and blah, blah, blah... But basically it meant that in order to get a new connection you had to provide a crazy amount of "proof" of address and blood samples and the list went on. If you happened to be non-Indian, good luck. You had to take a Valium before going in to a Vodafone store and negotiating the new regulations with the ill-trained and ill-informed staff.
My whole point is that my iPhone sitting here with no sim card provides another shining example of how I literally hide behind my husband here. He is the Front Man for every single interaction we have with the powers that be in India. Well, I don't really hide behind him; it's more like I shove him in front of me saying, "Look, I have a free pass! My Indian husband is right here, so don't you mess with me. I'm no "foreigner" I'm a PIO!" (PIO is a Person of Indian Origin....equivalent to a Green Card in the USA)
I realized a long time ago that my presence in any given scenario leads to a quantum leap of complexity. What would have normally been a rather straight forward discussion suddenly becomes something extraordinary. I can also literally watch brain activity in the attending sales person stop; especially if for some reason we share the fact that Vishal and I are husband and wife. Complete brain freeze.
But I diverge....my intention was to address this great issue of AVOIDANCE in my life, which seems to have been accentuated by my Indian experience. I've noticed that I spend lots of time avoiding situations, people, emotions, etc... I suppose that sometimes it's a good idea to avoid situations that you know make you angry or anxious, but at some point we need to address WHY we are avoiding that thing, place, person or feeling. Because the word "avoid" is just a nice way to say "hide." And when we start hiding stuff, weird things start happening inside us and we start doing funny things.
When we first moved to Goa, after living in Mumbai for two years, I had to learn how to drive a scooter. There was a HUGE fear factor for me to overcome, not because of the mechanical skill of driving a scooter, but because I discovered I was terrified of the police. The thought of a policeman pulling me over was enough to send sheer panic through my veins. I had begun to associate Indian police with some dirty sort of parasites lurking around waiting to jump out and nab me. I have all the necessary paperwork and drivers licenses, but my fear was so intense that I found myself avoiding going anywhere alone on the scooter. I wanted to avoid coming in contact with what I considered a dirty element in the environment around me. Some how I had convinced myself that I wouldn't be able to handle the situation. So I avoided the situation.
But we all know that that which we avoid will come looking for us. We are so busy pushing it away and obsessively thinking about it that it's as though we have a big energy magnet for that very thing hanging around our neck! I was never stopped by the police but I did realize that my fear was totally getting the better of me, so I found that reciting a short song I learned from Isha calmed me immediately and for sure sent out positive loving vibrations rather than fearful ones.
Maybe I'll be singing that song as I enter the Vodafone store tomorrow.
Last year (or the year before...I don't remember exactly ) the government here created some insane regulations for mobile phone companies to follow when signing up new customers. It was presumably an anti-terrorism measure, some attempt to keep better track of who is getting sim cards and blah, blah, blah... But basically it meant that in order to get a new connection you had to provide a crazy amount of "proof" of address and blood samples and the list went on. If you happened to be non-Indian, good luck. You had to take a Valium before going in to a Vodafone store and negotiating the new regulations with the ill-trained and ill-informed staff.
My whole point is that my iPhone sitting here with no sim card provides another shining example of how I literally hide behind my husband here. He is the Front Man for every single interaction we have with the powers that be in India. Well, I don't really hide behind him; it's more like I shove him in front of me saying, "Look, I have a free pass! My Indian husband is right here, so don't you mess with me. I'm no "foreigner" I'm a PIO!" (PIO is a Person of Indian Origin....equivalent to a Green Card in the USA)
I realized a long time ago that my presence in any given scenario leads to a quantum leap of complexity. What would have normally been a rather straight forward discussion suddenly becomes something extraordinary. I can also literally watch brain activity in the attending sales person stop; especially if for some reason we share the fact that Vishal and I are husband and wife. Complete brain freeze.
But I diverge....my intention was to address this great issue of AVOIDANCE in my life, which seems to have been accentuated by my Indian experience. I've noticed that I spend lots of time avoiding situations, people, emotions, etc... I suppose that sometimes it's a good idea to avoid situations that you know make you angry or anxious, but at some point we need to address WHY we are avoiding that thing, place, person or feeling. Because the word "avoid" is just a nice way to say "hide." And when we start hiding stuff, weird things start happening inside us and we start doing funny things.
When we first moved to Goa, after living in Mumbai for two years, I had to learn how to drive a scooter. There was a HUGE fear factor for me to overcome, not because of the mechanical skill of driving a scooter, but because I discovered I was terrified of the police. The thought of a policeman pulling me over was enough to send sheer panic through my veins. I had begun to associate Indian police with some dirty sort of parasites lurking around waiting to jump out and nab me. I have all the necessary paperwork and drivers licenses, but my fear was so intense that I found myself avoiding going anywhere alone on the scooter. I wanted to avoid coming in contact with what I considered a dirty element in the environment around me. Some how I had convinced myself that I wouldn't be able to handle the situation. So I avoided the situation.
But we all know that that which we avoid will come looking for us. We are so busy pushing it away and obsessively thinking about it that it's as though we have a big energy magnet for that very thing hanging around our neck! I was never stopped by the police but I did realize that my fear was totally getting the better of me, so I found that reciting a short song I learned from Isha calmed me immediately and for sure sent out positive loving vibrations rather than fearful ones.
Maybe I'll be singing that song as I enter the Vodafone store tomorrow.
Friday 13 January 2012
The First 40
This year I'm going to turn 40 years old. Wow.
I'm not nervous about it or anything, but it does make me a bit reflective for some reason; specifically I'm reflecting on what the hell I've been doing for the past 40 years. Something tells me I'm really just getting started in this life though, which makes these 40 years seem like a colossal waste of time.
Of course it hasn't been a waste and really what is a "waste" anyway? My definition of "waste of time" might be totally different from yours. But I think we've become so used to (addicted to really) judging ourselves and others that we simply can't let Life just Be anymore. We almost can't let ourselves just Be because we're too busy "Becoming" something. Honestly, I find it all quite exhausting.
My favorite game as a child was "the dream game." I would pretend to fall asleep outside, preferably under a comfy hedge, and then wake up and fly around as if in my parallel universe where I could do and be anything I wanted. Tells you something about what my 5 year old consciousness was experiencing even then: Limitation. The bane of the Human experience.
Today one of my favorite things to do is simply stare out into Nature. Specifically I just love to look at trees. They are such amazing creatures, trees. Such an amazing expression of Life. They don't struggle, they don't ask inane never-ending questions of themselves like, "What sort of tree should I be? or 'How tall should I grow?' or 'How much should I eat?" They just exist and grow according to their nature and the circumstances around them. They are always expressing themselves to their fullest possibility. And it is enough. It is perfect.
I'm not nervous about it or anything, but it does make me a bit reflective for some reason; specifically I'm reflecting on what the hell I've been doing for the past 40 years. Something tells me I'm really just getting started in this life though, which makes these 40 years seem like a colossal waste of time.
Of course it hasn't been a waste and really what is a "waste" anyway? My definition of "waste of time" might be totally different from yours. But I think we've become so used to (addicted to really) judging ourselves and others that we simply can't let Life just Be anymore. We almost can't let ourselves just Be because we're too busy "Becoming" something. Honestly, I find it all quite exhausting.
My favorite game as a child was "the dream game." I would pretend to fall asleep outside, preferably under a comfy hedge, and then wake up and fly around as if in my parallel universe where I could do and be anything I wanted. Tells you something about what my 5 year old consciousness was experiencing even then: Limitation. The bane of the Human experience.
Today one of my favorite things to do is simply stare out into Nature. Specifically I just love to look at trees. They are such amazing creatures, trees. Such an amazing expression of Life. They don't struggle, they don't ask inane never-ending questions of themselves like, "What sort of tree should I be? or 'How tall should I grow?' or 'How much should I eat?" They just exist and grow according to their nature and the circumstances around them. They are always expressing themselves to their fullest possibility. And it is enough. It is perfect.
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