Pilgrimage - Part III

Coming Home

We arrived at the foot of Kedarnath thirteen hours after rising at 4:00 am. The day felt twice as long. I approached the icy meltwaters of Mandakini, a tributary of the holy mother river, Ganga, with reverence, relief and appreciation.

Ritualistically dipping my hands and feet caused frigid knives of pain to shoot up my extremities. Icicles in the veins only temporarily masked exhaustion, nausea and light-headedness coming through the rest of my body.

The distance and vertical covered, thinner air at 3600 meters, an obscene amount of chai, cookies and snacks inhaled at frequent stops, and my mind’s red-lining through the day switched the blender of sensations and emotions to ‘liquify’ in my perception.

In 2013, record cloud bursts created flash floods that wiped out much of the village I now stood at as well as many others downriver. The equivalent of one month’s monsoon rain fell over two days, bringing massive damage as far as Rishikesh and beyond; thousands died or went missing.

Miraculously, a massive rock migrated to rest above the 8th century temple, perfectly situated to divert the floodwaters rushing from the mountain above. The building suffered little damage relative to the devastation around it.

After a necessary nap at our humble accommodation, I entered the hallowed edifice, aided by Swamiji’s smooth talk, the protection of that boulder, and perhaps divine intervention.

I was both the pusher and the pushed as I joined the line of joyously hectic seekers and believers. A priest bestowed blessings as the mass of the people squeezed and chanted clockwise around the central shrine. Exiting after a quick minute, we gave offerings to the babas lined up to offer their darshan.

The next morning’s visit was a similar affair, only more frenzied. This time we were ushered back into the inner sanctum of the temple to circumnavigate the ancient, worn rock Shiva lingam. A priest generously dabbed ghee and other ceremonial materials on my forehead; I discovered this was the goey substance slathered over virtually all surfaces inside.

I received blessings among the crush of people inside and more behind the temple below that miraculous rock. After another pass down the baba line-up, we started our descent. 

I reflected on my thought process from the previous day and night and found my mood significantly elevated from before. The thinner crowd of people and mules combined with a fresh perspective were likely contributors.

Charles Eisenstein’s observation rang ever truer now:

“Whatever I'm seeing in this person is mirroring something in me. However I relate to this person is also an act of self-inquiry. The story I make about them is revealing something in my unconscious.”

I considered with relative objectivity yesterday’s judgement of The Other; what was it telling me about myself? In marking those who rode on the backs of the mules or people as lazy and unwilling, I saw the same characteristics in myself.

Watching the way the mule-men treated their animals, I recognized the ways I cracked a whip and inflicted pain to survive. While I took care of my own litter to not sully the mountain ecology, I considered how my lifestyle contributed in ways small and large to the desecration of this beautiful planet we’re blessed to inhabit.

I asked myself, who am I to judge this world, an outsider, an American whose country’s imperial exploitation of the other is unmatched in history?

Could I fairly judge what I observed as “wrong” without a fully realized consciousness, unable to consider all aspects of the nature of reality?

Recounting my climb with a mate added further perspective. He offered that Nepalese porters on the relatively close Annapurna circuit carry heavier loads for fractionally less money than the men I had previously pitied. Our “reality” is truly relative.

In the end, my worldview is my world. And it wouldn’t change without positive action to evolve it.

At the end of their conversation, Charles asked Orland, what do we do with all the wisdom we’ve been given?

“Contemplate,” Orland replied. As you get closer to your self, the clearer you identify and express your creative calling, your gift. Then your “genius” appears.

———

I set foot in India two years after I started traveling in March 2016. It was the culmination of the latest part of my journey to my self, which began in earnest — or at least more consciously — when I made my way to Bali from Australia last July.

I was there to slow down, reflect and hopefully move on from a few hurtful relationships: one recently ended with a girl, the other one still ongoing with an unhealthy lifestyle. I had pushed the pedals of consumption and sense-gratification too hard for too long.

So I set up by a rice paddy in Ubud to write, stopped drinking alcohol, gave a go at the Whole30 diet, and dove into all manner of methods and experiences of self exploration.

Coming off my first Vipassana retreat six months prior, I did my best to keep a morning meditation and more-dedicated yoga practice. My consistency wasn’t perfect but it didn’t have to be.  “Take the middle way,” I remembered.

I soon discovered and became enraptured with Inner Dance, then ecstatic dance at the suggestion of friends from before and during my stay. Thus began my exploring energetic pathways.

Shortly after leaving Bali, a flight scheduling snafu guided me to an August ayahuasca ceremony in Barcelona. I was returning home to NYC after but was unclear of my next step. 

It was suggested to bring a question or intention into the ceremony, so before I drank, I asked Mama Aya, “Where am I going?”

I received a clear answer: back to Australia, specifically Uluru, the massive monolith sacred to the Aboriginal people in the center of the country.

I didn’t know why she sent me there but I answered her call, leaving first for Thailand in December. I intended to return to the Vipassana retreat I sat in the New Year’s Eve prior. After two weeks on Koh Phangan, that plan was tabled.

Encounters with family constellation, more plant medicine, several illuminating tantra workshops, and dear friends I now considered family kept me for a full month before departing for Australia.

I arrived in Oz in late January, stopping first at Rainbow Serpent festival near Melbourne. There I received a message during a sound healing, confirming a premonition it was my time to finally travel to India.

Nearly six months after Aya’s message, I landed in Australia’s Northern Territory. I spent three powerful days in the mythic land of Uluru and Kata-Tjuta, taking in epic sun-blazed landscapes, guided by Aboriginal land owners to view their 20,000 year old cave paintings, absorbing the energy of the land on silent walks around the majestic rock formations. Still, the reason I was sent there eluded me.

The answer I sought for my mission to Uluru struck me suddenly a few days after arriving in India in early March. I attended a chakra healing session by a random schedule choice — or so I thought — at the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh.

As Maa Gyan, the master leading this session, described each chakra, I saw how each of mine might’ve needed attention. When she came to the Manipura, the third chakra located around our solar plexus, I felt my hair stand on end and tears started to well.

The third chakra holds the qualities of clarity, self-confidence, self-assurance, knowledge, wisdom and the ability to make correct decisions. I knew in my heart this was the energy center most in need of clearing and healing.

I’ve long looked outside for wisdom, perpetually feeling I’ve come up short. Assurance in my self has come and gone equally quickly. Seeking guidance often left my vision foggy. I seldom felt true and pure confidence in myself, to trust my inner knowledge.

All I wished for a clear and healthy Manipura enables and empowers.

Tears flowed freely as Maa led us on a powerful healing of all our energy centers. I felt the power of her love and immense gratitude for the clarity she had given me.

I had been sent to Uluru because it is the Manipura of our planet.

———

Our descent took hours less than the climb and gave more breathing room with noticeably fewer pilgrims on the path. I was grateful to arrive at the bottom, slurping two helpings of the ubiquitous Maagi noodles (Indian instant ramen) while thinking about my next steps for my fourth and final month in India.

After visiting Badrinath, the second temple on our “half-Yatra,”  I would forgo previously conceived plans to continue studying with Swamiji and make a go of it on my own. While I knew I needed guidance, I needed it most from within.

I returned to Dharamkot to give a second shot at shutting out inputs and voices from without in order to contemplate and find the inner voice and authority from within. Seeking truth, I had received enough messages by now to know it truly comes from our inner being.

On my first day back, a friend invited me to a havan — an Indian fire ceremony — in honor of her taking a new name. Here I met new friends who urged me to join a four-day healing journey that week.

In spite of best-laid plans to go on my own, I agreed to join this group as the intention was to open the heart chakra. As the portal to our soul and the chakras above and below, directly connected to the Manipura, it probably needed work too.

I’m grateful I joined as the process revealed deeper truths about my past, my family’s history and gave me profound guidance for my path through my heart.

———

Today, my final day in India, looks much like most I’ve spent here: meditating, practicing yoga, writing, discussing matters of life — deep and light — with cherished friends at favorite haunts, and receiving healing. 

At the start of this final month, I tried to keep to myself in a more personal, cloistered practice here in Dharamshala. Inevitably, the pull of the conscious community, filled with beautiful souls, drew me into their loving magnetism.

I’ve continued to heal past wounds but life continues to unfold and deliver new challenges. I have learned much to this point. But I realize I am still figuring “this” all out, and will probably be doing so until my last breath. I imagine most in life will be in the same boat.

As I prepare to return to Thailand to sit at Suan Mokkh monastery and complete the meditation retreat I aborted six months ago, a few recent conversations with dear friends come to mind.

I half-jokingly asked Gigit, a wise and well-traveled friend in Rishikesh, whether he thought everything in life had to be hard.

“Not everything,” he replied with questions of his own, “but isn’t that which is worth doing worth being hard? Who would you trust more with one million dollars? The person who worked to earn it or a lottery winner?”

I’m pretty sure self-realization is worth way more than any amount of material gain. But a milli wouldn’t hurt.

Since meeting a dear soul-sister, Anneka, in Barcelona in October 2016, we’ve spoken almost every day, and our connection and shared experiences continually amazes me. Of the outside guidance and wisdom I’ve sought and received since, hers is probably the most cherished.

When I shared misgivings about quoting that podcast so extensively in my last post, she gently but firmly admonished my quoting others, telling me to write my own thoughts purely.

So I’m sure she will love me quoting a small piece of her beautiful mind, which she shared on my last days in Rishikesh.

Recalling a poetic series of synchronicities separated one year apart and taking her further in her life, she said:

“I see these synchronicities a lot in many, many things in life. If you let it be, if you just let your heart guide you, then you find them because you will meet the right people in the right moment. Sometimes you have to pass through some things, you know, and the steps have to be slow.

And yea, it’s a funny thing, Life. Time and space is just an example of how they can appear insignificant. Because one year later you take another step in the right direction with that one aspect of your soul — your self — whether it’s family, friendships, your career, your home, no?

Whatever it is, those things that are important to your soul just happen one year later.

However, it depends on the power of it. Maybe it happens faster... It’s a funny thing...”

Life is a funny thing. I might do well to stop taking it so seriously.

Perhaps I had to take a few, slow steps through some horse shit up a mountain to get to closer my heart, to my own soul.

I’ve met many “right” people in countless moments along the way.  

However long it takes, it’ll be worth it in the end.