Sketching a Twisty Path on the Globe

A 3-hour essay exam, celebratory “feast,” and graduation ceremony–I guess this means I’m a yoga teacher!  I can’t believe this experience is over or that it ever began.  A mix of boarding school, boot camp, and the iconic “spiritual journey” all wrapped in a green, leafy package scented of jasmine, incense, and mosquito repellent.  I’m quite certain that I don’t have the body, mind, or soul of steel now, but maybe I at least scraped off the top layer of mold (or was that Brie?)

As before, I can’t really think of a way to summarize this experience.  So, you get the first things that come to mind in a stream of words to paint the picture with pointilism.

VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY

The ashram is a bit like a fishbowl in the middle of the normal world.  Like the fishtank that confines our mind with senses, time, space, etc.  Our mind that knows nothing.  Including that nothing is real.  Reality–“a Cosmic Drama.”  Drama–emotions and fancies holding our leash.  Lashing out, bad karma; cleaning dorm’s toilets, good karma. Good thing I have an endless number of lives to understand all of this.

YOGA CLASSES

Breathe relax stretch and contort your body in directions it never dreamt of before.  HOLD.  Breathe (gasp).  Relax (thank you).  I came a beginner and, now…am an improved beginner, proud of a headstand, still a blowing “tree.”  I’m surprised to find though that at the end of Teacher’s Training, I actually feel like I COULD TEACH.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

Wake up at 5:30am, meditate, chant, yoga, hold your appetite until 10.  Clean the toilets.  Lectures, tea, more lectures, peanuts to stay awake just make you full and sleepy.  Do some more yoga.  Time to eat again (yummy yet monochromatic).  Homework. Laundry.  Time to meditate and chant again, then tumble by 10 under mosquito net on the “extra-firm” mattress (ouch).  Oddly, this, all of this, wasn’t the biggest challenge.   Taking in so much new information, staying positive, staying focused, staying healthy, keeping mind off cookies, THESE were the real challenges.  Well worth attempting.

FUN SURPRISES

The “Crocodile Lake” is pleasantly warm and quite therapeutic (the uncertain fear adds some excitement to our otherwise bland days).  That huge vibrating sound each dawn and dusk REALLY IS lions across the lake.  Vegetarian food is good.  People from 25 different countries can easily live, study, laugh together.  I actually really like yoga.

I don’t know how all this fits into me or my life yet.  As I sit on Kovalam Beach (where this idea was planted back in January), the ashram feels like a planet (not 30 km) away and New Zealand actually feels closer.  Must be impossible though as it will take 30+ hours for me to get there once I leave tonight.  Kristin is right now I imagine surfing the waves in Raglan NZ.  Our next adventure together begins.  The rest of my life as well.

While turkeys thawed across the world, limbering up for feasting, I stood in a ring of people in a grassy lot.  Some peple had water dripping out of their nose like a faucet.  Others were putting something back into their nostril–a rubber string–that they eventually retreived from the back of their throat.  Still others were rapidly gulping down glasses of warm salt water like beer at a frat party then (as instructed) putting their fingers into the back of their throat to induce puking.  I couldn’t even watch the people that were swallowing lengths of gauze just to pull it back out again.  Others gorge today; we cleanse.  Well, “WE” being a very general term.  “ME” specifically has a bit more sensitive system for snorting and swallowing non-edible items. 

It’s all good though.  One of the strangest environments I’ve been in for this holiday (although last year’s Lao “Monkfest” wasn’t exactly the norm either).  There’s no way in my remaining 5 minutes or 5 hours for that matter that I could summarize the past two weeks. Challenges on all fronts–from physical origami to mental contortion as well.  I’m both exhausted on some levels and invigorated on others.  Meditation hasn’t killed me, often entertains me, and is most certainly good for  my fragmented mind.  Vegetarian food quietly weened me from sugar cheese and wine so that now I actually get just as excited for that little walnut-sized blob of sweet gluey cashew rice flicked on the corner of the plate.  Vedanta philosophy has me spinning, but, often nodding also. Ah ha!  So there is a plausible argument that all the religions of the world are really only worshipping one God.  And all those things we stress and fret and grump about truly are that embarrassingly small.  Not that I spring out of bed eagerly at 5:30 or joyously memorize Sanskrit, but this experience is saturated fully with things I can learn if I were actually ready or capable of learning them all.

But, most of all I am learning patience with myself.  Not everything can be gained by pushing straining paining.  Some things have to be learned by working hardest to do less.  

So, thanks and thanks and thanks.  I am thankful for this experience, even if I will still go running gleefully away toward Kristin and mochas waiting for me in New Zealand.  Thankful for the people who’ve smirked at me slightly for entering this crazy adventure but trust that no, I’m not going to come out of it with Hindu idols in tow, floss my nose next to them in the bathroom, or insist on eating all meals with my hands from now on (while sitting in lotus of course).  I’m still very much the spastic, erratic, sensory-loving Cindy who just has a few new ideas to add to my collection of mantras on how best to live life. 

Love to all for Thanksgiving. And please, please SAVE ME SOME TURKEY!!!