Reflections and Intentions:
-Oh Great Kali hear my plea...
-Why?
-Oh wow instant response... Well aehm.... Do you need me to give you more reasons then I have already as to why I wish to return? Is it not enough that I have never truly left and just wish to physically be where my heart and soul are right now anyway?
-Is that what you belief your reason to be? Is it truly about being where you belong? Do you know where you belong? You are as shifty as the seasons you make home where you put your hat. Do not toy with my patience!
-Ah but there is momentary belonging. Like the seasons I do not shift at random. If you compare me to the seasons you must have a reason. Like them I need to conclude my cycle and this one has not run it's cause yet.
-Smart ass. What are your motives then? What makes you belief this season has not come to an end already? Do not try to persuade me with the words you choose for your family, your friends or yourself.
Don't trifle with me by pretending it is all about it being a great developmental opportunity. Give me honest reasons. Are you sure you don't just have itchy feet and are looking for an adventure? Are you not just lost and are looking for an easy escape? I do not help such people!
-Honest reasons you say? will you listen to my story as I bare my soul to you? And will you help me?
-I promise no help. The truth is it's own reward. But as time bears no meaning to me I will sit judgement on your true intentions. Be sure to speak true, I do not care for pretty stories that are adapted to please the listener. My ear will filter out such poison and it will be held against you at the end.
Now speak if you dare.
-Under such conditions I do not know where my story begins? How can I relate the facts, give you my intentions when I do not know where truth begins and persuasion ends? After all I am only human we lie to others just as much as to ourselves as truthfulness is often too much for us to take.
- Your story must start at the core of your initial intention. You may have to go further back then you think. Do not elude yourself and untangle the thread.
-It must be when I booked the course then. Surely it can't go further back then that?
-Oh but it must! Why did you book, why did you even look for it? Find your real intention for this and you may yet be on course to tell me a truthful story.
- Well let me see... I booked it because it seemed a great addition to my existing knowledge, it would be beneficial to my qualifications after all I had looked into yoga courses on and off for a few years now...
- hmmmm...
-No, maybe that is not it...
I started my business you know not so very long ago, the school opened in 2010...
I enjoy teaching!
No seriously I truly do! I tutored when I was at school and I was very good at it I think I rediscovered that when I started to teach Pole. I also love to learn. I mean learning while doing has always worked for me I actually absorb things like a sponge... my friend says I'm driven. I do not stand still. I develop and transform always. I set goals and I achieve them just to set the next goal post before I have made it to the current finish line.... I think that's what she means when she says I'm driven.... I never stop there is no time to think, to reflect... I'm restless at the core. I had finished at St Andrews and part of me was ready to leave but part of me couldn't. I was tied to my other half and to my friends, my possessions my comfort of knowing the place. So I was determined to try and have it all, travel, a home and relationship and to be my own boss. Anyway when I finished travelling I was ready to get started but maybe I should have never started here, should have never stayed... However I was determined to make it work here and therefore ignored all the singes that told me that it would have been best to break camp. Maybe I was too scared I do not know it's been too long now... I never stoped to think about it. I don't think I have to bore you with all the things I did but I think maybe I was just never again truly settled here when I came back. Travelling rekindled the globetrotter in me that I always knew I was when I was but a child. It's amazing how much self knowledge you loose as you grow up trying to press yourself into the expectation others and yourself set for you. You know a home, a steady job, making use of your degree, all those things that get drummed into you as you grow up. I have never admitted that... not even to myself but it's true I think...
Working 24/7 and setting new goal posts all the time does help a lot in making yourself oblivious to how stagnant everything else is and how caged and unhappy you are. Don't get me wrong it was exiting to set up my school and I dare say I found my calling but with my friends as support it wasn't that hard in the end. Anyway I had barely finished setting up and getting all my qualifications out of the way when I was looking for the next shiny thing. I actually took my TEFL exams. I told myself it was a handy thing to have, something else to fall back on, maybe do some teaching abroad over the summer when business is slow. Combine my love for travel and teaching while continuing to be stationary and settled. Truthfully I really had itchy feet again and looked into going abroad by any means possible. Maybe not for good but I could hear new adventures calling, China or Japan were my fantasy. I even applied for a postgrad course that did a Chinese exchange. Not many people knew about this... Speaking these things out loud would have meant admitting that I started to feel like a trapped animal, stuck in a cage that is too small to turn in. However I did find the next shiny thing so to say and it would tie in nicely with my current business so it was perfectly reasonable to pursue it publicly. Aerial Fitness and Yoga. Great stuff. Exiting, new, a challenge. Quite different to everything that's out there in the fitness world. That's when I started to look into yoga qualifications. The aerial yoga wouldn't give me proper yoga recognition so it would make sense to add, if possible and feasible, an actual yoga course to make me more reputable. I had done yoga for a while now and I though it a great addition to Pole. I never thought of it as exercise as such but a philosophy a way of life and an addition to improve the things I do already. It works remarkably well with Pole so I had come to love it for that. As soon as I discovered that you could get yoga qualifications in India I was sold I think. Of cause I looked for alternatives here in the country but only to justify booking the course abroad. I truly persuaded myself that it was the right thing to do, it would give me and my business more credibility and would enable me to be a better teacher. All true statements but in the name of true intentions I guess it was another way to get away. Did you know as a yoga teacher you can work in retreats all over the world? What a thought to put into my head. I booked the course before I had even started on the aerial courses.... I powered though everything, absorbed information as I went along, spread myself thin teaching, working, learning. I should have known it would all escalate into a big blow up at home. It was unavoidable I set the time bomb when I booked the course I think. It wasn't intentional and certainly not consciously done. Then again by then I had definitely refined the art to decept myelf. I am doing it for my business, I am doing it to develop myself, I am doing it to be a better teacher, I am doing it to branch out more, I am doing it so I can continue to stay where I am when in truth I was probably the wolf that slowly gnarls its own paw off to get out of the trap. The sacrifices that you make for your freedom. Had I not imprisoned myself though? In the end it was always my choice no one made me do what I did. Maker of my own misery how sad is that? Selfishly dragging everyone in my path with me into this downward spiral of destruction and caoz... Of cause that's the other benefit of being so busy... not only could I ignore the early signs of the implosion at home but I had no time to stop and think where I may go with it all. What about the greater picture? What is next? What will I do with my freedom? and then all those other questions I had largely ignored quite successfully I may add for the past few years as to: What do I want from life? Where do I belong? What is may path/my reason for being here? and your typical Who am I? Mind you I am who I am. A chameleon of sorts I am what I want you to think me to be. I have at least 5 persona's and pick more up as I go along through life. I can slip each of them on like a skin within seconds. All of them with the same essence at the centre but all so diluted and distorted that few can see the reality. Do I still know what is true and what is fails? I like to think I do. After all, all persona's are facets of me, shades of grey. Again even here I can persuade myself to be one thing more then another to the point that I don't know anymore when I lie to myself and when I am being true to myself as I don't know which self I am being true to. A self spun web of illusions and lies that has knotted itself around me so tight that I do not know that I can get out again without setting fire to it all... Fire ... like the Phoenix from the ashes. Now there is a metaphor that has dominated my life for some time. Now covering my back I can feel the fire rise around me. The metaphor has become reality. The tattoo came first then the explosion. My life as it was ended. It was brought on by myself and I pulled the trigger and let it burn. It wasn't planed. I acted on impulse. Everything had boiled down to this moment and I stood at the edge of the Abyss and I jumped. There was no going back.
Each darkness brings light and my light was going to be Rishikesh. The yoga course that I had signed up for 9 month ago for so many selfish and ultimately destructive reasons was now to safe me, harbour me and give me new perspective on life. I never bought into the concept of "life changing experience" until now. I think you have to come to an end point, a turning point or a stillness that allows you to experience this but when it happens it does and BANG that's the impact it's going to have on your life. It wakes you up, it shakes you out, it stretches you, it turns you upside down, it pulls you apart, it takes you to pieces and it puts your molecules back into a new/old order. Cleans and polish your atoms and molecules from the inside out, re-ensemble service free of charge.
I am an odd being. I am not a people person (superficial chit-chat and blending in is not something I am good at, too much effort for something I do not care about), I have a general dislike for human beings as a whole (that whole humans are the cancer of the earth thing, yea I guess I subscribe to that a bit and lets face it look at what we do, what we have done and continue to do to earth and to each other), I don't deal well with authority (you have to earn my respect position does not grant it to you naturally), I generally don't respect men as authority figures mostly because I don't consider them my equal (I guess it's my way of rebelling against a male dominated world), I tend to pay zero attention to anything around me unless it has direct impact on me or my interest (self absorbed in my own little bubble that's me) and I don't make friends easily (I don't like superficial friendships when you make friends it ought to be for life they become part of you and who you are, they are your mirrors, your pillars, your family). What a candidate I am to come to such a place... an Ashram... Still here I was in what my friend would probably deem a hippy commune. I had no persona to adapt to this situation but oddly enough I fitted in somehow. I did not know what to expect and just as my first visit to India the country and the people worked their magic on me. The girl I shared my taxi with on the ride up fell asleep on my shoulder and within the first couple of days I knew more about some of these "strangers" then I do about my blood relations. I was settled into my yogic family very quickly indeed and soon sobbed like a little girl on my "brothers" shoulder about my imploded relationship/life. So the first week or two were spend in falling apart.
Week three and four brought on the slow process of heeling and learning that more or less the whole family was going through the motions. A notion of hope and rebirth was in the air. At the same time the philosophy lectures brought back to me a lot of the things and thoughts I had thought I had lost along the way. A refresher course for the soul as we speak of the journey from you to you/ I to I. Rediscovering my Ananda, the pure joy of being alive and free. It was a coming home to myself. I am sure it wasn't just me, there was a shift in everyone. Not that I noticed right away, too self absorbed in my own rediscovery I guess but it happened all around. The energy shifted and shifted as a whole.
Now in my teachers I found two men I could respect heartily. Their belief in what they are doing, the fact that they live what they teach radiates through them so powerfully a blind person would be able to see it. Baring his soul to us, making us part of his family, life and vision in his dignified, humble, humorous and kind way our lead teacher could only inspire admiration, respect and love. Mind you he's got drive and ambition too but it has transformed into something bigger his vision is no longer concerned with self gain but with the transformation of others and with them the world. I want to share in the dream. And that's the core. This is what it boils down to. This is the centre of the story I did not know myself until this very moment. To be brutally honest as this exercise is ought to make me I have many selfish reasons to go and work for the Ashram. There is the outer shell of it being a great learning experience and opportunity that you don't get in life very often (the one I told my boss and my parents). It will enable me to learn more and absorb the culture and philosophy into my very being (there is just so much more learning to be done I felt ripped away from it just at the point where my mind was open and quiet enough to absorb it all properly). Going deeper layer by layer... It is a convenient and incredible break to gather my energy before I start setting up in a new place from scratch again taking with me my experience and knowledge. It places me for once into a situation where I just follow the flow, where I might have time to refocus and re-evaluate my life more fully before embarking on my own again, like catching a ride with the tide readying yourself to swim against it all again as it leaves the shore. It places me in a different country and culture feeding my addiction for adventure and discovery. It will place me in the same country and place as a person close to my heart so I may yet see what may come of this (the things I tell my friends and persuade myself to be the main reason). On a less selfish part it enables me to give something back to this magical place that has helped me through so much and has given me so much (and I like to think I have a fast array of knowledge to offer too, unique and different approaches that I am happy to share). But, and that is the core of it all, this is what I think is my true underlying intention, it will enable me to be an active and contributing part in this amazing vision. I may generally be blind and oblivious to most things but I have not just felt the change in me while I was there I have felt and have seen the change in others. As the weeks went by and we readied our self to leave the Ashram you could see how light returned to hollow eyes, how belief and self belief came back to those that thought it lost, how strenght returned to many and how it replaced fear or doubt in others, how self respect and self love was nurtured and encouraged. How strangers became a community, a family, lovers and friends. And although everyone felt the strain of the early mornings by week 6 there was peace and happiness in the hearts of them all. Light replaced darkness and for a brief moment the idea of world peace did no longer seem impossible. Forces and energies working together as one. By working there I can be part of this creation, help to saw the seeds that one day may blossom into making this world a better more caring place. For a brief time my self serving selfish desires may be put aside and transform into something better too as I will be a spoke in the wheel that churns the tides, that changes liefs momentarily or forever. Truly the opportunity of a lifetime. To be part of this vision and be able to touch so many liefs in such an intimate meaningful way would truly be awe inspiring at it's very core and may lead to the transformation of my very soul. Actually a very scary thought at the same time... Then again a phoenix ought to raise from the ashes eventually and every rebirth requires fundamental change...
-This is the end of the story for now. The truth is it's own reward. You have stood trial before yourself and how you judge yourself is no business of mine. If you learn your lessons there is hope for you yet. All acts are ultimately selfish but the way they are channelled is what matters. Conquer your fears and stay true to the core. You lay your own path, fashion it with your deeds and intentions now follow it truthfully and obstacles will become opportunities of transformation. We do not interfere with your small matters but we are here and we will listen. The truth makes for sturdier building blocks then illusions and self deception, remember that and your path may not crumble under you as you walk. Reflection is my gift to you. May you learn from it.
