Tag: inner work

Twenty Six: Monsoon Bower Bird

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“Please speak of how you view the possibility of attachment to non attachment,” I ask the dharma teacher.

I am at Kopan Monastery to heal my body and mind from resonating at the frequency of the fatal diseases I might have contracted from the dog bite, and to recover from setbacks encountered on the home front. On a three-day water fast, I travel the darkened tunnels of a healing crisis with fever and fitfulness and I find the comforting containment of 700 monks and nuns chanting and performing pooja to be instrumental in my wellness.

I notice, as I ask the question, my hand running fingers through the thin blonde hair I have always equated with femininity as I admire the teacher’s beautifully smooth-shaven crown. I am drawn to life in a nunnery and commit to shave my head on my arrival in India … yet I also know how fickle I can be. Life as a renunciate mocks me as I consider relinquishing the bower bird aspects of my identity … the beautiful shiny objects I have around me, even on my travels.

I sit each morning as an observer, an outsider looking in on the monks as they arrive dressed in robes that simultaneously shed their identity and give them one. They prostrate and take their seats. They are vessels, showing up in service to the prayers; chanting for others what others can’t do for themselves.

I sit and contemplate on no more than what I witness. The pooja, the music, the clapping away of evil spirits. When a British Colonel arrived in Lhasa after gunning down thousands of Tibetans, he is said to have felt great pride in the Tibetans clapping for him on his arrival, mistakingly believing their attempts to dispel evil as their celebrating his prowess.

The opposite of doing is not apathy; it’s allowing … a yielding rather than a seeking. Meditation is an action. It is a deliberate and intentional allowing of all that is, in order to practice not attaching to any of it through the sense organs. Gathering to wash the plates and utensils from food preparations, the chatting and community is as profoundly important as the nourishment from the simple food. Quality of life is expressed through moving hands that find their intelligence in ordinary tasks. Is this what malas could be used for? I wonder.

As the fever passes, I feel both relief and disappointment. Relief that I may have healed myself from potential suffering. Disappointment that I may have saved myself from dying. If you know me, you will understand that this is not in fact a depressed dig in the darkness, but a lightening of something quite liberating. Regardless, a little more context may be required for those who don’t know the true meaning of the word GuRu and may be more attached to just the one syllable without considering its counterpart.

I have never felt fully committed to this incarnation. Call it trauma, abuse, nervous system dysregulation … no matter … contemplating death these past days, I recognise that I am more attached to death than I am to life. So the tears I shed are related to feeling that dying from a dog bite in a country that honours death as much as it honours life would be a better fate than ultimately taking that long walk into the ocean when I am done with this so-called me I am becoming less and less identified with as I travel to integrate the past five decades of my fabrication.

There is a middle ground always: not attached to either life or death but fully committed to and incarnated in both. Like a suspension bridge that must be fully rooted in both banks. Straddling. Clinging to neither … and also to both.

My writing habits have gone into holes and tunnels and transcended the notion of linear time. There are gaps … chasms. And, as with my meditation practice, I have to keep coming back to the cushion to start again.

I am in India now at Deer Park Institute in Himachal Pradesh. So much life has happened between my time here in February, and this time now. I have written less than I aspired to, traveled and explored way more than I imagined, connected, studied, expanded (and also contracted), integrated and shed so much of who I believed myself to be. To honour this new version of myself that can’t recognise myself in the mirror anymore, I travel to McLeodGanj, two hours each way by cab, to a hairdresser I met in February. My instruction to Mukti back then was still my usual, “Just the ends off please; I’m trying to grow it”. This time I am not bold enough for the full head shave—yet—but I flick through Pinterest to show him some images that match this new Penelope V11.9 and tell him to work his magic. I close my eyes and breathe.

This is the only death I need right now.

Monsoon season is a flushing of all the rubbish; a cleansing of the earth and a transition into autumn. India has six seasons instead of four … six opportunities to adapt or die.

Ten: Toto, are we Home?

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I bought a sari when I travelled through India about a decade ago. I have bought many over the years. They are draped throughout my home as a love sonnet to India and a symphony of remembrance to my paternal grandmother who was born here. But this particular sari is different. Pure slippery silk in the deep cobalt blue you would see in a stained glass window, and woven with pure silver thread, I bought it whilst dating a man I loved. He had spoken of marriage and this was my intended wedding drip. Unable to find it for several years, it was only when packing up my house for this trip that I rediscovered it. I follow the trail of crumbs to find out why.

I depart Sri Lanka in a state of blissful calm having forged more meaningful relationships in a month than I could imagine possible in several years. This maiden visit was not, as I initially believed, eight years overdue but exactly on cue. It contains me. It infuses me. It recodes my DNA. If India inspires my grit, Sri Lanka has been my grace.

The drive from Galle Fort to Colombo International is as slow and mellow as is manic the drive from Chennai airport to Auroville. Psychedelic daydream. Un curated. The hazy persimmon sun hangs between palm fronds tracking the trajectory of the day. A goat runs across the road; its frantic herder throws herself between cars to beat it back in formation. The once comforting and familiar smells assault my nostrils. Human filth molests my eyes. We almost hit a calf. The car lurches. An entire herd takes up a lane on the highway, lumbering, oblivious. Time warps … both linear and spiral … both vertical and multi-dimensional. The sun is swallowed by horizontal smog resting on rooftops. The journey is long; the drive spasmodic. A fairground dis-traction. 

Paving the road to relocate to Auroville has been twelve years in the making and, as my son leaves home—allowing me to create this transition—Auroville is a human experiment in its demise. ‘Paving’ has become a swear word. Trees are massacred to make way for roads, housing, a city of people ready to populate this foreign utopia. I am unsure this still feels like home. But I am suspended in the liminal space between places, external and internal, and I tread tentatively to feel into who I am as a reflection of that.

If Sri Lanka gave me comfort in structured travel, all of my plans for India strangle me. I bite the SriPada white string off my wrist; even that feels like a garrotte. My AuADHD brain causes literal writhing and groaning as I ruminate night and day … sleepless, delirious. It tears open my capacity for worship at the alter of my introspection. Not having been allowed to develop and apply interoception as a child, it is still a struggle in my 50s to discern wants from needs. And as I find myself occasionally still defending my need to travel, I recognise that the intensive course I have sequenced this entire trip around is a decoy to justify taking time out for Me.

Manifestation is directly correlated with what I currently put my energy into, so resistance simply manifests that which I resist. And yet here I sit on that very cusp I fear the most, wanting to change everything about my next few months and paralysed by my fear of making the wrong decision. I’m not afraid of going into the unknown. What I fear most is the not stepping into the unknown … the terrifying prospect of choosing inertia over movement … the feeling into the pause when I have to choose whether to step forward or not … the insatiable courage and curiosity. 

I have spent my life in service to everyone else’s agendas—mother, husband, son—and bulldozed my way through more than the RDA of studies in support of the work I do for others. So, doing anything out of obligation rather than desire has this week become my main gear shift process and priority; a fragile time of subtle recalibration—not wanting to overcompensate and shift too far in the opposite direction … maintaining poise whilst tuning into the silence that still has something to say.

Awareness is, however, only one wing of the bird. I often fly in circles.

I reorientate to—and in—the surrounding forest, looping to begin with so I don’t mistake one red dirt road with another, and then gradually broadening my forays. I reach out to touch the trees. A Mimosa frond closes over my finger; a forest friend reaching back. In the seed of everything is its destruction—a plant, a city, a person, a dogma. As I orientate to my environment I orientate to my Self. It too has the seed of its departure. I take a familiar path. It leads to an unfamiliar field. Am I lost? I wonder. I wander. Everything looks the same. Everything looks different. A creature lurches in the bush; the smell of lemongrass floods my senses. India is a land of distinction and dichotomy. A labyrinthine mystery.

Defined as ‘excellence that sets someone or something apart from others’, the word distinction mocks my equanimity. My son’s six Matric distinctions prove his competency. Confident he will be just fine on his own, one final push and I am solo. Confident I will be too. I pass a sign to Surrender and understand that this is always the very first step in the process of manifestation. It is only in attuning to and creating appropriate conditions that the unfoldment and formation of the foetus can occur. When I open up to what I seek, what I seek will find me. Cows barricade the road. I’ve learned to honk my squeaky e-cycle horn at everyone and everything. Wide-eyed diva eyelashes gaze back. I drive around them. Some things do just need a wide berth. 

Whilst it is seemingly obvious that it’s impossible to survive without also thriving, it’s questionable whether thriving is a feasible notion without the fulcrum of surviving. I regularly throw myself over this tipping point. The love, the hate, the everything in between. When struggle becomes synonymous with productivity and achievement, travel teaches me how to regularly come back to centre. Not permanently; just to feel into the equipoise before the next swing of the pendulum. Expansion and contraction—this is the harmonious interplay of integrating Equanimity.

My itinerary lies frayed on my laptop screen. I piece it together with pliers and superglue, the prescriptive picture on the box no longer the one I am creating. There is another waiting to take shape—I am both creator and student, instructor and imbecile. Struggle is both a personal and universal lack of acceptance. It’s impossible to evolve AND be resistant. Change is like getting caught up in a wave—if I tense up, the force will use my defiance to pummel me; if I loosen, however, I can tap into the water’s power to pop out. To find air. To breathe again.

Sunrise cycles bring a deep bow of gratitude to my father for inspiring the early morning worshiper in me as the colours of Pongal are laid out on dawn-drenched doorsteps in honour of the hope of abundance … that may never come for some. And I reorientate too to the perception of abundance; the value placed on it, and its very nature. My e-cycle eats my trouser leg. I stop to eat another mango. Permission spills out here. I drink it with my morning coffee. I dress it like a Pongal bullock and dance around a Pongal pot dressed in a sari of possibility. I merge temporarily with the me who was here twelve years ago and I slip timelines … and everything I imagine these next three months to be, fall to shreds in the throes of trance.

I listen to Joseph Goldstein on mindfulness. Would he fail me, I wonder, if he knew I listen whilst running in the forest. I overtake a couple on their e-cycles. My body is strong since Chinese cupping and Moxibustion but my gut goes into crisis as it no longer holds anything. The couple return the challenge. I up my game, drawing on reserve fuel, motivating purification as my being busts open and shatters apart less integrous cells that can then be expelled from my body. Healing only fully happens when the system is empty.

I am empty. And full. Both And.

I make coconut shell espresso cups for my new Aeropress and learn face yoga; I drink copious amounts of Marc’s Coffees and invite Chun to facilitate a tea ceremony beside the koi pond at 4 East Coast Home, my new digs; Yashi’s serves up my favourite coconut cappuccinos and Mohanam prepares special thalis I consume whilst writing content for their new sustainable business website. I don’t skip a day without fresh fruits and green coconuts and I am resetting my system physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Travel—and India specifically—has the capacity to both shatter my heart into pieces and break it wide open.

I don’t need red sequin shoes. I don’t need a false guru. All I need is the heels on my feet and the capacity to swiftly tap them together three times. And I am home; not to a physical space but a place within myself I no longer want to escape.

Nine: From Blisters to Bliss

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I stare at the words on my laptop screen, images stare back at me. Like a 3D puzzle, it makes sense only when I stop trying to see what I know … surrender to what the image knows of me. I discern the bigger picture when my eyes learn the images in a different code. Everything I require requires something from me.

Arrival in Galle at Le Bella Inn 1912 is to a celebrity welcome. Procrastination terrifies me so, with my precrastination skills, I made this reservation four months ago. Exalted as the very first person to book a room here, it is presumed that my lucky charm energy resulted in subsequent non-stop bookings, including a dozen from South Africa where the owner has recently toured. Within five minutes I have his oath to assist me with a long term visa extension next time I am in Sri Lanka. Wise action is the path to manifestation.

For me, the first thing to do on arrival anywhere is to walk. But a sign outside proclaims that life starts after coffee. The 19-year-old waiter brings me real coffee; his t-shirt tells me that dreams only work if you do. Manifest is a verb. So, the second thing I do is walk … compelled to keep walking until my feet have drawn the maps on my body and my soul starts to recognise the terrain. Competency building to find my vibe; to dispel my demons into the cobbled roads. The difference with aging as I travel is that my inner elements require a little longer to find resonance with the outer; I need a little longer to calibrate; to integrate. If I don’t immediately do the thing I fear, I get locked in the inertia of it. A cobra recoils into its basket, its flute-playing master closes the lid. Imprisoned. The gun metal ocean tones reflect the rows of cannons of this once heavily defended island. Gun fire shoots me back to the 5-year-old desecrated by her molester on the cannon at the not so defended Durban Library.

An ancient on a bicycle delivers coconuts to Tap House across the road. LKR200 he states. Tapping into the distinction between tourist and traveller I follow the trail to the source, encouraged now to leave the confined bastion of Galle Fort and venture to the street markets. The mania of the city always calms me; slows my stride; brings me closest to my core. Traffic that makes no sense; people and dogs slipstream in flow. I join the harmonic discord. Brightly embellished fishing vessels and cats devouring discarded tails counterpoise the stench of death at the fish market. I follow a cow across a traffic circle. Vehicles mirror me. Fruits and vegetables with knobs and spikes and colours never seen in Cape Town’s aisles of homogenised produce. And king coconuts for LKR100. I get two. One young for ‘drinking’ and one mature for ‘eating, drinking’. I stroll the streets and back through the sally port still eating the flesh on arrival back at the Tap House: Cool King Coconut LKR450 affirms my mini adventure that stretches me into the edges and keeps me real. What ‘feels right’ is simply what feels familiar. When’s it’s uncomfortable—when it burns—that’s when it matters.

Forged in the fire; more beautiful for the fire; I find equilibrium in the water. But first a run—the fire of dynamic meditation to release the kundalini energy to cleanse my emotional body. I do four laps of the fort walls; each re-turn to the lighthouse exhibits another sublime perspective of the rising sun. I have my skipping rope. It strobe-lights the view and I zone out as my entire being becomes a part of my sensory experience and my cells vibrate with joy. Whereas I once I adhered to following my blisters, I now surrender to Joseph Campbell’s true adage and follow my bliss. Exorcising self sabotage is not a once-off event. Magick is a process; practice makes practice.

Writing too takes practice. The foetal heart is formed as it travels in contraction over the brain to nestle in a knot of chambers in its slotted cage in its chest. I write with my heart brain. I write until the writing writes me. Reconstructed. The Tetris Effect. 

Imagine a city where the culture isn’t about sitting down to eat or drink; where the main purpose of walking isn’t to shop. Imagine reverting to tribal culture being genuine progress, where people connect and engage over music, dance, shared experience. Where you can be normal even without an addiction. Conversations can often sound something like back and forth WhatsApp exchanges—threads frayed, only randomly matching. Glimmers of a stitch.

When I travel my body reprograms my brain with felt senses and shifts my approach from top down to bottom up. Sensory signals or guesses; I get to choose which side of the scales to place each experience. It is only with the heart brain that one can ultimately fully comprehend. Cognitive dissonance lingers in a dark skull box. The blueprint knows where to inspire and where to protect. Denied ecstasy … also disillusionment. I feel.

I stare out the taxi window en route to Colombo Airport; words look back. Forests and hanging fruits. Fecund. Phallic. Feral I am. The wanting to stay taints the wanting to go. Gratitude. Grit. The wanting. The waiting. The pause. Breathe. The driver straddles the lanes. Neti neti.

Waiting at the airport for the international flight to Chennai, the tension of the opposites waits with me. I attempt to connect the dots back to who I was when I arrived at this place a month ago. Deer-eyed. Interrogated. The Circle of Zen is not always a simple brush stroke. This cycle that has brought me back to the same place is an explosion and collapse of rainbows and black holes. Order, chaos and everything in between. Each new day a new me. Travel creates the earth’s tarot cards that give direction based not on cardinal points but on the ever-churning and spiralling internal highways that never get me lost. Because I can never be lost. Because I am always right here. Where are you?

After a month in Sri Lanka, I will have to re-orientate my being around my old lover; India … to feel if her devotion is strong enough to hold me. Usually when I’m anxious I shop online. The only thing available to me is an upgrade. “Gulp!” I don’t want to leave but know that I must … it is only in the leaving that I will be able to return. Sri Lanka has chipped away at my heart and snuck inside. If you look real close you will notice the chains are broken.

Seven: Amniotic Floating

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Places leave imprints on the soul. Like lovers, we exchange DNA and leave a part of ourselves in each other. Like attracts like so, just as consumption of any substance creates a resonance for more, so too do these places I traverse set up the frequency of return. Since arriving at Mama Lanka’s bosom, my eyes no longer strain for familiar comfort, my ears find solace in the sounds. 

But it’s not about seeing anything new but rather seeing everything anew.

The words composure and sangfroid are common synonyms of equanimity. While all three words mean ‘evenness of mind under stress’, equanimity suggests a mind only rarely disturbed under great strain. Stress tears the gloopy untransformed caterpillar from its chrysalis; it cracks the shell from the inside, killing the unformed baby bird.

A friend told me not to worry too much about my food addiction, that I would find connections to fill that void. I feel fed through my senses. How right she was. Our fears simply show us what we are searching for.

A mongoose scuttles across the road. A smudge of baby bird yolk on its snout. And I’m on the move again. Belching exhausts,, burning plastic … potholes big enough to devour a small person. City life layered between rice paddies. Coconut groves. Dogs sleep in doorways to keep cool and across roads to keep warm … and politely keep watch at food stalls. Hope lives. A gormless looking water buffalo lifts an opportunistic egret into a marsh. Horns are honked as greeting. Hairy brown coconut shells on spikes pierce the earth to scare marauding crows. Scalps on sticks. A dog run free still choked by its owners chain. Freedom wears a cosh.

Each day of travel breathes change into me, like the changing landscapes I am tugged through by growling grumbling tuk tuks. The earth turns slowly, the tuk driver freewheels; gains little momentum. Captain Jack Sparrow glowers at me from the fabric ceiling. Are we there yet?

If Vipassana was solitary confinement, and Kandy was fast track freedom into the frenetic, Hiriketiya is the equilibrium, the poise. Like the literal rows of surfers on every wave the bay can conjure, it is the place that balances the familiar on both sides of the spectrum. Arrival at Sand Dollar House is like coming home; it even has a dog called Bella. No belching smoke, no burning plastic … and the opinionated peacocks have enough to say to override the discordant ice-cream truck … mostly. It is a beautifully considered space for quiet introspection away from the carnage of resort-style escapades yet, a short walk away for swims and … yes … runs.

Like bubbles rising up through honey, calibration needs to breathe. And to run is my best form of breathwork. Movement, I have come to reflect on, isn’t a diversion. It’s a purification … it’s pure liberation. My teacher says I must “run first, then class”. “Purify physical body to unlock trapped kundalini energy”, he adds. He gets me. One of the few, he accepts my all.

Running the bays in the early morning avoids heat and gives a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes local vibes, while the throngs of tourists on surf holidays are sleeping off their cocktails. I have the beach almost entirely to myself. As an indication I’m on the right map, I see an actual sign Connect the Dots to Dots Co-working space and surf cafe … I get my laptop and go for coffee. The dog has taken the best seat in the house.

My runs are short; they take long. The view refocuses me, the sunrise blinds me, and I drop for expansive moments into the magnitude of connection. A vicious dog stops me in my tracks, grabs my leg and tries to bite me. White with a black head, it reminds me of the bird at Vipassana, content with its shadow part that still remains … a reminder of work to be done. Done with fighting, I sternly grab the scruff of his neck and look him square in the eye. “NO!” I declare. He listens better than a few men I know and runs off on his way.

In the months before my departure, anxiety sat on my shoulder and coaxed me into researching, plotting and planning; it collaborated with my intuition around what I felt I needed and would need as I progressed. A structured itinerary to provide the containment for the journey to flow. Every place I chose has dosed me with the medicine I need.

To affirm and highlight this wise inner voice, Saturday night brings waking through the night to club music. And chanting. At 1am the music is throttled. The chanting remains; no liquor licence required for sustainable living. Fireflies surround my bed like glow-in-the-dark stars. Am I dreaming the whole thing?

Blue Beach beckons like sirens. I hear the call and walk the 2km to a tiny fisherman’s’ bay. And, like sirens, it thrashes me over jagged sea-urchin-encrusted rocks. I bleed. Bloodletting is clearly still my medicine. But, if you’ve read my previous updates, you now know the way to remove a leech is simple—just a squirt of salt water. I immerse my being in an entire bay. The waterfalls all run here and all the metaphorical leeches that cling are cleansed away.

Life right now is all about beach runs, ocean bathing and coconuts. I travel solo to get from myself what I seek from others. where I can meet myself in fullness. I don’t travel because I am brave but because if I don’t travel I will die.

Sand Dollar House is expanding and looking for longterm lets—it is the perfect space for writers, artists, therapists, surfers and free-spirited wonderers; a haven away from the hustle and bustle where you can perfect your craft whilst still having easy access to the most beautiful bays and a multitude of local and international bars, restaurants and shops. Oh how tempted I am.

You can’t stop the waves but you can learn how to surf. I am taking this purely metaphorically as I watch the surfers and feel only JoMo floating on my back in the over-salted swell, needing no balance because the water cradles me, supports me.

Every step I take is a paving stone on the road to my future, a stem cell in the placenta of my development. I am both pregnant with potential and also that potential being hatched.

Maybe I really can have it all.

Four: The Peak of Pilgrimage

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Mercurial Gemini with a strong intellect and speed, I get myself so tied up in knots over labels and judgements; flummoxed by the dangerous new age bullshit of either being in my head OR in my body. My pilgrimage this past year has almost broken me; taken jackhammers to my psyche trying to understand where the unique intersection is between the paper doll, the shadow and the self; made me sick wasting energy justifying who and how I am … on blending two parts of myself that were never separate.

“Now, about that word authentic. It is related to the word author—and you can think of it as being the author of your own self.” — Marion Woodman

Being authentic and spiritual makes me the more real, not the less. It guides me on those internal spiralling pilgrimages down passages of grief and awakening. I touch into every part of me that is also a part of you and therefore a part of everyone and everything in the universe. I can’t hide or deny any aspect of myself. And so I write and I walk and I journey to the places most are afraid to go; places I am mostly also afraid to go.

Slightly Chilled. The name of a guest house I pass on my walk to find real coffee. Nescafe signs send me away. Coconut time. I walk to the river and put my feet in the coolness. Vegetable Garden House is Super Chilled—the family, the garden setting, the beautiful young travellers I meet over delectable Sri Lankan breakfast dishes and weird Sri Lanka coffee.

I wake before the three alarms I have set. It’s 1h40. I am dressed in full hiking gear when I climb into bed at 8pm. My fast-pack is loaded with every warm item of clothing I brought with me, including the pink shawl (the Diana I take on every pilgrimage), a kikoi, extra socks, an entire change of clothing and merino wool gloves. Geared up with head torch and rain jacket, I emerge from my room to the sight of a woman also kitted out for the climb. Her name is Cami, she’s from Paris and it’s her 32nd birthday. It’s hard to imagine I’m twenty years her senior. I feel 35 again, meeting young travellers on their first round of adventure. I get the sense I am being appraised with a measure of curiosity; they are not sure which bracket to place me in as I am the age of the mothers who are in the process of making home and being normal.

Walking this path often means walking alone. And alone isn’t about being without people but without the capacity to articulate my sense of self. Relationships fail for me because I attach to an ideal based on what the world wants from me rather than what I myself want for me; I attach to the illusion of what it promises despite knowing that intentions are generally to ‘fix’ my rabid self reliance in order to make others feel less conflicted and more comfortable with their own erroneous attachments.

Most hikers in Cape Town know the Newlands Forest 400 steps. Add another 5,100, throw in a gazillion tons of concrete, hundreds of neon lights, tea stalls, sweet stalls, Buddha statues, snack bars and innumerable walkers from as old as ancient and as young as infant. It’s a lot to take in. I have the intention to do two nights in a row up SriPada. I am delusional.

Like the star at the top of the Christmas tree, the cluster of neon lights marks the end point of the climb, where the foot of Buddha is believed to have dented the top of the hill. I am initially captivated by the continuous row of lumens lighting up the path until I recognise the reality and the altogether fabulous absurdity of it all. A monk ties a white string around my wrist with blessings for the journey and, similarly to the Camino de Santiago scallop shell, I am branded a pilgrim and given kudos for my commitment.

I navigate new pathways and pave new neurological networks. Like the silk of the spider’s web or moth’s cocoon, the white pilgrims threads create initiation networks, a semi-permanent anchor on the railings. I lay paths that others may follow, not because I know my way but so others may know it’s okay to not know. There are no solid  lines on this map. Only hyphenated. A dot-to-dot puzzle. This is my Sadhana.

People sleep where they sit. A young girl walks holding her mother’s hand; sleepwalking. A man walks barefoot; it’s his 15th time to the Peak. “Is that a spiritual thing?” asks my walking companion. “No, my boots got too heavy”, he replies, focused fully as he places each footfall tentatively on the gnarled concrete. But I feel differently. That kind of pain can only be a spiritual experience. People carry babies and toddlers, people sing to encourage each other, and the elderly use the  railings to replace worn out knees. Babies cry; some adults too. It’s an endless river in flow, night after night after night. The same yet always different.

Everything in life is pilgrimage. Nothing we do or say or love is unique. Yet, in pursuit of being individual … special … we try to carve our own way and, in doing so, fail to recognise the struggle, the value, the pull, of all the millions that came before. And without proper ritual to honour the trajectory of sameness, we ultimately get lost.

I lie awake on the second night in the shadow of SriPada imagining the thousands more trudging to the peak, and I know that as weird and whacky a pilgrimage it is, I am bound to do it again … many times. People who judge me for my atypical free-spirited escapades also follow me vicariously; afraid to step into the groundlessness of the abyss … smothering themselves instead in the illusion of hoarding for something that never comes. A guru tells me that I’m on the right path when fewer and fewer people understand me. 

I travel solo so I can disappear into a framework of existence that doesn’t require justification or proof of my being. I travel solo to untether myself from these insidious and relentless chains curtailing my capacity to simply be. I travel solo so I can re-understand myself.

Courage is my currency.

Be Fluid

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There are so many ways to explore one’s inner landscapes and outer realities. For me, it’s fluid tumbling and twisting in the primordial amniotic fluid of the psyche where I find that womb-like nurturing and waterlogged madness that take me on a dualistic journey of finding (and often fighting) my way back into my body.

This is by no means a finite journey but rather a continuous adventure of the inner landscapes of my psyche … constantly leaving, searching, learning, practicing and arriving … back to the same place but changed by the journey … 50 years of exploring and knowing myself for the first time.

As the continuation of my birthday celebrations, I was visited after a ballet class by a soul sister bearing a gift of the sweetest-smelling single rose, in full bloom, attached to a pack of Cosmic Dancer oracle cards. And the very first card I drew? Be Fluid.

Water can be yielding and can also wear down the hardest of obstacles. I am reminded to do the same — to be in flow and adapt according to the environment.

With Craniosacral Therapy I access your fluid body, working with the jelly-like cerebrospinal fluid that is encased in layers of dural membranes, continuous from brain through spinal column, and that in turn encases your central nervous system. By working this way, I can access your entire being by touching lightly into the landmarks of your body and, in so doing, bring cohesion to body, mind and soul through attending to the symptoms that are calling out for healing.