Tag: transformation

Eleven: The Dream

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“a dream
there should be somewhere on earth,
a place which no nation could claim as its own,
where all human beings of good will who have a sincere aspiration,
could live freely as citizens of the world and obey one single authority,
that of the supreme truth;
a place of peace, concord and harmony…”
— The Mother … (had a dream)

A dream is a portal. So too is a nightmare. Chaos and order both are portals. Auroville was that dream. And Auroville is that portal.

When my son finished school he chose to go straight into his studies. I’ve claimed his gap year. Has we slipped dimensions. Cause. Effect. Unlawful Degree by Distinction. I extend my stay at the sublime 4 East Coast Home and book a flight to Delhi for the 8th of February and a flight to Dharamsala 3 days later. Movement can come incrementally. I am exploring options to stay till July… or August … or forever. Will either of us make it back. Is back even an option. Forward is also an anomaly.

Most people dream of a life that is a dream, an illusion. Some dream of a life grounded in reality, in humanity, in freedom and in truth. I’m settled and decide to stay that way. I’m well and happy and finding ways to recalibrate. I have my moments … but they are more like salt in a lake here than salt in a glass of water. 

For me. The forest is the portal. Running is my vehicle. I am curious about a path but lack the courage to take it. Yet. I run through a spiderweb. That too is a portal.  Superhero. I run. Step by step … no other way for now. Spiderverse awaits. I see a mongoose … My eyeballs search my brain; looking for the plural. I run some more. Everything… the good, the bad, the beauty and fear … comes in plurals.

Altruism is not necessarily grand gestures of generosity and service; altruism can be as simple as being happy and, in being happy, holding happiness for those around you. Sometimes the greatest gift you can give someone is a smile. Sometimes moving a fallen branch from the road or stopping to treat a fallen scooter driver. The paths are dry and sandy. I stoop to retrieve a shoe on the sandy red dust road. Croks it says—erroneously spelled brands come cheap here. I place it on the foot of the small boy who dropped it riding pillion with his mother. A hybrid Cinderella portal to that time way back of wedding sari buying and Nic back-to-back with me on the moped, shouting, “go fast over the next speed bump, Mum, so we can get more air!”

I pass a field of boys playing cricket, pausing to slip into the many memories of four, six and seven-year-old Nic on his Indian cricket tours; playing on the ghats in Varanasi, the town square in Darjeeling, parks and beaches in Goa. I remember the excitement at the IPL in Bangalore and how content he was joining in every cricket game we passed and jumping on the backs of motorbikes with my young colleagues in Auroville for daily cricket games. A part of me wishes he were here and I was studying law.

Space time glitches with precision. Looking for doorways … trying to draw them into my objective reality. Will I still be writing on the other side? For three consecutive days on my forest flings, the same ancient cyclist dismounts his equally ancient cycle at the exact location as I approach in the opposite direction; the same bare-chested Korean teenager runs past me at the exact same junction, and the silver moustached man in a saffron hoodie gives the same steely stare as I cross the new road lined with the remains of the trees. The Chainsaw Massacre was banned in the same era as the birth of Auroville; another thread tethered to inception.

When I recognise the anomaly, it stops happening. Am I through, I wonder. Are you still reading this?

Wild boar sandpits keep me moving forward. I run. The portal to a memory of reading of Ulysses’s wild boar scar on the morning I later encountered a wild boar trapped in a wire fence … human-made in conflict with nature. It is also my trail of crumbs to Penelope in waiting. I can’t stop. My sweat evaporates only when I’m in motion. I stop. Mosquitoes land in clusters on exposed flesh to suck my blood. My edges blur with the steam rising off my body and the mosquitoes drown. Sweating blood, words are like threads through blisters.

I pass the Youth Centre, aging and not yet wise. Perhaps I am straddling the time warp; gradually dissolving across the threshold. My toenails blacken and I run some more.

Feeling stuck in a Philip Pullman novel, I remain on the limen, crouching, my daemon beside me. An elephant. Too heavy to carry, this elephant guide crouches beside me, Diana on her back, my real mother and guide—both creature and human. Both. Because everything travels together. In tree pose, she joins the forest, passive activist; ever-present. Compassionately mothering me into the adult who knows who I am and who isn’t afraid to be the Bohemian she was.

As the sun snaps open its brazen eyes and seeks me out between the silences, leaves spray dew, christening my passage through this puzzling tunnel. I don’t look up, It smacks of ambush. I keep looking over my shoulder. Paranoid South African. It sounds like I am being followed. It takes me a couple of runs to figure out it’s the sound of the nylon running baggies I borrowed from Nic shloofing together between my thighs.

I encounter a herd of cows. They block the path; look docile. But I am wise. I back away, remembering the cow in Varanasi I got too friendly with that horn butted me in the solar plexus; left me breathless and unable to call for help. Some things are more scary than they seem.

Everywhere puppies are suckling. Calves too. The puppies stretch themselves to reach the mother’s teats. The calves contort. If humans had to suckle a cow, I wonder, would they still believe they need its milk. Cognitive dissonance. A herd of goats freely graze, stretching as they do to reach things partially inaccessible and I am taken to the Annapurna mountains of Nepal where the sock-eating goats stretch to reach trekkers’ laundry.

If the tree represents the forest, the road represents humanity. The trees will not get defeated because they are not at war. Holotropic breathwork masters. They know we aren’t yet able to breathe. We fight instead … and burn. False breath, false transformation. We fight because we fight the ignorance we neither desire to confront nor change. The opposite of caring isn’t not caring; the opposite of caring is caring too much. And like a heart breaking doesn’t destroy the heart but only opens it to more love, the trees collude with the elements and the creatures to ensure their seed spawn travel beyond this imagined utopia. The trees don’t fight back. They lift their roots like Ents and retreat to safe haven, a simple manifestation of a current incarnation in wait for the roads to crumble to dust. They trust we won’t last forever.

A man squats in a field; his morning constitution. He holds a newspaper—read and wipe. My sari-clad being makes it into the Hindu Bureau; I feel a sense of relief it’s only online. A dog shits on a speed bump—I share the sentiment. The bumps and dips in the roads, like the bumps and dips in life, build my resilience through the bruising and the pain. I learn to put pressure on the pedals when I ride the potholes so I don’t break my vagina.

The light rain has done nothing to settle the red dust. Everything steams. It’s humid. I crunch the dirt thrown up by motorcycles, cows and construction vehicles between my teeth.

I take refuge in the trees. I offer my love. I breathe. The trees breathe back. I sing with the birds. The temples sing in response. Life is a chant. I spiral in birdsong and shade. And from the villages beyond the trees, Bollywood blasts from a megaphone and my body moves in synch. I dance in chaos and move to flow … and back again. Both polarities can reside in harmony; a harmony borne only through the portal of conflict. Order leads to chaos and chaos will ultimately always make way to order. Harmony isn’t calm … harmony is about being able to move between it all and not get lost in the clinging onto just one aspect of the entire range. Order is safe but chaos brings change. Within everything is the seed of its destruction. Struggle always manifests new life, generates resilience.

Post a 4-day water fast (translation here is 4 days no water as opposed to the 4 days only water that it is) I choose an integrating walk in the forest. I see a runner in the distance. My competitive subconscious kicks in. I run to overtake him. Podium position. It feels simultaneously pointless and fun. I get my dopamine where I can. Not running away from anything. Running towards everything.

The head of a kid goat lies with a vacant stare on a roadside table, its severed body already butchered, more distressing than butchered trees. Trees grow back, goats don’t. Nearby, an old goat sits on its concrete block not wanting to move where the rope no longer tightens around its throat. The other side is tied to a tree, beneath its branches a shady patch of grass. It reminds me that I too feel like I am tied to the branches and pulling away despite it throttling me. At the end of my tether. How often do we tie ourselves to that which seems to bring comfort only to find we are strangled by our own knots?

It takes 2,979 hours to walk to Japan and 1,850 hours to walk to Bali. My journey stretches out like the thousands of steps and I feel such liberation in my diminished attachments and in not being missed. I won’t be returning as planned on 11 April. I won’t be walking to Japan or Bali but I will be flying to Kathmandu. They offer a 90 day visa and I’m thinking it would be a waste not to utilise all 90. My work is loved here; I feel I am too … both appreciated and received … but I must leave. Some aren’t ready to heal. The trees have spoken and I need to let the dead leaves drop so the new can grow; I need to expand my branches and drop aerial roots so I can expand outwards to provide more shade for those who need it.

The world that I am used to is gone and I am on the limen of finding the new. I buy a magnificent scarf emblazoned with golden dragonflies and when I reach my bedroom door, there is a dragon fly clinging to the string tied to the lock. It flies in after me.

Reminiscent of clearing my storage after four years; moving only what was absolutely essential into the house I built, so too have I cleared my inner storage containers and what I now put back in is what will stay and sustain and support.

I have become the woman who would have taken care of me as a child. And now I take care of the me I have become through the portal of travel.

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.

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.

Six: The Tension of Opposites

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To retreat is to pull back or withdraw. It also means haven or refuge. A retreat is not a defeat, but a commitment to adjust or rethink. It can be a noble endeavour to recoil from the outside world in order to sink deeper into one’s inside world. It can be the only safe way to develop and enhance one’s mind, heart, body and soul so as to gradually reform old habit patterns and show up for oneself in a more appropriate and supportive way.

The man I married professed to have 18 wives; claimed he didn’t know which one he would wake up to each morning. During the 15 years of marriage it was a boast; his own personal harem he’d say. During the 2 years of divorce, however, I was schizophrenic, bipolar … shamed, an outcast … abandoned by friends and family alike, I found my way by moving … down the road, up a mountain, or across the globe … anyhow and anywhere … “Can’t you just be normal?”

Stories make sense of my world. Everything comes from myth and is told in parables. Words haunt me. Memories are fulcrums that our futures are hinged upon; the seesaw that highlights the anchor point in its motion. As I write, the voices ask what’s the point, who are you to speak about your experiences, what makes you so special, no one is interested in what you have to say, go to your room, eat your food and keep quiet, don’t interrupt me. I write like  I live: scrappy. Undisciplined, I break the rules.

As someone who has had many life periods of not wanting to be here, I have developed a capacity to divert attention from feeling isolated, abandoned and generally misunderstood into copious amounts of diploma courses, research and, more recently, podcasts. I learn to live better through gaining knowledge about why I am, how I am, and how better to channel my unique gifts and superpowers into my work, my relationships and my step-by-step manoeuvres on life’s labyrinthine map. Without movement, however, this can become rumination … even stagnation.

When I checked in at CT Int’l I was overweight—and I’m not talking about my baggage. I had been overriding my body’s homeostatic drive with months of anxious buffering against the outside world, the inert emotional sludge now hanging off my dense physical frame.

Arrival at Sinharaja Kurulu Ella Eco Resort after 7 hours of potholes, downpours, dust and sensory overload is New Year’s Eve. My psyche wants refuge. I forego the trekking in the trees for washing under waterfalls. I’m not allowed to trek alone here; they say I’ll get lost. They saw me coming. My jump rope lies coiled, cobra like, at the bottom of my bag. Unused; lifeless. The snake of transformation comes instead in the form of a rescued python my host fetches me to see. It too is immobile in the bottom of a bag waiting to be set free.

As I begin to work into my word for the year—equanimity—I assess whether travel too is simply a diversion from the battles going on inside. It is, of course! And also, of course, it isn’t. It’s like water that falls over rocks, sometimes flexing around them and sometimes carving right through. Never clinging, it gains momentum, flows in and out of all spaces, and keeps moving. Structure generates its flow. And ultimately it merges with the ocean without separation. Humbled.

A word closely related to equanimity is homeostasis, which is defined as the desire for the system to return to so-called normal. How long will this recalibration take? I shame myself for trying to rush it. This is allostasis, the system’s means of achieving stability through change. But what happens when the system is constantly trying to compensate for an abnormal emotional or physical environment? The set point gets recalibrated as an abnormal normal and the system goes into a compromised state of harmony.

A black and turquoise butterfly keeps banging its head on my window. A woodpecker taps on the tree outside. I meditate, I breathe, I contort. Peace descends, strips me, leaves me naked. The tension of the inner critic takes its cue. Slithers up. It clings to me like the leeches sucking on my flesh on New Year’s Day. It lambasts me for being so unproductive, so sedentary and I have to wonder, is this hedonistic—not contributing, only experiencing? What’s normal anyhow?

I walk down to the water, modestly covered; back up not so. The cascades cleanse me; expose my feral. The river is never the same; neither am I. Water is my greatest teacher … it clings to nothing. Except my laundry. Nothing dries in humidity. My skin is moist. I haven’t eaten much since arrival—the water fast during my first week in Sri Lanka merged into mostly fruit and only the occasional vegetable. And as the physical buffering has dropped away, the emotional baggage has too. A resolution isn’t a miraculous instantaneous transformation; it is a gradual ratcheting and greasing of the cogs of change until, slowly slowly, the machine works on its own, unconsciously competent.

There is a distinction between nomad, tourist and traveller. You get nomadic travellers and travelling tourists yet there is a distinction between the three. Whilst a nomad makes a life of travelling and a tourist escapes life through travelling, a traveller slips somewhere between the two as a touristing nomad. I was mostly a tourist whilst married; I could only dream of the nomadic life. It was the tension between the opposites that exposed the traveller in me. I doubt I will ever be a typical tourist again and, as I create a map for my inner nomad to navigate, I travel.

I am mutable. I travel to be anyone I want to be—the harem, the schizophrenic, the deranged. I don’t have to be who I was yesterday. I want to change my names to days of the week. Even that feels limiting.

The jungle breathes for me now, the rivers move me. I offer my host a craniosacral session—I miss my craft—and get gifted a breadfruit curry in exchange. The days now are all about waterfalls and perfumed fruits; connection and comfort. There’s elemental alchemy here. As I plot the route and navigate the journey, it is like placing pins in a globe of the earth. Travel is an opportunity for data gathering and those pins are mirrored like acupuncture needles mapping the nadis and activating the elemental chakra bodies. The trapped energy is released to turn the wheel, and the gears lock in and ultimately drive movement.

Traveller acupuncture. The quintessential calibration tool.

Already my trip has shifted radically through meeting new friends and reconnecting with old ones. I feel into whether the re-planning is due to fear of boredom in the pauses or whether they are legitimate growth-through-travel opportunities. The adventure has begun to sweep me up and I am not resisting … it feels like doorways are stretching open and luring me across the liminal spaces of transition like a space gate.

A baby monkey hangs from the balcony loitering with intent to steal my banana. Ferns hang from high branches, hitching a ride from the undergrowth into the canopy; an umbrella for the plants and creatures beneath. Tension palpates instinct, the neuro pathways create their own patterns, building without thought or knowledge of where the pathways will lead.

I go for one last plunge. I say goodbye to the river … for now. The rocks provide the momentum for both of us. “I’ll meet you in the ocean.” I say.

Next stop Hiriketiya Bay 🐳

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.

Three: It’s a Jungle out there

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At international departures, Cape Town, a father bribes his daughter with a lollipop to “kiss uncle on the mouth”. The gateway to abuse. I’ve been there. Always having to ‘be nice’, to not offend, I still don’t always recognise it until in hindsight when boundaries have been violated and trust already fractured. It happened last year in India with an 80-year-old man I saw as a father figure, until he threw me out of his home when I denied his lascivious advances. My son called it, told me how obvious his angle was. I felt foolishly naive.

And it happened again this week in the spice garden. Well regarded and highly respected, I wanted to meet the almost 70-year-old herbal medicine doctor. At 50, his wife was run down by a train and he retreated to a cave on a barren hill where he has lived the past 17 years. Slowly slowly, sherpa style, he began by planting a simple vegetable garden to sustain himself and gradually expanded the planting, integrating his holistic medicinal knowledge. An area of regular landslides and death due to receding vegetation is now jungle once more. I caveat this with an ‘allegedly’ at the end of each statement as what followed gives me cause to doubt. I get a tour of the spice garden and a pulse reading and feel inspired to return as a volunteer to help him reach his target of adding another 8million trees to the 2million already planted. And then he hugged me and told me I would have to dedicate three hours a day to sex and that my energy was causing him to want to do things to me with his tongue. Confused, I busied myself in the herbal shop, got financially exploited for remedies I don’t trust are the real deal and fled in the getaway tuk tuk back to Kandy. Trust … boundaries … total weirdness … that’s life, although it shouldn’t have to be.

The benefit of approaching menopause is the transition from fertile body to fecund mind. I am driven more into the space of exposing sexual harassment; not remaining quiet; not protecting anyone regardless of how incredible a human they are (allegedly). Even when it still feels awkward and uncomfortable doing so, I want to work towards flicking off the ‘nice switch’ in the moment of feeling violated.

“From earth”, is the new retort to men more interested in my marital status than my birth place. I add, “my wife is taking care of my son.” A happy boundary. Despite my occasional need for a facetious push back, I have found the Sri Lankan people to be engaging, kind, helpful and super chilled. Safe I am.

Navigating a new country is like learning a new language. And Madugalle Friendly Gamily Guesthouse has become a familiar language. This is a new comfort zone. I consider canceling my trip to climb Sri Pada to stay two more nights … but there is also the tensile force pulling me to challenge myself on whether I have in fact found a new way to engage with this relentless downpour and climb 7km up 5,500 steps to almost 2,500m, a 1km ascent with a gazillion pilgrims … starting at 3am to summit for sunrise. This all sounds mad, right? 

Linda Goodman sums me up in her Sun Signs tome I discovered as a teenager when I had lost myself in the dysfunction of my family system. “Why walk when you can run?” is the single line adhered to my psyche. I use this as justification for my special kind of crazy.

One last delicious curry—green beans and sweet potatoes—at Mrs Madugalle. A walk for a final coffee at Natural Coffee Kandy. It’s still closed. And rain comes tumbling down … in drops, then sheets, then buckets. The coffee is worth it; waiting in the rain isn’t. The people are short enough for the countless umbrellas to take out an eye and the eaves drip exactly where the walkway is. I arrive home wet. Packed and as ready as I’ll be, the only thing to do is get to Vegetable Garden House in Nallthaniya, ten minutes walk to the start of the 5,500 step climb.

I’m great making choices when I have no choice. Confused the first time I heard this, I learn to let go of regrets and accept that I also have to do certain things just to know I don’t want to do them … which means often I have to just go with the (moment)um and know a fail is as good as a win. Not brave enough for the bus, not scared enough for a taxi … the tuk tuk always comes out top. I order a PickMe. I enjoy the road tripping and so far I have had super friendly humans behind the handlebars.

We stop for king coconut and tea. The road is good to begin with and then I understand better why taxis command such a high fare. The roads become potholed and corrugated and there are entire sections of wash away down the mountainside. I feel the bus may have been a stretch too far for me and am grateful for my wise choice. Eventually I hear the voices of all the bugs over the sound of the tuk tuk engine; I see waterfalls and hilltops; I see tea plantations and rice paddies beside dense trees and forest foliage; I see life. NOW we are in the jungle! The first 80km build the anticipation and I keep feeling like I must be there already but with the state of the flooding, the last 25km take as long. Huts, tea houses, shops and lodges hang precipitously from the cliffs. I see the remains of homes not lucky enough to escape the recent deluge. Four and half hours after setting out, the lush and comfy Vegetable Garden House stretches out into a field. It grounds me. No vertiginous sleeping. I commend myself on another excellent choice.

There is a fire in my chest. The doctor warned of a potential healing crisis and, if this is it, I’m going to be just fine. The past months are burning off me now and the two weeks I have been away feel endless and infinite. Before departure my body was in a condensed state of dis-ease and I developed a pathology that causes me to hold my breath. My diaphragm gets stuck; my soft centre curls in on itself … I can get to the precipice of blacking out. As with the packing process, I am paralysed by the phobia of taking up too much space. If I hold my breath will I shrink? I consider if this is why I push myself on runs and hikes. Is it the only time I fully breathe?

Tonight I practice breathing. Tonight I climb. Tonight I allow the jungle to breathe for me.

The Elements of a Pilgrimage

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When we pilgrimage we spiral back to core, to the centre of our soul.

Earth — into the woods / earth / matter 
Water — over the ocean / river / water / emotions
Fire — exposed to the sun / the inner flame / mind / thoughts
Air — bathing in moonlight / shadows / sound / prayer / source

Ether — integration and interaction of other four … the cross section

Can you trust the shedding of the skins … can you stand naked and raw and exposed for just long enough to feel the pain and discomfort of the not knowing, the not belonging, the not defended … to allow your new soft skin to rise up out of you to form the new membrane of your being … a gently woven tapestry of gossamer that is both protective and porous.

Immortality

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Immortality is the new alchemical remedy that is taking the world by storm. The phoenix is the symbol of Immortality and it is often from the ashes that we rise … into a new state of being; everything we have ever wanted to be.
First we must acknowledge what we have dumped on the body — in the process of taking Immortality, old memories and wounds will emerge for acknowledgment, acceptance and release and it is important to honour and traverse each part of this healing. The reward is a younger you — tighter skin, more flexible joints, stronger muscles and bones, youthful energy, and the ability to see what it is that has been preventing you from releasing certain stuck emotions and injuries.
One bottle (R1,500) lasts a month and it’s only necessary to have two bottles initially (with an optional integration gap of a month between bottles) and then one bottle every year or two. Contact me to discuss your healing plan, to order Immortality and to book your Craniosacral Therapy session: O741O11621 or wellworthbeing@gmail.com

‘The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.’ ~ C.G. Jung

As within, so without …

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When you can’t change a situation, you’re forced to change yourself. Humanity has lived a life of the caterpillar for way too long and has been forced now to wrap itself in a cocoon where we can isolate ourselves and go deep within to find those parts of ourselves that need to change.
The only home we have is our planet, our environment, our very beings.
And right now we are being challenged to change from the inside out; to shift things and shake things so we don’t come out the other side to ‘business as usual’ but as beings adapted to change.
It’s a sign of insanity to keep doing the same things whilst expecting a different outcome. We have to now push through those pains of metamorphosis and decide if we come out flying or if we die resisting the change.
It’s time to learn to operate as part of the whole so as not to be constantly at war with an environment we are knowingly exploiting, abusing, destroying … killing!
We are all complicit in this massacre.
Why? Because we don’t want to change our behaviours and habits; so we don’t have to learn to live in a manner that honours our bodies and souls.
Because, I assure you, if everyone simply worked in harmony with their own beings, their immediate environment would change and the extrapolated ripple effect would naturally result in a healthy planet 🌍 
Are you going to make this time matter?
Can you stop fighting the virus 🦠 accept the virus, and recognise we ARE the virus?
Only if you accept this challenge will things change and you’ll be able to step out of your cocoon to a new inner and outer world.