A Third of The Way There

The last time I made a long journey (that time to Europe) I stopped in New York for a week on my way.  This time, I’m hanging out in Newark, at the airport, for 5 hours.

Even though it is a meager correlation, I like the idea that I am touching base here on the East Coast…my birth coast… if only for a short while.

Almost three years ago, on my first afternoon in New York City, I stood on a corner in Washington Square waiting for an old friend, wondering what in the world I was doing going off to Europe for three months.  The economy was on the verge of collapsing; I had no income on the horizon, all I knew was that I had to go and that I had to go then.  I stood there, arms crossed over my chest in my best New York defensive stance trying to get a grip on why the universe would be calling me to the British Isles, what could possibly be so important.   A clear voice from somewhere deep inside (or was it from some higher guide?) said, “Well, Morgan, the only thing you can do is go with an open heart and see what happens.”

That seemed like a good plan.

I got a look at myself standing there, stone face, protectively guarding my chest.

“Huh.  That’s not very ‘open-hearted.’”

I decided in a flash that I was gonna drop my arms to my side and that I wouldn’t cross them over my chest for the entire journey.  I mean, if being openhearted was the only way to discover what the trip was about, then I was going to keep the channel clear!

I dropped my arms and instantly a guy came up to talk to me. He was selling cds, his cds.  Rap Music.

“I don’t like rap music.”  I told him. “Great, I uncrossed my arms and look what happens!” I thought.

He said, “I know, I know.  The culture is so violent, so full of hate.  I’m trying to change all that.  Look at these titles….we got words like ‘love’, ‘family,’ ‘connection.’  Look, I don’t even want you to buy my cd.  Just take one.  Listen to it.  Then email me at the address on the back and tell me what you think.”

My European adventure was full of moments like that.  I never crossed my arms over my chest and magic seemed to follow me along my trail, right up to Iona and that amazing rock I told you about last week.

So, here I am on the first day of a new adventure.  I learned so much on my last journey about trust, about the kind of listening it takes to navigate on my own so far away from home.  Even at 5:30 this morning when I walked into SeaTac airport, I could feel the travel instincts start to kick in.  I could feel the energy start to percolate.

But what it’s all about?  I have no idea.  Thank goodness.  Much more fun this way.

But I do have an hypothesis born out of that last trip and the discovery that came out of opening my heart on day one and finding that rock on the last leg of my journey.  I believe that there is a connective tissue that binds us all together. I believe it is made of love.  I believe the Earth is an active participant in this web.  I believe that if we could all clue in and listen to each other, we might have a chance of healing this planet and ourselves.

I think going to a third-world country where poverty, and all that comes with it, is rampant and almost validated by the caste system is a great place to study that connection, to test its existence.

I live in a place that is filled with a certain standard of comfort and convenience.  Traveling in Europe, I was in familiar, very westernized territory.  Perhaps it was easy to make the kinds of connections I made there because, in essence, I was fluent in the cultural vocabulary.

It seems important to open my heart and mind to a place and people that will challenge what I know of the world, to discover if, underneath all the differences, we can still feel the same pull, the same thrum, the same global heartbeat.

I know I may be disappointed.  I will surely be stunned by much of what I see, there will be much that will shock and hurt and wound my senses and perhaps my beliefs.

I have no idea how I will test my theory.  I can only travel with my arms by my side, listening to my intuition and my guides, following those “dancing lessons from God” that come from “strange travel suggestions” and observe.

But right now…dinner…in Newark.  Think of it this way, I’m a third of the way to Mumbai!  It sounds much more exotic that way.

Tomorrow

I am headed to bed.  In 6 hours I will get up and head to the airport.  About 24 hours later I will land in Mumbai.

I feel as if the world is about to get smaller and bigger all at the same time.

On the Subject of Gurus

My friend Marianne recently wrote and asked if I was going to Varanasi...actually, she asked if I was going to Benares, which is the old name of Varanasi.  I said "Yes", and wondered why she asked.

She said,  "The city has always caught my imagination as being the mystical center of that spiritual universe."

Well, everything about that sentence hits me like a gentle punch in the gut and makes me want to yell, "YES, YES, YES. Me too.  That's the way I see it too..."

Long before the Beatles went to meet Ravi Shanker India has drawn spiritual seekers like bees to honey.  People don't call India "Mother" for nuthin'.  She's the bosom, heart, soul for billions of folk.  After all, she birthed two of the oldest religions we've got: Hinduism and Buddhism.

I have been wooed at different times in my life by Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as, Sufism, Catholicism, Judaism, Quaker-ism.....

The problem, not really a problem, more like a conundrum, really, with all those "isms" is that I'm not particularly down with the idea of gurus, wether they are called "guru", "sensei", "Pope", 'Rinpoche', "Rabbi."

On the other hand, call someone a "Teacher" and my hesitation goes away.  I love teachers.  I've had some fantastic teachers...both in school and out.  I see teachers everywhere.  I try to value each being I encounter as both a teacher and a student, each relationship, no matter how brief or how long, as an opportunity to learn, to grow.  This is a huge daily practice for me, as I like to do things my own way.

But when a teacher is elevated, or elevates themselves, to the realm of "Guru" I get squeamish, especially when they purport to have the only lesson plan for my personal enlightenment.

It's not the knowledge and wisdom that Spiritual leaders impart that I object to.  I'm just not big on the idea of putting the picture of some famous guy or gal like the Pope or the Dalai Lama on my wall or alter and praying or meditating or self-flaggelating myself "to" or "for" or "in the name of" these other mortal humans who have, lets face it, been coddled and cocooned and isolated from many of the kinds of relationships and interractions (marriage, parenthood, knocking up their girlfriend when they were teenagers, living openly as a homosexual.....) that try us ordinary mortals.

I know, I know...they study their whole lives (or over several lives in the case of the Dalai Lama), they dedicate themselves to the betterment of humanity.  I get it.  I do.  I admire that immensely, deep down into my boots, I admire that, I do.  I think the Dalai Lama is an incredible human being, like Ammachi, the Karmapa, Pema Chodron, Eckhart Tolle.....

I've been blessed to be in the same room with Ammachi and Pema Chodron, though not at the same time.  (Wouldn't that be something?)  Each time there were hundreds of other people in the room, most of them between me and each of these Bodhisattvas, but their calm, their grace, their infinite emotional space and open hearts were astounding, humbling, jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Each of these tiny women filled every nook of the cavernous auditoriums that they sat in with love and, even from so far away,  I felt washed clean by their powerful light and energy.

Each of these teachers/gurus/women have their own distinct style.  Ammachi, a Hindu who is also known as The Hugging Saint, makes you feel warm and safe, the way a small child feels cradled in the arms of their mother and, like a mother would, she feels the pain and heartache and frailty of all of her children and she loves you anyway.  Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, loves without attachment and holds within her emotional embrace the secrets that might help each of us release our own attachments to things that bring us pain and, as it turns out, from things that bring us joy.

I would like to know what each of these women know.  No doubt about it.  But I cannot imagine asking one of them to be my guru or, more likely, one of their disciples to be my guru.  I cannot see putting their picture on my wall as if they were a member of my family...how presumptuous that would feel to me.  I could, actually, go to Ammachi's ashram when I am in India.  It's possible.  I will be right up the road.  I have looked into it, thought about it, wondered if I'm so resistant to the idea of a guru because I really really need one to evolve spiritually.  It could be argued, I'm sure.

But my gut has always said, "no."  "YES," to India. "No" to gurus and ashrams.  Though I think I would like ashram life, that's the funny thing.  I'd love to live for a few weeks or months chanting with hundreds or thousands of other people, meditating our way into our higher minds.  I love the idea of everyone chipping in, doing the dishes, cleaning the floors, making food.  I would welcome the idea of living for a while in community like that.  And I think the discipline of that kind of devotional practice would be good for me.  But when I ponder further, it also makes me feel a little bit like I'd be drinking the kool-aid.

An intuitive woman once told me that, unlike many people who walk a path that was cleared long ago by someone else, I would always feel like I am chopping my way through uncleared jungle with a scythe creating my roadmap one step at a time.  As I am writing this post and "listening" to myself talk about gurus and teachers, I wonder if the method of exploration and discovery that I've chosen is made unnecessarily difficult by my refusal to humble myself in some important way to a guru who has already cleared a path that I could follow.

I have always yearned for a spiritual home, a place that I could hang my hat and settle in.  As I get closer and closer to setting down in India for a few months, I wonder if that home might be in the place, India itself....if "that spiritual universe" populated with galaxies of gurus will hold enough power taken on its own to help me clear my path and get closer to my personal "mystical center", even if I don't choose to cross the threshold of an ashram.  Can I learn how to stop working so hard and settle into the core of myself while reaching out in genuine connection with the divine without explicit guidance from one clear voiced human guide?

Or, might I discover that all my hesitation about elevating one teacher over all the others, about taking a guru, as it were, melts in the heat of India?  Might something about the culture of India crack through my resistance and show me that there is a path already marked out for me and that walking beside me, or slightly ahead is someone far wiser than me into whose hands I can completely and willingly put my spiritual education?

I am trying to hold these questions lovingly, giving myself permission to change my mind as my heart opens and India teaches me, well, whatever it is I'm meant to learn from her.  It would seem, it occurs to me just now, that maybe, just maybe, India is all the guru I will need.  At least for now.

Dressing the Part~A Moment of Complete Frivolity

I've been really stressed out.  I'm having trouble deciding about a couple of medications that some people think are necessary while other experts think they are not worth the money it costs to take them.

Add to this the daily to-do lists that include dozens of little tasks like buying adapters, making copies of important paperwork, telling my insurance guy someone else is looking after the house and my blood pressure gets pretty darn worked up....blah blah blah.

Today I decided to cross off one of the most anxious-making tasks on my to-do list: packing.  I learned on my last long journey that all my stuff becomes heavier and heavier with each consecutive leg of the trip.  I ended up buying a smaller suitcase within the first three weeks, sent some stuff home with my mom a week later, and spent a small fortune shipping two large packages home to myself.  I discovered that, contrary to my normal everyday pack rat tendencies, when I travel, I need to travel LIGHT.

So today I went through the whittling process and came up with a plan that includes a very limited wardrobe of five shirts, two skirts, a slip (with security pockets), one pair of pants, pjs, a "wrap", one pair of sandals, one pair of sneaks, a squashable hat and, of course, some undergarments.

To finalize my choices I started with tops, which had to be paired one at a time with each available "bottom".  At one point I had on a shirt and skirt that I really liked together so I decided to make sure my sandals looked as cute as I thought they would.  Then I had to try out wearing my hair in braids(a la Julie Christie in Heat and Dust.)  I topped it all off with my floppy straw hat.

Suddenly, I was standing in my hallway dressed for a steamy day of sight seeing in Mumbai while the furnace hummed downstairs, cold rain splashed on the windows, wind howled in the trees and I felt both awesome and delightfully ridiculous all at the same time.

Dreams and Omens, The Mystery Begins

You know how, when you learn a new word, that word suddenly starts popping up everywhere?

Well, ever since I decided I needed to go to India, Indian people started popping up everywhere.

The most poignant example of this concerns my dog Toby.

Toby and I dancing in our younger days.

Toby was a great, lovable soul.  He forgave me lots.  He was unbelievably forgiving about my leaving him for 3 months to travel to Europe and, before that, for going to Florida to do a show.  Oh, sure, he'd be a little distant or pull too hard on the leash for a while after I returned to let me know his feelings had been hurt but, all in all, he let a lot slide.  As he got older and began his battle with cancer it became clear to both of us that neither he nor I could stand another long separation while he was still among the living.  This is one of the reasons I didn't achieve my goal of going to India when I was 40.

Last spring, Toby really started to hurt.  I agonized and agonized about when to make THE call to his vet.  One night Toby and I were hanging out in the living room and he was whimpering so much that I just knew it was time.  It being after business hours I called what I thought was an emergency vet I'd been to once before, years ago, but when I arrived to a new address, thinking they'd moved, I found a completely different operation.  The place I ended up was in a little strip mall.  The unpainted walls looked as if they'd just been puttied with drywall caulk five minutes before I walked in. A gorgeous young Indian man greeted me, checked me in, came to get Toby and me from the car when it was time to meet the doctor who was, it turned out, the younger man's father.  The nurse was the doctor's wife.  It was a family business.

The doc took a look at Toby, gave me a surgical option that might have given my pup a few more months, and I decided Toby would not like or understand surgery and a mediocre and temporary recovery.

Putting Toby to sleep was very difficult.  His veins were tired and didn't want to take the anesthesia.  Plus...plus...he was my baby and he was scared and he was leaving me and its always a leap of faith that somehow, somehow your beloved animal will know that its because you love them so much that you are willing to ease their way into the afterlife.

While the doc and his wife struggled to get the chemicals into Toby's system I tried to calm him through tears that grew to intermittent sobbing.  At one point the doc had to go to get some different supplies and left Toby, me and the nurse sitting on the floor.  The lovely Indian woman stroked Toby's head whispering kind words one minute, then she stroked my head and whispered loving words to me...back and forth.  When the doctor returned we all sat together, in a room no bigger than most closets, while the drugs finally did their work.

As soon as it was all over the lovely Indian couple left me so I could say goodbye to Toby but not before hugs were exchanged and parental pleas were made to me not to drive until I had sat for a good long while to recover a bit.

As instructed, I sat in my car for 20 minutes or so flooded with both grief and awe.  I could not have imagined a better set of humans to go through that experience with and I was suddenly aware that now, now I could go to India without leaving Toby heartbroken.

And my heartbreak?

It will mend; I think I know where.

When I drove away I felt certain that the animal clinic would vanish like Brigadoon, so angelic and unexpected were the family I'd met.

Since then I meet someone from India or of Indian origin three or four times a week, which never used to happen before I bought my ticket.  There's always about each encounter the sense of other-worldly intervention, like these souls are little sparks of light meant to convey approval by the universe for my impending departure.

No.  I don't really think the universe is specially creating a web of Indian folk around me just so I will feel better about my crazy decision to up and leave my regular life for 3 and a half months.

I think the universe is creating webs around each of us, sending each of us clues all the time about whether we are on the right track or not....

Last night was the first time I dreamt of India.  I was walking down a road that ran along a bank that bordered a large body of water.  There were three weddings taking place along this lane.  The first had two brides in bright white dresses, blond, both of them, like super-models.  Their entire wedding party was made up of equally stunning women in bright red, monk-type robes, only worn off the shoulder or strapless.

The second couple being married were a very handsome man and woman in their 40s, witnessed by a group of 20 or so men and women.  Everyone was dressed in warm tones and natural fibers and everything about the party felt of the Earth, clean and calm and peaceful.

The third celebration was the third day of a traditional Indian wedding taking place on a Wednesday. (3, 3, 3)  The bride and groom were nowhere to be seen, but members of the congregation were standing both on the road around me and down on the bank, all anxiously awaiting the guests of honor.  One Indian woman next to me spit down below to clear her throat in a manner I associate more with men here in the states.  A British woman down below yelled up, "Do you mind." The Indian woman spit again.

I was reminded of this story my friend Sarah told me years ago about traveling in India by train.  She was sleeping in a seat by the window and she awoke just in time to see a stream of urine passing in front of her eyes.  A young boy child was standing on the seat next to her, peeing out the window.

Down on the beach of the third dream wedding, another woman started singing a sort of call-and-response song, very deep and throaty.  She was pausing every few seconds to take a drag on a very long home rolled cigar.  She would sing sing sing, inhale, sing sing sing, inhale.  The crowd would respond during her inhales.  The whole group was waiting and singing.

Then my phone went off...a text from my cousin...in the real world, and I started to leave the beach, the weddings, India, behind.  I was sad to be drifting towards daylight and I tried lingering in the dusk of the mysterious beach, in the aura of the musky smoke of the sensual singer's song and cigar for as long as my mind would let me.  As my wakeful brain took control, I wondered what my dream might portend.

Omens and dreams are strange things.  All are subject to interpretation.  I've decided that, for now, I will simply report on these misty and ambiguous happenings.

We shall soon discover if these occurrences be omens, or just strange quirks of fate and my imagination.

Closing the Books on the Past To Make Room for the Next Adventure

If you followed my previous long journey when I went to Europe a few years ago you may recall that I kept hinting at a Large Story that I needed to figure out how to write...a story that was the climax of that trip....far too grand a tale, I felt, to wrap up neatly or blog-style.

Well, over the last few years I have been struggling and struggling to put it into writing.  I have no trouble telling the story to friends over bottles of wine, with an hour or two to really flesh it out.  But writing it.....I just couldn't.

After I bought my ticket to India I hired a wonderful life/career coach, Denise Barnes, for four sessions to be spread out over two and a half months to guide and cheer-lead me through the writing process so that I could close the books on the "old" story before setting off to discover a new one.  Funny thing was, even though we got the writing juices flowing pronto and I found a solid voice for the story after the first session, I still couldn't navigate my way through writing the whole tale.

However, Denise did coach me through quite a powerful mental block: she helped me to finally feel confident in my abilities as a "light worker".  With her energetically holding my hand I took the first steps towards believing that I have something unique and valuable to give to the world by virtue of my exploration of it and reporting on it.  All I have to do is trust my gut, take one step at a time, and keep careful notes.

Over the same few months, I made the long-distance acquaintance of another wise-woman, Victoria Pendragon, who has a site that I've followed for the last few years called sacredearthsevenelement.com. I introduced myself because she was looking for free images to replace the copyright protected photos that she used for her cyber tarot deck in order to make a sellable hard-copy deck.  I had a picture that I took on Iona that had always reminded me of her Tower Card; I wrote and asked her if she'd like to trade my image out for her old one.  She did.  This led to several of my travel photos being incorporated into her deck...a high honor for me, as I feel she is a very gifted healer and light worker.

On Sundays Victoria doesn't post her usual daily readings, but sends out tutorials on the meaning of one of her cards.  Yesterday she highlighted The Tower; naturally, she included my photo.  She was gracious enough to give me a shout-out at the end of the post and I wanted to repay her with the history behind the picture.  

Lo and behold, in a matter of minutes I found that I had written The Story.  Granted, it doesn't have all the back-ground I thought it needed in order to be impactful, but it is The Story.    (If you'd like some of the history I might have shared in an oral telling, you can root it out by sifting through the blog posts from the spring of 2008).

So, to close the books on Europe 2008...without further ado...I give you: THE Story (as told to Victoria Pendragon).

A different shot of "The Tower" 

I built that tower at the end of a very long (3 month) quest around the British Isles....a quest I was called to go on, without being given the reason, by the universe.  The night before had been a full moon....I had spent the new moon, two weeks earlier, in Glastonbury casting wishes for clarity and a sense of purpose into the Holy Well....and I was sure that my long awaited epiphany would come to me on the full moon on Iona...I mean, if you can't expect an epiphany there, where can you???

But none had arrived.  No prophetic dreams.  Nothing.

So I'd slogged through the rain and sheep poop across the island to the beach where pilgrims have gone for thousands of years.  This beach is famous for it's pebbles and it was, indeed, covered with millions of the most beautiful pebbles I have ever seen.  

I sat amongst them all, in the rain, building that tower feeling very much at sea and forsaken and at the end of my energetic/spiritual rope.

And I gave up.  I started to walk home.  But then I turned around and decided to walk out into the water on some big boulders (so, surrounded by water, but not IN the water)...

....and I yelled into the surf, "What's it all about?" and I found myself saying out loud, "Love."  

Well, this didn't surprise me because all along my trip I'd been followed by hearts....heart shaped leaves, flowers, wads of gum, puddles, rocks, I had been photographing them for months just to make sure I wasn't going out of my mind:

So, somewhat petulantly, I threw back to the universe, "LOVE...OK...LOVE...I give.  LOVE....".

At the Holy Well I'd "received" a mantra: "Weaving a tapestry, putting in light."  Now, the mantra expanded to: "Weaving a tapestry, putting in light.  Weaving a tapestry putting in LOVE."  I stood on that boulder arms wide open yelling that into the sea.  And then I thought, that's all I can do....my epiphany will obviously come after I get back to the states...maybe years from now...

I began to walk back.  There was a little tidal pool filled with a thousand pebbles, shallow and warm.

So, I decided that the one thing I hadn't done was infuse a prayer into the water....a practice taught to me by a wise man in Australia.  Its a simple practice, you just put your hands in a body of water and say a prayer and by being clear and open-hearted, you infuse that prayer into the water which takes that prayer and sends it around the world.

I said the juiciest prayer ever.  I prayed for peace and love and harmony for everyone I could think of by name and then everyone else whose name I didn't know, as well as for the planet and all its critters.  It was a long long prayer.  Upon occasion my eyes would drift open and I became intrigued by three particular rocks...and when the prayer was done and I was sure that there was no more I could really do to incite an epiphany, an epiphany that was OBVIOUSLY not coming anytime soon...I indulged my curiosity and picked up the three rocks, one at a time.

The first was tiny and white and irregularly shaped with pin prick orange and blue spots on it....I pocketed that one for a kid I nanny upon occasion.

The second looked as if it was going to be heart-shaped....of course, knowing my luck....but it wasn't.

The third was a very ordinary egg shaped rock...grey...with a pink line running down the part I could see...and I love a rock with a wishing line on it.  I picked it up and slowly turned it around to make sure the line connected on the other "side", because we all know...the line has to connect on the other side to be a valid wishing rock....but as I turned it around I realized that it did not circumnavigate the stone...instead it appeared that God had taken a pink sharpie and drawn the outline of a slightly irregular, but Hallmark worthy heart onto the pebble.

I stood up and tried telling myself that that was a perfectly normal thing to find.  That there was nothing at all extra-ordinary about finding a rock with a perfect heart drawn on it amidst millions of other pebbles that don't have hearts...and to find it right after I said a prayer for love into the water right above it...."PERFECTLY NORMAL!"

But as I walked away I suddenly felt as if I'd been punched in the stomach...I doubled over and collapsed to the ground and started sobbing....and I knew in a flood of insight that the Earth had been speaking to me all along the way.  It had been speaking AND listening to me..the whole time.  It had been telling me that Love really is the only answer.  I also believe it was telling me that it can be healed...we can be healed....and the healing starts with love.

Now I don't think I'm special...I think the Earth is speaking to all of us..listening to all of us...I just happened to be in a space where I could pick up on the signals...

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ~Lin Yutang

Lest anyone think that I don't understand that going to India is gonna be a challenge....let me reassure you...I GET IT.

When I tell people that I'm going for three and a half months, they inevitably ask me what I'm going to India FOR, what am I doing to DO there.  My response is always, "I'm going to see India.  Or at least a small part of it."  Sometimes I'll explain that it's a "calling".  But usually I just stop with, "I'm going to see India."

That is the simplest, truest answer.  But just as folks asked me if I was going to Europe "for work or pleasure" a few years ago, people, in their search to understand my quest, tend to try to categorize the reason I might be going to India.  Usually they offer such boxes as "Yoga?", "Meditate?", "Live in an Ashram?", before they get to "Work?", or "Fun?"(for some reason people rarely associate "Pleasure" with India).   When I wrote about fielding that question before going to Europe, I talked then, as I have here in the past week, about being "called" to travel.  But if you read between the lines of that post, you might recognize that I suspect the trip to Europe will turn out to be a great deal of "Pleasure."  And, it was.

My impending journey, on the other hand.....I suspect this trip is very much about "Work."

Starting on a clearly superficial level, let's examine the energy it is bound to take just to be in India for 102 days without a time-out.  I'm a person that is used to my alone time.  I need it.  When I was in high school I used to ask my mom to go to the movies sometimes just so I could have the house to myself.  All I would do is watch tv, or read a book, but somehow just having one other person in a seven room house felt like too much of an invasion of my personal space.  I get sensorially overwhelmed in Fred Meyer if I haven't had the perfect amount of beauty rest.  I sleep with ear-plugs, a noise machine, a fan for more white noise, and a pillow over my ears and that while I live on an incredibly quiet street with house-mates that tend to be asleep before me insuring there will be little banging around to wake me up.  And now I am getting ready to go to one of the most over-populated countries in the world.  It's chock-a-block full of people.  Filled to the gills.  And all those people make sound, fill the streets and, soon, the edges of my personal space.  And I don't think Fred Meyer has anything on the sights, sounds, smells that are going to flood my senses in a constant stream once my plane touches down in Mumbai.

For the last month or so, I've been thinking of that quote above...."No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow"...especially when I wake up, my head cradled by 7 insanely well worn down pillows, on a pillow-top bed, feeling like a princess.  Every picture of every hotel bed in India that I can afford looks only slightly more luxurious than a straw mat.  Ok, I'm exaggerating.  But they tend to be very thin mattresses with one very anemic looking pillow.

I miss my bed already.

But whenever I start to grieve for the soon to be separation from my bed, my thinking expands to a slightly less superficial realm.  I begin imagining all those souls I will encounter who have no pillows, no beds, no walls to shut the world out when they sleep, eat, go to the bathroom.  My mind wonders how in the world I will process (sensory overload aside) the devastating poverty, sickness, filth, and desperation that I've been told to expect.

My friend Jane related a quote from a teacher of hers who said something like, "India will either make you insane or crack your heart wide-open."  I believe it.  And I believe that any place that has that power will take a great deal of energetic work to navigate it without going crazy.  And it will take a great deal of courage to let India into my psyche, to let my heart crack wide-open.

I guess what I'm going to be "doing" in India is learning how let go of what I think I need in order to be comfortable, challenging myself to see India as it is (thanks Zach) without going crazy, making peace with the mosquitoes and the constant stimulation and the massively challenging socio economic disparity, not just between how I live and so many people live in India, but between how so many Indians live in relative opulence while millions of their countrymen live, sanctioned by the caste system, hand to mouth in filth I cannot imagine.  I will be working to understand a culture that is so vastly different than my own without trying to impose my needs and beliefs and worries and sensitivities onto a people that are pretty ensconced in their own needs, beliefs, worries and sensitivities.

In the midst of all of this I will get to see some pretty cool things, hopefully I'll ride an elephant, take some pretty pictures, and do all those things that tourists do for "fun".  But I need to make it clear that this trip feels like a job to me.  A job assigned to me by my soul.  A job that will be hard, challenging, exhausting and, hopefully, very very rewarding.