Sunday, July 9, 2000

I don't know what I'm about to write, but I feel I should write something, so here goes.

This last month in the Premvarni Ashram has been very tough for me. Some of my biggest fears have come true about living without joy, focusing on negativity and sense mortification, and pushing myself to an extreme from which I rebel.

Now that it has become a past experience rather than a present one, I am trying to put it in perspective, seeing what I can learn from it, and maybe what I already have learned from it.


Deva and I found a turtle on the path, and I kept it as a pet for a few days.


There were a lot of factors which made the experience a challenge emotionally. There were many communication difficulties, great and small; some due to language and cultural differences, some due to my own inflexibility of thought and resistance to relying on the ambiguity of "common sense" (which Swamiji continuously told me to use, instead of answering my questions). Miscommunications aside, there were also plain old negative communications -- in some of his old lectures, Swamiji describes his style of teaching using a metaphor: in order to create a diamond from coal, you must apply much pressure. This pressure has been applied by frequently, if not quite constantly, pointing out my negative and selfish motivations. While intellectually interesting to the introspective, it doesn't take long before the mind closes to these insights in a state of stubborn defiance. Ironically, his main message in the midst of these biting criticisms was that I need to open my heart and think of others before myself.


Jyoti, always kind, helping me take the wheat to be ground into flour. I gave her some mosquito repellant as a goodbye gift.
Regretfully, I was usually too caught up in fuming about a recent admonishment or worrying about a future one to fully enjoy the variety of experiences I was getting in the process. Tending the fire and collecting milk from the village were simple tasks in which I took refuge, and barking at monkeys to keep them away from the mango trees gave me a certain lightness of spirit. Working with Jyoti, my eleven-year-old-karma-yogi-angel, was always a joy...she was often in charge of teaching me how to do things, even though she spoke no English. Even washing the unaccountably multitudinous amount of dishes that came out of the kitchen every day never really got old.

Second to the geologically-proportioned pressure on my ego, the biggest burden was the distinct lack of unaccounted time. What started as four hours of officially scheduled personal time per day was whittled down to two and a half; and even that was, in practice, always taken up by finishing a task I hadn't done quickly enough or starting something new. For someone accustomed to twenty-four hours of free time per day, this was quite a shock. Anyway, Swamiji says I am not yet free from freedom. Darcy, in a recent email, reminded me of one of her favorite quotes to the same effect: "Freedom is dancing in chains," says Nietsche. The point, which I have yet to learn, is that true freedom comes not from what your activities are or are allowed to be, but from your state of mind -- from within.

So...there are a couple of big questions left over after this brief recapitulation and analysis. One is, have I actually learned anything from this experience? I don't mean intellectually; rather, have I grown in awareness? Right now I feel spiritually drained, not invigorated like I would hope to be after such strong lessons. Which leads to my next question: is the tough-love teaching style really necessary? I've managed to learn many things with softer-handed teachers...but of course I was always learning through the ego, not learning detachment from the ego. So I can imagine an argument supporting it, I guess I'm just hoping there are easier alternatives. On the bright side, I think I've gained a little insight into how people manage to get fulfillment out of an environment like the army -- something I never would have predicted I would discover studying Yoga -- merely making it through the experience requires developing a certain amount of personal strength.


Tomorrow I fly to Bankok. Surprised? Me too. The chain of events leading up to this spontaneous excursion began on January 27th, when I got my six-month visa from the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. My error was that I forgot that the time limit begins on the date of issue, not the date of entry. The mistake would have cost $50 to fix by buying a new visa in S.F., but by procrastination I've turned it into a $330 trip to Thailand. By measure of how much I'm looking forward to the trip, it seems like I might have done the right thing in retrospect; for a few weeks I can trade in my chana masala for pad thai. Whoops, I let slip my true motivation...