Oh India...

I am finding myself talking in broken english in my head, occasionally with a dutch or english or italian or isreali accent... sometimes hindi.

What happens to me here?  What draws me back here, beats the shit out of me, and then softly and lovingly resists me leaving?

I spent yesterday with my beautiful friend Evelyn, and we walked with a saddhu down to sit below the road, next to the river (the river Ganga) where they all live.  This saddhu is one of the few left here with a real light in his eyes.  He is sweet and desperately thin and peaceful and light.  We trust him, so we follow him to sit for awhile.  As we land and speak with him and his friends, he just softly glows.  His friends take turns talking to us and lecturing about spirituality and life, as they pass the chillum pipe and speak wisdom in their broken english.  They are quite perceptive.  It was a magical couple of hours.  Dirty, smelly, hard, peaceful, sweet, honest...  Painfully honest.  One man and I take turns telling stories of the mountains and bears.  Then he tells me to spend more time looking very deeply inside.  It is the theme of the trip, and the root of my motivation to move - I need space and freedom for what is deeply me to re-create my outer life.  He also says "God doesn't see you making good, God doesn't see you making bad, God sees you making karma."  Well said!  Karma is action, and the Buddha spoke of this beautiful thing called paticca samuppada - it is basically the idea that everything we do/think/feel/know arises co-dependently with the world around us.  This is true most overtly with the things/people close to us, but also true on larger levels - it is the basic understanding of complexity.  Since karma is action, this saddhu's statement comes back to the basic idea that we are constantly co-creating in an intricate complex web, and contributing to the appearance and momentum of reality.  I do not think there is ultimately a right or wrong, but there is this fleeting moment of experience, and karma is the understanding that what I experience and how I experience it changes with each thought, word, deed... So I am choosing again, surrendering even more deeply, breathing a bit more honestly... 

So back to my question, what does India do to me?  Why do I return and relish it all?  In the midst of it, as I was being digested and seeing and experiencing the deepest of my uncertainty, I questioned it...  And thank GOD, because I don't think I could have seen those deeply rooted uncertainties at home.  I am always holding space in Boulder, teaching Yoga, leading workshops... it's absolutely wonderful, but you've got to dig into the shit in order to be fertilized with good mulch, eh?  Yeah.  I went all the way there.  And now I land back, another level deeper.  Distilled to the center of my being, then finding more hidden little (or big?) barriers, then finding myself distilled even deeper and more honestly.  I feel better then I have in months.  Life is so incredible, and I am so thankful for the work this country (land, culture, people...) does on me, and for my willingness to do it.

I spend time volunteering with these orphan kids, and this incredibly strong woman who runs the orphanage, Dhwaba, reminds me very concretely that we can cause social action, we can cause big change, and it's not that hard.  She is inspiring in a very specific way.  It was a very good reminder of social responsibility in a world where I spend a fair amount of time living in a realm outside of body.  Yet my whole study, my whole sholarship is about truly deeply integrately the sacred, the truth as one finds it, into the body, with the Earth, and into community.  Why else could we be here?  I do not believe that Earth is a school to be trashed and transcended - I think we have the gift of a body for a reason - transcend but then (as Indian Yoga teachers would say..) try harder, try better... take it deeper.  Bring that unity consciousness or even better nondual, bring that deep practice DOWN into daily life, and then wade through the dirty flood waters, see the dragonflies as they swarm around you, breathe the scent of flowers so deeply that everything else disappears for that instant, and then inhale the chemicals you clean with... check it all out - all of it, with that sacred lens.  I don't think there is right or wrong, but there is certainly an incredible knowing to be found through dedication, through honest intentions of surrender, and through deep breath and deep wilderness.  And there's nothing quite like truly beholding a flower and her scent.

What does India do to me?  I guess it reminds me, it boldy pulls away all of my protection and humbles me until I surrender to the beauty that lies at the heart of my being.  And then I love it back, brilliantly.

I have so many stories to tell, but for now I can barely remember them - I am just relishing in re-membering me.

Thanks for visiting my little pocket of reality for the moment =)

Love and blessings,

Kelly~