Not So Holy

The dengue fever really wiped me out.
Two days after the fever broke I decided that I needed to lay in the sun. Very slowly I climbed the steps up to the roof parapet. Shaking from the effort I lay on the concrete wall. I fell asleep. I rolled over and woke suddenly as I fell off my perch. And thought I was falling 20' to the concrete courtyard. I yelped "Oh shit!" as I fell 18" to the ground. How holy was that? I laughed and laughed. Gandhi said "Ram Ram" as he was shot. There was the difference between holy and my fake holy. It took weeks before I was able to function normally. But that close to death, and the focus on death, and the pain experienced all changed my life. I was prepped for death from here on, so all I had to do was to live.

• "Everything you need is provided."


• "Everything you are looking for you will find."


• "Everything you are looking for is divine."

The place I was living was provided, what I was looking for I was finding, and this looking place was a holy spot with an altar and all.

Getting Sick

I mentioned in the last blog that I got sick. I got dengue fever. Also called bone-break fever.
Ha. What a joke. I spent twenty years traveling throughout Central and South America looking for spots that had dengue fever. I figured wherever there was dengue fever there was remoteness. I never expected it in Varanasi, India. How remote could a city of 7 million be?
Both were trips searching based. Both were highly successful in their own way.
During the 8 weeks preceding the dengue episode I meditated on my own death. And I mean sitting for four-six hours/day. Focused on death of the body, awareness of the moment of death, fear of death, awkwardness of detritus after death. I sweated bullets in the stifling heat of Assi Ghat. I was determined to personally confront this stuff. Then I almost died.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
The meditating for such extended times helped in more than emotional/psychological ways. I am a fat American woman of 50 years old. Sitting in the lotus position was excruciating (and for some reason I had to meditate "authentically" and twist my legs in a figure 8 on my lap with my spine as straight as a stack of coins). I had to deal with this pain on a daily basis. Dengue fever feels as though each bone in your body has been broken. Your finger bones, your collarbone, your toe bones, your leg bones, your face bones. Every bone broken. Your eyeballs hurt. And a wicked fever.
How providential that I had done all of the prep work.
As I lay in the bed, prepping for my death, I laughed about the 20 year hunt for dengue in the jungles of South America. I laughed at the prep work happening at the perfect time. I laughed because i was going to die aware.
There was blood coming out of my ear on day 4.
I got seriously focused at this point.
Then, after 7 days, the fever broke, and I was still alive.
I decided that I had attained holy. That feeling only lasted for two days.

What am I doing here?

       I started taking lessons in Hindi, but had a feeling that that was not all I was here for. I was searching for something. I had no positive feelings about religion, yet I was in the middle of the holiest places on earth. One day a young boy handed me a brochure of a man teaching yoga. Not hatha yoga, but other kinds. So for six months I sat with him several hours every day, took Hindi lessons, and meditated. It wasn't doing the trick. But I felt that I was on the right path.
       Back during the trio trip we had gone to Kenchi to see a holy woman. Before we left on the trio trip to India I asked Jenny what I should talk to with this woman if we met her. Jenny said to pretend that she was god and ask her anything you want to. Well, at that time I was still stuck on the hiking-New-Zealand idea, and the only question that I could think of to ask god was "Where is the most beautiful place in the whole world?" Now really. How lame is that? So we got an audience with god, and I went to ask the question, and I knew. I didn't open my mouth. I knew everything. For a brief second I felt that I was flooded with an indescribable amount of space. Damn if I can describe it. There was nothing to ask.
So, during this time of Hindi lessons, Yoga lessons and meditation I knew that there was something else out there.

I eventually got tired of the yoga teacher, meditated until I got sick, and kept up with the Hindi lessons, smoked many a chillum with itinerant babas, boated the Ganges, bathed in the Ganges, did 108 Hanuman Chalisas, had chai every morning as the sun rose on the steps of the ghat. Then I went to Nepal to chill out before heading back to the states. Then back to India. Back to Varanasi. What was I doing? What was I doing here?

Surrender

I forgot to mention that before I took off on the solo India trip I had decided to surrender. I was already surrendering to this voice in my head

• "Everything you need is provided."


• "Everything you are looking for you will find."


• "Everything you are looking for is divine."

There was something about this trip that made me want to surrender to the experience. I sweated bullets on the flight over. All of my fears were surfacing. What if .... What if .... What if .... The flight was a blur until the hotel room in Bangkok when I saw Asheville on the screen. I awoke to experiencing the sequence of events. Kinda. Sometimes.
      The taxi ride to the hotel was a perfect overwhelming shock. But deep inside I was thrilled and sure that I was in the right place at the right time. The hotel was facing the Ganges. My room had a balcony facing the river. There was a grimy restaurant in the reception area with dog eared paperbacks. Everyone spoke English. I was shaking from excitement that first day. Now. What was I doing here? I spent several days in the room, on the balcony, trying to figure this absolute insane passion I suddenly had for Varanasi. What was I doing here? Why this very spot?
I went out on the fourth day just walking around the neighborhood. I saw buffalo walking in the street. I saw an elephant walking in the street. I heard bells, and shouts and cries. I smelled feces and urine and curry and spices. All of this at once. So many people. It was a blur. I turned a corner and bumped into a man. It wasn't until years later that I knew how rare this was. This was the only time, of all my time in India, that I ever had physical contact with another person.
       Anyway. We bumped. He looked at me, cocked his head "Oh, are you here for Hindi lessons?" Here it was. My desire was not to have Hindi lessons. I felt my face blanch and my heart sink as I croaked out "Yes." I was surrendering. I was starting the trip.

Arrival

The plane trip was boring, but the trip was broken up in Thailand with a night in the fancy airport hotel. As I walked into the room I remember thinking "I am so far away from anything that I know ...." I turned the tv and the channel was set to BBC. They were having a program about small town USA politics. The small town was Asheville, NC. My previous (for 30 years) hometown. How far was far? Was anything far?
There was an element of humor in this whole trip.
In the trio trip to India the previous year, we had the same experience. In walking down the hill in very southern India, (Kanyakumari) we were joking that we were extremely removed from all that we knew. We turned the corner and there was "Dirty Dancing" being shown at a local restaurant. Filmed very close to Asheville. We were "gob smacked." Once again India was making fools of us.
So another example that my idea of truth was something I couldn't believe in, here in India.
I didn't even know what I was searching for.
Finally landed in the Varanasi airport. Took a taxi to the only hotel I knew. Passing jeeps with bodies wrapped in glittering cloths on the roof. Huge heat. Huge noise. Huge confusion. And the thought that I had really screwed up.

Internal voice

I went to Taos and learned about the way to behave in a temple. I asked old hands at India travel how I could contribute to the experience. "Learn to smoke a chillum" was the answer.
I still was not committed to the search until one day in a small park in Atlanta, Georgia. I was at a party. The house was crowded and the sound level was high. I walked outside and wandered into a park. Standing by a broken jungle gym a voice started shouting. But the shouting wasn't really shouting. The sound was coming from inside of my head. It was a powerful, modulated, forceful voice. Nothing I had ever heard before. I was so startled that I grabbed a pencil and looked for a piece of paper to write this strange message down. Looking down at my feet there was an advertisement "Get Your Sexy Fast". I wrote down the exact words.
"Everything you need is provided"
"Everything you are looking for you will find"
"Everything you are looking for is divine"
I was astonished. I took those words and believed them. Packing for the year long trip I chanted "everything is provided" and brought only a small backpack. And took the plane, believing that I would find everything that I was looking for.

Trio Trip to India

Finally went to India with two friends. We hardly spoke to each other by the end of the trip. I hated India from the first moment. It was everything horrible that I was afraid of. Poverty, filth. I couldn't see past these dislikes and fears. Then we ended up in Varanasi on the last three days after a 2 month trip. I had to return. It was visceral. I had to return. At this point I went back to the States, separated from my girlfriend of 15 years, left the business, and prepped to return to India by myself. This would be the real trip. I took a two week course in Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain with the intention of seeing more clearly. I took a 3 month course in Bikram's Yoga with the intention of being fit to experience India in a strong and healthy way. I traveled across the United States trying to learn the Hanuman Chalisa, learn how to meditate. I laughed all the way. I was trying so hard to be holy. I walked naked into the desert to meditate, and sat on an ant hill. That was how this part of the trip went.

Knock on the door

One day, after I had been searching for a while with ecstasy, astrology, Tarot, and I Ching, came a knock on the front door. Someone I had never met was at the door with a casual friend. They had brought an apple pie over because they had heard I was going to India. I wasn't. I had no intention of going there. I had saved up for ten years to go to New Zealand hiking. They were convinced I was going to India.
They kept insisting that it wouldn't cost me anything to tack New Delhi on to my RTW (round-the-world) ticket.
Yes, I went to India. But that's another chapter. There was some prep time ahead of the physical trip.

Estatic Trips

During the next year twelve women would take ecstasy once a month. Sometimes individually. Sometimes together. I usually ended up on a couch, covered in blankets with headphones on as I traveled. We would talk during the next week about our respective trips. We were close before the journeys, became very close during that year, then drifted apart.
I kept traveling. So did Deb-Ma.
Each woman's trip was unique. Some trips were terrifying. Some were funny. Some were touching. Mine were, unlike anyone else's, sequential. I would pick up the trip where I left off. Twelve chapters of a fantasy tale about Lilith, and apples and a polar bear called "Strength".

Massage

For the first time in my life I went to have a massage. Deb told me she was having visions as she massaged my feet. She said that it was important that I take a drug from a woman who was living in a trailer. It would only be available that night. I went to her trailer, took the drug and started the trip that continues today.
The drug was ecstasy. Taken with much love, gratitude and attention, by myself, after a warming chamomile tea, cuddled in a quilt in her trailer bed. No music. No nothing except for a feeling of calm. I slipped into a dream.

I was wearing a blue dress with a belt, a wide brimmed hat, silk stockings and heels. I had a heavy gold charm bracelet on my right wrist. A white leather pursein my left hand. I stood on a train platform, hearing the sound of engines. The hiss of steam. The squeal of steel on steel. I knew that I had just gotten off of the train. The hem of my dress swirled behind me with the breeze of passing trains. The air was damp. The sun was shining at the left end of the platform. The concrete platform was lined, both left and right, as far as I could see, with very young men in Nazi uniforms. I knew where I was, in time and place. Berlin 1942. I was being escorted. I was to review the troops. I walked the line of officers (they were all so young!), putting my hand on each of their hearts, over rough wool uniforms. I looked in their eyes, and opened my heart to theirs. And wept inside.And gently smiled outside.

20 years later and that dream is as fresh as a hot biscuit just out of the oven.

Starting the trip

Before I start out on a trip I pack a bag. Unconsciously I spent 42 years accumulating stuff for this trip. It was a mental/emotional backpack overstuffed with desires and fears.

Growing up there was little or no religious emphasis. The chauffeur would take my brother , me and the nanny every Sunday to the Grace Episcopal Church. Very high Episcopal church. We stopped when I insisted that we would no longer go if our parents didn't attend. As a child I wrote compositions about past lives. One was about being a tick in a previous life. I worried all through high school about god and time and scale. Was god change, the only constant? What if our known universe was the same scale as human to ant to some hugely perceptive being. Atoms::universe::? Was this what people were talking about when they mentioned god? Then there were the brief flings with churches. Looking. It was all about men in the churches and the mosques and synagogs. They weren't speaking my language.

I left off looking and tried to fit into society. Had debutant parties, gave up nature for a wedding gown, practiced housewifely duties, had four miscarriages, fell in love with a woman on a road trip to South America, and left any attempts at fitting into society. It took 20 years more before I resumed the search.

Self Referential

I
With whom do I have internal conversations ?
What if the conversations stopped?
What will happen if there is no thinking, planning.....only present?
What if I surrendered?
What will happen? Who/what is happening? To whom?
Who is I?
Who am I?