Pilgrimage...

I had many ideas about what would happen as I left the north of India and headed to Mysore, the second home I'd established and now possibly the first home, or just home. But none of it came about. I didn't really have definitive things laid out that I actually expected, more like general ideas of some simple things.

Coming to Mysore is very normally a pilgrimage to practice with my teacher from the U.S. But this time I wasn't thinking of it this way since I knew I wouldn't be practicing with him, and really when I look back on it I shouldn't have had any idea of what to expect.

This trip has been anything but whatever it was that I thought was going to happen. It's been much more and in very different ways than I thought it would be.

In the regular seasons that I come I'm expecting much inner work to be done alone with the asana practice, always. It is sometimes very disarming and I expect it to be. In our idea of a pilgrimage, especially when we come from the West and there really is no pilgrimage that is thought of as a normal thing within the community there, you hear about them... people who go up into the Himalayas and have all these insights happen and shifts and changes go on in their body, their mind, their life and often they don't return or when they do they are a very different person than when they left.

That is what I often expect when I'm coming here to practice, and many changes and shifts do happen, but they never seem to stick. This time I came here expecting nothing except getting some insight from my teacher possibly, and practicing at home. But when I come here in the regular season I have many, many friends also here, so I'm occupied with social engagements and the like, have great discussions, learn a lot about a lot of people, and only think I learn a lot about myself.

But being here no, with almost no one I know here other than those I've met since I've been here, and with almost no social engagements leaves a lot of time alone, and a lot of quiet time to sit with oneself and listen to those voices that are so often silenced by the conversation over a meal, or on temple visits. This I have discovered is when the real work happens. When you sit with yourself. Now in theory I've always known this, always respected the idea of those yogis who went into the mountains to meditate and gain insight into the world, or themselves, or for whatever reason they decided they were going away for. And so now I realise when you're going to a place to be alone, to be alone with your practice, to be alone with your chanting, to be alone with your pooja, to be alone with your own mental fluctuations and almost nothing else, then that is the real pilgrimage. So I believe now, for the first time, not the fifth, I'm actually experiencing this. This long elusive thing that I thought I'd encountered before.

Maybe even writing about it in this way diminishes it in some capacity. But when I think about it I've gone long weeks, or days, here without writing at all and just sitting with the things that come up. And I have been sitting also after my evening pooja I feel led to just be in the energy of it for a while, sometimes short, sometimes long, and it's wonderful, disturbing, annoying, amazing, and crazy what is there to be observed. Now for the first time in my life I find myself curios and wanting to embark in a sitting practice. I don't think twice a day as prescribed by vipassana is for me, but possibly at least once a day.

To be with the things that come up and notice them, see how they affect the body and mind physically, emotionally, and still yet just be in observer mode. I'm approaching my asana practice in the mornings in this way already since I've come back to India and it has changed that practice fundamentally, so now its time to expand on it in other ways. Odd to be saying this, and maybe it won't last, and maybe I'll find that this state of being is where I can reside even when I'm walking around town, having a conversation, riding my scooter, etc. Maybe I'll find it's just the way to be in life, in the things but not of them.

Hmmm...