Day 139 – how sweet the sunshine

My last day in India. I am content to just be here right now. I don’t need to go anywhere or do anything. From 7am when I get up it takes about two hours to do my morning Sadhana but only fifteen minutes is trying to meditate. It is such a struggle that I just give up. I don’t know why it has become so difficult, why I get so easily distracted. I feel like there is an element missing. It’s like I am trying to pick something up but my hands are full. My mind feels stiff, like it is swollen. Flopping down on the bed, I realise that I have not yet found the one thing that can take me to samadhi. I keep practising, though, because the only way to go is forward but I when I feel exhausted and frustrated like this I wonder if I am not moving in the opposite direction. This whole time I have said that I am not searching for a guru. Whether I am ready or not, I have no idea but knowing I don’t come from this culture of guru/student learning I have not considered it seriously. The word guru literally means “one who dispels the darkness”, taking the student into the light. I don’t feel like I am in darkness, I feel as though my path has been illuminated all along, but perhaps the sky is overcast? Maybe I do need a spiritual guide?

Reading The Journey Home, by Radhanath Swami, I come across a passage in which Swami first meets his guru. ‘I felt that all of the events of my life thus far had been conspiring to bring me to this point.’ How often I have felt this, especially here in India. This journey has been so much more than ‘finding myself’. This has just been the beginning of a much deeper journey that is taking place, a a much more uphill path that I am destined to walk. Like the high altitude trek to Gaumukh, the air is thinner but it doesn’t matter because the view is breathtaking anyway.

The questions has been asked in coming to India; Who Am I? Everything now is about answering that questions. As I move through the world, she shares her beauty, wisdom and magnificence, teaching me and guiding me. Perhaps the rising sun can be my guru, the ocean my comfort, the wind my master and the earth my mother?

How sweet the sunshine

How soft he wind

How gentle the whisper

Calling me home

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