....letters from my friends are part of my connection with "home", even though the sense of home , you are right, is very fuzzy at the moment:
at times it is memories of our previous orderly and comfortable but stressful lives, (Teodora often misses our kitchen where we could cook for ourselves), memories of good times with friends, sometimes it is fantasies about where to settle upon our return to Canada (East or West?) and what kind of life we would want;
at other times we are able to be comfortable with a sense of home that is not defined so much by a geographical location or some routine, or a group of people surrounding us, but is more defined by our inner enthusiasm for learning, exciting experiences and promises of self-development.
I think it may be easier to have an inner experience of home in a psychological or spiritual sense especially in the absence of stable physical environment, in the absence of stable routine.
It is also a challenging experience for me to attempt to feel at home in the country altogether vastly different from anything I have ever experienced before; it is definitely a learning- finding a way to meet a culture we do not really understand with a degree of acceptance, appreciation and kinship ( we are all humans after all!) The biggest challenge for me (Teodora is much braver in this regard)
are monkeys, who keep snaring at me bloodthirstily :-)
Of course, we are home to each other as we move through so many foreign terrains. We are fortunate to be very compatible travellers, enjoying many mutual interests and resonating in terms of energy and needs. For example, we both enjoy quiet times and do not need to rush to experience things (as much as I used to rush and push in my past; nowdays we are happy to allow things to unfold.
May be because for some of our friends we became a symbol of living an exciting life, which is of course a bit idealistic, people often write to us about how busy, stressful or uninspired their life is.
Some people do not write perhaps for the same reason.. May be in part due to that and also because of still fresh memories of our busy life in Toronto, we have no regrets (I checked with Teodora yesterday ) about our decision to travel. "Regret" does not even enter my mind. For sure, there are many uninspiring moments of travelling-dirt, aggressive sale, tiring bus rides, poor yoga and Buddhist teachers, disillusionment with "spiritual" India etc, yet the enormous luxury of time, space, novelty has been amazing.
It has been an enormous gift for both of us to have this time to learn about ourselves, each other, us as a couple, reflect about our roots, Canadian culture, our life style and previous aspirations aganst the backdrop of India. It is funny, but the strongest fear that comes up for me at this stage, is the fear of returning to the life I had before. I just cannot imagine anymore the inhumane speed, the politics, the amount of pressures, the lack of spiritual. I think it will take a few years for me before I am able to shed my identity of a psychotherapist, yet it is clear to me that I am not missing a bit having therapy practice-it is increasingly clear to me-I had enough of that. Well at least for a loooong now. So, with this realization, comes a question-what is next?
I think the biggest gift of our situation is that we do not have to push ourselves into some new hastily manufactured mold, new career, new business, but have some time to play, to fantasize, to try a few things (like photography, writing, yoga etc) and to begin to learn about which phantasy come as a response to fear of survival (what will we do when we back in Canada and have little money?) You may laugh as one attempt to answer this fear was at some point to buy four expensive Pashmina shawls to sell in Canada...anyways, whether it is fear or not, the phantasies so far for me revolve around teaching meditation and yoga as ways of helping people to integrate spirituality in to their life, and creative things-photography, writing, music, painting etc..
It was very exciting for me to explore connection between arts and meditation at the conference in Bir, where I indulged in Calligraphy, Ikebana, Hailku writing and even had my hands on a potter's wheel!!! It seems I could play with all those yummy arts for hours on end.
perhaps, just like a turtle is bound to grow a new shell, the exact replica of the old one, all my
experiments will ironocally terminate in some replication of my previous external circumstances. Although it does sound pessimistic, and of course my hope is for a radically different life style and a sense of home, even in the "same old shell" scenario, I would like to imagine that the inner experience of having lived in fluid waters for a while, will affect the new stage of ossification. Time will tell...
