Its time to resurrect the blog.
I have been writing, I just haven’t been publishing. I needed some time, alone. Alone in my own space and alone with my own thoughts. For a while there I needed to retreat into my own head and my own heart. Seek some silence and stop running.
This travelling, journey of self discovery thing isn’t easy. Everyone imagines that as you swam around exotic countries, conversing with exotic people and sampling exotic food you will feel fabulous. But actually, sometimes you don’t. With no-one else to rely on but yourself, you get to know yourself in an entirely different way – the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. Acknowledging and accepting all parts of yourself is not easy. I hope this doesn't make me sounds like a nutter ;)
Whether it’s a travelling thing or a yoga thing, you become very self aware. You see how your thoughts and your behavior is connected, the patterns in creates in your life and the outcome that these dictate. And just when you think you’re done they keep on coming, like layers of an onion that just keep on peeling.
Since the last post I went into the meditation retreat, only to run away after 3 days having broken all the rules (ie. texting, talking, checking to see if I could get a wifi conncetion in my cell, sleeping in, doing yoga… you name it I did it) because I realised that I had had enough of doing what I felt I ‘should’ be doing, enough of judging myself against what was expected of me (usually self imposed) and enough of sitting still and being quiet – dancing to someone elses tune, acting on what society or our parents or peers dictate? – so, I ran away. Packed my bags, gave back my white uniform and jumped on the next bus back to town. It felt good.
I thought it would be an incredibly spiritual experience, during which I’d feel liberated and enlighted. But I didn’t. There was a war raging inside my head and even living in a temple with monks and nuns, sleeping on hard floors, chanting and meditating for 18 hours a day (with the odd trip to the 7/11 for chocolate milk to break up the day) couldn’t calm the fire that burnt. And, it’s because I kept fueling it – where should I be? Do I want to be in this temple? Or should I be somewhere else? What did I want to do with my life? Where should I go next? This wasn’t really the ‘right’ kind of spiritual experience… I expected to feel more… I dunno, spiritual. If I cannot have a spiritual experience whilst living in a buddhist temple for goodness sake then I clearly I needed to reassess my expectations and have a strong chat with myself.
In short, expectations suck. They alter how you perceive everything. If you have an idealist view in your head about things should be, you’ll always going to be comparing how things are to how you thought things would be. And that creates a massive amount of conflict and duality within.
Clearly, this was something I needed to work on as it was starting to turn into a bit of a theme.
So, I said fuck it to expectation (from this point onwards I will practice the art of having non) and flew down to Koh Yoa Noi – just about the most remote island you could find and did a spot of rock climbing, just because it wasn’t a Vipassana meditation retreat and just because I could.
Then, I spent a very chilled birthday in Chiang Mai – my all time favourite place – and bit the bullet and ended up in India. But not just India – Ladakh.
I have been writing, I just haven’t been publishing. I needed some time, alone. Alone in my own space and alone with my own thoughts. For a while there I needed to retreat into my own head and my own heart. Seek some silence and stop running.
This travelling, journey of self discovery thing isn’t easy. Everyone imagines that as you swam around exotic countries, conversing with exotic people and sampling exotic food you will feel fabulous. But actually, sometimes you don’t. With no-one else to rely on but yourself, you get to know yourself in an entirely different way – the good, the bad and the very, very ugly. Acknowledging and accepting all parts of yourself is not easy. I hope this doesn't make me sounds like a nutter ;)
Whether it’s a travelling thing or a yoga thing, you become very self aware. You see how your thoughts and your behavior is connected, the patterns in creates in your life and the outcome that these dictate. And just when you think you’re done they keep on coming, like layers of an onion that just keep on peeling.
Since the last post I went into the meditation retreat, only to run away after 3 days having broken all the rules (ie. texting, talking, checking to see if I could get a wifi conncetion in my cell, sleeping in, doing yoga… you name it I did it) because I realised that I had had enough of doing what I felt I ‘should’ be doing, enough of judging myself against what was expected of me (usually self imposed) and enough of sitting still and being quiet – dancing to someone elses tune, acting on what society or our parents or peers dictate? – so, I ran away. Packed my bags, gave back my white uniform and jumped on the next bus back to town. It felt good.
I thought it would be an incredibly spiritual experience, during which I’d feel liberated and enlighted. But I didn’t. There was a war raging inside my head and even living in a temple with monks and nuns, sleeping on hard floors, chanting and meditating for 18 hours a day (with the odd trip to the 7/11 for chocolate milk to break up the day) couldn’t calm the fire that burnt. And, it’s because I kept fueling it – where should I be? Do I want to be in this temple? Or should I be somewhere else? What did I want to do with my life? Where should I go next? This wasn’t really the ‘right’ kind of spiritual experience… I expected to feel more… I dunno, spiritual. If I cannot have a spiritual experience whilst living in a buddhist temple for goodness sake then I clearly I needed to reassess my expectations and have a strong chat with myself.
In short, expectations suck. They alter how you perceive everything. If you have an idealist view in your head about things should be, you’ll always going to be comparing how things are to how you thought things would be. And that creates a massive amount of conflict and duality within.
Clearly, this was something I needed to work on as it was starting to turn into a bit of a theme.
So, I said fuck it to expectation (from this point onwards I will practice the art of having non) and flew down to Koh Yoa Noi – just about the most remote island you could find and did a spot of rock climbing, just because it wasn’t a Vipassana meditation retreat and just because I could.
Then, I spent a very chilled birthday in Chiang Mai – my all time favourite place – and bit the bullet and ended up in India. But not just India – Ladakh.
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