Thank you India!
Manny Muros:
It is 4:30 am and I am at the Bangalore airport, tired, red-eyed, and feeling both completed and exhausted…. My heart is full of gratitude…. I had spent the previous night in a sleeper bus (12 hours) traveling from Goa to Bangalore….. I can feel my breath slow and calm, deep in my belly. There is very little energy/tension in my being.
There is a European woman sitting next to me holding a book from Sri Baba avatar. Her eyes remain close for quite some time as she listened to a CD. When she opened her eyes and made contact with me I asked her if she had been at Sri Baba’s ashram. She answered that she had just completed 13 days there and then asked, Who are you? …. She went on to tell me that as I walked over to sit down next to her, she felt my vibration engulf the room and she saw a vision of Shiva dancing as her eyes closed in contemplation… and then she asked again, Who are you?… What a gift to be acknowledged in such an unexpected manner!!!
Who am I? What a beautiful question… a question that took Ramana Maharashi all the way to enlightenment…. Ramana Maharashi’s ashram was the 1st stop for Mark and me. We meditated in the caves that the Maharashi spent 20 years in meditation and his most famous teaching is the inquiry Who am I?
As unusual and powerful as this encounter was for me it was also part of what I have come to expect from my time in India. Better yet, I’ve learned to expect nothing and to be open to receiving the unimaginable….
So much has been experienced in these last six weeks. It feels it has been much longer since I left home, since I have seen the faces, the eyes, of those I love. So much has changed in me and yet it is all the same…. My feet are more solid on the Earth, my breath is slower, my love and compassion is deeper… My being has grown in maturity.
Not sure how or what will be different once I am back home with the currents of my old life… What my relationship will be with the expectations placed on me… Will I slow the world around me to my pace, to my peace?
I have traveled around India self-contained and in my natural way of being. Assessing the reality of each moment and gracefully moving thru each moment’s grace and challenges…. Fully aware of my role as a traveler, passing thru the landscape, thru the moments of time, peacefully awaiting the next experience and gently letting go of the one that ends.
All of us have things we believe that, if we could change them, then life would be fine, easier, all would just work out…. More money, a good partner, a better job…. But it is our inner-self that needs to change. The peace, the joy, the contentment lies inside, irrelevant of the external environment. But, as we change from within, our relationship to the world changes for us and for those traveling with us…. This is the true gift of spiritual practice and an expanded awareness…. The whole world is there waiting to be received, waiting to be seen in all of its magnificence!
I am very grateful for the magical experience that India has given me, and I am also quite happy to be back home with my large and beautiful soul family.