Time for contemplation

Manny Muros:

I had been looking forward to my time alone but I’ve had quite a bit of apprehension about it. I have never spent this much time on my own. The four weeks journeying with Mark have been amazingly special. It was great to share the intensity of the travel and the constant humorous unknowns. We were always there to cover each other and a good complement for one another….. Now I have begun another more inner journey….

I am slowly settling into a routine here in Palolem. I get up around 7:00 am, have a chai tea at the hotel’s outside restaurant. At around 8:00 I go on a long walk on the beach over to a makeshift yoga studio and take a class from 9:00 till 11:00, with a very nice young Indian teacher who could use some Anusara alignment training. I am having a hard time not getting up in the middle of class and assisting the other students… But I am not doing it!!! There is a great group of British guys who attend class and then we all hang out for breakfast at the Blue Planet health food restaurant….

The afternoon is too hot for the beach with sunny, over 90 degree weather. So it’s become my time to connect with home and then I head to my room for meditation. Around 4:00 its back to the beach till sunset…. Then I clean up and head out to dinner usually ending the evening with a late night walk on the beach….

The interesting part is that I am spending the bulk of my day on my own, on purpose. The beach and everywhere I go is full of European visitors… There is constant energy flowing around me and yet I am choosing to stay mostly contained in myself…. The only time I am finding difficult is having dinner alone.

Tonight I am meeting the British guys for dinner…. They are an amazing group who are in their early 40’s (and look like 20’s & 30’s, with peaceful, intense eyes and a great sense of humor). They are all intense Vipassana meditation practitioners and total world travelers…. I describe them as a group but none of us knew each other until a few days ago. We are all traveling separately and we started to gather after class.

These 2 weeks will be about “being”…. I am in southern India, surrounded by Europeans, in a beautiful warm beach and nothing to do but enjoy it all….