The One Where It All Comes Together...
So this last leg of my trip has been nothing short of miraculous. It’s the one time I'd not filled every available second with anything spiritually or physically challenging. So it's with some incredulity that I have to report that it’s here in Anjuna, this out of season beach resort, that I’ve begun to find some of the peace and closure that I’ve been searching for for a very long time. For the sake of convenience I kinda pin-point to when my Dad and Jason both died last year, but the truth is that the unhappiness has been around for way, way longer than that. It's just that in the past I’ve just found all kinds of ways to distract myself from it all.
The whole purpose of my trip to OshoWorld was to learn how to counter the negative voices in my head and heart that have plagued me for years. Sadly, for an assortment of previously documented reasons, it didn’t happen there at all. That’s not to say I didn’t get something out of the experience, just that I didn’t get what I went there for. The haircut and tattoos are things I don’t regret about my time in Pune! I also used the time to kick-start my exercise routine and that is fabulous too.
After that I went to the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to do what I thought would just be a good re-introduction to the world of Iyengar yoga up in Dharamsala. On my first day on the course, the instructor went through all of our registration forms and asked us all about what we’d listed as our illnesses. When it came to me and the Lupus - he simply said ‘Maybe if you loved yourself a bit more, your body wouldn’t be attacking itself’. There was an audible gasp from the entire class at his bluntness but I couldn’t disagree with his summation. He told me to buy Louise Hay’s “You Can Heal Your Life” and read it while I was doing his course.
That afternoon I tracked it down in McLeodganj and turned to the bit where she gives the mental causes for physical problems. The diagnosis for Lupus totally summed me up! I know she was on the button because I got really bloody angry with her, her stupid book and the stupid yoga teacher!
As the week went on and as I pushed myself harder and harder in the class, I was also pushing through my mental resistance to facing up to my own responsibilities as I read through the book. The more I read the more I saw through some of the airy fairy stuff and got to the common-sense that lies beneath. The book was affecting the effects of the yoga too, as I did backbends I found myself in floods of tears. I was told later that when you do those moves they have they effect of opening up the chest, and as mad as it sounds I know that I felt the thick brick walls I’ve built around my heart in recent years begin to crack as I opened up.
As the second week of yoga continued I lost a bit of faith in the teacher to be honest, by day two it became a philosophy class, and it was the world according to him - God spare us from small men with huge egos! - so when the cramping and the shits that are automatic by-products of the majority of Dharamsala cuisine got beyond bearable I gave up on the classes. I spent my last few days in the Temple doing a bit of chanting, and attending English conversation classes with the Monks. I found time to finish the quick read-through of the book as Ms Hay instructs, and with Goa coming up I planned to go through it all again, this time in far greater detail.
Well guess what folks, that’s exactly what I did. My first nine days were spent on the beach making copious notes, reading and re-reading and doing a whole lot of thinking about how I treat myself.
You know, when I was here in Goa at the beginning of this trip, a girl at the Saturday Night Market said to me “Forget Osho, spend three months here, it’ll do you more good”. I’m starting to think she may well have had a point. Having said that, I feel I needed to go on the external journey in order to be able to begin the inner one.
About seven days in I noticed small changes, the work I’d done began to show results. Yes, it has happened that quickly! I guess it comes quickly when you're ready for it eh? I’m working really hard to silence my inner critic - or at least being mindful enough to notice when I’m being hard on myself for no reason. As hippyish as they appear, I've been doing the affirmations and using a lot of energy to be kind to myself.
It hasn't all been navel-gazing though, I’ve been pro-active too. I’ve been allowing myself to dream and plan for my future, and reaching out to people I’d kinda lost contact with for one reason or another over the years. It feels good to take chances again, I feel alive!
I came here wanting to lose the sad, sick me that I’d become and find the old me, the one who got excited about the daftest things, who trusted people enough to give them at least a couple of chances, who was happy to wake up in the morning. Until 15 days ago I feared that I’d been expecting the impossible, but then bugger me, it’s happened!
The whole purpose of my trip to OshoWorld was to learn how to counter the negative voices in my head and heart that have plagued me for years. Sadly, for an assortment of previously documented reasons, it didn’t happen there at all. That’s not to say I didn’t get something out of the experience, just that I didn’t get what I went there for. The haircut and tattoos are things I don’t regret about my time in Pune! I also used the time to kick-start my exercise routine and that is fabulous too.
After that I went to the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to do what I thought would just be a good re-introduction to the world of Iyengar yoga up in Dharamsala. On my first day on the course, the instructor went through all of our registration forms and asked us all about what we’d listed as our illnesses. When it came to me and the Lupus - he simply said ‘Maybe if you loved yourself a bit more, your body wouldn’t be attacking itself’. There was an audible gasp from the entire class at his bluntness but I couldn’t disagree with his summation. He told me to buy Louise Hay’s “You Can Heal Your Life” and read it while I was doing his course.
That afternoon I tracked it down in McLeodganj and turned to the bit where she gives the mental causes for physical problems. The diagnosis for Lupus totally summed me up! I know she was on the button because I got really bloody angry with her, her stupid book and the stupid yoga teacher!
As the week went on and as I pushed myself harder and harder in the class, I was also pushing through my mental resistance to facing up to my own responsibilities as I read through the book. The more I read the more I saw through some of the airy fairy stuff and got to the common-sense that lies beneath. The book was affecting the effects of the yoga too, as I did backbends I found myself in floods of tears. I was told later that when you do those moves they have they effect of opening up the chest, and as mad as it sounds I know that I felt the thick brick walls I’ve built around my heart in recent years begin to crack as I opened up.
As the second week of yoga continued I lost a bit of faith in the teacher to be honest, by day two it became a philosophy class, and it was the world according to him - God spare us from small men with huge egos! - so when the cramping and the shits that are automatic by-products of the majority of Dharamsala cuisine got beyond bearable I gave up on the classes. I spent my last few days in the Temple doing a bit of chanting, and attending English conversation classes with the Monks. I found time to finish the quick read-through of the book as Ms Hay instructs, and with Goa coming up I planned to go through it all again, this time in far greater detail.
Well guess what folks, that’s exactly what I did. My first nine days were spent on the beach making copious notes, reading and re-reading and doing a whole lot of thinking about how I treat myself.
You know, when I was here in Goa at the beginning of this trip, a girl at the Saturday Night Market said to me “Forget Osho, spend three months here, it’ll do you more good”. I’m starting to think she may well have had a point. Having said that, I feel I needed to go on the external journey in order to be able to begin the inner one.
About seven days in I noticed small changes, the work I’d done began to show results. Yes, it has happened that quickly! I guess it comes quickly when you're ready for it eh? I’m working really hard to silence my inner critic - or at least being mindful enough to notice when I’m being hard on myself for no reason. As hippyish as they appear, I've been doing the affirmations and using a lot of energy to be kind to myself.
It hasn't all been navel-gazing though, I’ve been pro-active too. I’ve been allowing myself to dream and plan for my future, and reaching out to people I’d kinda lost contact with for one reason or another over the years. It feels good to take chances again, I feel alive!
I came here wanting to lose the sad, sick me that I’d become and find the old me, the one who got excited about the daftest things, who trusted people enough to give them at least a couple of chances, who was happy to wake up in the morning. Until 15 days ago I feared that I’d been expecting the impossible, but then bugger me, it’s happened!
posted by JoJo Smith at Saturday, May 28, 2011
1 Comments:
You look like a completely different version of you. Young-carefree, and dare I say it innocent....okay that may be going to far; if innocent is fresh.
As for Louise L hay, I think that is hysterical. Reminds me of the Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy...
I suspect though that in order to be open enough to the 1970s book that you needed the journey. That is when it feels like destiny is the truth, don't you think?
Fantastic! I have really enjoyed reading your blogs, and watching the personal journey that you have been on, not only the travel-tales. Thank-you Jo. xOx
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