The View From My Tree House

I have come to realize that my feet are mysteriously linked to my heart, for,whatever my heart desires my feet are sure to follow.  I do believe they are equally responsible for my wanderlust and gypsy nature, for conjuring adventure against reason.

I leave Denver by way of a 17 ft. u-haul trailer, a wing and a prayer.  My daughter Adrienne once gave me a card that read, ‘when you have come to the end of all you know, there will either be ground beneath your feet or you will be given wings to fly.’

I have come to the end of all I know.

I reduce my belongings by two thirds and now live quite simply in 500 sq. ft, my version of monk’s quarters.  However being a bohemian means that it’s hardly austere.  My abode is a 1920′s tree house with a wood burning stove and a deep soaking tub. I am a half a mile from Lake Washington in Seattle, with a commanding view of Mt. Rainier.  The forest surrounding my house is thick and overgrown, the kind of place where small creatures and children like to hide.  This place is reminiscent of my beloved Ireland and all the things I love most about it, the water, the smell of the air, the winding roads and emerald paths…

There is something inside of me that has always been drawn to the unknown and foreign.  My senses and intuition are heightened in unfamiliar places.  I am challenged to let go of my prescribed sense of self, of all the places and people that give structure and meaning to my world. It lends a perspective that is humbling, stripped of  all personal identity save human.  In a city where I know less than a handful of people I have an anonymity I have never experienced before, and it is both unsettling and liberating.  Where I was once a chapter book, I am now a blank page.

Who is this woman who has left all she has ever known?

Who I have been feels remote, like a lover distanced by time and space. Yet I feel the faintest breath of my former self surface when I bathe, right before I awaken and sometimes when my mind gets still.  She is a chrysalis hanging mid-air.

I knew my heart would ache for my children, that I would miss my family and friends beyond the bearable. I knew that I would be challenged to the marrow to create a new world void of streets as mapped in my mind as the lines on my hands. How was I to know that simply knowing whether to turn right or left was so critical to my sense of confidence and comfort, or that I would feel so skinless?

My saving grace is my ability to surrender to the moment, to allow every thought and feeling to evaporate, to relax into my own vulnerability and emotional pain.  Sitting with uncertainty has become my practice.  Beginner’s mind, I allow myself to be the newly born. I am the ‘observer’ in this new life, the perpetual witness. I have the grace of continual connection to the subtleties of my inner experience, to the richness of solitude.  When I travel alone in foreign places I feel a quickening, a deeper level of expansion and a release from all the limitations of my conditioned mind.  Strangely enough I feel most at home when I am not.

The winged part of my nature loves the freedom of spontaneous movement, of the discovery that comes with the unknown.  It is not easy on my human psyche, on the part that needs to feel anchored.  Anchored to what?  My bold move has awakened the primordial fear of my mortal and impermanent existence, of the transiency of my life.  This is what has been lying deep with my unconscious mind and causing such a tsunami on the surface.  Nothing is permanent.  This is the lesson I learn once more.  But there is beauty in the brief, in the unrepeatable moments that come and go, that compose this delicate weave.  I drink my coffee, watch the morning light caress the surface of the lake, and bow to the mysterious forces that flow through my veins…

Get on the elevator, stand in awkward silence with others that seem to be bracing themselves for a day in a box.  It is a monochromatic landscape despite the fuschia colored orchids in the lobby, the kind of environment that one wants to scream in or do something entirely inappropriate just to see if anyone has pulse enough to respond.  Do other people have such thoughts?  The spirit in me feels blindfolded and abducted, and the rebel looks for every opportunity to enter into the revolving door that leads to my other world.  How did I land here?

I file leases into perfect numerical order, according to range and township.  My mind adjusts to a new environment to work repetitive and numbing.  The copy machine, a marvel of technological wonder creates one perfect duplicate after another that I staple and stack into manila folders.  Time seems to move in slow motion, nine to five.  Stacks of paper, each one a lesson in Latin look pale under fluorescent lighting. My mind tires, my body longs to move, I wrestle with boredom and tedium in equal measure.  The more I wish I were anywhere else the more misery I create for myself. While I am here pondering my new existence, earthquakes shake the planet, people die in a swift moment without warning, pain and suffering erupts globally.  Impermanence, it is the one certainty.

Admittedly my most recent employment has felt imposed not organic, foreign not familiar, contrary to my nature not nourishing. I  have struggled to find meaning and purpose in this twist of fate. Every imaginable emotion has surged through my body, anger, frustration, relief, failure, immeasurable gratitude, and even despair. Was I ‘selling out’, giving up on the most passionate work of my life, was accepting this position a sign of resignation and defeat, or simply an act of self preservation?  My mind in it’s ‘fight or flight mode’ was fatalistically preoccupied with trying to interpret my latest set of circumstances. Self inquiry.  Who is creating this suffering, who feels defeated and valueless?  EGO. I wake up, and all of the noise of my fretful chaotic mind dissolves.  Simple awareness.

For the past three decades I have served the world through a livelihood that is consistent with who I am and what I value; serving humanity by awakening consciousness.  My path has allowed me to express my innate skills and abilities and has nourished my heart and soul.  I have never seen work as a ‘means to an end,’ as something one does simply to get from one day to the next.  I think of work as vocation, a true calling.  This calling comes from deep within our being, from a ‘knowing’ and longing that seeks to fulfill itself. My commitment to this inner knowing has been absolute, my faith and dedication unwavering. There has been no greater singular priority in my life than to honor that internal truth and to integrate it into my life.

‘Knowing’ has not led me to my current position, necessity has.  Perhaps this is the real reason behind my rebellion, on some level I felt I had no other choice.  After months of trying to find work I was more financially desperate than I have ever been. Normally I would consider having work when I needed it grace, but given the nature of the work it has felt more like penance.  For years I have had the luxury of determining the choreography of my days, of  choosing how I would spend my time and focus my energy.  There was an organic and natural flow that was completely  influenced by my own internal rhythm and directive.  There was space for spontaneity, freedom and magic.  Is there now?

Making peace with where I am has proven to be a greater challenge than I could have ever imagined. Embracing my situation has taken conscious effort, time, and a willingness to suspend my perception of how things should be. Apparently my work isn’t limited to specific environments, to spiritual communities, yoga studio’s, satsang audiences, and private students. Experience tells me that nothing in life is without purpose, value or meaning. I am where I am for a reason and rejecting ‘what is,’ only deepens the chasm between myself and the truth that is emerging. When I wake up, settle into the present, into my body, it’s enough, more than enough to be exactly where I am.

As soon as I let go of my judgement, my resistance and rebellion a beautiful thing happened… I was able to help one of my co-worker’s with his fear of flying, lend an open heart to someone who needed to cry, and offer a ‘listening presence’ to someone in need. I may have the opportunity to offer meditation in my workplace as part of a well being initiative. I get out of the way, I let go. I free fall into surrender, to the magnetic pull of the compass that lies at the center of my Soul.  I let go of my critical mind, of my attachment, and I bow once again to the mystery that propels my life and keeps me ever on my toes.

still evolving,

Santidevi

What do you know?  How do you know that what you know, you really do know?How do you know that what you know is true? We spend our lives accumulating information. We try to gather as much information about as many things as we possibly can, after all it has been said that knowledge is power.  If we have power we might be able to supersede the vulnerabilities of our humanity. To a degree that is true.  If we know that proper hygiene is essential to limiting the spread of disease that information could save our lives. The power of information has dramatically changed our world. We have begun to unravel the mysteries of our origin, the conception of our galaxy and its approximate timeline of extinction.  We have analyzed and dissected our bodies to understand how they function.  How to treat illness and prolong life.  Through quantum physics we have discovered that we exist in a unified field of consciousness.  This field has been defined as dynamic and self-aware intelligence that generates energy that is virtually infinite. Our interrelatedness has become an indisputable fact. This knowledge has had a profound effect on how we perceive ourselves and our world.

Yet ironically enough no matter how much information or knowledge we acquire it remains an empty acquisition if we cannot derive personal meaning and value from it.  We know something is true by our immediate and direct experience even if it remains inexplicable.  I have known brilliant individuals possessed with incalculable knowledge who were completely exiled from any personal sense of Self understanding.  They had been completely absorbed in gathering data even if it was completely devoid of any relevance to their experience.  My own bias is that knowledge should in someway have a direct and lasting impact on the quality of our lives.

To know ones Self is to know the divine, the immortal aspect of our nature. The human being is after all a microcosm of the entire universe.  Within you lie all the forces of nature.  Somewhere in you are the remnants of the Big Bang.  Your DNA contains the entire genetic code of human life.  How more spectacular do you need to be to gain your interest?

I remember being asked as a child what I was most interested in studying.  I responded without hesitation, ” I want to study the unknown.” I had no interest in learning about what had already been discovered. Memorizing facts seemed irrelevant and a useless waste of my mind.  The unknown had always intrigued me. Being curious I was always wanting to see what would happen if…  I am grateful for this inquisitive and adventurous part of myself that seeks to experience everything in lieu of knowing anything!  In fact the thing I love most about life is that I never know what is going to happen.  The unpredictability makes it more of an experiment, an opportunity to “play.”  It is liberating to know that none of us really KNOW. I have always made my Self the destination of my inquiry.  In doing so I have realized that no matter how long or how diligently I sit in the silence of my own interior it will remain a mystery. This gives me a strange sense of fulfillment and peace in knowing I will never really know. It makes me feel childlike and innocent.  In fact I no longer have a desire to define what cannot be known.  The more I have experienced the more I realize how little I know. I can rest in that. In the vast presence of that ineffable field of pure consciousness one is immediately humbled. I continue as a venturing pilgrim in the home of my belonging.  As I wander I thank all of those brave adventurers who have gone before me.  Into the mists of the unknown I linger, longing to experience the borderlands of human endeavor. Follow me.

santidevi

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