Wow. I'm already home. How is that even possible? I started this travel blog almost 7 months ago, and I surely didn't write enough in it. At all. I was too busy "doing" to get wrapped up in writing it all down on a computer. Don't get me wrong, I have a personal notebook I write in at least once a day (ha, who am I trying to kid, try once a week), but people can't read that.
To capture my last few days at Sadhana Forest, I took a ton of pictures. Honestly, I only took pictures my first few weeks and my last few weeks, or when I was on vacation, leaving about 19 perfectly good, un-photographed weeks, where I hopefully journaled about all the bad-ass stuff going on in my life.
The most I can say about the last few weeks is that they were awesome; I think the best of all the time I spent at Sadhana Forest. The people that were volunteering there were all really amazing and had some really fabulous connections with them. I think that when Jaspreet and Kate left, I was absolutely devastated and thought, how the hell am I going to survive for 5 weeks without them?!?
And then I persevered. And it was incredible. I felt so liberated and I had to force myself to grow in ways that perhaps I had not been able to do, due to a built in sheltering system that had previously been in place (i.e. aforementioned friends). So, even though I was a cranky, crying biatch for a few days (ok, let's face it, it was probably close to two weeks), I managed to make friends. Easily, even, believe it or not.
It's not like I didn't want to make friends before, I just didn't have to. I didn't have to interact with strangers at all beyond the superficial level, because I had close friends. Why invest in someone who's only going to be here for 2 weeks? At least that was my attitude for most of the time I was there, which is kind of shitty. Yet, it helped to preserve myself, because I had to interact with so many people, for varying lengths of time, it's almost impossible to personally invest in each and every one because it still hurts when they leave.
I figured that since I had grown up always coming and going, leaving and returning, that it would be easy for me to make fast friends at Sadhana Forest, and be able to have them go, no-strings-attached. But it wasn't like that. After I lost that first group of friends, that first group of people who I essentially invested my soul in and who were there with me for at least my first month, it was really really really hard to do that again. So once Jaspreet and Kate arrived, I didn't really do it at all.
Sure, sometimes I'd flirt with some of the boys (hey, I'm shameless) or have small interactions with people because Kate, Jaspreet or Franziska were sick, but once they left, man oh man did I flourish! I think I did more growing and freeing of my personal self in that time than the entire time I was in India. I am a bit of a procrastinator so even my heart knew that it had some serious work to do after it'd been wasting away and sitting on it's ass all summer :)
I didn't plan it; it just happened. I was joking around with strangers more, I was making plans to go hang around or show people around Auroville more, I got rid of my moped, I stayed at the Forest more, I spent more time with the Family (especially Yorit and the girls), I went swimming late at night even though I was tired, I went out for chai even though I didn't intend on drinking any, I went out of my way to put myself in situations in which I would have once been socially anxious. As a result, I feel amazing.
I feel super-connected with myself (or at least I did when I left, the past few weeks have been a bit hectic with about zilch alone time) and I don't feel self-conscious. I feel awesome wearing my own skin, and not being sheltered by anyone else's. I feel the ability to act like myself and to speak my mind, even though it might not be the popular opinion or it might piss someone off. I'm not as friendly to people in public as I used to be, because I don't have to be, which is something I was actually striving towards.
After working in retail for 10 years (that's right, 10 loooooonnnngggg years), the most recent establishment being one that I sacrificed a lot of personal integrity, energy, attitude and overall self trying to be the "ideal" worker, I've had to work really hard to figure out how I feel on any given day. When I worked at the "Bounty", even if I felt awful, I had to go into work and pretend I was alright. And it's not the only job I had to do that at, it's just the most recent example. And it can even be a good way to get things off of your mind, to just forget about whatever nonsensical bullshit you had on your mind when you walked into work.
Yet, a lot of times, it left me completely detached from my overall sense of self and genuine emotion. Not to mention I spent plenty of time drinking, partying and staying up til all hours, because my friends/co-workers were coping in the same way, so there's a lot of numbing that takes place in the emotional department. Writing my thesis on this topic in particular probably didn't help me to cope any better, even though I was studying coping mechanisms, and I knew what worked and what didn't, I still was engaging in self-destructive behavior.
That's quite a bit to process. I'm still processing, after 6 solid months in India after the completion of my thesis. As awesome as it is to say I finished it, it still doesn't feel like it's done. I still will wake up sometimes and feel panicked, but then realize, "Nope, it's over. Go back to bed." Having that thing hanging off my shoulders for over a year and a half, then finishing it 3 days before I left for India was pretty insane. It definitely didn't give me any time to process before I left!
Thus, the past few months and weeks have been used to help get connected to my actual self, whatever that means, lol. I started meditating more, instead of merely counting my yoga practice as meditation. Though yoga is a form of meditation, it doesn't take as much focus as actually sitting down and sifting through your thoughts to separate the healthy ones from the poisonous ones. I started riding my bike more (ha, like 2 miles a day, 3 times a week, but still!). I stopped feeling obligated to uphold every single social activity that I committed myself to, but committing to those that would make me grow (i.e. feel slightly uncomfortable) the most.
Why would I do such a thing? Well, there is some reason behind it. Sometimes I make too many plans, then get overwhelmed and don't want to do any of them. Or sometimes I'll make plans with people, and the thought of hanging out with them gives me anxiety, so I'll cancel. On several occassions, an extremely attractive man, whom I've gotten to know relatively well in my time in Auroville, asked me to have lunch with him. And I repeatedly bailed.
Why, you might ask? Though I may appear as a confident, unphazeable, brazen young woman, I'm actually extremely shy around members of the opposite sex, especially if they're extremely good-looking. So in my last week in Auroville, I ran into this extremely attractive individual, who informed me that he knew I was leaving. I mentioned lunch and he was like "How do I know you're actually going to show up?" And I rattled some shit about having phone anxiety (which is actually true) and that I absoltely wouldn't bail.
So we had lunch the next day. I showed up on-time (a rareity for me in India!) and we had a good time. I even managed to tell him why I had been so flaky around him the past few months, and I told him the God's honest truth: because he's so attractive, I feel dorky and unattractive and have anxiety thinking about what kind of topics to talk about with him. He was very flattered, to say the least, and assured me that I was crazy and that those things aren't true about me. I know this! But he's so attractive it would make me insecure, how does that even make sense?
Anyway, this is just one example of ways in which I accepted and stepped up to the challenges that once used to plague me in my life. I also managed to tell another friend I thought he was really cute and I wanted to kiss him. He didn't really have a response, I guess it is an awkward thing to just drop on someone while hanging out. Yet, we kissed later that day. That's all it was, but it's a really powerful thing, to know that you think something or want something, and be able to reveal it or ask for it, regardless of consequences you might meet. Previously in my life, it was the thought of those consequences that kept me from even asking or revealing something like this in the first place. Now, it's like Pandora's box has been opened: I feel liberated from myself.
Ok, blah blah blah, I know this isn't as fun of a blog post as some of my past ones, but I feel it's pivotal in explaining what happened to me while in India. There are many, many other things which have helped me to become who I am today, but it would probably be trite and boring to keep making a list. These are definitely a few of the most monumental I have experienced, though.
I need to reiterate how much I loved being at the Forest. It changed my life! Now that I'm home, I realize how most of the people I know don't think like me, most of them don't want to live their lives they way I want to live mine, which is kind of sad, but at the same time I understand. Living in a hut made out of casuarina, banana leaves and rope and pooping in a hole in the ground and covering it with sawdust isn't for everybody. Yet, now that I've tried it, that's how I want to live in the long-run. I feel so much less superficial, have zero drive to be a consumer, and have so much less patience for are. But I should get into that more in my next post, the one where I talk about what it's actually like to be home.
I'll leave you with some photos of my last days in the forest: it's only been 2 weeks, but it seems like they were taken months ago...
Love and light and hugs and stuff...
To capture my last few days at Sadhana Forest, I took a ton of pictures. Honestly, I only took pictures my first few weeks and my last few weeks, or when I was on vacation, leaving about 19 perfectly good, un-photographed weeks, where I hopefully journaled about all the bad-ass stuff going on in my life.
The most I can say about the last few weeks is that they were awesome; I think the best of all the time I spent at Sadhana Forest. The people that were volunteering there were all really amazing and had some really fabulous connections with them. I think that when Jaspreet and Kate left, I was absolutely devastated and thought, how the hell am I going to survive for 5 weeks without them?!?
And then I persevered. And it was incredible. I felt so liberated and I had to force myself to grow in ways that perhaps I had not been able to do, due to a built in sheltering system that had previously been in place (i.e. aforementioned friends). So, even though I was a cranky, crying biatch for a few days (ok, let's face it, it was probably close to two weeks), I managed to make friends. Easily, even, believe it or not.
It's not like I didn't want to make friends before, I just didn't have to. I didn't have to interact with strangers at all beyond the superficial level, because I had close friends. Why invest in someone who's only going to be here for 2 weeks? At least that was my attitude for most of the time I was there, which is kind of shitty. Yet, it helped to preserve myself, because I had to interact with so many people, for varying lengths of time, it's almost impossible to personally invest in each and every one because it still hurts when they leave.
I figured that since I had grown up always coming and going, leaving and returning, that it would be easy for me to make fast friends at Sadhana Forest, and be able to have them go, no-strings-attached. But it wasn't like that. After I lost that first group of friends, that first group of people who I essentially invested my soul in and who were there with me for at least my first month, it was really really really hard to do that again. So once Jaspreet and Kate arrived, I didn't really do it at all.
Sure, sometimes I'd flirt with some of the boys (hey, I'm shameless) or have small interactions with people because Kate, Jaspreet or Franziska were sick, but once they left, man oh man did I flourish! I think I did more growing and freeing of my personal self in that time than the entire time I was in India. I am a bit of a procrastinator so even my heart knew that it had some serious work to do after it'd been wasting away and sitting on it's ass all summer :)
I didn't plan it; it just happened. I was joking around with strangers more, I was making plans to go hang around or show people around Auroville more, I got rid of my moped, I stayed at the Forest more, I spent more time with the Family (especially Yorit and the girls), I went swimming late at night even though I was tired, I went out for chai even though I didn't intend on drinking any, I went out of my way to put myself in situations in which I would have once been socially anxious. As a result, I feel amazing.
I feel super-connected with myself (or at least I did when I left, the past few weeks have been a bit hectic with about zilch alone time) and I don't feel self-conscious. I feel awesome wearing my own skin, and not being sheltered by anyone else's. I feel the ability to act like myself and to speak my mind, even though it might not be the popular opinion or it might piss someone off. I'm not as friendly to people in public as I used to be, because I don't have to be, which is something I was actually striving towards.
After working in retail for 10 years (that's right, 10 loooooonnnngggg years), the most recent establishment being one that I sacrificed a lot of personal integrity, energy, attitude and overall self trying to be the "ideal" worker, I've had to work really hard to figure out how I feel on any given day. When I worked at the "Bounty", even if I felt awful, I had to go into work and pretend I was alright. And it's not the only job I had to do that at, it's just the most recent example. And it can even be a good way to get things off of your mind, to just forget about whatever nonsensical bullshit you had on your mind when you walked into work.
Yet, a lot of times, it left me completely detached from my overall sense of self and genuine emotion. Not to mention I spent plenty of time drinking, partying and staying up til all hours, because my friends/co-workers were coping in the same way, so there's a lot of numbing that takes place in the emotional department. Writing my thesis on this topic in particular probably didn't help me to cope any better, even though I was studying coping mechanisms, and I knew what worked and what didn't, I still was engaging in self-destructive behavior.
That's quite a bit to process. I'm still processing, after 6 solid months in India after the completion of my thesis. As awesome as it is to say I finished it, it still doesn't feel like it's done. I still will wake up sometimes and feel panicked, but then realize, "Nope, it's over. Go back to bed." Having that thing hanging off my shoulders for over a year and a half, then finishing it 3 days before I left for India was pretty insane. It definitely didn't give me any time to process before I left!
Thus, the past few months and weeks have been used to help get connected to my actual self, whatever that means, lol. I started meditating more, instead of merely counting my yoga practice as meditation. Though yoga is a form of meditation, it doesn't take as much focus as actually sitting down and sifting through your thoughts to separate the healthy ones from the poisonous ones. I started riding my bike more (ha, like 2 miles a day, 3 times a week, but still!). I stopped feeling obligated to uphold every single social activity that I committed myself to, but committing to those that would make me grow (i.e. feel slightly uncomfortable) the most.
Why would I do such a thing? Well, there is some reason behind it. Sometimes I make too many plans, then get overwhelmed and don't want to do any of them. Or sometimes I'll make plans with people, and the thought of hanging out with them gives me anxiety, so I'll cancel. On several occassions, an extremely attractive man, whom I've gotten to know relatively well in my time in Auroville, asked me to have lunch with him. And I repeatedly bailed.
Why, you might ask? Though I may appear as a confident, unphazeable, brazen young woman, I'm actually extremely shy around members of the opposite sex, especially if they're extremely good-looking. So in my last week in Auroville, I ran into this extremely attractive individual, who informed me that he knew I was leaving. I mentioned lunch and he was like "How do I know you're actually going to show up?" And I rattled some shit about having phone anxiety (which is actually true) and that I absoltely wouldn't bail.
So we had lunch the next day. I showed up on-time (a rareity for me in India!) and we had a good time. I even managed to tell him why I had been so flaky around him the past few months, and I told him the God's honest truth: because he's so attractive, I feel dorky and unattractive and have anxiety thinking about what kind of topics to talk about with him. He was very flattered, to say the least, and assured me that I was crazy and that those things aren't true about me. I know this! But he's so attractive it would make me insecure, how does that even make sense?
Anyway, this is just one example of ways in which I accepted and stepped up to the challenges that once used to plague me in my life. I also managed to tell another friend I thought he was really cute and I wanted to kiss him. He didn't really have a response, I guess it is an awkward thing to just drop on someone while hanging out. Yet, we kissed later that day. That's all it was, but it's a really powerful thing, to know that you think something or want something, and be able to reveal it or ask for it, regardless of consequences you might meet. Previously in my life, it was the thought of those consequences that kept me from even asking or revealing something like this in the first place. Now, it's like Pandora's box has been opened: I feel liberated from myself.
Ok, blah blah blah, I know this isn't as fun of a blog post as some of my past ones, but I feel it's pivotal in explaining what happened to me while in India. There are many, many other things which have helped me to become who I am today, but it would probably be trite and boring to keep making a list. These are definitely a few of the most monumental I have experienced, though.
I need to reiterate how much I loved being at the Forest. It changed my life! Now that I'm home, I realize how most of the people I know don't think like me, most of them don't want to live their lives they way I want to live mine, which is kind of sad, but at the same time I understand. Living in a hut made out of casuarina, banana leaves and rope and pooping in a hole in the ground and covering it with sawdust isn't for everybody. Yet, now that I've tried it, that's how I want to live in the long-run. I feel so much less superficial, have zero drive to be a consumer, and have so much less patience for are. But I should get into that more in my next post, the one where I talk about what it's actually like to be home.
I'll leave you with some photos of my last days in the forest: it's only been 2 weeks, but it seems like they were taken months ago...
Love and light and hugs and stuff...
Shalev and Sadhana: they live at Sadhana Forest permanently and they're BFF's!
A kick-ass lunch (dal bhadi), whipped up by a houseful of Rajastani princes :)
My favorite Rajastani prince, Vikram: doesn't he look like a brown Jeff Goldblum? I sure think so.
Koot Road at night: partha master!
Chai, the favorite past-time of many.
Finally snapped a pic of the Matrimandir myself. I'm so sly.
Sweating the days away.
Crash 'n burn took took: one of the people involved in this accident actually died :(
I <3 nature.
View from 30 feet above. Climbed to the top of the water-tower, the highest spot in the Forest, yet another growing experienced.
Also from the water tower.
At the entrance...
Good night, Sadhana Forest. Until next time... xo
