Jerrash

Today I went to Jerrash. It is a site with extensive Roman ruins. As it turns out, it was the day for all the teenage girls to have a field trip there. Literally there were hundreds of them, all laughing and crying out, just being teens. (I think teens are the same all over the world). They were very friendly, vivacious, and fun. They loved to ask me where I was from, what was my name, was I married, etc. One girl asked me why everyone in the west thinks that Arabs are terrorists...I told her I thought it was because of the media. Then I asked her what she thought of the hijab, because I noticed some girls were wearing it and others were not. She said that she would wear it when she got older, because otherwise God would send her to Hell. Wow! I did not expect that answer. I wish I could have asked some other girls the same question and heard some of their answers. Basically, most of them thought I was the coolest thing around, being from America and all. With their basic English skills and outgoing personalities, they would say things like, "You are so beautiful! We love you! Do you love to the Jordan people? Can we see your eyes?" (I was wearing sunglasses.) After I took the glasses off, they all cheered. "Ohh, you have such beautiful eyes!" they said. Some of them had drums that they would play, and the whole group would sing an Arabic song. Of course, they wanted ME to sing, and dance. I finally agreed to sing a Justin Bieber song with them, the same one that was so popular with my teenage students in Nepal ("Baby, baby"). After finishing the chorus, a security guard and the girls' teacher asked us to stop. Adults here don't like women and girls getting too excited or singing/dancing too much in public. What a shame. All I could think was that these girls are SO lovely and energetic, with such free spirits. They were so curious about me too. I felt sad that they were growing up in a society where they will be so held back in their creative expression and freedom.

Amman Continued

Amman is WAY different than anywhere in India. No cows in the streets, no open sewers. Everything is clean and empty and calm compared to India. Also, all the buildings are the color of sand. Much less colorful. Most women wear hijab (head covering), but it is not required, especially of non-Muslim Western women. Most of the signs are in Arabic, but the tourist ones are in English, and most people do speak English. I have had no trouble getting around. Yesterday I went around the downtown tourist sites by myself. I went to see the Citadel, which is the site of some Roman ruins (a Hercules temple) on the top of a high hill. It was a gorgeous view of the whole city. It is a beautiful thing to hear all the mosques chanting the call to prayer. The only other loud sound is the song of the ice cream trucks, which also deliver gas for cooking stoves to each house. They play a song in a minor key that sounds eerie and mysterious. Much less honking of horns than India, although I think it is probably still more than Eugene. I love the Arabic language. It is so beautiful. I also love Arabic music....I bought 6 cds for a dollar each. The food is great - falafels, pita bread, hummus, baba ganoush. I got a taste of the "Arab hospitality" that the people are known for in the Middle East. As I was walking down the hill from the Citadel, I heard some women laughing from inside a house. I peeked my head in, and the smiled and shouted, "Hello! How are you? Come in! Would you like some coffee?" I went inside and they served me a tiny cup of strong Arab coffee, along with some bread which I ate with cheese. It was great. They were a very happy family, the husband and wife were retired, and their daughter had several small, cute children who danced to Arabic music that was playing on the Arab MTV channel. After leaving, I met another tourist from England who I spent the afternoon with. In the evening, I went with Samia and some of her friends to a place outside Amman where there was a beautiful view of another town, all lit up at night. We smoked shisha (flavored tobacco from one of those big Arabian tobacco-smoking gigs) and talked while enjoying the view. Today Samia and I plan to visit Jerash, a site to the north with amazing Roman ruins. If there is time, we will also visit Um Qais, which is supposed to be very beautiful. Tomorrow Samia is going to Egypt, and I will go South with her, either to Petra or to Wadi Rum (a beautiful desert). I plan on crossing into Israel on May 3.

Amman, Jordan

I'm now staying comfortably at my friend's apartment in Amman, Jordan. We went to visit the Dead Sea today, right after my flight landed around noon. Wow, I was floating so high in the water! It was weird, but cool. The Dead Sea is the lowest place on Earth, and also has such a high salt content that nothing can live in it and your body naturally floats really high in its waters. There are rocks encrusted in salt crystals on the shore, and when you swim in the water, it looks and feels almost like oil because it is so salty. I could see Israel on the other side. The rest of the landscape was very dry and deserty. It was amazing, flying through Sharjah in UAE and also flying into Amman - the plane almost looked like it was just going to land in the desert, before it landed on the airstrip. When I flew out of Sharjah I saw the city rising up out of the desert at the edge of the water, the skyscrapers blending in with the color of the sand like it was another planet. Amazing.

Musings on Life and Growth

In admiring and perceiving the acts of other beings, I remember that I am I and they are they, as different as two grasshoppers munching away in a field. After a while I think that what I do is just as good as what they do, and vice versa.

I notice how, after many months of traveling, I do not appreciate the contrasts so much anymore. I don’t see the beauty or appreciate the novelty of clashing cultures as much as I did when I was fresh off the airplane.

I am so ready to leave this place. I am ready to be home, to see my family, to be normal again. To express myself fully, openly, for all to see, and not feel judged for it by people from another culture who don’t understand me. Maybe in having this experience, I can relate to other people who have spent a long time away from home, away from their native cultures. I am so fortunate to be able to return home. Some people cannot do that because their homes do not exist anymore, or it is not possible with life situations for them to return. For example, like immigrants or refugees.

There is something so palpable about missing your homeland. It really is the land, and the people, and the songs which wind through both.

The knowledge that I want to be the best person I can possibly be, to assist in the global transformation of Earth into a place of light and truth, requires me doing exactly what my heart wants. My heart really misses my family and wants to go home soon.

I remember how heart-opened and free I felt when I was first in Nepal, teaching English in Nakote village. My heart was carrying me. My love was carrying me. My heart is no longer carrying me in India, because it has already set its course for home. It has set its course on love, and is doing everything it can to draw love experiences to it because that is what it craves.

I deserve to be in love now. I deserve to see, feel, and express beauty, to enjoy myself. I am free to go and do what my heart desires, because God is at the center of my heart.

I wonder, too, if my heart is actually a higher-dimensional being than I am. It doesn’t always resonate with specific plans or actions, but rather with feelings, frequencies, and energetic vibrations. I think I am starting to live from here, from a purely energetic, higher-dimensional place. Maybe just getting tastes.

I love the feeling of self-acceptance and situational acceptance. I love being right here, right now. Inside the envelope of this moment are stories to be told, lives to be had, love to be felt. I am so grateful.

It is so strange to be in a place that feels so utterly foreign to me (India). The people and the society are so opposite to who I am. They are counter-intuitive. Because of this contrast, I can more quickly define myself and my boundaries. It is actually crucial to my sanity to do this; otherwise, if I wasn’t clear about only doing what I want, I would be torn apart by guilt, shame, fear, anger, and hatred in less than five minutes.
It is so easy to make the mistake of comparing myself to others. So easy to fall into the traps of the many misunderstandings I’ve had about the different paths of the many lives on this planet. Mostly, I am saying that it is dangerous to compare myself to other people. Doing this invites the judgments which might assert a whole host of viewpoints, like “I am better than he is,” or “She is better than I am,” or “He needs to stop doing that and be more this way so that I can feel more comfortable.”

Helambu is a beautiful land (where I volunteered last fall). Nepal, the Himalaya, astounding. But looking into my own eyes, I know the landscape of my own heart is also beautiful. Perhaps it is more beautiful than outer landscapes. It is a dreamscape, a soulscape, a lovescape. Planting myself there, in my heart, has been one of the most rewarding and difficult experiences of my life.

I desire to live from my heart with a sense of ease and grace. I am attracted to people who move through life easily and gracefully – I would like to find this in myself and make a habit of it.

Something had to get cleaned out of me by going to India. I had to make room for all the empty space to breathe in! I had to open up and let go before more love, joy, trust, and centered decision-making could happen.

I am realizing that a lot of this trip has been about learning what fear really is. I used to think that fear was just a nuisance; that it was usually an unfounded emotion just getting in the way of my true desires. I would push through fear and feel it out violently, as though it were some disease to be cleansed and purified out of my body.

Now my understanding of fear has shifted. I also see fear as a valuable sign, a tool which helps to guide me and lets me know what I am ready for and what I am not ready for. When the fear response is in balance and I am not working on clearing past fears, this fear response can actually be a guide to truth. The fear doesn’t show me the truth; it just points the direction, like a sign with an arrow. It points to the corner of my universe where beautiful things want to be happening, and if I allow my love and attention to go there, I can be surprised by the ease, breath, and grace I find.

Life, for me, does not have to be so hard. Clear discernment of the heart, connected with the body, and verified by trusted friends who have good intuitive sense, can guide me into clearer pathways of light. A different perception of time is also required here. I mean that grasping at the future is not a healthy way to get anywhere. Force and effort are exhausting. It is better to let my river flow in the direction it naturally wants to go.

It is entirely possible for good, healthy, enjoyable emotions to also be parts of myself which I have been denying. Maybe it has been a practice of mine to deny myself good things like comfort, ease, wealth, beauty, and simple pleasures. This practice is even more apparent in India, where the general environment is harsh, annoying, loud, unrefined, invasive, and obnoxious. My small acts of self-care really stand out in contrast to this environment. Maybe the environment here is a reflection of the way I have treated myself in the past, and in learning to do things in contrast to it, I am learning to distance myself from old patterns of self-criticism, forcing, and over-expending effort.

Perhaps I am creating my own meaning here, but I still think it is a useful metaphor for changing personal behavior patterns. Any new, life-supporting pattern is obviously going to feel totally different than an old, self-destructive pattern. The two energies are polar opposites. Perhaps I am in the middle of my own “Precession of the Equinoxes,” where my core operating system is drastically shifting poles from being life/self - destructive to life/self - supportive. I like this analogy a lot, even if it is mostly intellectual! Maybe I will watch my body and emotions to see if they can verify its truth also.

Ciao for now,
Melissa

A Visit to Mahananda Siddha

Yesterday was New Year’s Eve in Tamil Nadu, the province in India where I have been staying for the past two weeks. I went with my friends Ganga, Tara, Sanjay, Lavania, and Swami to see a great Siddha (Aka “medicine person” in Shamanic language. You could also call him a saint or sage in other traditions). His name is Mahananda Siddha, and here is his story:

About ten years ago, he was a normal man in his seventies living in Bangalore. He had made his fortune by exporting turmeric, and then became the CEO of several software companies. Needless to say, he was a VERY wealthy man, even by American standards. He was also very spiritual, and donated large portions of his fortune to restoring and renovating temples and feeding hungry devotees and sadhus (wandering ascetic pilgrims).

Then, one night, Shiva appeared to him in his bedroom. Shiva told him to give up everything – all his companies, his wealth, his wife and kids, and go meditate on a specific mountain in Tamil Nadu, called Mahadeva Malai (Great Lord Mountain). So he followed Shiva’s request, giving up everything and going to this mountain. When he arrived there, Shiva gave him very specific instructions. He told him to never cut his hair again, to only take a bath once a year, and to only wear one piece of cloth all year and change it when he takes his bath. The catch is that Shiva also told him to never eat food or drink water again, that he should instead lie directly on a fire every morning and absorb his energy that way. These days, Mahananda Siddha calls the food we eat “dummy food.” He says “You get your energy 2nd or 3rd hand, from plants or animals; I get my energy 1st hand directly from the sun, the fire.” There is only one exception to this routine, which is that he doesn’t lie in the fire if it is raining because that stops the rain, and he says the farmers need the rain.

Yesterday was quite a blessing, to say the least. It is common for Hindu devotees to perform the ritual of abhishek, which involves pouring water or milk over a Shiva lingam (a phallic-shaped stone representing Shiva). All over India, Hindu priests have been performing this ceremony for thousands of years. Yesterday, we performed abhishek to Mahananda Siddha, pouring water and milk all over his head. He says this is energetically equivalent to doing abhishek on 30 million Shiva lingams simultaneously.

On our way home, our friend Swami showed us a holy place where a great yogi is entombed. They call these places “Samadhis”, where great yogis have since dropped the body, but their spirit continues to remain in that place and nourish the spiritual life of the people. It is very common in India. There are probably 50 Samadhis in Tamil Nadu alone. This yogi is known as the river yogi, because about 30 years ago, the local people found him buried in the mud under the river, deep in meditation, when they were digging up some mud for building their houses. Then he opened his eyes and looked at them. They instantly realized he was not dead, but in Samadhi (a state of deep meditation and absorption with the Divine), so they brought him to their village, called Poondi. He is now known as Poondi Mahan, the saint of Poondi, and people can come to visit him and feel his darshan (blessings). The energy of his Samadhi was blissful, loving, and pure. Wow, what a day!