Rishikesh, India, is a place for seekers. I am not even sure exactly what it is I am seeking but I am certainly looking for something. My soul is screaming and I giving her a place in the mountains to roar. It is full of enchantment, steeped in a cultural awareness of something larger than ourselves, illustrated in technicolor gods and goddesses wreathed in golden flowers.
I came here to find the silence to listen to my own mind but was not prepared for how incredibly noisy this country is, filled with a flurry of reckless vehicle horns and the relentless cries of street vendors pushing their wares. Heady swirls of sandalwood, nag champa and cow manure permeate everything, choking my mind. Beads and trinkets glister from every corner as fresh papaya rots gently under the orange sun.
Everything here is a contradiction. I walk through ripe gardens in the darkness at six o'clock in the morning, barefoot and dressed in white to practice yoga and to cleanse my body of impurities in order to make room for prana, the life force of the universe. I meditate in thunderstorms as monkeys swing from the balconies. I drink endless chai and read endless books and sit around a sacred fire every night to sing and to watch the sun set, as people float little boats made of leaves and filled with flowers and candles down the river Ganges. I am learning about the colour of each chakra and how to decipher my moon sign, conversing about karma and destiny and wondering which path to carve for myself, listening to eye witness accounts of levitating yogis and watching the man who owns the currency exchange healing people with huge chunks of crystal.
There is incredible peace and beauty here but it is also frightening. Strange deities and hungry eyes loom from every corner. Here skin colour indicates wealth and my own translucence appears to glow in the dark. A creature covered in beads and peacock feathers lurks in the streets trying to prise money from unsuspecting foreigners. Everywhere is full of trickery if not magic as emaciated cows and wild dogs snap at my ankles. Darkness falls early here and nights tucked away in my sparse room in the candlelight, to be woken by the ominous call of chanting and ringing bells are long and they are lonely.
My yoga teacher is trying to teach us about acceptance and balance. She said that we ought to accept difficult situations in our lives as a result of our past misdeeds and that we can do nothing about them now. She told us that our emotions and passions should not get the better of us, and that the path to enlightenment is rooted in balance, in accepting our difficulties and annoyances and letting them wash over us.
I am trying my best to live in the moment, to listen to the birdsong and the wind blowing through the jungle leaves during morning meditation, to feel the rise and swell of my own breath like the ocean, to appreciate the crude, transient and unapologetic nature of this wild life but I am finding it so difficult.
It is so tempting to turn my back on all of this, to leave the confusion and the fear right here and to walk right back into my life in London.
And yet even the most skeptic among my new friends admit that they cannot deny the pull of this place, the recurring idea that perhaps life is not merely a string of coincidences, and I can't help but feel that something brought me here.
In a sense, the niggling sensations of restlessness and insecurity and loneliness tugging at the edges of my scarf are representative of everything i am trying to leave behind. I want to learn how to exist in the moment, how to forget about the omnipresent pressures and questions and fears stacked in my head like piles of heavy books waiting to be read. I came here to find answers and clarity and yet I am more confused and afraid than ever.
I came here to find the silence to listen to my own mind but was not prepared for how incredibly noisy this country is, filled with a flurry of reckless vehicle horns and the relentless cries of street vendors pushing their wares. Heady swirls of sandalwood, nag champa and cow manure permeate everything, choking my mind. Beads and trinkets glister from every corner as fresh papaya rots gently under the orange sun.
Everything here is a contradiction. I walk through ripe gardens in the darkness at six o'clock in the morning, barefoot and dressed in white to practice yoga and to cleanse my body of impurities in order to make room for prana, the life force of the universe. I meditate in thunderstorms as monkeys swing from the balconies. I drink endless chai and read endless books and sit around a sacred fire every night to sing and to watch the sun set, as people float little boats made of leaves and filled with flowers and candles down the river Ganges. I am learning about the colour of each chakra and how to decipher my moon sign, conversing about karma and destiny and wondering which path to carve for myself, listening to eye witness accounts of levitating yogis and watching the man who owns the currency exchange healing people with huge chunks of crystal.
There is incredible peace and beauty here but it is also frightening. Strange deities and hungry eyes loom from every corner. Here skin colour indicates wealth and my own translucence appears to glow in the dark. A creature covered in beads and peacock feathers lurks in the streets trying to prise money from unsuspecting foreigners. Everywhere is full of trickery if not magic as emaciated cows and wild dogs snap at my ankles. Darkness falls early here and nights tucked away in my sparse room in the candlelight, to be woken by the ominous call of chanting and ringing bells are long and they are lonely.
My yoga teacher is trying to teach us about acceptance and balance. She said that we ought to accept difficult situations in our lives as a result of our past misdeeds and that we can do nothing about them now. She told us that our emotions and passions should not get the better of us, and that the path to enlightenment is rooted in balance, in accepting our difficulties and annoyances and letting them wash over us.
I am trying my best to live in the moment, to listen to the birdsong and the wind blowing through the jungle leaves during morning meditation, to feel the rise and swell of my own breath like the ocean, to appreciate the crude, transient and unapologetic nature of this wild life but I am finding it so difficult.
It is so tempting to turn my back on all of this, to leave the confusion and the fear right here and to walk right back into my life in London.
And yet even the most skeptic among my new friends admit that they cannot deny the pull of this place, the recurring idea that perhaps life is not merely a string of coincidences, and I can't help but feel that something brought me here.
In a sense, the niggling sensations of restlessness and insecurity and loneliness tugging at the edges of my scarf are representative of everything i am trying to leave behind. I want to learn how to exist in the moment, how to forget about the omnipresent pressures and questions and fears stacked in my head like piles of heavy books waiting to be read. I came here to find answers and clarity and yet I am more confused and afraid than ever.
But I am trying.
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