quoth the raven

Well. How do I sum up the last week? For those of you who don't know, I'm spending two weeks living and working at the Yasodhara Ashram in the Kooteneys. It feels like months have passed since i left Vancouver. I have done some serious self-reflection and hard thinking in the past week; I have been delving deeply into things that I've been completely avoiding lately, and it's been a really emotional week. I've been a bit of a wreck since I got here - day one was incredibly miserable. I really and truly just wanted to turn around and come home, and not be in this place with a bunch of crazy chanting strangers, and especially not be alone with my thoughts. But my thoughts are not as mean as i thought they were, and as I've gotten to know people one-on-one every single person has totally surprised me with how down to earth and kind they are. There are some really cool people here - people you would never expect to see at an ashram. Teenage boys talking about gratitude for life, meditating on the roof in coveralls. Retired school teachers and a crisis counsellor and an animator... It's pretty funny actually. There is such a wide range of people here, in terms of ages, life experience, backgrounds, beliefs. This really is just a haven for normal people who are looking to connect with themselves, with others, and with their spirituality in whatever form that may take, and at least for me to connect with a specific place. And it's such a beautiful beautiful place. Every morning while i walk to yoga class i say a little hello to my raven friends (there are two who live here), take in the mountains, the lake, the 100 year old apple trees, the wild flowers, the quiet. I say hello to thunderpaws the library cat, and to the noisy canada geese, and Raj the giant pine tree. It is SO quiet here. Birds, wind, footsteps, flowing creek, windchimes.

It's so easy to judge; I remember feeling this way at the Sivananda Ashram as well - feeling totally new agey and crazy chanting all these sanskrit hymns, but eventually i learned to just take what i felt was important and apply it to my own ideas about spirituality and about what kind of person i wanted to be. And i started to love the chanting and singing - it really isn't much different from choir where we sang all the time about jesus. And these songs are a lot more non-secular; they're mainly just about gratitude, in my interpretation. And i like singing. And maybe my interpretation is all that really matters here. There is something here that people do daily called 'The Divine Light Invocation'. For the first few days i felt really uncomfortable doing this ritual and talking about being divine light and all that. I felt like i was being forced into a specific spiritual practice that didn't fit me and that felt kind of prescriptive. But i've started to like it, because i've started to interpret the idea of divine light in my own way. Maybe it doesn't have to be some sort of god, it doesn't have to be about Swami Radha or Swami Sivananda or Swami anything, or about some celestial being. I dunno, to me it just feels like a ritual to be grateful for life in general.

This place is run pretty much completely on karma yoga - all the residents here work six days a week 8 hours a day to keep it running. So the work we do feels pretty meaningful - lots of gardening and grounds-keeping and cleaning, and lots of breaks throughout the day to just reflect on our day and write down all the things we've been thinking about. And the work is fun... hoeing weeds, riding up the hillside in the back of a truck, rolling around in manure (oops), frolicking on hillsides, digging holes at the beach (three people, one hole...many laughs...), finding tiny tiny carrots, carting wheelbarrows, making beds (not THAT fun...) and one day i got to walk around on the roof of the main building counting broken tiles and washing walls. eye level with ravens, beautiful view of the lake... sitting in the sun. cleaning gutters with a toothbrush. i dunno, it's a weird way to spend my holiday i guess, but i'm having fun. there's been a lot of laughter working with other people, and it's really interesting to work for your own living rather than for money; washing dishes that i ate off of and weeding food for the ashram and fertilizing trees that made the cherries that made the jam that i ate for breakfast (don't get me started on the food here, it is soooo good).

Every afternoon there is a reflection break - half an hour to write about the day, what you've been thinking and how you've been feeling, and then you share it with a small group. It was pretty intimidating at first, sharing my personal thoughts with a group of strangers, but i realized pretty quickly that there's not a lot of judging going on, and people have been really supportive. I've had some really helpful conversations with some people here about how i'm feeling and where i need to go from here; i even cried in front of my reflection group the other day, which felt kinda weird but also not so weird... i keep bursting into tears all the time here (mainly in private...), cause there's just so much time to think think think. And i guess a lot of you know i've been going through a pretty rough time lately, emotionally. But i'm seeing things more clearly i think, seeing where i need to go from here in my life.

Well, it's hard to really describe what it's like living here, because it really is another world. I've had some really special moments here already, moments of just feeling happy and forgetting about the things that have been nibbling at my mind constantly for a long while. But it's also not really the real world, and i can't stay here forever. I just hope i can learn something from this experience and take it home with me. I am actually really looking forward to coming home at the same time as wanting to stay here longer - looking forward to my new apartment, going back to work, trying to start some new rituals and habits in my life and see how that goes...

miss yous.