Short Reflections 5 - Wayward in Varanasi

If you're first meeting the Reflections series, you can read the earlier posts on my blog, or here:
Reflections 4 - Love and the North Wind, Reflections 3 - All the King's horses, and all the King's men, Reflections 2 - Shapeshifting Shamans, Reflections 1 - Light on a Dark Path

To give a brief overview, I'm now 23 to 25. I'm in love with and heartbroken over the same person aka Eve. After a profoundly tough few years, I've found my way from Egyptian Sufi wanderings to India, because I seek solace and clarity. I'll write another series about travel adventures of all kinds in off-the-path places, but for now these are Reflections on the various spiritual lessons and hardships that have come into my life.

In October 2008 I landed in Delhi, and somehow knew that I was home. I was only a few weeks in into a two year sojourn around the world, when India stole my heart and the next eighteen months of my life. By this point, there was an immutable need in me to realize something...and I thought it was called God or Union or Enlightenment...something with a capital letter at the least. India being a real 'spiritual' place, I of course thought I would meet my 'guru' and the rest would work itself out.

After a few weeks of wandering in the Himalayas, I found my way to Varanasi, the spiritual heart of India on the banks of the Ganges. There I rented an apartment near the river, and spent every day sitting on the ghats. As I watched bodies burn in the ongoing cremations, I prayed and prayed and prayed until I had nothing left to pray for; which turned out to be a wonderful act of faith. I reasoned that if God was Love, well then perhaps I was already receiving everything I needed, and should just shut up for awhile...

So prayer turned into meditation. Day in, day out, hour after hour after hour I sat. My body and psyche went through another deep catharsis over the next 18 months, and at times all I could do was lay in the fetal position while time and sincerity untied me. When I could I went to the river for sunrise, I went to the temples, and I went to the burning ghats to remember death. For a time I worked as a walking tour guide, which intertwined me with Varanasi in a way I still don't fully understand; only that Varanasi still fills my dreams.

During a trip to Bodh Gaya, I met a Tibetan monk who told me of a master in a Tibetan colony in South India. Days later I took a 36 hour train ride to receive the teachings foretold to me. I arrived at 3am, unannounced, to the temple gates. I mention it not because the teachings received changed my life (because the 'master' was just another monk with tuberculosis who happened to speak English), but because I was willing to do anything - go anywhere - to find what I was searching for. Absolutely anything.

After 18 months of seeing the divine everywhere, in beggars, in temple deities, in the river and sunrises, I knew I needed a Teacher. My meditations were always profound, always so important, and truly always going around in circles. I was missing something, but I didn't know what. Only that I wanted enlightenment more than I wanted to breathe.

Through my searching, I learned of an 'enlightened' woman in Australia who was teaching meditation. I decided to go for six weeks to see if she was the real deal or a charlatan.

I'm writing this eight years later from Melbourne. Little did I know it then, but meeting my teacher was actually the beginning, not the end.

This is me in Varanasi towards the end of my time there.