I arrived at the airport in Goa at about 6am on Tuesday, feeling pretty good that I could avoid the nightmare of trying to deal with taxi-drivers on account of having already arranged a taxi from the ashram to come pick me up. But when I went out front of the relatively small airport, there was no one there holding a sign with my name on it, as promised. When no one showed up, the taxi drivers picked up their sales pressure, hoping to snag the job of driving me all the way to the southern part of the province, which runs about 30 bucks if you haggle and makes for a pretty penny for a local Indian. Not knowing what to do, I ended up borrowing one of the driver's phones to call the ashram. I pretty much knew that if there wasn't a car already on the way, I'd be obligated to hire the driver who lent me his phone, which sucked because I didn't necessarily like the guy to begin with.
The news came from the phone call that they weren't coming. They thought it was 6pm that I was coming, a convenient excuse since I had already sent them my itinerary. Without too many options, I talked the guy down from $36 to $30 and we were off. Just a mile or two down the road, we passed another taxi that my driver started honking at and then pulled over once we had gone around him. He got out and went to talk to him. I didn't know if they were friends or if he was going to fight him, but when he came back, he pulled out my bag and said I was going with this other guy. Again, not much of a choice here, so I went along with it fine. The new driver was much more friendly, and claimed to have known where it was that I was going.
But he didn't. He knew the general idea. Very general, and his sense of direction got us about 10-15km from the actual ashram and we had to stop and ask locals at least 5 or 6 times before he was satisfied. When we finally got there, he asked to be paid more than the 1,500 rupees that we had already agreed upon, arguing that the trip ended up being longer than expected. "That's funny," I said, "because you told me you knew where it was already!" I told him that by lying to me, he lost out on any chance of being paid extra. If he would have told me he knew the area, I would have been sympathetic and paid extra, but he assured me he knew exactly the place. Typical.
So it was probably 8:30 or 9 by the time I arrived, and we flagged down a group of Japanese yogis and yoginis headed to the beach to get final confirmation that the large, run-down hotel looking structure was in fact the ashram. With a lack of sign other than an old painted on sign that read hotel and bar, it was hard to believe that I had come all the way from Thailand for this. To make matters even better, there was really no one there to welcome me. The driver yelled into the kitchen and some Indian people came out asking who I was. They had to make a phone call, apparently to the main office, and confirmed that they had a room for me. "Just wait here for a few minutes and someone will come take you to your room." "The room isn't here," I asked?
No, no, it wasn't there. It was about a 1/2 kilometer away, in what I can only call an actual shack that was painted blue. The color was the only thing that I liked about it. It was built on a slanted concrete slab and made out of 1/4" plywood. It had an attached bathroom, which might have been impressive, with the exception of the lack of functionality. Note to all: you can't install a sink into 1/4" plywood, especially when it leaks. The moistened wood had no chance of holding up the sink, so it sloped forward a good amount that made draining the water a challenge and any attempt to put a bar of soap or a toothbrush on the little ledge just led to them slipping into the basin. Nor was there any hooks or racks or shelves of any sort. And the door, being on a downward slope, closed behind you as you entered as if it were on a spring. Not a sweet combo.
The place was must have been some sort of a breeding ground for mosquitoes and the fan only worked sometimes. No mosquito net either, in a place where there is malaria. It was hard to believe the ashram had my best interests in mind. When you travel overseas and pay good money to train somewhere, you at least expect a welcome and a decent facility. This place had neither. The atmosphere was strange too. It was like a bunch of people living there and yoga was part of it, but not all of it. With only 3 classes scheduled a day, most of the day was free-time. It was like a social gathering more than a training facility. Everyone seemed to jump at the opportunity to talk about themselves and how wonderful and spiritual they are.
If I was in the US, I would think this place was the ultimate, but since I came to India and am in the birthplace of yoga, I couldn't settle for the sort of operation they were running. So I left. I told one of the senior students, for a lack of understanding that any sort of real faculty existed, and was quickly on my way. The local community I was living in was basically there to support the ashram. They had a restaurant going and offered other things such as a taxi service, so I hired them to take me to the next town over to the train station. "The train leaves at 3," he said, but when I got to the train station at 2, I had already missed the last train. Luckily, the bus station was just a 15 minute sweaty walk away, and before I knew it, I was headed north to freedom.
I had to take 4 different buses to get to the place in north Goa where my friend owns a restaurant, and am now posted up in a nice little guest house at $11/night that will be my home for a little while now. I had a nice day today of walking around and took advantage of having a huge balcony/common area to myself to use for yoga and meditation. I got a 5 minute palm reading for about $1.50 and saw an Ayurvedic doctor to get some medicine for the wrist problem I have. I guess I'll regroup here and consider my options. And since I have come to devote this blog to the relevancy of everyday situations to the spiritual path, I must now make an effort to put this into some sort of perspective
If you don't like a situation you are in, change it. It's not about control, it's about acceptance. I understand this a bit of a dichotomy. How is change not control? It's because by admitting that you don't like something, and want to leave, you are just honoring what is. I have been in plenty of meditation centers that I wanted to leave, but I stayed because I trusted that it was a good place for me to be, and that I only wanted to leave because it was so much of a challenge. This was not the case. I wanted to leave this place because they lost my trust, and I felt that it was not a good place for me to be. Call it an intuition, or what you will, but there was some feeling within me that told me that I didn't belong there, at least not at this time. Honoring this feeling is not about assuming some ability to control, it's about accepting that it is indeed arising.
When your intuition is telling you to do something, and you do the opposite, you are practicing control. When you listen to your inner guidance, even if it's telling you to take action, it's still a matter of acceptance. To stay would have been to fight. To leave, was easy. On the contrary, it would have been very difficult to walk out any one of the monasteries or meditation centers that I've stayed at. During none of those times did I feel a calling to leave. The only thoughts I had about leaving were easy to see as coming from the head, but my calling to leave this ashram came from the heart. Not always is there an obvious difference, but when we tune in and listen to ourselves, we can learn to decipher.
I'm willing to admit that I may have made a mistake. I don't want to write this in a attempt to justify my actions, but rather to reinforce this idea that acknowledges honoring signals of guidance that come from within. Without this, what do we have? We have other people, society, and thoughts based on fear. If we are getting messages from these sources only, any decisions we make will never be our own. Sometimes it feels good to take matters into our own hands and accept that what we need to do for ourselves is not what we already find ourselves doing. When the main purpose of this path is liberation, or freedom, it's easy to see that it's important to free free, not just in the mind but from the heart.
So how to tell the difference?
The mind changes from minute to minute, always unsure of what it holds to be valid and important. The heart, on the other hand, retains its stance on a matter over a longer period of time. This is really the indication that tells us that something really does come from the heart. It's sort of the idea that it's wise, when making important decisions, to "sleep on it." This is honoring the heart's intentions, knowing that unlike the mind, the heart doesn't need to compare pros and cons and simply knows. With this being said, it also acknowledges that the initial reactive tendency to think what you feel is from the heart may very well be from the mind.
Giving yourself time to think it over is really a way of saying that time will tell what the heart feels. A feeling is different from a thought, it is more inspired. Thoughts are mostly random, and even though they have causes, they don't always carry any sort of justification. If you watch your mind over time, you will see how many times it will go back and forth on any matter at hand. Rarely is it convinced and remains the same.
So what I can say is that I intend to continue to trust my intuition to guide me to act in ways that serve my higher purpose, whatever that means in any given situation. I can only trust that this practice will help to keep me safe, to keep me aligned with my purpose in this life, and will make the rest of my stay in India worthwhile. I hope that you do the same.
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