(Written on October 10, 2013 from Bagan)
I finally feel to write. Inspired by not being able to sleep tonight. Could it be because I slept most of the afternoon yesterday as well as this morning with a fever? or the ginger masala tea I had at dinner? or just because it is the opportunity to feel into myself and all those with whom I am connected at another time of transition? For an hour or so earlier I had a play list on shuffle and one song out of 27 kept coming on, again and again. I then turned off the music to try to sleep to no avail, and so asked for a message through the songs and the same song came on again!!!… “Be here now” by Ray La Montange. “Don’t let your mind get weary and confused; your will be still don’t try. Don’t let your heart get heavy; child inside there is a strength that lies.”
I tried to write after my time in Mongolia, but have not been ready to articulate my experience there. I will say it was amazing and challenging – one of the most phenomenal places I have ever been. God/s/esses willing, I will return. And at some point I will share what it was and is for me. My time there was framed by cosmic cycles… I arrived on August 1- the first day of fall and the harvest holy day in the Celtic tradition, and left on September 22- the autumn equinox. For now, here are some reflections before I leave this country.
So much has happened in the world since I have been traveling these last months. So much happens every day. And so little too. I was in Burma 4 years ago, lured by my dear friends who fell in love there, with each other, the people and culture. Now they live here. In early 2009, we watched Obama’s inaugural speech from a hotel, the Internet was restricted, Aung San Suu Kyi was in her 14th year of house arrest, and people were generally reticent about anything political due to the threat of imprisonment and death. I stayed a month in Bagan, traveling by bicycle and horse cart, visiting the adopted family of my friends, and many of the thousands of pagodas. This time I spent many days in Yangon, recuperating at the home of my dearest friend and her family. After the ruggedness of Mongolia – navigating on my own, not speaking English for days, being thrown off a horse, eating meat and more meat, I thoroughly enjoyed laying around the house, playing with the kids, eating salads, and reading books (Eve Ensler’s memoir, In the Body of the World, about her journey with cancer and women everywhere and Steve Jobs’ biography). I also did my best to find equanimity in the heat and humidity (it snowed the day I left Mongolia).
My intention for being in Burma was primarily to visit my friends, and also to look into what kind of NGO work is being done and to meet with people doing the work. My soul sister Stacy has been volunteering as a consultant and teacher with a women’s rights and education organization in the capitol and among other things was asked to do a talk called “My Beautiful Vagina”, which was very well received. She introduced me to some wonderful people, locals and foreigners, doing inspiring work. When I arrived, she helped organize a group of women activists and leaders to come together to experience the practice of council to learn as a form for their personal sharing as well as their social justice work with women around the country. There is the desire to hold a longer training early next year. They are now preparing for One Billion Rising, which is pretty radical for Burma. I spent the last few days working on a permaculture project, connected with my friends project, Vihara, on land in Bagan near the Irrawaddy river, with a permaculture designer from California. We had great fun.
Given the recent “opening” of the country, from dictatorship to democracy, there are many ramifications. Rapid growth with no infrastructure, both visible and invisible. So many cars, too high rent as foreigner NGO workers can afford more, capitalism, shopping malls, fast food, mobile phones. (There is still no system to use credit cards and wifi is hard to come by, as are ATM machines). Other countries have entered the market, everything is for sale with little regulation. Including the indigenous lands and “natural resources” (Oren Lyons might say “relations”)…. all of the things that the country was protected from and which gave it its beauty, though at the expense of human rights. There is ostensibly freedom of speech, however, locals informed me that people are still bring arrested and detained for political and social activism. I went to a beautiful photography exhibit, The Vanishing Tribes of Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi spoke briefly. Myanmar – the name which was chosen by the military government, actually means ‘union of tribes’ and Burma refers to the majority ethnic group. Despite the changes, the Shwedagon pagoda still holds such a precious and pure energy and the people are gentle and flowers and incense abound and demonstrate the spirit of beauty here. The monks and nuns still go out on their morning alms rounds and the communities join together to feed them. I enjoyed many spirited conversations about where repression and violation occur under the guise of culture and tradition, and how to define pure culture and allow tradition to be influenced by the present.
Before I left my home in Santa Barbara, someone, who happens to have a psychic gift, told me that I was living too small for who I am, that I needed to get out into the world and work with humanitarian projects. She said that the only thing limting me was my self perception. So… it was the right time for me to hear it. And let me tell you, I have had many opportunities to feel my smallness over the last 2 months, I must have set myself up for it to challenge my beliefs!!! And yet, it is shifting. I know I have more work to do to grow my faith so that nothing comes between me and what I know I must do to honor myself and this life. For now though I am happy to have found my way back to myself. I got lost in Mongolia (so did my camera…stolen actually —still bummed not to have those photos). And I also found a piece of myself I did not know was missing. I am very grateful for you, my community. My heart smiles each time I think of someone who is on the list to stay connected to my journey. Staying unplugged with limited time on email has felt right to me, but I am very glad you are in my/the circle of life. The transition from Mongolia to Burma was hard, I was not ready to leave, and it feels this way again (though much more mild), as I am just touching the surface here. And yet I go. I learned in Mongolia that most of the nomadic people’s return to the same places year after year. That makes sense.
Speaking of transitions and thresholds, I flew into Burma all set to get the newly offered Visa on Arrival at the airport. My friends set me up with the required paperwork which they had used for another friend who visited a few weeks before. However it turned out for a number of reasons, and a variety of coinciding events, that my entrance into the country was denied. After about an hour and a half of trying to sort things out, stalling as much as possible, tones going from polite to pleading to angry as I refused to board the departing flight, I was physically escorted by two security men and an entourage of about 30 airline employees onto the plane I came in on with a full flight of waiting passengers. And I had to buy the round trip ticket to Korea (where I had a layover from Mongolia) and back. (It turns out 4 others were also turned away that night). To re-enter the country the following day, I had to sign a release letter of apology stating that I would adhere to immigration law. It is a complicated country. And world. I thought of the many who are turned away and deported from the USA without the privileges I have. I was so committed to not boarding the plane, as I had all the paper work I thought I needed, that when they told me I had a choice of boarding or being handcuffed and detained, I told them they would have to take me to jail.
So tomorrow I leave for India where I will be volunteering with an organization – the Samarpan Foundation – doing a wide range of humanitarian projects. A healer named Patrick San Francisco is at the heart of this organization. I met Patrick when he was in Santa Barbara this spring when a dear friend introduced me to his work. He says that when he was a child he would demand god to heal people and they would heal. Now he travels around the world and in India it is not uncommon for hundreds of people a day to line up to receive healing.
And now the song has come on again… “Don’t let your soul get lonely, child it is only time, it will go by. Don’t look for love in faces, places; it is in you, that is where you’ll find it. Be here now.”
Tracking Destiny 