Chapter 1
“I didn’t come here to find God.”
It is strange to transverse half the world overnight. I awoke to find the sun rising (or was it falling?) over the icefields of Sweden. The sun was breaking like a yolk from its shell just over the horizon line, casting warm shadows of pink and purple over the white and icy terrain below. Just across the window, another white orb seemingly gazed at me. Did she just wink?
The Full Moon reminded me that even across the world I would always have something from home.
I always have a bit of an existential crisis when flying long distances in an airplane. In this case, 21 hours of flight time. I am shockingly terrified of heights for such a rational, evidence-based person. Throughout my flight, I actively used my brainpower to continue a running dialogue on how a plane works, the statistical likelihood of a crash, the sheer number of planes flying at this very moment which will all make it to their destinations, and so on… Needless to say, I sleep very little and find myself quite tense.
When all of the rationalizations fail, as they do, I soothe myself with thoughts that I am just made up of atoms, like everything else around me, so technically I am not flying through the air, but I am held up by an infinite number of other things just like me. I am cradled in the arms of physics. So even if I go, I am not gone. Simply soaked back into the infinite.
I glance back over to the Moon, thank her again for her loving presence, and finally fall asleep.
I touched down in Mumbai around midnight.
Despite it being early January, it was hot and muggy. I was told to wait outside the airport for my two teachers, David and Adriana, who would be leading me and 14 others on this three-week spiritual pilgrimage through rural India. I carried a camping backpack with my brand new yoga mat attached to it and my camera gear slung over my shoulders. I sat down at a table to wait for my fellow God-seekers and ordered the first of what would be the beginning of a slow-growing addiction to masala chai. Served in small metal cups, it is undeniably sweet with subtle hints of cardamom, cinnamon, fennel, and other spices unknown to my senses. Western chais are nothing like it and without being dramatic, of all the horrible things Starbucks has done to our senses, this is one of their greatest mistakes.
I would be lying if my original intention to fly across the world was to find God; it wasn’t. I was here to document a spiritual Bhakti yoga retreat with my camera. Yoga has eight limbs, only one being an asana (physical) practice. To clarify, Bhakti is less downward-dog yoga and more go-sit-in-a-cave-and-go-find-God yoga. Like all good Pilgrims, my primary motivation was to find adventure, get myself out of the sleepy hole of an Oregon winter and into the blazing sun of India, to change my color palette from dismal greys to colors inspired by tropical birds and plants. A place where cows wandered the street belonging to nobody, yet thoroughly painted from horn to horn with flowers gracing their long necks. I longed for something novel, so I could keep my promise to my ego to never remain stagnant or become boring.
I suppose the Universe had more in store for me.
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