Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I can't believe another year has gone by… We began 2013 in Mysore last year, and it is here that we end the year again.  It's like coming home to yourself and discovering that indeed you have been changed by the course of time after all.  Personally, I've always found my time in India to somehow highlight the areas in which I've grown, and also make painfully obvious all areas that I still need to work on.

The New Moon at the start of this New Year brings with it an excellent time to reflect and reconnect to your purpose.  The New Moon symbolizes 'new beginnings' and so it is an opportunity to set an intention or goal, or even just take a glance at where you've been, how far you've come, and look ahead to where you are going.  How auspicious that it all happens as we pass from 2013 to 2014!

Some of you know our tradition of coming up with 2 words at the beginning of the New Year. One word reflects your feelings or thoughts about the year past and the other word reflects your intentions for the year to come.  These are Not two words that you should sit around and contemplate, they are simply the first words that come into your head when you think about 2013 & 2014.  We invite you to join us in this fun little game we started now a full decade ago!

So, maybe you're wondering what we've been up to for the last month here in Mysore…
Well, we've been going deeper into our practices, which is spiritually and mentally a wonderful experience, but physically we're feeling a lot of the "sweet pain" that Guruji would talk about.  Some old openings are 're-opening', as we delve deeper into the process of purification that always goes hand-in-hand with practice in Mysore. I'm not sure there are words that can describe the metaphysical process that goes on through the practice here in this place, but it is awe-inspiring.  I am both humbled and grateful to be a witness to it.

On a purely mundane level, we tried to see if Jediah would take to preschool with the other kids who are here, but after 3 failed attempts and his many angry statements like: "I will not go to school" we decided it was better not to traumatize him with a debauched "Indian preschool" experience, and so we have a fairly proud "preschool drop-out" to contend with, and that pretty much keeps us literally running around all day long.

On a typical day, we have a sitter who comes to our house at 4am, so we can leave before Jediah wakes up and has a massive melt-down that we're leaving, potentially waking our neighbours, and so if all goes well, we can peacefully leave for practice. Afterwards I come home and Jeff continues to assist Sharath for another 2.5 hours.  After that we're pretty much occupied with trying to keep our little man distracted and busy.  Breakfast, coconuts, parks, pools, more parks, walks, climbing, running, more coconuts, hopefully a late lunch in there somewhere or dinner,  a bucket bath, and finally bed.  Something like that.  I'm pretty sure Jeff and I can tell you all the best parks near Gokulum at this point.  Occasionally we get to chanting, and some days we might even get to study some Yoga Texts or have a nap - if our little man is napping, which seems to happen once or twice a week at this point!


Health wise we were all doing much better, that is until Jediah got an eye infection, and I got a lung infection, and both Jeff and I went down with a fever.  Hopefully we'll all be back to our "New" healthy selves by the end of the week!

That's my little New Year update.  Just wanted to stay in touch and keep you connected with where we're at and how we're doing over here in India.

Wishing you all the best in 2014! HAPPY NEW YEAR!












1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thankful. Hopeful.
Wishing all of you a healthy, happy, successful 2014 and beyond! Jediah is getting huge! Ah school my boy is 11 and he still doesn't want to go lol. More photos and blog posts please ;)