I received an interesting newsletter from a friend back in Wimberley yesterday (now a week ago) and it set me to thinking.  (As I said, you know where this is going, so feel free to get out while you can. ) Just before his epistle, a different Newsletter arrived, about a similar topic, not exactly the same – but related.  Well – when I got two in a row, that seemed significant.

 

Because – one of the things I have missed sorely here in this experience is my connection with things spiritual. That world – intuition, healing, synchronicity, metaphysics, things that go bump-in-the-night – has been part-and-parcel of everything I’ve done both personally and professional for the last two decades. To have gone cold-turkey has left a void that I must discover new ways to fill.   People here don’t really know me for that work,  so I get little of the feedback I grew accustomed to back home.   But some of those discussions are re-emerging. I came here – in part – to live the tools I taught to others and do it in a way that didn’t involve making a living at it.  But you know that and I won’t beat that dead horse.  Still, when a passion is also your business, it provides a different opportunity to keep it in the forefront of life – in fact be up-to-your-ears in it.   Here, much as I had expected – it has been relegated to the world of practical use and the very nature of something becoming part of the routine, takes a bit of the mystery out of it, but it is no less valuable.  If fact it makes room for the next level of realization or exploration.  One skill builds on another as with anything else.  But I do miss sharing it – so I guess I’m sharing it with you.  I’ve started meditating again, and with it there has been a return of a sense of connectedness and also an increase in synchronicity.   Perhaps I’m baaaaack.

 

Anyway, the topic addressed in the first news letter has to do with Oneness, the concept that we are all part of the greater whole. I’ve referenced it obliquely before as a holographic universe – and it is a guiding principal of my life and indeed my choosing to be here.  The partial answer to the question, “what in the world are you doing there,”  rests in that belief and its natural consequence: that if I/we can do one thing to help any part of this universe, we help all of it.  Consciousness knows no boundaries, so as long as one of us holds anger, fear, contempt, judgment – all of us hold it to one degree or another.   The flip side is – that as one of us becomes more enlightened, we all become more enlightened – the Hundredth Monkey Principle.  And I have re-discovered that  it is easier to  feel enlightened and release the negatives when one lives surrounded by a sense of safety and comfort that is so much a part of what we have considered to be our birthright in the States.  It is another matter, when faced moment-by-moment by things, people, circumstances that are so at odds with the way we are accustomed to operating.  Easy to judge things like “people being late, not knowing how to_____,  cultural acceptance of certain forms of abuse, etc.”   I’m in a target rich environment here for learning non-attachment.  As was true on the boat trip, I am also coming face-to-face with some characteristics about myself that aren’t so pretty (the down-side of self-discovery).  In psychological jargon, one might say I’ve met my shadow… 

 

Then came the newsletter about “being present – in the moment,” not in the future, nor chewing on past successes or failures.  We hear about these concepts, discuss them, philosophize…..  But then we get back to living the life that is hard-wired: worried about the past, focused on the future, seldom in the present.  The useful thing about stepping out periodically, putting yourself in situations where you don’t automatically know how to respond, is that it challenges different parts of the brain. – let alone different parts of the psyche.  Anything we’ve done for long or have done repetitively forms a handy neural network, so the next time we need a response – a network fires without our even calling it into play.  That’s why it’s  exhausting to be learning all the time, to be stressed all the time, to be in immersed in a radically different culture.   And I have been exhausted most of the time here – the case for most of the PCVs I know.  Nothing comes automatically – each response is a new one.  And while one is seeking new responses, it’s a constant battle between what we remember worked at one point in our lives and what might work NOW.  Those are often at odds with each other.  

 

So back to being in the present and Oneness. What an opportunity!  In wanting a metaphysical or spiritual experience (you know – one of those with bells-and-whistles like a precognitive dream,  communing with a ghost, a close encounter-of-the-third-kind…) I failed to see the one before me.  And that is, using this concept of being present  (and dealing with nothing and no one every being on time)  as an extended meditation… That means letting go of the judgment around it, letting go of expectations and not moving ahead to the future outcome….  Beginning to sound very Buddhist.  And that works for me, but I wouldn’t mind some bells-and-whistles.

 

In thinking about this, one of the things that is both endearing and infuriating here is the issue of time.  It’s one of the greatest challenge of westerners.  The other great challenge has to do with boundaries.  And here we are back to “being present and oneness.”  Lordy, does the Universe always have to have the last word?  But I WANT THE LAST WORD!!!!  Could be time to put on my big-girl pants and shut up.  

 

Interestingly, there is often a sense of “no time” here.  Or maybe it’s the black-hole of time. Have to wait?  Bring a book.  No amount of angst-ing over it, pushing, cajoling, logical discussion will make any difference. We can try to effect those changes (and I still think it’s not only worth while, but required for any developing country to adopt some concepts of timeliness, honoring commitments, etc. because these are part of the bundle if one wants the conveniences brought about by commerce and business) but it is futile.   In the MOMENT, it is sometimes  more valuable to learn to BE. So… as someone who has always been involved in a project, been the teacher, the planner, had at least some illusion of control, this – shall we say – is  simultaneously illuminating, interesting and infuriating.  Reminds me of the Buddhist “curse:” May you have an interesting life. Because “interesting” implies lessons…  No shortage of those here.

 

Consistent with what I know to be true of intention and the world of quantum physics, law of attraction (tho I am growing to hate that term because of the baggage that comes with it and some of  the Charlatans  trying to sell it  as “get rich quick”) I know the instant one lets go of the attachment to something, the faster that something manifests.    As I said, it’s a good meditation.

 

And – as if to prove a point – as I had a repair man scheduled to come at 10:00 AM and settled down with a good book and a cup of coffee feeling it will be completely OK if he didn’t show up until – when?  Having forgotten about the time (i.e became unattached to it) I startled to a knock at the door.  It was straight up 10:00 and there was my repairman!    He confessed to being such an anomaly in his culture that friends call him the Black Mzungu.  So today, the White Acholi and the Black Mzungu met, each quite delighted by this twilight zone shift of identities.    Each of us had to let go of an attachment to custom to get there.  It’s going to be one attachment at a time I think.  Eighteen more months of lessons/discoveries to go – and counting.  Oops – that’s another attachment.