Indonesia
Self-exploration is not linear.
As the months pass by, you hop from place to place. Prior to undertaking a longer-term trip like this, you'd think that the growth from travel life shoots upward. The amount of time you spend living out of a backpack parallels the amount of gratitude you have for living each day. Your joy expands. People think that just because you travel, your person gets better and better and better in an upward trajectory. WRONG. Bust that myth.
An expat yogi's words in Costa Rica stay with me, “I see many people coming and going, using this place as an escape. They think, people who live here in paradise couldn't possibly have any problems. But as soon as you move here, when you don't have the distractions of city life, your demons come back, and they come back louder than ever. You start going crazy.”
She spoke about her own personal experience, touching upon the reality check many spiritual-seekers get hit with when they escape. In Bali, I saw many “enlightened,” spirtually-seeming people keep evidence of their addictions and demons hidden and laced with shame. The demons would only open when it was convenient for self-promotion and contest. Some days, when I heard just one more person say the word “healing,” I'd visualize in the back of my mind, my pointer finger at my temple, pulling the imaginary trigger, the whites of my eyes rolling up. How much more could we talk about healing without making space for presence, for darkness, for joy to lie? In them, in narcissism, and suffering, we can see versions of ourselves, even if we don't want to.
You move forward, you go backwards, you stand and come to a stop. At one point, I began wondering if I would be able to pull myself out from the heaviness of what's past. This last lingering weight that's been with me all my life annoys and disturbs me.
I'm here still, brushing aside the thick of it, getting stronger and better, faster at running away from what doesn't serve me and walking cautiously towards what is finally ready to be released from within.
