Word of the Day: Erratic
adjective
1. deviating from the usual or proper course in conduct or opinion; eccentric; queer: erratic behavior.
2. having no certain or definite course; wandering; not fixed: erratic winds.
3. Geology . noting or pertaining to a boulder or the like carried by glacial ice and deposited some distance from its place of origin.
4. (of a lichen) having no attachment to the surface on which it grows.
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deviating from the usual or proper course in conduct or opinion;
eccentric; queer: erratic behavior.
My little path spins onward, wandering and not fixed. I’m in my final few days in Granada and preparing to travel soon to Costa Rica and begin the next phase of La Adventura. There, I’ll be managing a yoga studio and natural health center on the Carribean coast, just north Panama. This special little yoga studio sits with a private beach to the east and a National Park to the west and plays host to yogis on retreat and in training as well as people recovering from cancer. I anticipate a lot of growth spiritually and professionally as I dive into this next endeavor.
Meanwhile, I have less than a week to walk the cobbled streets of Granada and say goodbye to the city that has felt like home for almost a year. I am looking forward to being surrounded by creativitiy as the city begins the International Poetry Festival this Sunday. Poets are arriving from all over the world and every part of the city will be full of words as poemas pour forth in the poets’ native tongues. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate this vibrant city and country!
having no certain or definite course; wandering;
not fixed: erratic winds.
It dawned on me recently that all this traveling and country hopping has left me with no external place to call home. It’s an odd feeling to realize you don’t have a home. Even stranger is feeling okay with that reality. The result has been to dig deep and root down within my own heart, leaving me with the seguridad that I am at home wherever I find myself. This is a dramatic shift from the person I was when I packed my bags and left the States close to a year ago.
I don’t have a certain or definite course looking forward. The only thing I am sure of is that I want to keep exploring. The practice of yoga, meditation, mantra, and wellness is deeply layered and promises years of study, learning, and refining. The Spanish language has dictionaries full of words to learn and the Latin culture is varied country to country, region to region, each pocket of the Americas offering it’s own unique way of being and interacting with the world.
Geology . noting or pertaining to a boulder or the like carried by
glacial ice and deposited some distance from its place of origin.
In my wanderings, I tend to move at a glacial pace, taking time to really know a place and it’s people before moving on. I don’t feel as though I can say conozco un lugar, I know a place, until I’ve had enough free time to sit and watch life flow by like a river on a lazy sunny day. The more I understand the idiosyncracies of a people and a culture, the more I see the common thread binding us all. I’ve been blessed on this journey to be taken in by so many people. I’ve experienced a profound welcoming in Nicaragua that I’ve not seen in the States. People here are quick to open their hearts and homes, allowing me to take part in a genuine sense of connection and bonding. And so I move ever onward from my place of origin in the snowy Northeast to this land where snow is only seen in photos, movies, and imagination.
(of a lichen) having no attachment to the surface
on which it grows.
I strive to be unattached, though despite my best efforts, I do grip and hold on to what’s comfortable. The practice of Aparigraha, non-attachment, continues in different forms: first letting go of material possessions, then identity in job, connections to people and places, and finally, to the attachments of the ego and emotions. Like the dance of shiva, as I release one attachment I grab onto another, allowing myself to learn this lesson from many different perspectives.
In Douglas Brooks’ discussion of the Bhagavad Gita, Poised for Grace, he writes
“Krishna’s apparent emphasis on fierce non-attachment to the ‘pairs of opposites’ that make up the ordinary experiences of limited, conditioned, and mortal embodiment is as if the divine or spiritual (purusha) were one thing and the material (prakriti) another. Thus, when we act as Krishna’s agents of spirit and no longer identify with the physical realities of duality, we regain the experience of our ultimate freedom, which was never actually bound.”
As I travel from place to external place in Central America and follow the roads of my heart, I am ever returning home to the unbroken peaceful one within who remembers. She remembers that the separateness we see is only an illusion, with our hearts reaching out and intertwining with all living beings.