Centred

Rid myself of purpose, in order to find my purpose.



This, in essence, was the purpose.


People ask me what I've been doing with myself, incredulous that I've spent so long not earning any money.

As if I was being offensively indulgent.

I want to tell them what I've learnt. I did write a list, but it is too long to be interesting to an outside eye.

Very few of the items would be in place on a CV. Sometimes this makes it difficult to communicate, people often needing things put in terms of 'doing' words.


A lot of the learning comes through meditation, often in combination with stunning natural beauty or ancient sites. I am often reluctant to dwell too much on this, for fear of what people might think. In doing so I am being untrue to myself and of course ignoring what I've learnt, for it seems this path has become my purpose.

****


Back in August I spent a month at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, during which time I was led, by a series of synchronous events, to La Finca de Yoga Mistica.


At the time it was a community in the making, deserted during the rainy season. Empty garden beds lay sodden from the rain, several small pelapa huts hunched dripping and empty, one large rancho semi-finished, smelling of fresh-cut wood.


It was the cleanest kind of peace.


I was a guest of my new friend Randi, who consolidated my daily yoga practise with calm words and dedicated sentiment. Every morning was ignited with meditation on the small dock, mist hanging heavy over the lake, the only noise the soft paddling of early fishermen in dugout canoes.

I fell in love with everything then; the lake, yoga, sitting still. Myself.


I left the farm calmer than I'd ever been, the clear water flowing through my veins. I knew I'd be back.


In the months following, there came an exchange of emails with the farm's coordinators, which resulted in an agreement. I was to receive a yoga and spiritual teacher training in exchange for time working on the farm.


One day I woke up to my soul's autopilot and realised I'd found something I not only really wanted, but had, almost without realising, made happen.


There, crystallising from a long, heavy mist, appeared the Purpose.


It was so simple. Yoga is the synthesis of body, mind and soul, with the ultimate goal of inner stillness. Far more than the commonly perceived 'stretching,' it was designed purely as a moving meditation to sink one deeper into other worlds.

Although I had practised on and off for five years, I had never considered it more than just a beautiful activity. It is still unbelievable that I took so long to realise this could be a life choice.

The more I did, the more the lines blurred between the physical and the perceived. I sank easily into postures, my mind settling like a sudden dropping of the wind.

Without movement of air, there is no wind. Without thought, there is no mind.

Now, early March, I find myself for the first time on a timescale. I pass through Mexico, Belize and Guatemala at speed, like a fly, darting randomly in seemingly useless directions but somehow making it to my goal with time to spare.

I ride a speedboat across the lake, swaying up and down with the rhythms of the waves, rushing into the unknown. Volcanoes tower over me on all sides and I realise the entire lake must be one supervolcano.

I am in the centre.