Berlin 1.0

Again, I wish I could write from my most creative moments… This time, it’s when I’m walking… can’t quite do both.

So, I came to the realization today that I’ve been suffering from a severe form of blog-block and think I may have found a way around it, for now.  I am missing a huge chunk of my journey that should be titled USA 1.0 - Virgina, USA 2.0 – East Coast Tour, USA 1.2 – Virginia again, USA 3.0 - Dallas, USA 4.0 – LA, USA 5.0 – Seattle, USA 4.2 – LA again… What I realized today is that I’m overwhelmingly struggling with how to communicate the deep love I have for all the people I was able to visit, stay with, share with and just be with.  You have all, in the past, present and future; have left an indelible mark on me and I hope to be able to express my gratitude in a more deserving way at some point in the near future. 

I also am not sure how to address the difficulties in my family because it’s such a huge part of my journey and an ongoing part as well.  The struggles I’ve gone through are something that so many people have had to deal with and I would hope the learning’s and realizations I’ve had over this experience could maybe, one day, mean something. For now, I don’t know how to even start to talk about it all and what it means and how deeply I’ve had to search into myself, my family paradigm, my worth to my family and what I’m willing to go forward with through this process. Needless to say, it’s been a long journey and a difficult one. Many many many tears have been shed over it. Hearts have been broken. Relationships torn apart. Illusions shattered. And, some real beauty has come from it as well. I am cautiously optimistic about the future.

So, that brings me to Berlin.  Someone who is very dear to me inspired me, today, to write from where I’m at; rather than where I’ve been. I do hope to re-visit where I’ve been over the last few; however, Berlin is bringing me to my knees in a whole other way.

I am in Berlin, preparing for, and waiting for “The Polish Tour” to begin. For those of you who don’t know what this is or I haven’t explained it to you, it’s this… Indradyumna Swami, the Swami I met in Vrindavan (gosh, that feels like seriously forever ago) has created “The Festival of India” along the Baltic Coast of Poland for 20 or 25 years now.  It looks like we’re going to be in 14 towns/cities this year. I’m going to try not to explain too much about it, since I really have no idea. It is my first time going.  I do know we’ll set up for 3 days at a time from place to place and have nightly performances of a taste of India with a nightly Bhagavad-Gita reading from Indradyumna Swami and a Kirtan… That’s about all I know. 

Indradyumna Swami graciously invited me to come and help out on the tour.  What I will be doing, I have no idea. I plan on pitching in wherever I’m needed.  I know that I have a whole host of qualifications and a resume that is pretty full of material abilities; however, when stacked next to these people who have been studying the Bhagavad-Gita for 5, 10, 20, 40 years, I feel wholly uneducated.  Or these amazing dancers who have studied Indian dance their whole lives and perform ‘on the big stage’, as it were, in India… yeah, not me… Or people who can do the most amazing yoga-asana – yeah, not in this body, yet.  Or people who desire, so much, to cook for thousands of people – please don’t put me in a hot kitchen, I sweat too much… I pretty much can come up with a reason or explanation as to how I would be a bigger bother than help. So, my intention is to go in and fill in the gaps and holes wherever needed.  I am going with a heart so full of gratitude to learn from all these amazing people, that I just hope I can help them do their ‘jobs’.  All in all, there will be 250-300 people who will be ‘working’ during the program!

So, I’m in Berlin to get acclimated and see more of the world and wait for the school, where we’ll be staying, to open.  I’ve been here for 5 nights and am deep into another night of no sleep.  It’s been epic.  I have never suffered jet-lag like this in my life, until today I finally realized that this absolutely just can’t be jet lag.  I don’t get to blame that anymore.

I’ve been walking around Berlin, seeing all the sights, taking pictures, fairly passively.  I walk down the street my hostel is on and all I can see when I look up is bombed out buildings. Because that’s what it was. Almost nothing in Berlin hasn’t been rebuilt.  I did see 1 building today that is known for the fact that it made it.  I get on the train and think about the people who were riding the same tracks to their impeding imprisonment.  A new friend told me how the kids of Berlin take field trips to old concentration camps… I took field trips to the White Mountains to see Glacial Boulders…  So, last night I finally got out of bed to eat something out of helplessness, since I couldn’t sleep.  I was sitting in the kitchen, pissed off, as I was stuffing green beans in my face… Finally, 6am I found sleep. 

As I was mulling over this whole thing today, trying to figure out what on God’s green earth could be keeping me awake, I realized that I am feeling this place.  And, that I feel stuff. Dammit.  Like, when people start rattling off their dreams to me. I haven’t done a ton of dream work, but enough to know that you’re telling me way more about yourself than you know or than I really want to know.  That, yes I actually am sensitive.  Yeah, shocker… here I am, a 33 year old woman saying I’m sensitive… I’ve always been the jock. I’ve always rolled with it. I’ve always been the president of this, captain of that, in charge of this, over that.  Generally, I haven’t allowed myself to feel through it.  Or admit that I feel.  The good news is, generally I move on so my whole life isn’t about to come crashing down on me in this moment, it just means I need to be more aware that I feel.  And, not just stuff.  My digestive system isn’t iron clad.  Food affects me.  Sleep affects me.  I’ve spent so much of my life just muscling my way through.  I have felt deeply and moved on.  I have been sick and kept going.  So often, these would be considered admirable qualities, right?  But, what’s admirable in that? If I blew off your experiences, or your feelings, or your indigestion when you came to me; wouldn’t that be callous and mean?  So, why should any one person be expected to blow off their lives’ experiences and just move on?  I say the hell with that.  So, as I’m walking through Berlin today, taking yet ANOTHER trip to the Holocaust Memorial because it fascinates me, I need to realize that I’m going to not just see 2,711 stone pillars.  I’m reminded that I need to be aware of what I’m subjecting myself to.  I think of a moment in India when we were getting a tour of the hospital and the director wanted to take us to the cancer ward.  Our guide was emphatic that we don’t need to go there.  This is a spiritual journey and we weren’t in a place to need to be that.  Now, different thing entirely if we were there for something else; however, let’s be aware of how we are affected because this effects how we affect others.  The question now, is can I integrate it all?  I’m not going to put myself in a bubble and I’m not going to keep blowing myself off either.

For now, I need to just be aware that I’m sensitive. I’ve lived my entire life as though I’m not. That there isn’t this deep, sweet tenderness in me.  And, that’s enough. How to integrate it will come.

And, so, hopefully, will sleep.