Hello dear friends and Imaginary Readers,
Tomorrow afternoon, the Comcast cable guy is coming by to pick up the decoder boxes and broadband modem. After that, my access will be limited to whenever I can get online via free wireless and/or some Internet shop when I hit the ground in Bangalore, India this coming Tuesday. After that, I have to get a dial-up account in Penukonda, which may take a while.
Thus it may be some weeks before I can post again. As I mentioned in a previous post, in order to head off any misbehavior or comment spam, I’m going to turn off comments for this blog for now. Later, when I’m sure I can get online at least once a week, I’ll likely turn them back on again — as well as keep you all apprised as to my adventures abroad.
In the meantime, please do check out the blogroll in the righthand column. AlxIndia, Blue Gal, Poetic Justice, and Roryshock are all great personal blogs and among my favorites. And if you want to write me directly, please do feel free to drop me a line at admin(at)rebeccamorn.com (replace (at) with the @ sign). I’ll pick up email when I can and as many of you already know, I try to respond to every message. (Well, except for the ones trying to sell me fake prescription drugs, get me to help deposed Nigerian princes recover large sums of money, and online casinos. Those go straight into the circular bit-bucket.)
Do I ask myself from time to time, "Sell our house, move to India — is this insane or what?" The answer continues to be, "Doubtful. But even if it is, I still gotta do this. And besides, life is too frackin’ short to be unhappy. Or to pass up possible adventures."
Life shouldn’t just be about trying to have enough money or the right love affair or a good job. Life is what you’re doing, every minute of every day. If you’re in a job you hate — that’s your life. If you are fighting constantly with your spouse rather than talking honestly — so is that. If you spend all your time worrying about getting more money… well, then money is your life.
Happiness, contentment and bliss aren’t a destination. If you keep saying, "I’ll be happy when…", you’ve already lost. These things come along one’s path, whatever that path might be.
Mine led me to California about eight years ago, in the midst of a huge number of other life-altering changes, of which only those closest to me know the true extent. In the last few years, I’ve been comfortable — but also feeling somewhat stagnant. I’ve been trying to make a go of fiction writing, but that’s a hard field to break into. Plus, it wasn’t really satisfying my deepest desires. My desire to know the answers to the four most basic questions of existence:
- Who am I, really?
- Where did I come from?
- Where do I go, after I die?
- What am I supposed to be doing in this lifetime, what is my dharma?
And, like Vivekananda, I want to know God. Not just believe or have faith. I want to know and understand the true nature of Divinity. What is it? What’s it for? And where did it come from?
If my mind, heart, and spirit aren’t big enough to encompass this knowledge, this understanding, then I want to grow them until they can. Or at least to be able to hold more of it than my limited self can now.
I want Moksha. Freedom to choose. So that when I drop the body and move on, I’m not trapped by karma and old habit into returning, just to play out more of the same. To have to start over yet again with no real access to what went before. And whatever shape the ‘afterlife’ might take, I still want both the choice to decide what I will do and the wisdom to choose rightly.
Earlier in this life, during my 20s, I was walking one very ordinary and conventional path, one traveled by a good many others — or near enough to it as to be entirely recognizeable and unimpressive. In my early 30s, I made some truly radical decisions, heading down one path that only a few have ever walked. It was perfect for me, and I have no regrets. Still, eventually it led me back to a rather more ordinary and well-traveled road, with me as a small business owner and freelance technical writer…and not much else.
I gave that up a couple years ago to try this fiction thing, because I knew it to be far less of a "soul prostitution" than writing computer manuals. Still…something wasn’t right. Missing.
Then my beloved friend and sister (in spirit) Alx came back from India, a changed woman. Over this last year, I’ve come to realize that where she went, I must follow. Because of her, I have witnessed and personally experienced miracles (as have others around me). Through her and her husband Jonathan’s teachings, I have come to see there are a multitude of paths to the divine (or as my main website page says, there are an infinite number of paths, but only one mountain). They’ve been invaluable — and now are in essence handing me and Stephanie (and two more of our close friends, Maya and Sage) to their teacher, Sri Kaleshwar Swami himself, a divine soul I’m honored to call my Guru now. (Guru meaning "teacher" or "master"…or guide, if you will.)
I go into this, walk this path, with my eyes wide open and my mind sharp. I know what I’m doing… and at the same time, I’m trusting to God and the Divine to an extent I’ve not done before.
And while I’m there, I’ll share as much of it with the rest of you as Providence and opportunity permits.
Take care everyone. When next you hear from me, I’ll probably be in Penukonda at Sri Kaleshwar’s ashram. First on tap is to get settled into our new apartment. Then Guru Purnima (festival during the first full moon in July, each year). And then begins Kaleshwar’s ‘Soul University’ — sure to be an amazing experience in and of itself.
Until next we meet…
- Becca
