Connecting Spaces

 

I crawl out of my dark hole after a deep long sleep. I am shocked when I look at my phone and see that it’s 1,5 hours later than my usual wake up time. 7.24. It's day four in my yogi home and already my past has started to connect to the now. Here. My present me. I step out of the room into the bright morning and look at the guy standing in front of me. Good morning Lina. My sleepy mind takes a few moments to recognize who is wishing me a good morning. Here. In the middle of nowhere. In between the mountains, my yogi home. A person who wasn't here the night before when I went to sleep and who apparently knows me when I get up the next morning. One of my yogis from two years back. I have never spoken as much as a few words with him and he's cut his long curly hair, making it hard for me to recognize him at first. But once I do I lean in towards him to hug him. His smile familiar. I feel a warmth towards me that I cannot remember from back then. I come to realize how much I have changed throughout my processes over the last months and how it's changed my perception of people. Of men in particular. Waking up to this unexpected encounter, his warm and understanding words for my long sleep as if he had felt the same the last nights, as if he was here, giving my mood just the right push into the day. Sunny. Bright like this morning. In contrast to yesterday. The darkness, grey and cold from the rain, having finally been replaced by the warm spring sun as I’ve asked the universe for.

The last two days having been a bit of a roller coaster ride, taking be back to some old memories, wanting to be answered the next day. Luckily within a day. The Universe didn't let me sit with it for more than 24 hours for my emotions to be met. Met where I was wishing for them to be met. 

Sitting in the same spot as two days before where the past started to reconnect to the now. My present. This beautiful small cafe after returning from the waterfall. Family trip. The kitchen boys, my fellow neighbor and me. 

Returning to the meeting point of the village to treat myself. The place where people come together to hang out. The place where you find the best food, the kindest staff, most social company and the best service. A place where I had come to make it my routine showing up every other day to socialize, read and connect. As it shall happen the same two days before. After talking to my sweet from back home before the electricity finally cuts us off, I order my favorite dish, sitting down inside. Devrash owner as the place‘s name given the same is smiling at me. I smile back and ask him if he remembers me from two years before. In my memory I have never really spoken to him. But I do know that he is a friend of my past love story. He smiles back at me, nodding confidentially. Of course I do. You were with [...]. He remembers well. It takes me off guard. A person who knows about my story. Our story. Until this point it was only my memory. In isolation from the outside world. Me choosing to come back here without anybody knowing, without further connection to the outside world. Returning to this place where no one was physically present involved in our story. Not even here. No mutual friends, no people who would recognize me or even make the connection to him for that matter. 

We start talking. He tells me that he hasn't seen him in a while, asking me if I was in contact with him and if he knew I was here. I shake my head. He smiles. I can give you his number if you want. Maybe he would come if he knew you were here. I smile at him too. Maybe he would. I don't want his contact but you can call him if you want. I say. And I mean it. Why not put him into the same position to decide if he wants to see me or not. I would have liked the Universe to just let us bump into each other but that apparently was no longer an option.

Instead I open up the channels of the modern world technology after leaving the café - to give him the chance to reconnect. What I fail to realize is the frequency of him actually using this channel of communication and how he would not even be aware of me having opened it up. While walking back into the forest I get more and more in the notion that this was a totally pointless idea, putting me in the exact spot I didn't wanna be in in the first place. Me now being possibly the only one knowing that I am here, not wanting to contact him at the same time, having the feeling he could. The outcome of an unelaborated impulsive reaction to a conversation that has brought memories of my past back into the physical present, making it a reality. To make the whole situation more confusing I am seeing myself confronted with the same picture of him and his friend at the same time from both of them, causing me a big wave of misunderstandings. Indians. I feel it's always the same. Communication. Mission impossible. These two guys in the same car when his friend only days ago spoke to me saying that he was hoping to see me in Pulga. Here. All this was not making sense. And it shouldn't have as it comes out the next evening after a cold rainy day trying to make sense of the signs.

It's dark, I've had my favorite dinner now that it's full house as more of the yogis are returning. They've waited for me to make my childhood dish for the right time. Not knowing. This kindness that I forgot on what scale it's being lived here as their highest value, making me feel like a twinkling star. Going to my room with a full stomach, switching on the light I find his message on my phone. There it is. The question I was waiting for. If I was here. A phone call follows just like a year ago. After all Devraj did call him. I didn't expect it. 

And there we are in a conversation that reminds me of many before, yet it's different in its particularities. A call full of familiar comments and perspectives, yet from two changed people. Filled with old known patterns, at the same time coming up with new insights that shall still be to revealed. A conversation bringing me back to moments in time, seeing them from a distance from a place where all I feel is process, learning, understanding. There is nothing new in his perspective for me to see. I can only laugh about the unnecessary harm that was caused yet I cannot excuse what he has done to me, neither do I want to, only I can see it from a different angle today. From a person, a young boy who didn't know any better as neither did I. I let him make me the princess he wanted to see in me but that I wasn’t and that I couldn’t be and I made him the man I wanted him to be according to his words. Words that were in no alignment with his actions or being. And so we were nowhere to be found aligned with one another.

For the first time the pain was so overwhelmingly intense because I had to leave a world I’d discovered for the first time. Returning to it, bringing the necessary safety for the next return, making the anguish more bearable. As it was with us. The wisdom of surviving such pain bringing reassurance that I can come back into this world reborn. Every time that I choose to. And in the process itself also choosing not to pursue such a path of pain again.

As he’s a young boy who is trying to learn, to reflect and for what he can - apologize, I can forgive him. Expressing his appreciation for what he could take from me to his own reflections on his personality to evolve into a better place. Expressing his gratitude for what he has learned through his experience with me and maybe one day he will even feel responsibility for his actions. Now and then. And maybe then I will stop haunting his dreams where I still appear  yelling at him in his worst nightmares. I cannot help but laugh about it. It seems like a fair punishment for the endless existential pain he has caused me that I had to work myself through. To rise as a phoenix from the ashes stronger and more beautiful than ever before. Thanks to him. And still I know how my rawness, my harshness, my rigidity in mirroring him has caused him heartache too. Softness I was missing. Softness that I've been trying to integrate, inviting it into my life.

A call that reminds me of endless little details of who he was and how he is. And who I was and how I am now. The topics switching between his business ideas collaborating with my qualities to old memories and what we could do when we meet as he offers to come back for a few days when he has finished his duties. I find sweetness in his attempt at least in his words to make up in little ways for what he was missing to do for me back then; even if it was only to pick me up from my place for when we meet. We should have a little party, have a drink. It must be the irony of the universe that the topics that tore us apart are now the ones that bring us together. It amuses me the way the Universe is always conspiring to make things happen the way they should. Maybe I deserved to hear a few things from him in the sincerity of the distance that time has created. Words about what he regretted or what he would have liked to do differently. And also that his love was for all he knew back then coming from his heart. Yet I am only a silent observer from the past. It has no value to me anymore in my life in what way he thinks, feels or has changed. It will not bring me redemption as I’ve redeemed myself. It will not serve me but hopefully him. What is serving me today is how I grew out of it. How I acknowledged my own wounds. My own soft heart, idealizing the people around me into something they weren't. Falsely holding space for people when they were hurting me, thinking I could safe them. In combination with trying to find salvation for them and myself by mirroring their every habit, character, flaw and trauma. In deep hope to dissolve the pain. Yet I couldn't take the blunt reality that this was never my responsibility, neither could I reach them as they've been too far away from me all along. As he was as well. Neither could I solve his or my pain, nor was I the one in charge. I was the one in charge to heal myself. And this is what I did.

Looking good he says while he is sending me the pictures of my knotting pose in the morning. The pictures? I ask. He is nodding. And you. You're looking good. I smile. Great, you're doing great. Nice. Good job. It's all I've been hearing the last days from the yogis, pushing myself through the movements. I trained. I worked hard and I am not yet to finish. He decided not to leave now that more of his friends have arrived. I'm smiling at them. So guys that means full power. You'll have to start getting into practice again. With me. I need to learn. I know why I am here. Back. 

Back to my happy place where other memories connected seem to unravel. Stories that seem like someone must have made them up. The disconnected lives of Indian men. One more. Another one. It seems to me like there is more than one personality in each and all of them inherent and it makes me wanna question our concept of identity. 

Finding my highest values the ones of truthfulness, trust, integrity, sincerity, loyalty, fairness it seems in all these people contradictions seem to be the most ordinary thing in building their identity, not even causing anyone a sleepless night. Absurdity to me. I find myself hanging lost in space for understanding where they find their stability, their trust and faith in people when no one is truly connecting or committing to anyone or anything. No likes, no dislikes. Everything just is how it is. And I wonder if in the deepest of their culture of spirituality they have misunderstood something. That they have overlooked the complexity of life itself and have accidentally drifted into black and white thinking. Only wanting to follow what they make their truth. Justifying everything in the name of spirituality. When what they overlooked in the first place is... Their own values that they may have forgotten to define. Drifting, floating around like lost leaves in the wind. Ending up with no identity. Following false temptations and ideas of life believing this is freedom, yet it is the opposite as they are slaves of their mind, failing to recognize the misleading messages they receive. At least I am trying to lead a life, living up to my values. But what to live up to if you have no values?!

My processes, findings and studies that I'm still deeply involved in, reconnecting here. And all I can do is watch. Watch in distance, knowing deep inside that I cannot be involved in any of these delusional life styles. These contradictory personalities that seem to show a new aspect of personality every day, never knowing when they will be revealed if ever or what they will hold.

Understanding where I want to be. And that all that ever gave me reason to live was love, kindness, connection, friendship. People. People who love me, who I love, who are there, always. Who care. Who have similar values and likeminded souls. Whose focus is in their heart and from their heart not to be distracted by worldly temptations that yet bear betrayal, treason, broken trust, pain and loss as a consequence. So many lies, manipulation and broken trust, unnecessary disappointment and lost existences. For someone who has no aim, no value everything is a distraction. And this distraction can cause you a life of loneliness. Suffering and agony. 

And yet I do not even know where all these thoughts are coming from. Maybe it is from an oversized Thali, a sweet lassi, large chai and double portion of fried nutella milky bar chapati within a two hour range. Or it's this place. Devraj. That has connected me through time and space in memories. Bringing me here.