Well, I can't sleep so I figure this is as good a time as any to begin blogging againą„¤ I last wrote in October '07. Crazy to stay away so long. But I did not want to write. I was going through major transformation and sometimes it just ain't easy.
The India tour in November was very difficult. Some of my best friends and favorite students were with me. Hell, even my 86 year old father was with me. I had great expectations for this one. I tell ya.
And as the sages say over and over again about great expectations, they lead to great disappointment. And so it goes. Anyway, whatever could have gone wrong on a tour did beginning on day one when the wrong size bus showed up, not the one I ordered and paid for.
It was much too small for my plans. I like people to ride through their first part of India with plenty of room and comfort while they get acclimated to this very different culture. Also I like to teach on the bus and have people do everything from sharing intentions to Osho's Dynamic as we cruise along for the first 5 days. In this bus, it was just about impossible.
It did not have enough room for me to teach. It had no mic. It had no shocks. The AC system was poor. People's asses hurt. People breathed lots of pollution. People got disappointed and cranky. Eventually they got mad.
At some point I shut up and shut down. I was horrified watching their faces in such dismay. I wanted them to love India and they were hating it. I mean some amount of all this is to be expected in any third world country. Anything can go wrong and often does. But I so wasn't expecting it on my tour nor were they. After all, I had done this very same trip twice before. I know the ropes so to speak.
Ha ha, joke was on me. And not very funny. I became sullen.
Even though things improved greatly when we left the bus behind and made our way to Varanasi and Khajuraho, we never seemed to get back on the right track.
When everybody left India, I stayed on for a month. I had to get myself grounded and figure out what had taken place and why. I also felt I needed to make some repairs to the relationships after what had happened in my clearing, my space.
While receiving a deep healing massage, I got some insight into the spiritual aspects of what had happened. I saw reasoning behind the craziness. The message I received has to do with the tremendous shifts in consciousness required on the earth at the present time. I saw this group needing to go through a trauma together quickly, not one in which someone dies, but one where there is not much time for drama, just be traumatized and get over it! Prepare for something to come in our lives that we have to get through together at some later point.
Well, when I wrote that to the participants, nobody was having it!
I mean the whole reason I take people to India is to experience SURRENDER like no other place on earth that I know of can supply. That's Tantra is it not? But people had really felt so bad they just couldn't seem to focus on the spiritual aspects of our crazy time together.
So, then I woke up (with the help of one or two of them) to the notion that it was about the economics. They wanted full refunds in many cases. I have never heard of such a thing when it come to tours. As a matter of fact, I don't think any other tour leader in the world would even consider such an idea. But this was different. This was my tour and these were my friends and students. And there was out integrity on my part about what I had promised and what I delivered.
As I struggled with the idea of refunding so much money and the losses, I kept dreaming about how they capture monkeys. They put a banana in a cage that has slats big enough for the monkey to slide its hand in. Once the monkey gets his fist around the banana, it cannot get the hand out. The fist won't fit between the slats only an open hand. Of course the monkey doesn't want to let go so it gets trapped. Oh this recurring dream was driving me nuts!
So I made a decision to make large refunds. And in so doing, I got my hand out of the trap. Boy was it a painful process to let go, but in the end I am glad that I did. Now people can get over it (I hope) and they can return to seeing a spiritual lesson if they choose.
I certainly got one. Somehow abundance is now pouring into my life like never before. It's in the form of students, contracts, radio interviews, potential lovers, assistants, people signing up for courses and money.
Plus, something shifted with my father while there. He came back a much more loving and kind soul. It's like he had a frontal lobotomy. He's the only one who really loved the tour. I can't explain it. He dropped some mean thing that seemed a part of his personality and shifted into nice. Go figure. This was worth it all!
That fits into the abundance thing as well. It's what I always wanted from him - kindness, cooperation, affection more than just mouthing empty words. And so I am receiving that too.
Lately when friends have told me about how difficult it is to be with their aging parents, I've laughed and jokingly suggested they send their parents to India with me!
What transformation!
Labels: abundance, India, spiritual, surrender, Tantra, Transformation
