Sunday, 19 August 2018

Bearing Witness

"To show,  by your very existence, the Truth of a thing." Thank you Neil Kramer (Initiation to a Mystical Life on Gaia.com) for this life affirming piece of wisdom.





With thanks to all the teachers I've had the great good fortune to have had. May you all be liberated. 

Monday, 11 June 2018

Raj and Clare's Homestay

Dear Friends and Family,

After quite a long break, I would like to share with you the latest developments, in my creation of a 'Place to Meditate':

It's been interesting for me to re-visit some of the writing I did about the project and it's hard to believe that more than 4 years have passed since I wrote about my ideas to make a home and garden, based on permaculture design principles that welcomes a family of travellers, seekers and those in need of a refuge.




http://claresadventuresinyogaland.blogspot.in/2011/09/theres-new-world-coming.html
http://claresadventuresinyogaland.blogspot.in/2012/08/a-place-to-meditate-part-two_16.html
http://claresadventuresinyogaland.blogspot.in/2013/11/a-place-to-meditate.html

Since 2013, when I last wrote about the project, I have taken another yoga teacher training course at Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia. I've taught yoga in Swaziland, Spain (on the Camino de Santiago) and here in India, building up my experience of working with individuals and small groups. And I've haphazardly attempted to continue my two main areas of study: 30 book reports (I've only got 8 left now) on a selection of yoga texts which is a requirement for my continued studies in Hidden Language Hatha Yoga, Dream Yoga and Kundalini Yoga. These are areas that were adapted and developed by the founder of the ashram, Swami Radha, and they are quite unusual topics in modern yoga, which has a great emphasis on the physical. (check out the ashram website in the side menu). The second thing I've been trying to maintain some continuity with, despite moving around as much as ever, is the Diploma in Permaculture which is definitely on the back burner until I have a place of my own.

Which brings me to the latest plans. Having reached another dead end in my search for the right place to start, after quite a lot of travelling in France and Spain, I decided to take a break in 2016 and headed back to India, to apply myself to some yoga self-study and to dance and party- for the first time inviting fun purposefully into my life. So I chose Goa, having avoided it for years, hoping to find somewhere easy, social and stimulating.


After a month of serious yoga and singing training, when I began to feel very lonely and a bit miserable, Raj and I met, outside his shop and very quickly fell in love . We were both spending 'the season' (the time when tourism is busiest) in Arambol, which is one of the northern most beaches before you cross into the state of Maharastra, capital Bombay. Arambol is still suitably hippy to attract my prolonged attention; I came here for ashtanga vinyasa yoga with Balu but since then I've seen workshops for everything, from permaculture to contact improvisation, past life regression to Tibetan massage.

It's not by any means all clean-living here either: Goa was once the mecca for full moon parties and acid-taking seekers and, despite a nationwide attempt to clean up tourism in India, which means discouraging those without money, Arambol still has the essence of that freedom of thought and action that attracts a wide range of peoples; a very cosmopolitan crowd of partiers, musicians, artists and wasters from Russia, Nigeria, Israel, Europe, North America principally but to name a few.

Raj has worked the season in Goa for the past 5 years and successfully ran his shop, making a good profit that could support him and his family back home in Srinagar, Kashmir. Sadly the climate for certain types of business has changed and shopkeepers all over India are struggling to make ends meet as foreign tourists, particularly Russians and Europeans, have a much smaller budget than in the past. These days tourists are looking for accommodation and food and less and less have cash for gifts, jewellery or luxury items such as those Raj stocks.

This season Raj and I rented a 2 bedroom apartment with a shared garden and set about setting it up as our first homestay. Due to one thing and another, we've had only 5 guests this season, but this  has been enough for us to see how we work together and if running a homestay or guesthouse would suit us. Feedback we've had from our guests and friends has been extremely positive and people really appreciate the love and family feeling Raj and I create together in our home.

So we plan next season to have a guesthouse, here in Arambol, north Goa. We'd like to run it on a small scale (max 10 guests), as a homestay, with breakfast, 1/2 shared evening meals a week and yoga classes. We'd like to have good connections with a local ayurvedic practitioner and masseur who can visit guests at home. I would also like to offer picnics and local trips including introducing guests the joys of sea-swimming and body-surfing!

During the monsoon (May- September) Raj and I will be in Kashmir where Raj's family has a bathing boat (the Honolulu) for water-skiing and other water sports on Dal Lake. We'd also like to guide visitors coming to Srinagar and trekking in the wonderful countryside and mountains here.

Not only is Kashmir one of the loveliest parts of the Himalayan range, it is still one of the less visited and therefore unspoiled parts of India. Often called 'Jannat' or Heaven, the romance of the lake and the lush countryside, with its horses, gypsy people and flora and fauna is unique in my experience. And the welcome and friendliness of the family and Kashmiri people in general make you feel like one of the family in no time.


In the winter skiing and snowboarding are popular and the snow is much more reliable than in Europe these days. In addition the cost of a skiing holiday here, is a fraction of the price of most other places. It just takes a little bravery and faith to use the lift at Gulmarg! It's all part of the adventure.

Raj and Clare's Homestay

Hi everyone!



Wow I can't believe it's been so long since my last post! 18 months at least! Looking back on some of my blog posts over the past 6-7 years or so, I'm so glad I have persevered in following my dream, even when it's felt that it's carried me to all manner of places in the world (from Swaziland and Brighton to Catalunya and British Columbia and many trips to India in between) without offering up somewhere called home where I felt I could start the 'Place to Meditate'.


Finally when I gave up looking, I found Arambol. Much like Brighton with its big open heart, full of esoteric workshops and people who talk about permaculture, and decorated in many of the sub-tropical flora that feels so familiar to me from my childhood in Zambia and Zimbabwe (hibiscus and bougainvillea, frangipani, plumbago and morning glory). People call Goa 'India Light'. I'll take it: There's just enough chaos and heat (from May onwards that's anything but light!) and the ocean is perfect until the monsoon season.  


I also met Raj and we are happy together, planning to run a guesthouse on the outskirts of Arambol from next season. The search for a place and the negotiations have taken us the best part of 6 months. We've made a spoken agreement to rent a 7 bedroom place which we hope to call Raj and Clare's Homestay. I plan to make it the subject of my Permaculture Diploma Portfolio for which I still need to produce 8 designs. As I progress with these, I hope to share my processes and designs with people coming to our place. 


We have a small garden and a restaurant (which we hope to sublet to a chef who wishes to spend a season or more with us, offering a menu of something a little different). We also have space for a yoga and meditation room, where I would like to display art by local artists. If you know anyone who might be interested, pass on my details. I'm also looking for volunteers who'd like to work with me on implementing some of my designs in the garden/ space.


The next few months, I'll be completing the next part of my yoga teacher training, learning how to market our place and our brand and researching treks and activities in Kashmir, where Raj and I will also lead trips and host visitors during the summer (June to September).



Wednesday, 16 November 2016

A taste of something to come?



Standing in a line in Arambol, Goa, sweating along with at least another 100 people in a space not much bigger than the double room I rent. It’s one of the more humid days I’ve encountered in the last ten days of my return to south India, a place of adventures I have a great fondness for.
And adventure is how I viewed this little foray, hitching a ride on the back of a dread-locked local’s moped, getting in line at the State Bank of India with the old, the crippled and the foreign, as we’re all leveled to the same position: trying to get some money we can actually use before the cash in our hands, purses and trouser pockets is labelled old and useless for good. The rumour has it that we have 2 weeks to queue for hours in banks that may or may not have enough of the new bills to exchange for the nearly redundant notes. OK if you only have 4000 rupees (about 40 quid)- the maximum allowance I’ve heard of in any bank. Those with more MUST deposit it in a bank account. Hmm- I smell a dirty rat!
The Indian government, 5 days ago, deemed it necessary, on their grounds of tackling black-marketeers, to withdraw the largest notes that existed in the currency- 500 and 1000 rupee bills. Apparently shifty business men and those without bank accounts have huge piles of the stuff sitting about- under mattresses or in their bras?
The ‘transition period’ is causing much speculation, drama and queuing all over the country. Business people in nearly every shop I’ve been into this week have either had to refuse business because they have no money (the ATMS were closed for days), have to accept payment ‘later’ because they don’t want to accept the old notes anymore or have no change even if they are willing to accept the old bills. They’re losing a lot of money as the days turn into weeks.
The more accepting among us (I’m not one of them!) views all this as teething problems and resign themselves to sitting (or standing!) out the next 10, 14, 20 days of confusion and, let’s call it, scarcity. These people are still naïve enough to believe that the government is acting in our best interests. I have other opinions…
As I waited, trying to remain patient and positive while in a line that didn’t seem to move forward an inch after half an hour, the seed of an idea entered my head: ‘What if we all just pretended that we hadn’t heard the rumours? What if, like some really savvy restaurant owners and shop people, we continued to use and accept our old monopoly money and carried on business as usual. In other words, what if we collectively resisted this madness? What if we listened to our hearts and said ‘What would I rather be doing right now? Standing knee deep in sweat next to the Bank of India sign laughingly extolling it’s promise of customer satisfaction? Or earning a day’s wages, having a sit down in my shop, chatting with my neighbour, drinking a lovely chai, sunbathing on the tropical beach on my 1 annual holiday a year?
Someone’s having a laugh at our expense people!!
I could scream ‘Wake up!’ but to be fair, there I was in the queue, worrying that I hadn’t jumped through all the hoops of form-filling, document photocopying and general bum-licking that I feel we should all be getting rebelliously sick and tired of.
It almost brought me to tears to see the contrast in the faces of people standing in line (resigned, concerned, worried, angry) to those, happy and relieved, who had succeeded in getting their brand spanking new funny money- different colour, different denomination- same bullshit! All smiles they fought their way back out of the ram packed bank and back to living their lives.
And that brings me to another spark of insight I shared with a fellow yoga student I bumped into in the queue: This is just a taste of what is to come. This is the kind of scene we will grow to expect all over the world. Europe and the USA next. Greece has of course already tasted this bitterness. Suddenly, without much forewarning our very hard-earned wages are worth nothing. All of a sudden we find ourselves queuing up for hours on end to make our slave wages spendable.
Since when does one HAVE TO HAVE a bank account? Since when was it not our choice to keep our money wherever we see fit?
Since the world financial systems started to fail. Since governments world-wide started to twist the thumb-screws of control ever tighter.
I do believe that there are even wider than financial ramifications to this government-created chaos: Divide and rule. Instill fear. Promote a feeling of scarcity.
Even with the new 2000 rupee note I queued so hard to get, I was this evening given change in the old, decrepit 1000 and 500 notes! Not only are people worried that their hard-earned money will no longer amount to anything, the situation has reduced us to cunning and underhand ways, causing less than harmonious interactions between customer and business man.
Coincidentally (although I no longer believe in coincidences) I was watching an interview, last night, with a Zulu sangoma, one of the keepers of the history and the wisdom of the Zulus, Credo Mutwa. A very credible and knowledgeable gentleman, who foresees the use of money and the financial system to, as he called it, ‘reduce us all to beggars’. I saw that today. Very, very clearly. It might just be the beginning, masked by the government as a way to deal with illegality and therefore to help us all in the long run, but this is the beginning of mass chaos, even more hardship for the ordinary people.
Talking of which, the people I shared the line with in that bank were not crooked business men. Maybe one or two but in front of me were the elderly, barely firm enough to fight their way through the line to get a form to fill, women poor as poor can be, Nepali, trying as they might to make a bit of money to send home to a country brought to its knees for trying to be really democratic, small business people and foreign tourists.
If you just stand and observe, you can see the truth or at least more of the truth than the powers that be would have you see.
May we all see more clearly the wrongs that are being inflicted upon us. May we begin to resist peacefully and collectively this inhuman madness.
And please God! may the government of India print off enough low denomination bills so that someone in the country has some change!!

Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Making sense of a death.



Image result for dead swan and rainbow
Rounding a corner in the lane
I was surprised by a swan
Seated on the grass verge.

I stopped to say hello and
Admire her when,
Lying, neck swollen and wrongly
Bent, I saw, I guess her lifemate.

Dead.

It explained the shoddy, still-white
Feathers earlier scattered up the
Road.

I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
My tears began to flow.

I thought I saw her understand me.

In the background a rainbow
Framed the sorrowful scene.
Such beauty. Such pain.
But like sheep in driving rain, her expression
Didn’t change.

Slowly as time continued to pass
Perhaps I began to understand her.

Sunday, 15 March 2015

Song of the Heart



Image result for buddhaSong of the Heart

Straight away I felt a pain in my right chest,
Like sinews tearing in a tiny way.
Slowly my mind focused in:
What can I call this presence in my Heart?
Who can I have a relationship with?



I am a warrior of Peace.
I am strong, fit, able, willing
In mind, body and Heart.
Yet sometimes I am wracked by the
Emotions of fear and human love.

I have the innocence, the openness and eagerness
Of a child and many, many questions.

In the temple of my Heart
There is a lotus shrine
On which sits Love
This jewel shines forth a Light so bright
It is beyond imagination.

Pure dhamma- how can I go anywhere else?

Half way up Mount Mulanje,
Deep in the humid forest
I can hear bird calls, rustlings.
It smells of death-
Water moves nearby, dripping.

I have the taste of hesitation in my mouth,
I won’t go further.
I see green- trees and leaves amongst the shadows.
Light shafts coming through the canopy.
Rocks, a vague path.

The mountain Spirit said, “Honour intuition,
Honour dhamma,
Truth.
THAT is always there in your Heart.
Dhamma will protect.”

Struggling to trust, pleading,
‘Temu, the most High, how do I know you?’

“My voice is clear, direct and brief.
You can feel the Truth in your sinews, in your Being.
To hear me, keep silence.
Mine is the only voice you need to hear.
Be pure awareness. Be love.”

Dreaming of the Blue, nothing but Blue.
Totally full and satisfied;
One with the blue.
Freedom is being unattached
To everything I have to lose.

What are the facts?
I’m here and it’s raining outside.
Glorious rain. Blessed is the glorious rain.
I’m sitting on my Mother’s lap and
Asking myself, ‘What are the facts?’

Twisting out strange factory images:
Gritty, dark brick and chimney stacks.
Northern England:
My heritage and pain,
Deep, ancient pain.

Longing for Him, I say, ‘Show yourself to me.
I show you myself, my Truth,
My Heart, my vulnerability.
Now you stop hiding and
Show me what you are.’

‘I will look straight at you.
I will listen to the rhythms of my life
And be the rhythms of my nature.
I’m here, I’m watching, listening and feeling.
And I won’t give up.