Such as realizing that just maybe, diving > climbing and pilates > yoga.
WHAT?!
I have been on this spirituality kick (very loosely defined) for a couple of years now, and I have been trying to figure out what it is about coming back from my trip that has made me realistic about the lack of real progress or success that I have been making.
I think that I expected to go to the east and find that most people's daily lives are filled with some higher realization of a spiritual presence. I felt it so much when I was in the mountains - my entire existence as committed to memory through my journal entries was so rich with meaning and the quest for more meaning. And while the religions in the east may be more attractive to agnostic idealistic westerners, they are, at their core, just other examples of religions.
So it follows that religion plays a similar role in people's lives, albeit a somewhat more inflated role than it plays in my family life, but when people are not involved with a religious activity, they just go about their life. There is still something about the MOUNTAINS that is so powerful and incredible and evolutionary natural and nourishing and a comforting majestic presence, and I just happen to interpret that as sensing a greater being. To me, that is real. If nobody else knows about something but it is real to you, that does not undermine your perception of it. Anyway, the pristine environment got me to start meditating for a few months, which was amazing and really rewarding - but once I was back in the "bustle" of things, it became more stressful to make time to find a peaceful place for meditating than to continue with it. I know that I will get back into it once I have a set routine, but I am taking a break for now - it's pointless and ironic to even try when meditation makes you stressed out just thinking about it.
Also, my mom pointed out that I had so much more TIME - was this time available because I had less responsibilities and more people doing stuff for me, or because I didn't have a pesky computer to eat away at hours of daylight? Maybe the computer is a nice distraction from the fact that I am taken from a place of so much human interaction to a place of minimal human interaction, isolation, machines everywhere. You pretty much only interact with machines when you are out and about, so you continue to turn to machines when you are home and feel lonely. Everyone is in a car on the road - no horses, bikes, people pushing carts along, people stopping to chat. This is slightly different in a city, but even there, everyone is so BUSY. Also, when I'm not a tourist, I am much less visible, and the fact that "OH HEY I STICK OUT LIKE A SORE THUMB" is suddenly removed from validity and cannot retain its convenient place as an ice-breaker to start a conversation with anyone, anywhere.
Not that much of an ice breaker is needed to start conversations in some places in Asia. Places like public buses in Nepal are so tightly packed that you can't help but become best friends with the person you are sitting next to - and it's part of the CULTURE! I would see people get on the bus and talk like they were old friends, then I would be shocked to realize they just met and were chatting each other up.
Yes, that happens to some extent in the states. But everybody is so BUSY and so into their machines, so into their iwhatever's and what they are doing and not being late and using the most efficient methods to get things done. (Not that I am not totally like that.) I just wish that people could realize that they all have that in common and use it as a bonding experience, not as something that isolates them and makes them frustrated.
Anyway, pilates is kind of sort of actually better than yoga. As for diving and climbing - well, that is to be determined.
Suparatri :)
