Crossing the Abyss

Today’s quote says it all: “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.” – Thomas Merton
And so the journey continues. I have sailed to this paradise and am in the process of deepening my knowledge of self. I have experienced so much before and after this journey that make it all worthwhile and it’s just getting better. Here’s how it happened:

Sept. 2006 – I take a sort of couples and relationship course with my ex-boyfriend of 2.5 years even though we’ve been broken up for nine months. I hope that maybe he’ll change as a result of this course and we may end up back together. I realize in the course that I am very difficult in relationship and my general outlook on life is very limited and restricted to a need to control everything and everyone in relationship. Not attractive. The ex doesn’t change and in fact tells me after the course has started that he loves another woman, but still physically desires me. He proposes to make me his secret mistress on the side while he continues a relationship with this woman. This was very painful and I felt as despondent as ever about my ability to choose men or relate to them in a healthy manner in relationship. I start life coaching sessions with the leaders of this course and continue to look at why my life is so painful and lonely.
Oct. 2006 – I go to the Spiral Muse’s ‘Waking Women Retreat’ in the Santa Cruz mountains with some girlfriends. This is the first time I’ve done anything truly new-agey (attendance at health and healing festivals, etc. excepted). During a holotropic breathwork session, I clear sadness from my belly and rage from my throat, then feel white gold light go from the crown of my head to my navel and I laugh and feel beautiful and free and happy. I have flashes/dreams/visions that clarify several things: I will not be a litigator much longer, I will leave SF and go abroad, the ex was not the man for me, I need to learn about yoga and the chakras, I will experience complete contentment in a place that looks a lot like Thailand, and there is a man out there with buggy blue eyes in his late 40s with laugh lines and a tan – I think he’s a humanitarian aid worker – and this man is going to be the love of my life. He’s out there.
After the breathwork, I sat across from a lovely lady named Skylark and we shared our experiences. She said “I have just the place for you” and told me all about Pyramid Yoga. I applied immediately, but the course was full and Marina suggested I first try yoga anyway to see if I wanted to do this course for three months. Good point. I sign up for a year membership at Yoga Tree shortly thereafter and start doing yoga regularly. I also attend the Yoga Journal Conference for four days and am introduced to the eight limbs of yoga. I’m fascinated.
NYE 2007 – I go to Mount Madonna Center in Watsonville for a New Year’s Eve four day retreat. I go there b/c I have no one to kiss for NYE and am uninspired by the idea of being around drunk people or dancing costumed people, etc. My life coach Alicia Bayer recommended Mount Madonna to me as an option for peace and reflection for the New Year. This is the second “new-agey” thing that I’ve done, but the first where it is fully immersed in the aspects of yoga. There is a guru there who has been silent for 50 years – Baba Hari Dass a/k/a Baba Ji. For four days we do yogic cleansing processes (pouring water from a netti/flower pot through the nostrils, place a string through your nostril and extracting it our of your mouth (I chose not to master this one), study the Bhagavad Gita (although I would never ask a question of Baba Ji and I leave b/c the silent monk takes forever to answer questions as they need to be written down and then verbalized by another), meditation (I can’t quiet my mind and am uncomfortable sitting alone in silence for so long, singing and chanting (I am skeptical the entire time b/c it’s in Sanskrit and I don’t know what everyone is chanting - “is this a cult?”), eat vegetarian ayuverdic meals (good!), do some yoga asanas (they are very slow compared to SF vinyasa classes and I grow impatient) and sit in the presence of the silent monk while eating the meals (I am again skeptical as everyone sits to face him and I feel like I’m in a cult.)
I was surprised at how sophisticated and clean all these “hippies” were. The buildings and entire center are state of the art and no one smells like patchouli or has dread locks and hemp clothing. I was equally surprised at the age range – 3 to 97 from the looks of it. Entire families either living there or present for the NYE retreat.
On NYE, I watch a very funny play written by Baba Ji that pokes fun at westerners in India trying to reach Samadhi (spiritual enlightenment) by adopting the life of a saddhu (spiritual being who lives on alms). I decide not to participate in the following chanting and meditation b/c it’s just too hippy for me and I’m tired. I’m in bed by 10 p.m. I wake up at 11:11 and think I should walk back down, but ignore the message and go back to sleep.
On the morning of January 1, I walked into the main hall and the people are chanting a prayer for peace (in Sanskrit) 108 times. I’m bored. I walk outside and look at a wall of photographs of community members who have died. One man stands out b/c he’s young and vibrant. I read his biography and he was a beautiful person who gave to his community, was creative and deeply studying spirituality. He died in his 30s. I almost start crying. I go back to the hall and then I DO start crying. I feel completely isolated and although I can clearly see the bliss of all the people around me, I feel completely isolated and closed off. I can’t stop crying. I go to the bathroom, but the tears keep coming. Something inside my head tells me to just go sit in the hall and let the tears flow. I do. They flow and flow and flow from a sadness deeper than one I have ever had – it’s not bad, just completely and totally alone and very, very, very sad. I keep crying in silence and am conscious of all the people around me, but cry anyway.
After they are done chanting, a woman reaches over to me and whispers “Ask Baba a question.” I move in to the center of the room – about five people away from him – and my tears stop. I raise my hand. He looks at me and the tears start as I open my mouth. “I feel so sad right now. I’ve never felt more sad in my life and I feel very alone. It’s not bad, just very, very deep. I’ve been here for several days and heard the teachings and seen the practices, but none of this seems enough to cure my sadness, but everyone around me is blissful and I can see it, but I can’t feel it. Is everything we’ve looked at the way they got there? Is that it?” And everyone laughed. He smiled. What was written and verbalized was this: “Saddness is a sadhna. It’s the necessary first step for any spiritual journey. When you feel sadness, you are of a uni-focused mind as opposed to the usual multi-focused mind. At this point, you can either lose your mind to the pain and not know where to go or what to do, etc. OR you can merge with the pain, keep a strong mind and your path will naturally unfurl. You have a choice.”
I was relieved to know that my deep sadness was the first step to feeling better if I chose. So, although I didn’t know what he meant by a strong mind or how to merge with the pain, I decided that I would open up to a spiritual journey b/c my prior life was just really, really sad and lonely. As soon as I decided that I would take this path, Baba Ji looked directly at me and I’m not kidding, I felt a transfusion of solid white gold light emanate from his third eye directly to mine and that light washed through my center and then held my sadness in my stomach like a lotus flower on a luminous gentle pool of light. Suddenly, I felt connected to that bliss for the first time – I knew I could feel it, too. The pain was still there, but it was nurtured, held. I guess merged. The rest has truly unfurled.
I take regular yoga classes with Rusty Wells and Janet Stone in San Francisco. They start and end every class with chanting and it’s beautiful and fun and challenging. They always provide a piece of wisdom in their classes and I always feel elevated when I leave. I love this. In March 2007, they have a six-day yoga retreat in Isla Mujeres, Mexico. Beginners are allowed, so I go even though I’m completely intimidated. Sure enough, I’m the most novice yogini, but I do my first backbend in Rusty’s class on day 5 and it’s thrilling! After one of Rusty’s classes, it is twilight and we’ve just finished an invigorating class, sang and did a continuous om. I feel ripples of energy undulating from the universe through me and I can feel the same sweet rippling energy from the person on the mat next to me and I know that everyone in the palapa is feeling the same. I just feel it. We are all uncharacteristically silent and no one moves to pack up and leave class. We sit there and are completely blessed out as nothing less that the connectedness of the Universe undulates through us. This was the third time that I’d felt such a light, happy connection with the universe. First was holotropic breathwork. Second was with Baba Ji. But this time, it was a vibrating, rippling presence and it felt amazing!! I later learned that these are experiences of kundalini energy unleashing in my body. But not until much later did I learn this.
April 2007: I go to Costa Rica surf camp with my sister Stacy. I learn to get over my fears of the ocean waves and surf with the waves. She can’t wait to go home to be with husband and pets. I can stay for a long time b/c I have nothing or no one waiting for me in my beautiful penthouse suite. My loneliness is evident again. I go home and have a breast cancer scare. It ends up being a benign fibroedydema (sp?), but during the two-week process, I look at my life and really ask if I am satisfied with the way I live my life. I am not. The only thing I truly love about each day is going to yoga. I feel like being a lawyer is an out-of-body experience and sooner or later I’m going to be found out as a fraud. Every time my boss calls to me, I question whether he’ll fire me. I do this even though I know objectively that I’m a great attorney and my work is good. I’ve lost only two motions in five years. Yet, the unsettled aspects of forcing my round self into a square peg remains for years. It just isn’t right. I decide that I will leave my job and travel if I get accepted to Pyramid’s course.
May 2007: I am accepted to Pyramid Yoga. I decide that I will surrender to the universe and see what unfurls. Shortly thereafter, my boss stars giving me regular flack about financial hardships and wants to change my six figure income to a commission only status. I tell him that I’m leaving the firm in January anyway. I stay paid as usual. I’m surprised to hear him say that he envys me and thinks it’s great. I’m more surprised when everyone I know says virtually the same thing. I get a sailing certificate and almost complete a TESOL program, just in case I want to crew sailboats or teach English while abroad. I start reading about working your way around the world, round the world tickets, looking at all of the places and weather, etc. about all the places in the world I might want to go. It is overwhelming. I don’t decide much except to go to Pyramid and I buy a ticket from Bangkok to Kathmandu for June 5 and a ticket from Bombay to Bangkok then on to LA on Dec. 1 and 2. I can change the return date to no later than January 22 as it’s good for one year and I depart 1/23 at 4:00 p.m. 1,2,3,4…take off!
Dec. 2007 – it is the last deposition that I will be involved with. My client is two hours late and I am chatting with defense counsel to avoid him filing for sanctions against us. This is a man who I have regularly worked with over the years and would continue to do so if I stayed. There are the usual dealer attorneys and manufacturer attorneys and bank attorneys – this one is a dealer attorney. They all play very similar, very frustrating games on the litigation front. He suggests that he may file for sanctions. I ignore the comment and ask him if he likes practicing. He says he loves it, especially the gorey cases where men are impaled on rebar after a 30 flight fall on a construction site. He says some people were born to be defense counsel and other’s plaintiffs’ counsel. I ask for clarification. “You know howep at the beach one kid is building a sand castle? That’s plaintiffs’ counsel.” Then he beams, “You know how another kid comes along and kicks down the castle for no reason? That’s defense counsel…and I get paid to do that for a living!” His smile is ear to ear between his fat pasty jowels and his beady little eyes are shining black pools behind his thick glasses. All ideas of sanctions are gone as he gasps for breath between his smile - a revolting pale tubby mass of a man so far down the litigation path that he’s sour to the core. I notice the flesh from his finger spilling over a wedding ring and feel badly for his wife. My repulsion is visceral. I thank the stars for giving me a final confirmation that I really don’t want to be doing this for a living anymore.
Feb. 2008 - In Thailand, at Pyramid Yoga, I am again skeptical for the first four weeks, then I soften into the teachings. The ‘mystical’ things begin happening – yet they are not mystical – they are 100% real – I am 100% sober – but it is all happening. I am more open, so it comes:
I asked the universe if yoga was necessarily a lonely path. One day later, during meditation, I start saying to myself: ‘In the work of One, there are no others.” Where this came from is I believe from the universe. Rusty said that when we chant, we sing to God (what/whomever that is) and when we meditate, we get a response. I initially take this to mean that there are no others allowed on my spiritual path, then realize that perhaps it means that everything is interconnected and you are never truly lonely if you tap into it. Later, during visualization exercises, I see a shimmering gold pool of light and pyramids in Egypt with a large ruby ring and I know I’m in Egypt and a man I met at Sanctuary is also there. I later tell the man about this vision and he responds that he was told he was an Egyptian Pharaoh in a past life. While listening to harmonics, I fall asleep and wake up wondering where my attendants are because I am royalty. It is only when I look at my clothes that I am slightly startled and say to myself “I am Kyra in Thailand.” In a shamanic journey, I see an irridescent white cobra (my power animal) shifting through the sand dunes of change and it’s apparent that I can’t control anything – just glide with it. The next day I find a molted irridescent white snakeskin under my bungalow. The people on either side of me, Casey and Joe each see a white iridescent cobra in their visions, but it’s not their power animal.
During a reiki session, my friend Bianca tells me that there is a male spirit around me with a message for me and he is protecting me. I kindof dismiss it as new-age woo woo and am skeptical that whatever protects me would not be female energy. Months later, after the course, I go to Koh Tao with my friend Adrienne. In the middle of the night, I wake up screaming. This is the first time in my life I’ve done that – I usually cut my screams short in my nightmares – but this was full throttle screaming! She also wakes up, screams and asks what it is. I say “a man” and she starts laughing. I do, too, b/c there’s nothing there, but I clearly saw a black figure at the side of my bed leaning over me with both arms on the bed. It was so real that my heart couldn’t stop beating quickly for a long time. The next morning, Adrienne says that she saw exactly what I described and laughed b/c he wasn’t harmful. She said it was probably so scary b/c it’s the first time I’ve seen a spirit. She has seen ghosts her whole life and doesn’t generally tell people, but every time she has a boyfriend, spirits visits them and he often sees it for the first time b/c Adrienne is able to channel that energy into a visual form. She says, “Sorry, I should’ve told you that this may happen, but I’m pretty sure he’s your spirit and he’s not bad. Maybe you should ask him why he’s here.” I then remember what Bianca said about a male spirit around me. So, we meditate on it. I lay out protection of Durga on all sides of me, om white gold light over the top of me and invite the spirit to come to me to see what his message is. I receive that I need to open my heart. A flash of lightning and roaring thunder clap stops our meditation and Adrienne tells me she felt during meditation that my heart was closed.
A few days ago, I asked Bianca (who is also here on the Bays) to tap into this spirit (b/c she too can see spirits and has always been able to). She tells me that we were together in past lives and we have a contract with one another to love each other unconditionally. He wears a 40’s style Boggart hat and is tall and strong with dark hair and a radiant aura. She tells me he loves me unconditionally – that I am indeed always loved and his message for me is that I am absolutely lovable. I remember the countless times when I tell my mom that no one will ever love me. I appreciate the spirit’s message. A lot.

In Koh Tao, it won’t stop raining the three days we are there. So, Adrienne and I hike through the pouring rain to the top of a mountain in the middle of the jungle to a place called ‘Two Views’ where I went 13 years ago. At that time, I wouldn’t step on the property b/c it seemed so peaceful and beautiful with windchimes and a gentle breeze. I wished to return there someday when I was at peace with myself and could truly relish the energy. 13 years later, Adrienne and I hike way, way up in the rain only to find a burned, overgrown area of ground. We have a rough map of its location and I know, intuitively, that this is the place although there are no signs. I again refuse to step on the land because I am absolutely devastated. I turn around and start to walk back down the hill. Adrienne suggests we meditate on a rock at the base of a hill and I refuse b/c it’s not the right place. I then realize that we hiked all the way up to come to Two Views, nowhere else, and to feel its peace. I figure that perhaps it’s peaceful even though it looks like a disaster. So, we go onto the land and chant and meditate on a rock that has spectacular sweeping views of Koh Tao. I feel peaceful and invigorated. I learn that even though things aren’t always as I anticipated them to be, I need to roll with changes. I also learned that the peace doesn’t come from any place except from within. As soon as I calmed my disappointment down, I was able to merge with the energy of the place and feel that calm that had been hinted at 13 years ago. It was a beautiful lesson. Adrienne is a great, very caring and compassionate friend to go there with me. In the middle of nowhere.

And now, I sit here in my bungalow. It’s a beautiful sunny day. I’ll go have fruit salad and a coconut for breakfast and hang out with a lovely Mexican lady I met who is going to Northern India in July. I’d like to travel with her and will likely do so in July or August. I can understand almost everything she says when she speaks Spanish and we are on a very similar journey. She has already been to India on three occasions. Her name is Ushma Prema. It means “warm heart” or “warm love.” I hope that she will be my travel companion through Northern India.

After much vascillation, I decided just to stick with the ticket to Kathmandu on June 5. A couple of days ago, I met a man who has a friend who has lived there and worked with NGOs for two years. She is my age and looking for a female friend. He thinks we’ll get along swell. We’ve now been in e-mail contact and she said she’d love to show me around and hook me up with a job teaching or volunteering with an NGO if I’m interested. We’ll see. There’s also an older man I’ve met on these bays who is a scientist named Bob, who just moved there to do an environmental study with a team of scientists. We’ve e-mailed and he’s offered to pick me up at the airport. So, all in all, Kathmandu is welcoming and the idea of going there before India is very welcoming. June is the rainy season and I actually relish the idea of being trapped in a downpour in another exotic city about the size of San Francisco. I may stay there, I may not. I certainly won’t go trekking with the leaches and mud in the rain (I think). We will see what unfurls…