The Atlas of My heart - Belonging

Last weekend, I drove 800 Kms for nothing.

This is hard to explain to myself. It is harder still to write about it.

It's been a week since September 23rd. That time of the year in the Isha Calendar when a kind of gathering happens around the Master. It is called Lap of the Master. I wanted to participate in it. At least I thought as much. So somewhat mechanically I made plans to reach in time and participate.

However on the morning of the event, I found myself waking up in my ashram cottage and unable to find a reason to go to the event. I really don't know what was behind this sudden onset of Tamas. Almost as if to justify my unwillingness to get up, my mind is trying say that it is because of the crowd etc. But for whatever reason, I felt like not going to the event. I rather be curled up in my bed and read what I was reading.

Over the next few hours, I felt a gnawing sense of disconnect and disconcert. This lead me to search for a word of what I was going through. I think the closest word that i could relate to was "Belonging uncertainty". Brené Brown talks about Belonging as "the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn't require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are". And Belonging uncertainty is the act of questioning one's social belongingness.

This dictionary-like definition of what I was going through felt like a flashlight shown within the inner crevices of my being.

<Rambling>

One of the things that fascinated me while reading Amitav Ghosh's "River of Smoke" was the stunning complexity and diversity of the Indian Diaspora experience. This diaspora experience is something that I could always relate to. How living in a different place makes you become aware of your innards that you always taken for granted and ignore. For me the most scorching part of the diaspora experience is how one's identity gets transformed when one goes to a foreign land - how one's implicit assumptions and traits bubble up to the surface of one's identity. This is something that I experienced a couple of times. Suddenly when one is transplanted to a new milieu (more probably a space quite different from what one is used to), the following things happen:

• I become aware of the color of my skin. I recognize this in the way how strangers' gaze pass over me. How sometimes a casual gaze becomes a stare.
• I become acutely aware of the numbing poverty of my native land and its peoples.
• I become aware of my residence in the theological no-man's land - neither at home in a Catholic church nor at home in those kitschy Hindu American temples.
• I become aware of how my relationship changes to other individuals of my same ethnicity. A kind of a forced sense of fraternity happens and usually ends up in disappointment.
• Of course last but not least, one also becomes aware of one's own food and language.

The sudden awareness/recognition and eventual acknowledgement of all these aspects makes these become a more explicit part of your identity and belonging.

</Rambling Ends>

I always felt Isha has been my Tribe. I experienced Isha when I was an impressionable 20 something. Isha had accompanied the entire trajectory of my adult life. So my sense of belonging had never been uncertain. Over the years, as my engagement with Isha and Sadhguru evolved, there have been changes in how I experienced this belonging. I started out as a confused seeker needing a path/guidance and sadhana. I became a volunteer - a foot soldier. I became a teacher - an Ishanga offering the tools of yoga to the world. I even became a clumsy youtuber acting as an unofficial PR for Isha. Then one fine day, I became the organisation itself. I became 'them'. Those grownups who have to run the various seemingly bureaucratic departments of the ashram. Through all of this, there were a multitude of problems/issues. I had been an outspoken rabble-rouser of sorts within this beloved community. I loved the space for dissent within. I also felt that apart from partaking the Fruits of Isha, I also helped in nourishing the Tree of Isha. Raising resources for the organization and building IT systems needed for an ever increasing digital outreach.

I guess somewhere along this journey, I had lost sight of why I belonged here in the first place - I was just a stupid kid who needed some rails for navigating this life. More and more it is clear that this is the space that I need to go back to. I should stop seeing Sadhguru as a bad yet bombastic boss that I sometimes experience him during work. He is just someone who is reaching out to help me. I should stop seeing Isha as this big bureaucratic organization. It is just a rickety means towards a noble end.

I try to consciously take myself back to those dark nights of the soul when I was groping for something. I try to remember in what mindspace I was residing while I entered my first yoga program. I was so full of frustration that none of those 'ready-made' answers available in the society made any sense to me. I was so full of so many questions. I felt like a virile engine stuck in first gear. And it felt like I am just starting and have a long journey ahead of me. So when Isha yoga happened, I drank it in with all the pores of my being. I remember trembling with trepidation that I should never let this profoundness escape me.

And that's what I am yearning for. 

Time for Fruits.

ॐ त्र्यम्बकं यजामहे सुगन्धिं पुष्टिवर्धनम् |

उर्वारुकमिव बन्धनान्मृत्योर्मुक्षीय माऽमृतात् ||

Aum Tryambakam yajaamahe sugandhim pushtivardhanam |

Urvaarukamiva bandhanaan-mrityormuksheeya maamritaat ||

We worship the three-eyed One, who is fragrant and who nourishes all.

Like the fruit falls off from the bondage of the stem, may we be liberated from death, from mortality.