As I talk of preparations for my pilgrimage, I am finding it difficult to separate the mind, from the body, from the spiritual preparation. Perhaps that is because these three elements are woven together within us just as strands of DNA. One can pick up a strand and examine it. However, it is inextricably linked to the other strands. So, in the coming weeks I will seek to examine the strands of my mind, body, and spirit as I prepare for this journey. I will treat them as separate entities, even though they are not. Today, I will write of my mental preparations.
Do you remember everything you brought on your last trip, or everything that you forgot? If you are like me, it is the latter. I did not bring jeans or a sweater on the yoga retreat last week-end. Fortunately, I didn’t need them. At the same time, I could not tell you what was packed, and came home unused. Turning again to my favorite author on the subject, Philip Cousineau (The Art of Pilgrimage) writes, “If you don’t take the time to sit and reflect before you leave, you’ll surely be remembering what you’ve forgotten on the way to the airport or on the plane. By then it is too late. This tends to be true for what goes into your bags as well as what goes into your heart about your journey.”
No, my heart is not in my head. However, too often we use our minds to filter our hearts, to tell them what to feel and how to respond. With this in mind (no pun intended), I am working to free my heart of the judgment that is too quick to come as we visit other cultures. The reading I am doing, discussed in earlier entries, is one key to this. As I walk the streets, as I encounter others whose bodies, beliefs, economics, values, differ from my own, I seek to be consciously open and non-judgmental.
As a photographer, a great deal that enters my mind comes in through the lens of my camera. I am not sure that I find anything more powerful than a visual image. On the trains, in restaurants, passing through crowds, I take pictures. I have no camera with me (or if I do, I don’t pick it up). The pictures I take are in my mind. I ask, “How would I shot this person? In what way does his, or her, soul reflect outward?” I record the image.
I also dabble in words, so writing is part of my mental preparation as well. I have journals that contain myriad threads of my life. There are parts that are fully revealed in page after page of tightly penned entries. Other parts can be pieced together; it isn’t all there, but there is enough to know the story. For other pieces of my life, there are empty pages. I have vowed that this trek will not be empty pages in my life’s journal. And so I blog. I will soon renew the habit first introduced to me by Julia Margaret Cameron in The Artist’s Way, that of daily pages. I want to return to the habit of making a daily recording, so that I am prepared to do so in India.
Through words, pictures, and an open heart, I am preparing myself.
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