Man Makes Plans and Gods Laugh

Letting go of needing to know.

For my dear readers who are used to receiving a weekly offering from me each Saturday, thank you for your patience. And for the new subscribers, welcome!

For all who don’t know, I have been traveling throughout the Indian subcontinent for nearly 5 weeks now with a “ReGENerative Travel Caravan” hosted by the Global Ecovillage Network, i.e. GEN. Put simply, while there has been an overwhelming amount of time and space to be inspired, there has been little time and space allotted for writing. I will likely be metabolizing this monumental experience for many years to come. So rest assured, the stories will blossom in good time. Majee eska…

Ken Kesey in front of the “Further” bus.

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Like the infamous Merry Pranksters who journeyed across the United States in 1964 at a particularly sterile time in its evolution as a nation on a day-glo painted school bus deemed Further, we too are here at times traveling by bus through similarly closed-minded corridors in an effort to initiate more expansive dialogues than generally had in these scientifically obsessed post-modern times with a vast streaming network of thinkers, dreamers, farmers, dancers, teachers, techies, and well, really anyone who shows up.

Exploring both the outer and inner realms of the “eco-verse”, the organizers of this caravan have chosen an approach to discovery not too different than that of Ken Kesey who famously declared, “You’re either on the bus, or off the bus!”. GEN Bharat, the Indian chapter of the Global Ecovillage Network, mirrors in many ways not only that now infamous band of pranksters who eventually birthed an entire new cultural era but so too the seemingly chaotic pulse of the mighty Indian subcontinent herself in the since that we have but a loosely suggested itinerary from upon which most things simply “emerge” freely, with few set timings, rigid schedules or even what westerners would consider “clear communication”. Like the ecology we seek to reunite with, we are experimenting with a wilder navigational compass not oriented merely by us.

GEN Bharat, the Indian chapter of GEN, claims to be; “..a mycelium network where every individual and place becomes a catalyst for higher consciousness and change - regenerating not just ourselves but communities and our entire Indian bioregion”

To be certain, this type of travel is not for everyone. Even I, who have traveled in similar fashion for decades, now find myself dizzy at times from the lack of framing from which one might formulate logical cohesion from the many typhoons of thought erupting like volcanic waves when colorful comings together of deeply inspired people orchestrating their own fugues via rhythms foreign to me collide spontaneously upon the backdrop of yet another chaotic Indian city. As a musician I seek to find the cadence that will eventually find resolution. Alas, resolution doesn’t always come. Yet the music keeps going, like the drone of a tanpura, transcendentally buzzing away as the singer sings while dancers dance, held by an unfamiliar time signature. My unlearned ear wonders when to take a breath, when to pause, when to applaud. The sufi queen continues spinning. On and On and On She goes…….

Western views have convinced many of us that all our days ought be neatly spelled out for us, that we should be able to plan and organize everything efficiently. There are countless apps one can download nowadays that claim to make our lives smooth, predictable and easily streamlined. Modernity teaches us that things can be oh so much easier, that we don’t need to try so hard! “Just put your faith in technology!”, they say, “Eventually miraculous virtual reality machines will simply 3D print our entire world for us and all we will need to do is sleep and shit!

But what I have found on this grand caravan of chaos, as we dive ever deeper into the most diverse and populace country on earth is that there are as many ideas, potential realities, possible outcomes, tastes, sounds, smells, languages, preferences, aversions, etc. as there are people (and plants) to think them up. To try and conveniently script everything, to oversimplify the beauty of unplanned events, to “get to the point already” and thus squash the majesty of emerging Myth into a dumbed-down soundbite is but to place God Herself in a tony metal cage and wonder why the Sun no longer shines.

Our bus never leaves on time. It feels like we are on a deadly roller coaster as we speed through remote towns on unpaved roads, parading through myriad textures of culture, through simultaneously crumbling and blossoming metropolis’, villages, farms and slums. We often get sick. We often get well. So it goes. While meditating peacefully at dawn under a tamarind tree, receiving grand visions of divine insight from a Sacred Grove, a fellow traveler storms out from the dorm and vomits at the seekers side. More compost. The seed is well fed.

The message was that we would meet at 4:00. No one shows up until 5:00. We start slowly, eventually departing by 6:00. People got distracted. By a new friends story. By a woman making chocolate. By a bird singing in a treehouse overlooking a lush and mesmerizing agroforestry farm. The river flows. Some get in. Some rest at Her side. Some are upset. Some are ecstatic. Some take notes, others fall back to sleep. The plants surface when they are ready, rising in their own time. The evolution will not be televised.

I find myself aggravated at times. Why can’t these people just show up on time?! Why can’t we just communicate a bit in advance already!? But who defines such things? I look deeply and see in me the colonizer who wants India to look more British. We must learn to adapt. We must challenge our inherited notions of comfort and safety. The youngest member of our caravan has taught me the most regarding thus. I observe how at each location we go she immediately begins observing her surroundings in such a way that she is quickly able to see what the human and more-than-human of each place see, what they love, what they feel and as such she learns how to speak the way they speak, maybe not in words, but with the universal heART. This is the way.

The way out is in.

As travelers we often forget that to enter into another’s home is in itself a rite-of-passage. How do we chose to respond to the hosts generosity? By taking pictures? By expressing gratitude only when we receive the same experience we have grown accustomed to in our own homes? Why travel in the first place if we don’t wish to see the world from another beings eyes? Taste with a new tongue and dance to the rhythm of an altogether different drummer? We must learn to tune ourselves to what for our own untrained ear seems to be but dissonance.

Slowly I chisel away at my prejudice. It will take many lifetimes. Empires roots grow deep. The trauma was never properly metabolized and now we, the forgetful inheritors of misplaced grief must courageously look the demons in the eye and allow them finally to rest. No longer do you need to flee! No longer do you need to fear! Breathe. Just be. Home may be lost. But time means nothing. Together we are growing roots again. Crossing strains with other seeds. It won’t look like it did back then. It will be a wilder song than before. Let go.

“Let’s goooo!” screams the wild eyed driver at the wheel. The bus has finally arrived again. Who will get on?

We only have a few more days to go. Tonight we finally arrive at the fabled eco-city of Auroville where our journey will come to a close. I reflect over all the people we have met, all the places that have shared their take on what it means to “regenerate”, all those whom through cross-pollinating either deliberately or merely by chance with this wayfaring stranger have regenerated within me something I once mistakenly believed to be knowledge and now know to be but a reflection of one lost, curiously interpreted idea being shared again and again, a dream sprouted long ago that temporarily deceased and arose again as stars’ memory. I am another yourself. Over and over again.

The truth is, none of us really know what we are doing here or where we are going. I’m not sure we ever really did. But whatever is rising in me now, after spending a month on caravan, in this ever emerging exploration of human potential, seems to be suggesting that regardless of whatever unique version of the New Story we each wish to see come into view, we are all in this together. We actually do need each other, each one of us, and when we feel safe within this diverse community, the destination itself doesn’t really even matter all that much, for we have already arrived.

Chalo!!!

#mayallbeingsbehappyandfree