Wellness Through Wisdom

A JOURNEY TO HOLISTIC HEALING - My Story - Part 3

“Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.” - Paul Theroux

It was time to leave the desert. We took an overnight train from Jodphur to Delhi and then flew to Varanasi - The Holy City, The City of Light. By the time we reached Delhi, we were both sick. I got off the train ready to throw up. I wanted to kneel down next to the train and vomit (and I should have), but I forced myself through the crowds into the bathroom. There is no pleasant way to describe the bathroom in the train station. The walls had shit on them, the floor was covered in dirt and urine. The smell was beyond awful and there was an old woman who was mostly naked who seemed to be living there. I vomited and cried into the hole in the ground that served as a toilet.

Despite the fact that my boyfriend and I were both sick and vomiting and having diarrhea together, it would cease at times (like when there was nothing left in our bodies) and we were still able to go out into the city of Varanasi. We went to a temple called Kala Bhairogavanth and asked to be welcomed. We were asked for rupees for the blessings we received and the holy men in the temple tied black necklaces around our necks for health and rubbed ash and red tikka on our third eyes. One night we took a boat ride down The Ganges, or “Ganga” as they say in India, under a half moon and the water was brown like chocolate. We got to the Burning Ghat, where public cremations take place day and night on the river’s edge, and there by the fires we got off the boat. We saw the end of some bodies burning and some waiting to be put on the fire. I think now about how that was perceived - how would I react if some tourists showed up at one of my relative’s funerals? We walked back along the river and a sitar player welcomed us to sit outside his window so we did. My sickness was overshadowed by my sense of adventure and yet I moved in a state of shock, taking in hundreds of new experiences each day… some that traumatized me, others that enlightened me and expanded my perceptions beyond words.

The next day we went to find an ashram to stay at. We went to the Ramakrishna Mission, but it turned out to be a hospital rather than an ashram. We did prayers at the Durga Mandir - a beautiful temple that was painted all in red. A holy man came to me, dipped his hand into a silver bowl of water with rose petals floating in it. He blessed me with the water, putting it onto my head and putting his hand to my lips to drink. The thought crossed my mind that the water was straight from Ganga… the same water I had seen people bathing in, that sometimes the dead were floated down, that people cooked in, that was brown as dirt. But I was young and idealistic (unrealistic may have been a better word) and thought ‘but the water is holy; it’s blessed therefore it’s pure’ and I drank. It was a strange blessing I drank down…. one that left me ill for the next five years and still dealing with an auto immune disorder to this day…

(to be continued)

GLOSSARY - definitions excerpted from wikipedia.org

RUPEES = The Rupee (₨ or Rs.) (from Sanskrit rupyakam meaning coins of silver) is the common name for the currencies used in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Mauritius, and the Seychelles.

TIKKA = South Asian men and women sometimes wear a mark on the forehead, a dot, smudge, or lines of red, black, or ash-grey. The woman’s mark is most often called a bindi. It can be worn as a decoration, by women of any religion, or as a Hindu religious observance. The mark worn by some Hindu men is called a tikka. The most common tikka is red powder applied with the thumb, in an upward stroke.

THIRD EYE = The third eye (also known as the inner eye) is a metaphysical and esoteric concept referring in part to the ajna (brow) chakra in certain Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. It is also spoken of as the gate that leads within to inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness. In New Age spirituality, the third eye may alternately symbolize a state of enlightenment or the evocation of mental images having deeply-personal spiritual or psychological significance. The third eye is often associated with visions, clairvoyance, precognition, and out-of-body experiences, and people who have allegedly developed the capacity to use their third eyes are sometimes known as seers.

ASHRAM = An Ashram in ancient India was a Hindu hermitage where sages lived in peace and tranquility amidst nature.[1]. Today, the term ashram is usually used to refer to an intentional community formed primarily for spiritual upliftment of its members, often headed by a religious leader or mystic.