15 Dec 2018

Life is simple… So are the answers… We are all the same…

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Bird PokharaIt’s been so nice staying here in Pokhara, Nepal waking up every day to the Annapurna Mountains waving their majesty at me… but, what are they saying to me as I sit on the rooftop of where I wake every morning?

There are messages everywhere you turn but, are you awake and aware enough to see them? Even if they are right in front you and possibly slapping you in the face?

Sure, Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world, with one-third of its population living below the poverty line. It is a landlocked country with rugged geography, few natural resources and poor infrastructure. It’s also home to the most grandiose mountain ranges on the planet, the Himalayas, where people come from all over the world to see, climb and trek into. Are you seeing a dichotomy here? I certainly can feel it as I’ve been staying here in Nepal for about a month now.

There is this beauty of simplicity in the culture for the people here. Where daily concerns are whether they will be nourished with food and will they have clothing and shelter from the cold. It’s been really wonderful to ONLY have those concerns and be reminded of what’s important in life.

I think I’ve lost track of some of that simplicity in my own life back in the USA.  Searching for…. SOMETHING. Happiness? Security? Comfort? Love? Prestige? Appreciation?

I make myself sit here in this beautiful place I find myself sometimes getting irritated. What the FU(K, Maurice?

Be Happy RestaurantHello? Maurice? You get to live such a beautiful life, take time off from work and travel like this around the world, only to still find your irritation with what? YOURSELF! Uh Huh… I’m certainly human like the rest of you all reading this. Please don’t feel bad for me. I’m not writing this for any sympathy.

As I walk down this beautiful Phewa lakeside path a woman walks by me and intentionally rubs her hand on me leaving what looks like fecal matter on my hand and jacket. People who are also walking this path are not always aware of their surroundings and bump into me. The smell of moth balls are pervasive as they are trying to cover up the septic smell from lack of proper wastewater drainage.

 

Happy BoxI am a foreigner in a foreign land and people are curious. People are also judgmental. They like to tell me all kinds of things about myself… who they think I am, what I’m all about, how I feel, what a lonely life I lead and what my wounding’s are. Instead of being curious about me and inviting the curiosity about each other. I think our job in life is letting go of our judgments and preconceived ideas of what our lives should be like and instead, in the acceptance of what is and not finding answers in our judgment of ourselves or in others.

We are all wounded by our past to some degree. Some of us have explored those wounding’s so we are not in denial and dragged around by those echoes of the past. I’m not any more/less wounded or sometimes lonely than the next person. I do know that I will not find true solace and happiness in another person and I am imperfect like everyone else.

Happiness is a habbitWe are all in search of ourselves and who we truly are and sometimes that answer which is so incredibly SIMPLE is masked by all the complicated thoughts of the mind when the answer is right in front of us. We are creations of the divine and are perfectly imperfect in our flaws. Does god or the universe even create imperfection?

I’ve learned to appreciate the simple living I’m experiencing the last few months in India and Nepal living out of my backpack with the only real concerns I have is where I’m going to find clean food and shelter. The rest of the irritation or judgment I may have about situations or other people is my own attachment to an idea that something needs to be happening differently than it is.

 

Crazy GodI’m fortunate to have this ongoing opportunity to continue to practice letting go and accepting of what is. My peace and happiness depends on it. And I don’t think we can do it alone. I appreciate those of you who are witnessing me and helping me continue on this physical adventure around the globe and my spiritual practice of being at peace.

What are you doing about your own irritation? How are you cultivating your own peaceful state of mind?

 

9 Dec 2018

Humility – Annapurna Conservation Trek – December 2-7

by | posted in: Adventure, Love, Personal Growth, Relationship, Sabbatical, Spiritual, The Human Condition | 0

After only five days in the Annapurna Mountains… or is it… after five long days in the Annapurna Mountains… I return back to Pokhara, Nepal… humbled… on a multitude of levels that I’m not sure I’m going to be able to explain let alone understand and integrate into my being. In all honesty… I don’t even want to write about this… a part of me feels that since I am unable to communicate my complete being triumphant and joyous… and sharing the truth of some of the shame and embarrassment I am experiencing on my blog will only exacerbate what I’m feeling and I know all about the Law of Impermanence.

Here I sit at 2500ft above sea level returning to Pokhara, Nepal after being at 10,500ft above sea level for 3 days in these small villages of Ulleri, Ghorepani, Tadapani and Ghandruk in the Annapurna Mountains and feeling my bodies exhaustion and sore muscles. After planning with a guide (Min Gurung) for a 6 day “trek” and thinking that would not be enough for me, I made my permits and registrations for 8 days, so I could stay a little longer… and here I sit back in Pokhara after only 5 days… humbled.

My body is exhausted, and my muscles are fatigued and twitching, and I can feel every muscle in my legs with every stride I take. This could be some of the reason why I’m resisting writing now and forcing myself to do it. I’m “should’ing” all over myself. The thing I advise my students and coaching clients NOT to do… I should’ve been able to do the entire trek. My body should’ve been able to do it. I should’ve been in better shape preparing for this. I should’ve been able to get closer to the mountains than I did. I should’ve been able to be more peaceful in accepting my limitations. UGH! It’s a downward spiral of self-created misery.

Now that I’ve got that out of my system let me mention what an amazing experience this was. To experience a few of the tallest mountains in the world up close like this was an incredible experience. When I woke up in the mornings, when the sky was the clearest all day and I saw these majestic peaks I was brought to my knees in tears. The sacredness and meanings of what these mountains hold to the local people was made apparent every morning I was able to see a few of these 24,000ft mountain peaks in their fullness. It’s hard to put into words.

This is the main reason I came to Nepal… to experience these mountains up close, yet my ego thinks I should’ve been able to be on the top of them. (Ooops, there I go again should’ing on myself :-). YES! I did get pretty close to them. It’s incredible the amount of effort it takes to get from one village to another, where they are only a few miles apart. It’s the vertical up and down that’s hard on the body. For instance, it took almost a two-hour drive to go 15 miles, as the crow flies, back to Pokhara from where I was picked up by the bus. This is why…

A Humble Way of Life – Clean Water, Clean Food and Personal Hygiene

Living life at higher altitudes like this is a different way of being. Simplicity. Just a normal existence of eating food and a warm shelter is what’s mostly on the daily agenda. If you are looking for something that cannot be provided locally, remember, everything needs to be carried by mule or by foot from the lower elevations. People grow most of their own fruits and vegetables.

I remember being at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for 17 days where there is a pack in/pack out rule. And when I say, pack out… I mean EVERYTHING… there is no burying your fecal matter, you carry it with you and out of the park. Up here in the Himalayas is very different. When I was at 10,000ft+ and walking across running water I could smell the septic, or the lack of a septic system. The water that was coming out of some of the guest house toilets and grey water were just running down the mountain. No wonder why all the well water here in Nepal and India isn’t fit for drinking and every home has to have a filtration/reverse osmosis machine in order to drink the water. And with these machines… I wonder about the process that the water has to go through in those machines that just strip all the life-giving qualities out of it.

I find the food in this part of the world fabulous, even as basic as it is. I’ve learned to really appreciate organic farming even more since I’ve been here. You never really know what kind of pesticides farmers are putting on their garden. If you were poor, my guess is that you would do almost anything to ensure you wouldn’t lose one of your crops. Sikkim has become India’s first fully organic state. In some ways this is way more progressive than in the USA. As far as meat goes, it is far more expensive than vegetables which is the way it should be. The USA has this a bit backwards… when I go to the grocery store and find meat that is less expensive than vegetables it makes sense as to why our culture is suffering from a health crisis. If you liked that video… check this one out. It’s time to advocate the government to make some changes in how they can support better eating habits in the USA. The government is hiding this information from the public in order to protect the status quo.

Along with the conversation of clean water and organic food there is a question about personal hygiene in this part of the world. Coming from a Judeo-Christian upbringing and culture there is emphasis on cleanliness. The expression “cleanliness is next to godliness” was first recorded in a sermon by John Wesley in 1778, but the idea is very old, found in Babylonian and Hebrew religious texts and is still invoked to this day, often as a requirement to wash or clean up. In the Jewish faith there is a blessing that is said when washing hands. Is being clean a sign of spiritual purity or goodness? I’ve stayed in people’s homes that are clean to the standards of USA clean and I’ve stayed in places that had cockroaches and rats (not for very long though). I trekked into the Himalayas and didn’t wash my clothes or shower in days… but not showering or washing clothes for weeks? That’s a completely different idea of cleanliness.

The Humility of Yielding to Myself

As I was putting my body through the ringer trekking up into the mountains I could feel my irritation growing at people and my surroundings. I was paying my good hard-earned money to have this experience and I had sometimes felt entitled to get what I wanted. Mostly when I was cold and wearing wet clothes after a long day of trekking. India and Nepal are cultures where some people feel they do not need to wait in the queue, or to have the awareness to watch where they are going (walking down the sidewalk or even driving a car).

I could feel my own irritation and all I could do is be with it. I could feel how entitled I felt to be the one closest to the wood stove, so I didn’t have to be cold. I was tired of everyone else’s entitlement and me being the one to have to wait in the queue. Everyone could go fuck themselves. I’m sure nobody else has had these moments in their lives. I wanted to move everyone else’s wet clothing from hanging over the stove and replace it with my own clothing, so I could be dry after 2 days of wearing wet clothes. I was tired of smelling the same old stink from people who couldn’t take showers and wash their clothes. I was tired of having to deal with living conditions that I thought weren’t good enough. Yup… I was tired.

One of the expressions used here is … “Wat to Do?”. It is said when there is supposedly nothing to be done in a particular situation. I think that expression is used to not have to try to even do anything. Sure, when you are at 10-15-20,000ft in elevation you need to be in complete surrender to your surroundings, I get that.

In these moments I knew I had to be my irritation and be my frustration and that taking it out on people would not do me any good. I knew the cravings I was experiencing were going to bring me nothing but misery. I knew I needed to ask for what I wanted, peacefully… to be able to have dry clothes for the following day. I was wearing dry clothes and was mostly warm and I was able to sit around the evening fire, just not in the king’s chair. I needed to yield to myself… nobody was going to do anything for me. I was in unfamiliar territory and I had a guide with me and guest house owners whose jobs were to help out trekkers like me.

Eventually I got over myself and was able to get warm, dry my clothes and get into more acceptance of my surroundings. The alternative was my own self-created misery. Plus, I made the decision that I wasn’t going to do anything that would mask what I was feeling or experiencing. Sometimes having a beer is nice… but not to get away from being present in the moment.

The moral of this story…. Suffering is Optional

I’m recovering and feeling my body heal from this trek. I’m able to accept and appreciate more and more as my body heals what I just accomplished… walking up the mountain in the time I was able to do it in. I’m continuing to appreciate and be grateful for this 50-year-old body of mine and for the experience that I have been given at this moment. I’m respecting the different cultures I’ve been able to live into and offer my perspective whenever it is asked for. I’m able to continue to practice the art of letting go and yielding to myself in the moment so I don’t succumb to my own self-created misery.

We are the ones that get to choose how we want to live and even how we want to feel. What are the practices you have in your life that allow you to point your own mind into a peaceful direction and existence when you think you aren’t getting what you think you want, or what you are getting isn’t what you asked for?

        

1 Dec 2018

Teaching In Pokhara, Nepal – Happiness is Happiness / Truth is Truth – November 30, 2018

by | posted in: Adventure, Personal Growth, Relationship, Sabbatical, Spiritual, The Human Condition | 0

It’s just amazing to me what unfolds when I can let go of making things in my life happen. My housemate here in Pokhara,Nepal asked if I wanted to be introduced to his hospitality teacher, Arun,  who owns Standard Hotel & Language Training Institute. I am usually up for meeting new people, I am my father’s son after all. ???? After making a plan to attend one of his cooking classes, it was cancelled right at the last minute and instead I was invited to go meet him a restaurant on the north side of Phewa lake. My spider sense was tingling because he was not answering his phone after many attempts within an hour’s time right when I was supposed to meet him.

Something I’ve learned while here in India and Nepal is that there are a lot of people not good at keeping their word or having basic consideration for others time through good communication. I realize this is something that happens everywhere and not just India/Nepal, I’m just finding it more prevalent since I’m in my third month of travel. I’ve learned to specifically ask people to communicate with me when making arrangements should plans need to change and give others a second chance to make good on their word. I like to think that people generally mean well and are good natured.

After many attempts to communicate unsuccessfully and finally able to decide I went against my intuition to cancel and found my way to the north side of the lake to a restaurant where Aron was consulting. I only had a few minutes with him because he was working. Aron was more interested in consulting work then he was after 10 years of teaching which I can completely understand. I’m still not sure of the last-minute cancellation of the cooking class. I sat with a couple of men, one was Sanjay, a managing partner of Himalayan Java Coffee, a major coffee house franchise here in Nepal and another man, Sudip, who is an instructor at Novel Academy here in Pokhara. I had some great conversation with these other two men and we exchanged phone numbers to get together in the future.

I was asked if I would be interested in coming to the college to be a guest speaker in Sudip’s Operations Management classes. Of course, I could not resist to see what it was like in college here in Nepal. The boys sat on one side of the room and the girls sat on the other. There was one projector that could connect to someone’s laptop to project on the wall. No audio other than the speakers on the laptop. There was a wireless internet connection but only 10mbps speed which is good for here in Nepal.

What I experienced was that the students were used to instructors lecturing to them. What I call “chalk and talk” instructors. The classroom environments I experienced lacked activities, online course presence and instructors that were genuinely interested in how the students were grasping the material. I was able to engage the MBA students a little bit more than the first year Business Admin students. I was able to talk some about business operations from a hospitality standpoint and attempted to get them to ask questions with moderate success.

One of my favorite parts of teaching is getting underneath the material being covered and into the heart and minds of my students. Asking them exploratory questions which help them find the truth of what motivates them to follow their dreams, how to be happy, finding their passion in life and what will motivate them to get out of bed in the morning. I’m finding that the people in this part of the world are more interested in this topic than the students in America. The classroom was full of students talking softly to each other when I was talking about restaurant business operations… and when I started talking about this other stuff you could hear a pin drop in the room. You know truth when you hear it.

One of the students during their introduction said what he wanted to be when he grows up was “happy”. Another said he wanted to spend more time with their family. Another student asked for some advice in how to stay motivated when facing adverse conditions. What wonderful responses and inquiries that I had never heard before. This gave me some really fantastic material to guide me. When we were getting towards the end of the class time I found an opportunity to talk about happiness and the motivation we must cultivate to be happy when we aren’t able to locate it around us.

I proceeded to tell the class that our happiness and motivation is our individual responsibility and if we are looking for it somewhere outside of us we are looking in the wrong place. One of the ways I was saying to them to find our inner peace and happiness was to figure out what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning. What it is that we are called to do in service to humanity that draws out our truest and most unique personal gifts that nobody else can give to the world.

We were finishing the class with a conversation about what it means to be successful and I asked that question to the class. I got some great unexpected answers. I was expecting to hear a lot about financial profit as a determining factor for success. What I got were answers like achieving goals, inspiring people personal satisfaction, being happy and having a positive mental attitude. Wow! I was amazed at these first-year students seeing something beyond money as a determining gauge for success. I then invited them to look at this a little bit differently. Our success is determined by the success of the people who are employed by us and the success of the people whom we are doing business with. If we all are thriving in our personal lives and our professional lives, then we all are successful.

After these two classes I was able to meet the CEO of the academy. We spoke of the lack of student centered learning and I was asked if it was possible to give a workshop to the instructors to educate the faculty about student centered learning and the techniques involved. After I get back from my trek into the Annapurna Mountains I will follow up on this. Of course, I’m no expert on Student Centered Learning but I think there’s something I can do to help these people out engage their students a little bit better.

There was a last-minute invitation for me to speak at a welcome and graduation banquet for the academies nursing department. They were welcoming the new students and passing the flame from the graduates to the new students. I had some time and I couldn’t pass that up. It was a wonderful opportunity and I was concerned that I wasn’t prepared with anything to say. There were about 150 people there and I was the only American. I did the best that I could, and I didn’t feel good about it at all. The CEO said I did OK and I think he was being nice about it. I learned that I needed some time to prepare before making a commitment to speak in front of a crowd like that.

 

It’s a little strange not to be surrounded with x-mas music and all the consumerism associated with the holiday season. It makes me feel like it really isn’t December or the Christmas season.

I will be off the grid for 8 days as I make a trek into the Annapurna Mountains. You can google Poon Hill trek and Annapurna hot springs trek to find out more if you’d like to know where I’m going.

 

28 Nov 2018

Ego/World Centric Thinking & Responsible Tourism in Pokhara, Nepal with Tibetan Encounters

by | posted in: Adventure, Personal Growth, Sabbatical, Spiritual, The Human Condition | 0

I thought about traveling to the Mt. Everest region while I was here. Go big or go home has been a familiar mantra for me so traveling to Everest fits that so appropriately. After looking into the possibility of going to Lawudo Gompa and finding out the flights there were cancelled 5 days in a row due to weather, I realized after talking to people that I am a little late in the season to be traveling to those altitudes. It is going into winter here in the northern hemisphere. It’s not that it isn’t possible, it’s just that it comes with the risk of taking days to get in/out of the small towns by airplane, having to wait out weather in the villages due to weather, not to mention the cold and wind. Plus, I wanted to get out of Kathmandu anyway and there are many other options.

It was great to be out of Kathmandu and land in Pokhara where the air quality improved 50%. The bus ride was a little crazy on a road that could barely get two trucks by each other going in the opposite direction without coming to almost a complete stop. The windows on the bus were in such a location that you couldn’t see the road very much which I think was a good thing because it got a little scary at times. A 200km drive took about 7 hours, where in the USA the same ride would take about 3 hours. The bus I was on was a luxury style bus. The pictures on their website is of the brand-new bus. The reality of it all is that it’s not well maintained and dusty and dirty. And it was nice to just be out of Kathmandu.

As I got closer to Pokhara the lines of the 8000m Annapurna mountains came into view. Suddenly, my body and mind got still and knew I was heading into the right direction. Ever since I left the big cities of Chicago, San Francisco and New York and moved to Maine, I grew very appreciative being part of nature and in nature. We cannot escape the law of nature anyway so might as well accept that and follow the rules. I’ve become in awe of this place near the Annapurna Mountain Range.

One of the things I have learned to enjoy in my previous travels is allowing myself the time to settle in to places and not feel so much pressure to take in all the sightseeing and things to do because time is so limited. When I first arrive somewhere I’m typically tired from a long journey of hundreds or thousands of kilometers and need to rest. I planned to stay in Kathmandu for a week and I didn’t know that would be too much time for me to be there. Life is mysterious and full of learning… suffering is optional… and it’s nice to feel like I could hang out in Pokhara for a while.

The Airbnb I am staying at is run by a Tibetan man, Thupten, who runs a company called Tibetan Encounters. Thupten’s parents escaped from Tibet while China was attacking Tibet and his family landed here in Nepal in a refugee camp in 1959 around the same time the Dali Lama escaped. When I was in South Africa I took a tour of the tenements where the native south Africans were forced to live during British rule before the abolition of apartheid and it helped me understand the culture a bit better while I was there. There is a history of Nepal and the people here, as well as Tibet and why Tibetans are here in Nepal that I needed to experience and was most likely the reason I landed in at his Airbnb. What I learned was a big reminder of why I am a teacher, coach and spiritual guide and what I need to continue to be doing.

I’m sure you are waiting for me to tell you what it was that I learned, right?

I’m not going to get into the history of Tibet, China and Nepal because you can look all that up on the internet. Nepal is a developing country and rated one of the poorest in the world. People here in Nepal are trying to survive just to put food on their plates and have a roof over their head that doesn’t leak regardless if they are Tibetan or Nepalese. Did you know the Nepal government has never granted any of the Tibetan people rights to get a passport, or get a job here or even own a car or property? And that’s over 50 years ago. I was astounded…

The USA is a melting pot where people have escaped war torn countries, genocide or just wanted a better way of life for themselves. People, no matter where they came from, had the chance to eventually get work, get citizenship and gain the basic human needs to survive in the United States. They still retained their dignity. Something is happening very differently here.

I’ve had several conversations since I’ve been here in Pokhara with Nepalese and Tibetans and have learned a lot about the culture, the economy and their religion. One of the things that I’m having a hard time accepting is the treatment of the Tibetans in their refugee camps… or as I would like to call them now, over 50 years later… their villages. Some of the Nepalese people and the government here have this idea that since Nepal is a developing country they cannot offer the Tibetans basic rights to get work, become citizens, get passports and own property because that would take away the opportunities from the local Nepalese people.

Sure, taking care of our own country and our own selves makes sense on one hand and in a small minded and ego centric sort of way but, the United States has not operated in that kind of way when people left their countries. I can feel this way of being as I walk around town and see the MANY shops selling the knockoffs of North Face products with all the owners saying they will give the best deal to me… better than their competition, even right next door. I’m really good at the bickering and haggling over price and I also have a good time doing just that. But, most everyone here is just trying to survive to make a living and there’s something about the haggling to get the best price is making me think.

One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is how we gauge success, not by how much money we have in the bank at the end of the month but, how much others in relationships to us are being successful. I even wrote about it at the beginning of my India stay and it’s once again revealing itself to me here in Nepal. Responsible Tourism is the buzz word that comes to mind. Check out the definition of responsible tourism here.

During my stay in Kerala, India and working with a couple of people trying to plan a cultural and culinary tour of the area I was turned on to responsible tourism thanks to Linda and Nayab. While on a tour with Thupten of Tibetan Encounters  I witnessed the way Thupten gives back to his village and not just take from them and I have a lot of respect for how he is operating by giving back to his village in Nepal where a lot of people are just struggling just to survive.

Even in these developing countries like Nepal and India I am learning by others’ example and living what it means to be a world-centric thinker versus an ego-centric thinker. I can see the people who are looking out for only themselves to survive and I can feel the people with hearts who, not only are looking after themselves but, are also giving back to the community and the world.

Having this experience has continued to allow me to expand my own thinking from ego-centric to world-centric ways of being in the world. and it makes me wonder how an expanded way of looking at giving back to the community and the world might look to put into action leading by example.

I’m curious to know how you have gotten out of your ego-centric ways of being so you can offer your best and most unique gifts to the world. Post a comment here or just email me… I’d love to hear about it.

 

      

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