In the beginning

It is August and my plan to travel will begin in January, maybe later. I think January will be perfect as I feel ready to dive into the next realm of surrender and release and merging with the divine-fully, knowing that that is where I will dwell and it is distinct from where I have been. The conversations are fewer and they happen with fewer people. I can feel the peace soaking into my skin.

Wow. I am planning where I want to stay, how long, the costs, soliciting opinion and advice from the myriad ton of people that have traveled for extended periods through India already. Single women, couples, Westerners, so many have traveled to drink from the mouth of the source. Why India? Anne opened up the doors to India for me through her friendship with Hinduism when we were together. We went to the Rathyatra, read a little of the Baghavad Gita. Though she didn't talk that much about what it meant to her and the significance, I quickly and easily found myself absorbing the knowledge and fruit that this pathway to God, of God offers.
Then I put it away for many years but the familiar sight of a Jagganath sticker or Krishna playing his flute would bring a smile to my remembering heart.

Over the years I got involved with men, did transformational courses designed to enhance and increase my ability to communicate effectively, ask for what I want, be the one in the driver's seat of my life. Designed to wake up to life, realize that life is short and I have power, and there is an "I" here that wants to make a difference. Through Landmark Education I learned that I had been living my life from my own self point of view. I believed that because I lived the way I did and thought the way I thought that everyone must be doing their lives the same way, thinking more or less the same way I do. Really that way of thinking is so limited and confining and most people in the US are doing life this way. Landmark is a knock on the head.."Hello....wake up to the world. Realize that you are choosing your life the way it is. Life is not happening to you, you are creating it- in all of its glory, misery, discomfort and form." That was a big wake up call to me. Thank you Community and thank you Rich Reinholdt for asking me to do the Forum, for holding my hand through all the weekends and tears and joy and confusion. That, December 1998, in a lot of ways, in when I consider my spiritual life beginning-even though I wouldn't have defined that experience as spiritual.
Just today I realized that while I was a kid and went to church with my Grandma-sweet little old women kneeling in the pew, rosaries in hand, Hail Mary full of Gracing, that also created the Anitra I knew myself to be-spiritual, but more religious. When my Grandma left, went back to Pennsylvania, that was the end of religion, spirituality as I knew it until now.
After Landmark and during LM, I did the Sterling Women's weekend, Arete several times, sensuality living, reading David Deida-more transformational work oriented around being a fully-expressed feminine, sensual, creature living life as her essence in the space of community. All of those experiences that I have had since 1998 have created to and contributed to who this body, this person, this identity, the Anitra that people are referring to when they say "Anitra."
John Stewart [my new, old boss] left me a message on Friday saying that everyone is excited for me to come back to work there and while in the shower I had to laugh and pause for a moment wondering which Anitra they were happy to have back. The ten months ago Anitra. She was doing Bikram four times a week, had been out of a two year relationship with Aaron for three months, had been seeing a new guy Adam that was making her excitedly, wildly nuts and not sure what was next, thinking that becoming a sensuality leader, instructor was the path, but afraid to tell anyone at WF that except her boss. Hmm...guess they'll be happy to have her back. Oh, and the Anitra that would smile at everyone and wasn't afraid to look people in the eye. I always felt the discomfort people experienced in my subtle directness, but oddly enough when they think back I am sure they remember something about my unconventionality that struck them in some way. They'll be glad to have back that girl who was strangely comfortable to be with, a breath of fresh air in the stale , 17th floor banking world where millions of dollars are excanged but no presidents are actually seen. It all happens on paper and over the phone.

So it's 2004. It's been 6 years since I started to wake up, was even aware that life was something more or different than going to school, finding a job, sticking with it and doing the same with a man. that's what people do. That's what I was queued up to do. you're 29 Anitra, when will you get married and have children. Mostly only I asked myself this question. But I knew that I wouldn't do it because everyone was doing it. I didn't see Lord of the Rings and Star Wars in its re-release and everyone was doing that. But even with my rebellion and free spirit, somewhere in there I knew Iwanted to have a kid, to imprint my gentic makeup with my fabulous man's [whomever that might be at the time] genetic makeup and presto, we'd have a lil' one! Like baking bread. zucchini-walnut. but I am not married (phew) and didn't get preganant (double phew..). That might be something I am excited about one day, but today, August sixth, two thousand and four is not the day, alas.

After Adam and I, well after I decided that I needed some space from Adam (three months to cool the flames) I had space to be with me and look into what I wanted to do with my life, when it is not defined by the man I'm with. Aaron and I started to see one another again, that was sweet and beautiful, but still I felt that longing in me to be alone, to not be with a man. The comfort, familiarity and ease with which Aaron and I related made it all so natural. It was good for us to stop doing that. Especially when I realized that I wanted a particular type of relationship and Aaron wasn't ready to do that, neither was Adam. It is all so right that things happen as they do, when they do.

I knew that I wanted to live my life devoted to love. but how does that look. who does that and can actually sustain a place to live, food, etc.. I knew I wasnt going to found an organization that saved 4 year old southeast asian babies from eating undercooked rice. that's an overstatement obviously, my point being that I didn't have the motivation to start or create a movement; not that those pursuits aren't needed and essential - it is just that I am much more free, nebulous, whimsical, formless. It would be irrantional for me to consider showing up at the same place everyday and to make plans hosting forums and panels and organizing meetings and creating fundraisers- I am not that woman. Thank God for the Deirdres and Marcies of the world! I use to think the reason I wasn't inspired to create an organization or movement or cause was that I was too self-focused, and maybe I am, I do have a lot of planets in the first house that underscore the emphasis I place on self-knowledge, self-development, self-realization--and I am an attention-grubbing LEO. :) that's a joke-I am, but I am not the limelight, needs to have all the attention on me type of Leo-yes, some would disagree, but anyway, that's not why I'm here.
The bigger question confronting me How was I going to live a life opening hearts, loving people, sharing the gift of loving to love, listening to gain understanding, crying to be expressive as an energetic organism that has the capacity to cry-it's all energy- and the universe wants to experience itself through us.
The planets want to live as their highest selves through us. How can I live a life based on that. Who's going to pay me to live like that? I thought a man but then I saw how that desire and structure to live devotionally free and surrendered to love in the framework of a man/woman relationship was using him and that didn't feel right to me.

I know, I'll be a gypsy. My Mom will love that one. I will wander through cities, countries, states, provinces, territories and I will get by, because I believe, and God will take care of me. And of course I feel drawn to India. India is ancient and rich, and full of God, and prayer and magic and worship. So that is how this whole thing started.

Since then, then being sometime around April/May 2004, my plans to travel have taken a more developed form. I met Amma. I met SadaSiva. I met Swami Kartikeananda. I started doing spiritual practice (sadhana) with SadaSiva. Amma is my guru. She gave me a mantra. I stopped going out to parites and have gotten rid of most of what I own. I am integrating. I am standing on the bridge, the bridge between Venus and the Sun. the sun is so bright, it is my planet, he burns up all the confusion, the lack of clarity, the mud and says this is your path dear one, while venus so luxuriously, sensually and palpably beckons me with her sweet scents of rosewood and nectar. She has given me so much of who I've been, the juice of the last 20 years. I thank you Venus for lifting me on your shoudlers so I could sing, strut, taunt, love, sparkle and gleam as a butterfly, bedecked with charisma, character and dazzling gifts. As I enter further into the Sun I am moved to further purify and liquify. The gifts of the Sun feel like they will continue to strengthen my spiritual practices and discriminating faculty.

As my path twists and turns and reveals itself in the simple, pure form, the trodden dirt path, printed with bare feet and lined with dust; I walk in peace, in light, quietly, sweeping through as a whisper does in a soft moment of surrender, toward a life unbound, yet structured and well-traveled. Devotionally, selflesslessly- through knowledge, experience, guided by truth.