The Power of Our Voice (and adapting to the world again)
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The Power of Our Voice (and adapting to the world again)
It has been only 3 weeks out of my isolation in the jungle I found so many new challenges and teachings.
As we were talking about the challenges, Magdalena told me about Michael Roach who became a buddhist monk then was asked by his master to go to NY and start a business! He tells the story in his book “the diamond cutter” which I will read as soon as possible.
I see the challenges as opportunities for growth and find my integration back in society and following the dieta for another 9 months much harder than my time in the forest (which I thought would be the hardest but I was wrong).
It is also for me an opportunity to see if I really changed and what changed in me or has not…
When I was in the container of the remote hut, I wasn’t tempted by anything as there wasn’t much.
My words-
I got trapped so many times but saying things that came back hurting me or hurting someone. I am struggling with a huge “need” to share my experience in the jungle, the interest and questions of many friends but also the danger of sharing too much. For example my latest newsletter about addiction did not go very well.
There are so many addictions: working all the time or hyper activity is an addiction most people don’t notice (I had it all my life until I started working on myself), seeking success or outside recognition through social media, alcohol, using our phones constantly (the Internet was forbidden to me there), sex, etc etc. Addiction scares many people and talking about them isn’t okay. I just tried to be honest saying I got rid of all my addictions but came back with a new one with strong natural tobacco. I then shared how I was working on controlling it and how I could control it quite easily. I believe addiction is “just” a matter of controlling my thoughts. I am talking for myself. It’s the same process that makes me not stop a meditation or resist any type of pain or difficult situation. It’s mind training. I received strong criticism for saying that as well as a few comments I since deleted that modern medicine or science did not help as much as learning to control one’s mind.
To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing. – Elbert Hubbard often misattributed to Aristotle
I often talk too much and write too much. I enjoy sharing what I am learning and my challenges and try to do it very honestly. The other risk is to sound crazy or that I completely lost balance or reality. It’s challenging but I will keep sharing. I am trying to share more quantity than quality.
Back to the topic of being “monk like” isolated or in the world. See how it’s much easier? I could tell anything I wanted to my “secret” journal without any consequences but here I am learning as I have never learned the consequences of my words. It is tempting to delete my public writing and posts (and I sometimes do) but I love it so much that I keep going. I also feel -might be my ego too- that I must share some of what I learned, it might help others too. It feels worse to keep all that knowledge for myself than taking the risk of degrading my image or making some people upset, often family members…
My teacher Putanny Yawanawà has incredible words as always in this must watch short video:
“Our weapon is our voice, our love and our humility” - Putanny, first ever woman master of the Yawas
The food-
I had two green bananas a day and a glass of water that’s it at the beginning. It was obviously incredibly hard but here now it’s even harder seated at dinner with friends eating sweets or meat. When you do not see it it’s easier. When everything is constantly available it’s much harder. My dieta also includes no sugar or sugar taste liquids and no water. I can only have tea or bitter tasting juices such as pure passion fruit. Better stay home than going to have breakfast somewhere, I am experimenting with green juices I used to not like.
There is one thing that definitely seems gone forever. I see many friends drinking wine in front of me and I don’t even feel like it. I did not drink a drop of alcohol for about 10 months and very little for 1.5 years.
No sugar for one year is the most challenging, like a spoon of honey in my yogurt.
People-
I have always been very social and frankly nearly always social. If I wasn’t with my family I would always be with friends or business friends, they were often the same. I learned to be alone and self-sufficient for the first time in my life in the forest. As I came out after 3 months I craved reconnecting with friends and meeting new ones. This is where I noticed how I changed (maybe temporarily) the most. I have a hard time sitting in a restaurant for two hours. Crowded restaurants when I visited Paris where a constant challenge mostly for the background noise (just people talking normally!) and also their energy after a few drinks. I took as a meditation listening to strangers. I listened for about 30 mins to someone I did not know explaining all the details of his business including his margin, costs and how successful it was. I have to be honest, I was totally uninterested but yet listened carefully to every word and noticing what it was doing inside of me.
Meditating in silence is tough but often easier than some conversations for me currently.
He was also constantly touching me for some reason, putting his hand on my shoulder ever few minutes. In the forest nobody talked to me and I was forbidden to touch or be touched by anyone. I also constantly notice the eye-contact. The indigenous also taught me to avoid eye contact as for them it’s too much incoming data and energy as well as being careful with what “comes out” of my eyes. In other words I am learning -and trying as it’s so tough- to be conscious at all times. I gently told this new friend I did not talk about business for months and wasn’t touched by anyone so it felt weird but he continued anyway.
My ego started thinking “mmm, how can he not be conscious that I am so bored” but then I saw it as a mirror of myself as I am for sure also often talking too much and thinking that what I say is interesting but it might also be totally boring. A new connection in my brain seems to fire-up telling me to also “read” more whomever I am talking to and adapt to this.
I still love connecting to friends and new friends and take these new feelings as a challenge to overcome. I have no intention to isolate myself.
To-do-s and material things
I have lived without a wallet and always offline. I had no passport or id card with me in the forest. I was truly free. There were borders though as I wasn’t allowed to walk outside of the 50m circle around my hut. When I first connected to the Internet two weeks before coming out of the jungle I discovered the crypto and tech-stocks crash and that I had lost -like many- quite a bit especially in Luna for those of you following crypto… Another challenge as I came out so sensitive. I told the Chief. He said “welcome any new challenge as a blessing and a new opportunity for you to become stronger”.
I am fine, not complaining, and I feel very fortunate to be in the position I am in, but it was definitely a strong return to real life.
I also feel like going back to business so I see it as an opportunity to do so now.
I want to be in the world again and very grounded, after flying for so long. I am also curious to see what changed there and how I can apply some of my teachings to daily life and also business activity.
Keeping my spiritual work-
I still meditate an hour a day sometimes two. It is much harder to “find the time” as there are so many things to do here. I learned to sing and pray also play some -still not so good- guitar. I was singing many hours every day there. Here if I am not isolated I feel I disturb others or I get shy (not usual either for me!) so I don’t. I still try to sing a bit every day and say some prayers aloud in ancient Yawanawa or I risk losing them. These songs and prayers really help but I need to “think about” singing and finding the right time and space to do it.
No sex for one year (in any form)-
It is hard, no question. I am about 4 months in. I will write about it one day but I definitely feel the benefits, a huge energy always available. I do the Kundalini Sat Kriya daily, the only practice I kept from one year of Kundalini in San Francisco. It helps moving the sexual energy up among many other benefits and I really love it. I sometimes do the practice for up to 30 minutes.
There are many more changes and challenges I notice but I will keep them for my next newsletter.
Please give me some feedback in the comments about this newsletter. What do you like? What do you not like? How about the frequency of about 3x a week? What topics would you like me to cover if any? Thanks for reading!
update: really good post on “right speech” from a friend.
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The Power of Our Voice (and adapting to the world again)
thank you for writing this very interesting post. i spent only one month in dieta (on a less restrictive dieta) with the Yawanawa, and was not completely isolated...and i still found "landing" in our western world very challenging and disorienting. i can't imagine how much more intense it must be after your 3 month experience.
something i find particularly fascinating is that much of what you're expressing about your recent experiences with people has so much in common with my normal day-to-day experience as an autistic woman.
in our culture, frequent eye contact is expected as a part of normal socializing, but i have always found it difficult to maintain eye contact while speaking or listening - it makes the current between me and the other person overly intense, and it's something that i always needed to consciously remind myself to do in order to avoid offending or alienating the other person. i prefer brief and limited eye contact, so that i can focus on listening or speaking from within my own container. since my dieta closed, i've been working on staying myself more, and sharing my presence rather than pushing myself to make eye contact. i only push myself to make the "required" eye contact as needed at work.
i've always found crowded restaurants and other crowded public places very difficult, for these same reasons that you express - background noise and also the flood of unfamiliar energies that are moving around and colliding in a way that feels disorganized, or at times chaotic - especially when people are intoxicated. years ago, i used to drink a lot of alcohol or smoke too much marijuana to numb my discomfort in these situations, but now that i don't do these things, i find it quite challenging and i feel i need to rest my entire nervous system afterwards to recover from it. i do this by sitting in silence with my animals or being outside by myself. many of the sensory aspects of modern life are quite jarring and draining - sirens, noises, in public there are always so many different sounds crashing into each other, many frequencies of artificial light are painful and/or disorienting (not to mention that most lightbulbs in commercial buildings are actually strobing or flickering at a frequency that most people don't seem to register), the chemical smells and tastes that are supposed to be "clean" or pleasant (smells for me have a very strong taste as well), perfumes, the lines and colors of modern american commercial architecture...yikes. probably the most challenging sensory experiences are visits to a shopping mall, large store, or crowded restaurant with loud music and many conversations. it takes so much more energy to interact with anyone in these spaces.
from where i sit on the spectrum, i've never had an easy time speaking in the sort of conversations most people like to have. socializing and networking are very challenging for me and i still don't understand quite how they work (or rather, how to make them work for me). they seem somewhat superficial to me - i don't mean superficial in a pejorative sense, but superficial in the literal sense that most conversation touches only the outermost layer of people's existence - and yet this kind of talking is what makes people feel connected. it's confusing. it's much easier for me to speak very little and and try to do a combination of feeling and intellectually understanding where the other person is coming from so that i can respond in a supportive or encouraging way (luckily most people don't mind doing most of the talking, that seems to be the best way to manage). this requires a lot of energy! i still don't entirely know how to politely conclude this sort of conversation, short of excusing myself to the bathroom, so they sometimes go on for quite some time! on the other hand, i find deep conversations about people's emotional and spiritual realities, their creativity, and their family histories refreshing and energizing.
i've wondered many times in the past year about this connection between the indigenous lifeways/spirituality and my personal experience of autism. i don't consider the "symptoms" that mark me as autistic to be disordered, just things that mark my neurology as a bit different from most of the people i run into. but it seems i've at last found a comfortable place where i can live with my neurotype and still be around quite a few people. i have never felt my day-to-day sensory discomfort in an indigenous ceremony. i've had some physically painful and otherwise very challenging experiences, but they don't feel like a sensory assault the way that a trip to a mall or a hot restaurant does. i don't find their style of interaction to be energetically draining, and the social norms seem quite clear and easily navigable for me - i don't have to think, "what's the socially appropriate thing to say/way to hold my body/should i make eye contact/what's the appropriate gesture?" i can just be, and it doesn't put anyone off. i never knew that my mind/nervous system could relax around a group of people in this way for such a prolonged period until i spent a month in the village. after spending most of my life feeling like i'm missing something everyone else is clued into, it's nice to feel like there's a place where my brain fits in, and i wonder what it all means. i also wonder if i will understand things like western socializing and have an easier time being in our public spaces if i keep following this spiritual path. i wonder if learning how to bridge the gap between my brain and my culture without feeling depleted from the process will emerge as part of my healing. wouldn't it be hilarious if this is how i learned to understand small talk?
thank you for this post and for creating the space and opportunity to reply and share. wishing you all the best.
Good to hear from you Prianka! Thanks for sharing your experience!