The past 2 weeks that I've spent at home have been amazing. I started off with a bit of confusion and cloudiness but have spent the most recent days in sunshine. Ironically, after the first 5 days of being home, I've had nothing but good times and moments with good people each and every day. I have yet to wake up and go to sleep sad or angry about anything or anyone.

Today, I decided to finally tackle some school work before it's time to start the spring semester. I woke up had breakfast at Panera with my mom which consisted of the best bagel in the world (cinnamon crunch bagel) with cranberry orange cream cheese and a wildberry smoothie. Afterwards, I proceeded to conduct 5 hours of writing and reading and more reading. Even though lately, this would depress me at 2:15pm when I got up to leave Panera, I was happy and proud of myself; proud that I actually stuck to what I said I would do and did it. I was productive and managed to get a few, albeit small, amount of things off of my list completed.

I then went to the nearby park with the Trinity River flowing through it and just sat at a bench facing it. I hadn't done my sadhana for the day, so I chose to do it all here with the exception of my yoga. Many people may have felt weird or too exposed, doing their sadhana out in the open, but for some reason I just didn't care. I love doing my sadhana outside, especially when its a sunny day with warm weather. Today was perfect. So I sat with the construction men behind me working, people jogging and riding their bikes behind me as I gazed at the river. I began my sadhana without worrying what people would think of this normally dressed black girl chanting with her eyes closed and her hands in weird positions.

Oddly enough, even though the mind wandered during my mantras, it was focused during my meditation. This seems backwards doesn't it?  To be in a place with so much noise and movement in the background, to have the most focus when I can hear it all? Guess not, but something was occurring. I felt so in tune with what I'm not sure. But in my silence, I could literally feel a turtle diving underwater in the river, the footsteps of joggers encroaching upon me, the wheels of bikes turning, the flapping of birds in the trees. The most prominent of them all were the power tools of the construction men. Now yes, I know how obvious this would seem, but this was different. I wasn't just hearing the tools, I could feel the sparks reverberating through me as the tool met the metal.

If you've ever watched Avatar the Last Airbender Cartoon series, the way the blind girl, Toph, is able to earth bend is through her sense of the vibrations in the earth with every movement. It's painted like the ripples in the water. With each step anything makes, a set of vibrations emanate from touching everything in its path. This what the power tools were like for me during meditation. It was like the sparks were travelling from the ground through the cement bench and up my spine. The feeling could only be equated in words to a shiver, but it didn't make my body shake. I could just feel the vibrations working their way up spine. The feeling was amazing and completely made my day.

I have been plagued with the struggle between human love and monkhood. When I was attempting to deal with emotions, I ultimately decided to just let them flow; to give into them and experience whatever followed.  This hasn’t worked out too well for me. I say this not because you need to control your emotions and your feelings, but because, at least for me, it has evolved into something that it is not.

For the past two months, I have battled between being in a relationship with someone I love and truly care about verses renouncing everything and becoming a monk. As mentioned in previous blogs, I came to realize that there is no such thing as fate or destiny. We are what we make it. So I’ve been asking myself the question can I have my cake and eat it too? Can I have become enlightened and still be in a relationship? Many of you may think no, you have to pick one or the other, but interestingly enough it is possible to have both. IT is harder and takes much more time, effort and disciplined, but it is possible, very slight and rare, but possible nonetheless.

So I struggled with these questions, so much so that I considered not being a monk and just going for it. Here is where my emotions evolved.

Ego began using them as a tool to keep me trapped in maya, in illusion. My desire for love has always been ever-present but my path wasn’t really seen as a serious threat to ego until recently. As such it began using my desire for human love as a tool to keep me trapped. It played on my emotions and turned the situation into a fight between soul and the world. When ultimately, it is not.

I care about someone deeply, but they are not ready to be with me.  Although they care about me just as much as I care about them, the timing is off. I know that sounds cliché, but ironically in this case, it is valid. Even though they did not ask me to wait for them to be ready, ego was influencing me to do so; for fear of never experiencing human love. Ego turned it into the battle between soul and the world, when ultimately it’s simply a battle between waiting and moving on.  Nothing spiritual about it.

I realized that sometime in order to overcome bouts of attachment, one needs to take a non-spiritual approach. When I was looking at it as an issue between monkhood and love, that battle would have lasted for years, maybe even lifetimes. But when I look at with soul, spirituality and renunciation aside, would I wait for someone who doesn’t want me? The answer is no.

I arrived at this conclusion from recalling a past experience with an ex who wanted me to wait and the help of my guru. He simply said to me, “Why continuing walking down a street that you don’t live on?” He is completely right. Why should I continue to wait and fawn over someone who doesn’t want me to walk into their home?

I had to take out the spiritual factors that were at play here in order for me to realize what I need to do to pull myself out of this situation. I had to be realistic and in a sense worldly about the issue at hand. So I guess sometimes, being non-spiritual is the way to overcoming spiritual issues on the spiritual path.