New Plymouth Roadtrip #1: Soul Journey

I've been reading Marlo Morgan's "Mutant Message Down Under," a book recommended by Jen and Miriam. The book had pretty crappy reviews on Amazon, but I'm really enjoying the book so far, and not because it's good historical fiction or anything like that, but because of the narrative of the spiritual journey to appreciating the complexities of the simple things in life.

This roadtrip that Kathrin, Steve, Emily and I just came back from has been a little bit of a spiritual journey for me as well. The journey to Aotearoa itself has had its mystical elements in making me feel even more connected to the earth (thank you Caity Stuart), but this roadtrip was a soul journey of a different kind.

To begin, I carried with me a heaviness from the last couple of weeks as we started the roadtrip. As much as I tried to be present for the trip, the fact that the visa business was still not taken care of made it difficult. Do I begin to withdraw, simply out of the possibility that this could well be my last travel around New Zealand for a while?

Ironically, just before we left that morning, Kathrin and I had a brief conversation about something Michael posted on Facebook by Thich Nhat Hanh:

"In the United States, I have a close friend named Jim Forest. When I first met him eight years ago, he was working for the Catholic Peace Fellowship. Last Winter, Jim came to visit. I usuallyy wash the dishes after we've finished the evening meal, beofre witting down and drinking tea with everyone else. One night, Jim asked if he might do the dishes. I said, 'Go ahead, but if you wash the dishes you must know the way to wash the.' Jim replied, 'Come on, you think I don't know how to wash dishes?' I answered, 'There are two ways to wash dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to to wash the dishes.' Jim was delighted and said, 'I chose the second way- to wash dishes to wash the dishes.' From then on Jim knew how to was the dishes. I transferred the 'responsibility' to him for the entire week.

If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nusiance, then we are not 'washing the dishes to wash the dishes.' What's more, we are not living during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life shile standing at the sink. If we can't was the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future-and we are incapable of living on moment of life."

- The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh, pgs, 6-8.

It was then that I realised, I was leaving Auckland and had already decided to stay disconnected from the real world. Fretting about the real world stuff wasn't going to change anything anyway, but I couldn't get my mind off the possibility that this roadtrip might well be my last for a while.

Human-ness. What are we to do with that?

I proceeded to try and get my thoughts organized so that I wouldn't dwell excessively on one thing or another. But you know that Voice, the one that I hate sometimes? The voice said, "Let the past sweep over when it sweeps over, rather than try too hard to control the flow of your thoughts."


And so the soul journey began. I'll write more eventually, but my brain is about to combust.