The Spell of a Magician's Mind

Loyalty and Love in the Nepali Context

Loyalty is abiding by the laws of the self, other, or spiritual entity.  Sometimes the mind can be led towards loyalty to an idea that it doesn’t necessarily believe in itself.  People and places and voices and words can seduce the mind into change.  Whether that voice wants peace, love and harmony, or war, hate and violence;  such forces can be very strong and can pull the malleable mind into it’s vacuum.  The force of war, hate and violence is unfortunately a vein that many Americans get sucked into because we Americans are prideful of our accomplishments, money, social stature, etc.  Unable to let go of attachments to possessions, people lash out in fear.  They are loyal to the self and the pursuit of the sparkly diamond and cast away, or make the others who question them appear foolish.  Out of fear, desperation, and greed they use distraction and avoidance techniques to take attention off their malaise.  The magician can manipulate the whole environment around them into making another person look jealous/greedy/disloyal/whatever it is that they need in order to disguise that quality within themselves and direct attention outward.  They are only powered by those who are easily manipulated.

In Nepal, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by magicians of a different sort.  These magicians understood the need for love, affection, and a sense of belonging.  It is hard for people age 14-30 to find romantic love and affection within a dating relationship because they pretty much doesn’t exist.  Pre-marital relationships aren’t typically encouraged unless the community is trying to set up a love marriage.  For male Peace Corps Volunteers, this meant lots of proposals for marriage and lots of “no thank yous”.  My friend got proposed to at least once a day.  For females, it pretty much meant avoiding the whole scene, or going undercover.

The beautiful coping strategy that people invent to deal with coming of age, but not being ready for marriage, is to spread their love everywhere and literally love friends as family.  In some ways, it seemed immature and juvenile, but it works.  Boys would love each other, hold hands, and show affection publicly.  Girls share time together and become friends with each other very fast.  Boys don’t attach to girls and girls don’t attach to boys as a rule of thumb.  I never went to a co-ed middle school, but in some ways I imagine that the environments would be very similar.  Adult male sexual tension was diffused by simply being available for love regardless of the sex and having a strong love of the self.  

If there was an individual that seems to need love and affection, the community will accept and keep private whatever that individual needs to do to receive that love.  If that person has a loving energy, they are received with open doors in pretty much any household.  People are very intuitive and can gauge whether someone is just out to take, or is willing to work and happy with just having a meal, friendship, and shared time.  Those who have money give without reservation because that is their need.  Those who receive don’t complain about their role in life and find the joy in their work and those with whom they share time.  If someone trips, they usually make light of the situation and let that person try to stand, but if that person is really extremely lonely, or sad about their situation- it’s just an opportunity for someone to help pick them up and create good karma.

We must be loyal to this law of love no matter our cultural or religious backgrounds.  If we aren’t, we are only fighting ourselves and sucking others into our own internal conflict.

Bohemian Fantasies

A Gypsies Tale

Give me the strength to plant these seeds 

and when I must leave, that I will not grieve.

For I may not see them sprout and grow

These seeds, these seeds that I sew.

I wander the world and give my love.

Let there be no push and shove.

For I walk my path as others look on

Tempting, tempting me to attach upon.

Upon a dream, a promise, a hope

Tying me with their leather and rope.

The seeds were never mine, but yours.

Can’t you see?

They never belonged to me.

I cannot wait, I cannot pause.

There are rules.

There are laws.

Laws of money and sense and pain

What’s to loose, when you have that to gain?

I am sorry my seeds, but do not die

Upon my friends you now rely.

So drink in their love and soak in their rain.

Hold with you this truth and your life will sustain.

Freedom Beauty Truth Love

Are all these things worth dying for?

The current of the underworld is stronger than your greed.

Because you will never understand that money cannot feed

The passion that burns in the hearts of our breed.

Only by plunging into this fire can you be relieved

Of your small mind and your blacks and your whites.

The flare of bombs your only lights.

When a whisper turns to a scream

It will hit you like a beam.

So go and cry that your piggy bank is broke

We have other ways to cope.

Truth

Truth is meant to be found, not told.  Most of my life has been steered by people telling me what I don’t want, or what I’m not good at.  It took me a long time to realize that was a good thing.  Being a person born with lots of confidence, and being raised in the states where people tell you that you are good at things when sometimes you’re just not, I think I grew up in my teen years and twenties jumping at every opportunity to try anything.  I had to learn that I didn’t like drugs.  I had to learn that I needed time to myself to reflect and regenerate.  I had to learn that just because I failed at something didn’t mean I was a failure.  There is always a silver lining.  Money in my pocket, knowledge in my head, a warm place inside my bed.  I always seemed to be led to something better.  Call me crazy, but believe I have angels to thank for that.  The biggest thing I wasn’t taught was how to manage the universe and complexities of the soul.  Maybe there isn’t a way to teach that though.  Maybe it can’t be told.

In Nepal there are few “type A” personalities.  Those born with competitive, outgoing, ambitious, impatient and/or aggressiveness are labeled Type A.  If people are born with that spirit, they are encouraged and rewarded for it, sometimes despite the consequences.  Typically these leaders are male, but when parents were open minded enough to respect their daughters as fully functional, intelligent, capable human beings, they were also women.  These women were people like my younger sister Neera.  She led with quiet strength, but relenting commitment to her faith and family.  She encouraged me to learn Nepali culture no matter how much I complained that I didn’t want to wash all my clothes and laundry on the 4th day of my period.  She worked for an NGO fighting for HIV Aids awareness at a time when it is becoming a serious threat in the Far West of Nepal.  She fought for women’s rights, for the rights of all who refuse to be victimized.  

I am a “type B”.  I admit that.  My older sister growing up was the boss.  I was more daring than her, but she pointed me in the direction of my dreams.  She was the first to live in a third world country.  She lead by example.  It wasn’t until going to Nepal that I learned the strength of the Type B.  The Type B leads another to truth gently.  They assist their people in learning their own truth. Its having the strength to say:

“How can I help you?  What do you want me to do?”  

and honestly mean it because doing that opens the door for the other person to achieve their dreams.  Usually, in a collective society where the end goal isn’t money/fame/ego the dream is best for everyone.  

The only person you have to believe is yourself, and sometimes you need people to help you do that.  You need people to let you make mistakes, fall on your face, wallow in the muck and then help you to stand.  We need to learn NOT to believe what we are told, and to NOT trust the “truths”, the “words”, the “system”.  The answer and truth is within you.  If you are deceived, you deceive the whole world and everyone you encounter.  We walk in a confused fog of promises to each other and dangling carrots in front of donkeys when we don’t even have a map of what we want in life.  

You don’t have to try hard to find that.  Please, don’t.  Maybe you think it’s something you like doing.  STOP doing that.  I dare you.  STOP doing anything that brings you happiness as the loss of that thing, that person, that activity, that life can only lead to one thing…sadness.  

So what then do you DO-You motivated, skilled, intelligent, bored, driven, creative mind?  Listen.  Listen to the wind.  Listen to the birds.  Listen to your soul.  The truth is there and it will lead you with no effort whatsoever.  You can have a playground without toys.  Just close your eyes and be it.