Its a weekend escape from tourist madness, and today my vision is filled with red, natural dye once thumbed onto freshly mudded walls, depicting stories of men and their missions inside this thousand year old, mountain cavern.
What a discovery, what a place, what an incredible source of records, frozen in time and space, that my fingertips brush past in curiosity, respect…awe…and love.
The narrow path high above Saspul village crunches beneath my feet, the freezing air coarses through my nostrils, and once again I am confronted by my friend, loneliness.
(That usually happens when I am in the right place at the right time) I tell myself.
A kind of release of Universal memories inside my body, a deep connection with that which surrounds me; the realness of the nowness; all that is…coming together in one time and space before my very eyes.
A shiver grounds me…next stop; Lamayuru.
Lamayuru is a vertical Tibetan Buddhist monastery set out the side of stone cliffs like so many other in this part of the world.
India now owns Ladakh, although this ancient kingdom is made up of Indo-Aryan, Tibetan, Mongolian and Baltistani hybrids which follow their own cultures, traditions and laws.
I am coming to terms with realising that what I do isn’t always being myself, but I still do not see what I do as a result of lack.
It isn’t that I didn’t suffer from lack; I did. Didn’t we all?
And it isn’t that I don’t know who I am, for actually, I do.
But how else do you shape a warrior but with continuous exposure to that which can kill him, until he becomes a part of it, so that he may walk effortlessly amongst the enemy as if they are his own flesh and blood?
These mountains are beautiful to me. In fact, they feel like home.
Their colours swirl from rock face to rock face, the hardness of solidity so familiar to my senses when I would experience the literal essence of ‘rock’ during outer body travels.
The sun embraces the vastness of mountain in spectrums of light; the slate slides under blue sheep hooves, and I sit watching grandmothers knit whilst grandchildren play ball their mini monk peers.
I am coming to terms with realising that what I do isn’t always being myself, but I still do not see what I do as a result of lack.
It isn’t that I didn’t suffer from lack; I did. Didn’t we all?
And it isn’t that I don’t know who I am, for actually, I do.
But how else do you shape a warrior but with continuous exposure to that which can kill him, until he becomes a part of it, so that he may walk effortlessly amongst the enemy as if they are his own flesh and blood?
Each time I faced ordeal or conflict, I would run deep within myself until I entered a place where I could finally venture out and seek external refuge.
Only today I have discovered that I am in fact, running back into my own arms.
The sun embraces the vastness of mountain in spectrums of light; the slate slides under blue sheep hooves, and I sit watching grandmothers knit whilst grandchildren play ball their mini monk peers.
Such barrenness and stillness and deafening silence.
Stillness that becomes me, before my soul gets vividly, unabashedly exposed.
‘Who sees this me’, I panic, other than the little girl in the corner shop with patient smiles and iris’ of uncut, dusty rubies.
I head back to Leh, an ancient, yet modernising town that sits 3,500 meters above most of the rest of the world.
The 20 kilometre drive takes up most of the day.
I watch, entranced by barren landscapes through a smudged car window, and understand that one of the most beautiful and challenging things about being human is dealing with emotions.
A thing called ‘empathy’ is neurologically developed and permanently sealed in humans from an early age through mirroring of caregivers.
“I see you, you are worthy of me, I love you, you are love.”
For me, empathy is not easy. In fact finding and entering a war zone is far easier than finding feelings.
It is not that I don’t have any, but it can exhaust me to find it some days.
Instead, I travel into the deepest valleys and moulded stone seats of monks and snow leopards, seeking refuge from ‘being human’; alas there is no place to hide.
So this frozen landscape feels for me, reflecting the deepest recesses of an almost painful aloneness within, and it is now, aged 35, I hear the elements sing,
“I see you, you are worthy of me, I love you, you are love.”
In this stillest point of creation, I am found.
To those watching, it does seem I spend most of my time chameleon-ising myself.
Perhaps I do not accept who I have been created in order to become who I am today?
Or perhaps I no longer care enough to try and stop myself.
The final destination is blurring into sight, and all can think about are the words of the barren scapes that echoed through me,
‘These days we are all created for a purpose not so obvious in the beginning’.
