Breaking Free: A Journey of Self Discovery Read online

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  The final day of the tour was a particularly special one for me. As my good fortune went, I happened to be standing right in front of Amma at the end of the programme. I was so close to her that I could have lent forward and touched her feet. The programme started at around 7:30 pm the evening before and had gone right through until midday the following day. I examined Amma closely, expecting her to be completely wiped out after hugging so many thousands of people without even a one minute break, but incredibly, other than her hair being a little ruffled up, and a few stains on her sari from people’s sweat and make-up, Amma looked exactly the same as she had at that start of the programme the evening before. There was still that same sparkle in her eyes and the same look of joy and freshness on her face. Smiling up at her, I was filled with a tremendous feeling of love and gratitude for what she was doing to help so many people all over the world. With my hands clasped together in front of me in prayer position, I very quietly mouthed the words, “Thank you, Amma”. There was so much noise and so many people standing around that I didn’t think it possible for her to have heard me, but next thing, she looked down and straight into my eyes. She raised her eyebrows slightly, then paused for a second as if asking me what it was that I had said. “Thank you, Amma,” I repeated, beaming up at her with all my heart. Amma’s face lit up affectionately and she gave me that same flashing smile that she had given me before on the first night I had met her. After one lingering smile, she then turned and walked off with people chasing after her.

  CHAPTER 17

  I spent the last ten days of my trip in the ashram. This was an important time for me as it gave me a chance to let everything that I had learnt on the tour sink in. For all these months that I had been plugging away at meditation in South Korea, I had always had the impression that meditation meant only sitting with your legs crossed and eyes shut. However, over the last few weeks I could feel that my understanding of meditation had broadened tremendously. I now realised that there were many different ways to meditate, and therefore it was important to find out what methods worked best for you. Eating food could be made into a meditation. Playing sport could be a meditation. Even sitting on the toilet could be made into a meditation. It didn’t matter what daily activity you were busy with at the time, but whether or not it was done with awareness. Awareness meant to be completely in the present moment and not thinking back on something that had happened in the past, or dreaming of some future event.

  In the late afternoons I liked to take a walk along the beach in front of the ashram. By concentrating on everything that was happening around me, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, the smell of the ocean, the sun setting in the distance, the feeling of the breeze brushing up against my body, it helped to get me more into the present moment. In the same way that I had realised that there were many different ways to meditate, so too did I realise that there were many different spiritual practices that one could do. What was important in all of them was to develop concentration of the mind. Meditation, seva, devotional singing, chanting - these were all different forms of spiritual practice. Another technique that worked well for me was to repeat a mantra. Instead of letting your monkey mind run wild from one restless thought to the next, the idea behind repeating a mantra was to give it only one thought to focus on. In this way, the mind is slowly brought under control. The mantra you repeated could be anything, depending on what your preference was. It could be a syllable such as Om, or it could be a group of syllables put together, for example Om Namah Shivaya. What was most important was not which mantra you chose to repeat, but how much concentration with which you did it.

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  When I got back to South Korea, my spiritual practices were now so much easier than they had ever been before. If I wasn’t in the mood to meditate, I could lie on my bed and listen to devotional music, and if I wasn’t in the mood to listen to devotional music, I could take a walk through the forest and chant a mantra. If I wasn’t in the mood to do even that, then I could make my dinner that evening into a meditation, by eating slowly and with awareness. The candle meditation didn’t work for me and so I had stopped doing it all together. If I had carried on with only plugging away at my candle flame meditation as I had been before, it would only have put me off meditation all together.

  One of the great things about the school I taught at was that they didn’t monitor me too closely. As long as I was there for my classes, they didn’t seem to worry about much else. With the freedom that I had, I started taking walks through the surrounding rice paddies during my free lessons. Maybe this was taking advantage a little, but nobody said anything and so I wasn’t about to stop. Besides, rather than wasting my time aimlessly sitting in front of the computer at my desk surfing the Internet, I’d rather get outside and be out in nature. With the warm spring sun beaming down on me, I’d soon be completely lost in my own world and feel a million miles away from school. On one walk in particular, I felt this sudden explosion of joy inside me. It happened for no real reason. I just felt incredibly happy. At that moment, completely out of the blue, I decided that I wanted to lie down in the middle of a rice field. Lying spread-eagled on my back in the dirt, dressed in my work clothes as I was, this was hardly the sort of thing that a perfectly sane person would have done. I bet that if my teachers had seen me lying there in the rice paddy, staring up into the sky, they would have fired me on the spot and told me that I belonged in a mental asylum, and not in a school.

  ***

  I may well have been going through all these changes over the past few months, but the one thing in my life that hadn’t changed at all was my roving eye for women, particularly Asian women. If I had one big weakness in life, it was surely the opposite sex.

  A month before my year-long contract was to come to an end, I went to bed one night thinking about how nice it would be to get together with a Korean lady before I left the country. The very next weekend I met Kim at a salsa dancing evening. Dressed in jeans, high heels and a black blouse, Kim was five years younger than I was and as Korean as they get. She had beautiful skin, an athletic body and long dark hair that fell half way down her back. Yet it was her beautiful and friendly smile that caught my attention at first. Just one look at her and I could tell right away that she was one of those happy and bubbly sort of people who you’d love to be around. Perhaps I should have thought things through, as I was leaving Korea in only three weeks time, but to hell with that. I couldn’t help myself and asked her out right away.

  Kim and I hit it off right from the start. Our first date went so well that we made plans to go out the next evening, and then the evening after that. Before I knew it, Kim and I were spending every night together. The more I got to know Kim, the more I fell in love with her. Kim had an incredible childlike innocence to her and was extremely generous. She was one of those people who would prepare a delicious meal and then want to share it with the neighbours, rather than keep it all for herself. There didn’t seem to be a bad bone in her body.

  In the beginning it was great. Heaven. It was the classic honeymoon phase and all I could think about was when I’d see my little Asian princess again. However, with all the late nights that we were having, I very quickly lost my discipline to meditate and spend time alone, and so it wasn’t long before I had slipped off the cloud that I had been floating on since my return from India. Of course my skin issue played a part in it as well. As much as Kim seemed to be completely un-phased by the pigmentation on my skin, the old ghosts that had haunted me for so long returned and with that came the emotions that I knew so well, insecurity, anxiety, and fear. Just as before, I tried to suppress these feelings and pretend that nothing was wrong. It was a catch 22 really. There was no way that I was going to stop seeing Kim, as our time together was great, but during the days when I was at school, and the thrill of our night together had passed by, I could always feel an undercurrent of agitation. What made it that much more noticeable was that I had been feeling so
much peace right up until I point that I started seeing Kim, but I wasn’t prepared to stop things with her, and so these bitter-sweet feelings would remain as they were.

  ***

  The one question that had been nagging at me for a while was what I was going to do after my teaching contract came to an end. Signing on for another year wasn’t an option, as I knew that things had run their course at my school and that it was time for me to move on, then one morning I woke up with an idea. Why not carry on from where I left off on my bike trip and cycle all the way around the world? Having already crossed Canada, all that remained was for me to cycle across Europe and Asia. Korea had been great for me to not only grow inwardly, but it had also given me the chance to save up plenty of money as well. Part of my teaching contract was that the school paid for both my airfare and my rent, which meant that I was quite easily able to save around 70 % of my monthly salary. I spent the next few days thinking it through, and the more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed to be. I thought that cycling across Europe and Asia would be a bit much to do in one trip, so why not split it into two sections? The following summer I could cycle across Europe, and then some time in the future I could cross Asia as well.

  With a map of Europe in front of me, I plotted a very basic route from Portugal to Turkey, which would take me through ten European countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Once I was absolutely sure that this was what I wanted to do, I sent out an email to a few friends of mine to see if any of them would be interested in coming along. When Johnny, a 25-year-old guy from England, who was also teaching in the same town that I was in, found out about the cycle trip, he told me right away that he was in. Johnny, with his lean build, light brown hair and fair skin, was a natural sportsman and so the idea of him putting pannier bags on his bike and cycling through ten European countries appealed to him right away. As soon as he committed to the trip, Dan, one of Johnny’s American friends, decided that he was going to come along too. Not long after, I got an email from Max, an old friend of mine from South Africa, to say that he was in as well. He had been working at a finance company in South Africa for a few years and was itching for an overseas adventure. The cycle trip across Europe was just what he had been waiting for.

  With two weeks between the end of my teaching contract and the start of my bike trip, I decided to make a short stop off at the ashram on my way to Portugal. How I looked forward to getting back to the ashram and to feeling that same peaceful feeling I’d felt when I was there last. Kim came to see me off at the airport. Despite the fact that I had never been a big fan of long-distance relationships, Kim and I weren’t ready to say goodbye to each just yet and so we both agreed that we wanted to give it a try. I would go and cycle across Europe and do my thing, and then when I got back to South Africa after the trip, she would come and spend time with me during her summer vacation. I gave her one last kiss, one last hug, and then set off for the start of the next adventure.

  CHAPTER 18

  I had once heard that an ashram is no place to hide. It’s no place to run to when things aren’t going well for you in your life, as ashram will often magnify how you’re feeling at the time. If you’re happy and in a good head space when you get there, then an ashram can make you feel even better. However, if you’re feeling down in the dumps at the time, then God help you as you may be in for a bumpy ride.

  I arrived in India at the end of April. April and May are possibly the hottest two months of the year to be in Kerala. With the humidity levels running at an all time high, my skin was forever agitated, and as much as I tried not to let it bother me, it definitely did! The one good thing about coming to the ashram at this time of the year was that there weren’t that many Western tourists there at the time. I therefore had a room all to myself, which was not often the case in Amma’s ashram. At first I thought it was great to have all this space to myself, but in truth it wasn’t, as it meant that I had too much time alone. More time alone meant more time to dwell on my skin problems. One day I had spiralled down to a really dark place. Feeling totally desperate, I knelt on the floor in my room with my hands held tightly together and pleaded, begged for help! I so badly wanted to cry and to let out all the pain that I had been holding on to for so long, but the worst part of all was that even then, as desperate and depressed as I was feeling at the time, I couldn’t shed even one single tear. There was a block. Something was preventing me from letting go. Although the spots on my body didn’t miraculously disappear overnight, first thing the next morning I found a note on my door to say that I had to move into another room with three other guys. This was a blessing in disguise, as with people around me I started feeling better immediately.

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  With all the miracles that have happened around Amma over the years, the idea had crossed my mind many times that maybe she would help me cure my skin problem. If I wasn’t feeling as bad as I was at the time, I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so eager to ask for her help. However, at this stage in my life I would have done just about anything to get rid of my skin disease. I decided that when I got my next hug from Amma, I would show her my skin condition and see what she had to say. Seeing as though Amma didn’t speak much English, I was told that I had to write down my question on a piece of paper and have it translated into Malayalam, the local language. With the piece of paper held in my hand, I waited in the darshan line the next day. After reading what I had written, Amma indicated that she wanted to see my skin problem. I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the spots under my arm. Even this was terrifying, as there were so many people sitting around Amma, all of them watching the whole thing. After a quick look, Amma spoke a few words in Malayalam to the man standing next to her.

  “Amma wants to know what the doctors say,” said the translator. I told her the name of my skin disorder and was then told to sit on the stage behind Amma. That was it. No magic potion to rub over my body. No promise that I would be healed. She only asked me what the doctors had said. I sat on the stage for some time, hoping that Amma would call me back and tell me that everything was going to be all right, that I didn’t have to worry, that my problems would be solved, but she never did. I went back to my room feeling at an all time low. I had hit rock bottom. What I’d hoped and prayed for to be my saving grace had just fallen flat. What on earth was I going to do now?

  When suffering from a disease, some people are fortunate enough to have a miraculous healing, but for most people the healing process is not so fast and instant. Very often, it takes you on a journey, a journey that requires plenty of effort and soul searching to get to the bottom of what had caused it, and what it was there to ‘teach’ you. For me, this was something that I had failed to understand for all these years that I had been living with my skin issues. I had failed to understand that it was ultimately there to teach me, to help me grow. It was only on my next trip to the ashram that I heard Amma saying that the solution to our questions to her, often lay hidden in her answer. However, at the time that I showed my skin to Amma, I was feeling so heavy and so filled with pain that I was in no mood for riddles. The last thing I wanted to do was to search for hidden clues in Amma’s answer. I wanted my skin healed, and I wanted it done right now! Looking back in hindsight though, I can clearly see that at the time that I had asked Amma for help, I wasn’t even close to learning everything that I needed to. Had my skin miraculously healed, I would have soon forgotten all about it and gone back to my old ways. As difficult as it was for me to accept at the time, my skin condition miraculously healing wouldn’t have been in my best interests at all, and I’m willing to bet my life on it that Amma knew this all too well. When I look back now on Amma’s words, my understanding is that what she was telling me was that I had to go and do the hard work. I had to go and see as many different doctors as I needed to, to get to the bottom of what had caused my skin condition. Only then would I have any chance of healing the wounds that I had allowed to feste
r for so long.

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  We began our cycle trip in Porto, the second largest city in Portugal. Even though my spirits had improved since leaving India, my heart still wasn’t in this trip at all. However, I was the one who had put the whole thing together, and therefore I had no choice but to go ahead with it. From Porto we followed the coastline north into Spain, then crossed the country along the Santiago Compostella pilgrimage route. For many years it had been a dream of mine to do the Santiago Compostella. Every year, thousands of people from all over the world made the 800-kilometre pilgrimage across the country, either by foot, bicycle or vehicle. Despite the fact that this was a dream come true for me, staying in the pilgrim shelters along the way meant that I forever had to worry about exposing my skin condition to other people. Living each day with my guard up was hard work, damned hard work! I had now reached the critical point and knew that I simply couldn’t carry on living like this anymore. I was so sick to death of forever having this worry about my skin problems hanging over me. Sure, there were so many millions of people in the world whose problems were so much greater than mine, but this still didn’t mean that I was able to come to terms with what I had been dealt. Somehow I had to get to the bottom of it; otherwise, it was going to drive me insane. Dan and Max were both planning on cycling only as far as Italy and I started to wonder whether I should do the same thing and cut my trip short. What was the point of me cycling on to Turkey when my heart wasn’t even in it? Perhaps it would be best for me to go back to South Africa and face my demons once and for all, instead of running as I had been for so long. Not sure what to do, I decided to pray for guidance. Must I stay and carry on with the tour to the end, or would it be best for me to go home early?