A tale in 3 Parts, this being:
Part 1 – The Pyramids
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I knelt down, prayed… asking for the courage to start again…
That was me almost three weeks ago, near the base of the Great Pyramids at Giza. It was a journey I began two years ago and was stopped at the gate of departure by a shock. My father took very ill and began the road that led to his death. The week before I was a button click from buying a ticket that would have brought me to the Pyramids and an Israeli journey; I decided it was time I discovered more about my Jewish cultural roots. But, as with the ways of life, the next two years would be filled with a type of learning and gut wrenching emotions that I would wish on no one. Even knowing my growth as a person in those two years, very much due to the trials faced, I would not have wished that experience on myself. It was too much.
Yet, that hard time is what I was offered and perhaps in some ways it was what I needed. I did what needed doing, I discovered the loving people I had around me, and thank all goodness I engaged the situation as best as I could, in the end finding myself only with the regret and question of how I could have been kinder toward myself during that time. If my words seem vague there is a good reason for it… I’m writing now not to discuss the hardships, but the treasure I’ve found along the way.
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Flying in to Cairo from Kenya was the worst travel day of my life. With a 4 hour delayed flight, digestive pain, flight broken bag, and internal strife I did not end up sleeping easily in my fan cooled pension at 3:30am in Egypt’s capitol. The next day though I got up with hope, had some fuul, Egypt’s national food of slow cooked fava with pita, and went to buy my train ticket for a few days later to Aswan on a journey to the upper Nile and the Valley of the Kings. Skipping the subtle foreshadowing, I did buy the costly, overnight ticket, but never made it to Aswan, and am now in Israel a bit earlier than expected. I will soon tell you why… but first, a little buildup…
It was a tiresome day in Cairo, a city that is quite powerful to walk through. It felt worlds better than Nairobi, the people were nice, the streets dirty, and the air filled with a Muslim soul unknown in the West. Oddly, the whole scene was refreshing even though my fatigue was excessive. I should have gone back to my room to rest, but after getting the ticket I went to the Egyptian Museum. As my friend Steve put it, “it’s like going to the Met (Metropolitan Museum in NYC), but where they took everything out of the cases and put it on the floor in front of you.” That’s just what it was. Sure, some things were in displays, but how crammed in everything was makes you feel privy to the worlds largest, coolest, and best organized pet rock collection. The highlight was of course the golden mask of King Tut (not on the floor in front of you but in a rather secure case). The whole experience is a marvel with the quantity and variety of artifacts from so long ago.
Marvels aside, my mind was clouded with other thoughts. I was very, very travel worn. The next day I explored Islamic Cairo and the spice markets. I walked through the poor section, avoiding the tourist section, and encountered quite of few kind and overly excited Egyptians who wanted to talk to me even considering my two word Arabic vocabulary and their equivalent level of English. The area was combination of China Town NYC, with the feel those streets made distinctly Egyptian with cups of tea everywhere and a Walmart / Home Depot fusion, casting the neat sections of the stores into large slots in the street-walls, brimming with Barbie Dolls, metal goods, lights, food, and every cheaply made foreign product imaginable. The old culture of trade is this city is still rich. The mango juice is fresh, the falafel is great, the heat is rough, and after a bit of soccer with some local kids it was time for me to crash again… though, my heart was hurting, I was feeling very uncertain about my journey.
It takes a great deal of resolve and angst to find oneself in some of the most amazing places in the world, as my good fortune has carried me, and still find a way to be trapped in your own head. Well, I’m very good at this self-transgression. If anything, I’ve practiced hard at avoiding what’s right in front of me. And that’s where the treasure hunt of this story takes a turn toward the climax of two years, more if you consider the practices, the devoted, powerful practices I’ve been engaged in for years; yet… that I’d turned into malice.
“What’s he talking about?” Well, time for a….
PHILOSOPHY BREAK! —>
It is possible to find “god”, “union”, “grace”, “connection”, in many, many endeavors. Some people find it in loving their family, some in the garden, some in religion, others get lucky and see Mary in the mop water, and then there are those that pursue meditation and similar paths that have been specially crafted to explore the self and the majesty of the human condition. A point of note, these latter paths are not ‘better’ they are just very focused with clear intentions in mind.
For me, martial arts, yoga, meditation, Buddhism and other practices have been a significant part of my journey. They are powerful tools, very much so… but I have learned a lesson recently and this is the crux of it: The most powerful tools have the ability to do the most good, as well as the most harm, to oneself and to others.
Disciplines are dangerous. They are a commitment, a form of faith. The most devoted athletes, the most austere spiritual practitioners, and the most committed pioneers cast aside the obvious, the failures, the trials set before them in the face of the instinct that screams, “there’s MORE! I seek a greater, deeper Beauty and I’ll die before I fail to touch it!” Yet, at the same time, discipline and the fortitude of the human will can be twisted to serve destructive ends. Consider elite soldiers trained for war, or, perhaps in some ways worse, the many self-destructive behaviors people have created to punish themselves.
As I can see, it’s a matter of finding true and honest intentions. If you want love that’s what you’ll find, if you want pain, you’ll find that too. The scary part is, the more extraordinary the tool, the more carefully designed the formula of discipline, the more pure the intentions need to be. The harder you practice, the more solidified, for better or worse, the intention in your being will become.
<— END PHILOSOPHY BREAK
And so I find myself, the next day, kneeling on the stones outside the Great Pyramids, at the culmination of years of trying to get there… and I’d trained myself, twisted my heart and body, extinguished my flame so much (how and in what way is another tale), that I could barely see what was before my eyes. Literally, I was so worn from years of poorly directed discipline that my heart, mind, body, and soul were weakened into a spiritual and corporeal blindness. There, before the Pyramids, it felt as though I was looking at them through a pane of glass, a television monitor of ego and suffering, one that I did not know how to turn off or better yet smash with a giant hammer. Indeed my being felt truly broken.
Oh my though, the Pyramids are spectacular, truly epic and worth the journey; but after all the build up, and all the efforts I’d put myself through to ill ends, and though almost everything in me wanted to give up hopes and dreams on the spot, wrenched out of me by pain… there was a place in me, something small, that knew better…
I closed my eyes, pressed my hands together and prayed. What I prayed to, I don’t know, god, sure… but more so to a FEELING, to a feeling of love. I asked for Courage. I asked, even though I’m scared and weak and tired, for the Courage to start again.
And as I write it now, I realize that in that moment, there before the Pyramids, I’d found my treasure. Ever read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho? If you haven’t you should, it’s short and powerful; if you have you’ll get the extraordinary irony I refer to. In another vain, as Kipling said, to “make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss, to lose and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss.” Indeed I’m breathing many words, but I take that last line to mean not only humility, but letting go of the past. To start anew, to know in your heart that it’s possible, to be willing to ask for a chance, and to find that place of love inside when all else is pain, are greater treasures than can be measured.
Oh my again, as I said I just now realized that of all the craziness that was to come over the next week, that there at the base of the Pyramids was where a new page in my journey began. If life is a gift, then what more is another chance to live… to have a fresh heart?
But, as with many gifts and good fortune it takes time and contrast to make differences stand out. And that’s what comes next, a week of living with the Bedouin peoples in the Giza suburb, going to healers, sharing in their Ramadan, and exploring what it means to be myself.
Till next time and part 2…
-Lee