When people ask if I work while traveling I imagine they are really asking: "How do you afford to travel?" Maybe you are wondering this. If you are, here is my answer...
I receive passive income both from renters in my house and a social security retirement check. I work remotely as a life coach via Zoom. I am hopeful I will teach and lead workshops and retreats while on the road. I spend frugally and rely on trust and grace. So far, that is it. That is the "outer work."
I believe the real question people want to ask is still one layer deeper, closer to themselves. I believe people want to know: "Can I travel?" Here are my thoughts on that...
The outer work takes a few degrees of privilege and ongoing effort, for sure. If you can figure that part out, my friend, you can take the first step. With the "outer work" taken care of, the true challenge begins: the inner work.
The initial spark for inner work can be a frustrating situation like being lost, broken luggage, or missing a plane. It can be exhaustion from not sleeping enough. It can be an unexpected grief wave. Those situations (and more) can fuel the fire of inner change. I find the spark that eminently ignites growth can be housed within an interaction with a new friend.
Making a new friend is like being a new Mommy. I see my newborn as a miracle. I love them with all my heart. My heart is stretched. I feel more love than I had known. I am filled with the hope of a more expanded, more loving future. I open to them. I will do anything to make them feel comfortable. Then the adorable little bugger throws up on me.
It was a little spew. First, let me catch you up.
I have walked to İznik twice. The first time I walked to town I took pictures along the way to ensure I would find my way back.
I was surprised how close Fusun's home was to İznik Lake. I saw geese on the beach...
...and fishermen.
When I arrived at the edge of town, I walked along a long stretch of park, next to the lake, on the edge of the active town of İznik.
I crossed the street and began to see parts of the historical protective walls that surround the whole town...
...and towers from which the Call to Prayer is broadcast.
I wandered along and eventually found a restaurant on the same street as the Ayasofya Mosque. There, I ate two (of three) of my favorite Turkish food dishes: çorbası (lentil soup) and menemen. I wandered the streets further and purchased a few grocery items.
Back "home," after settling in, I felt a grief wave coming on. I took the little jars of Michelle's and Jessica's ashes out onto the grass, spread some of their cremains onto the ground, and we watched the sunset.
I walked through the garden and foraged greens for dinner, cooked (adding from what I had bought in town), and ate. Later, online, I sat with my Meditation Family, who held me through the continuing grief wave I was still riding.
The second time I walked to İznik, it was to meet with my new friend. I brought her to my new favorite restaurant where I ate çorbası, again. She just watched me eat. "I will cook this for you later," she said.
We wandered through the open (street) market where I bought nuts and onions. "You will wish you waited to buy your onions till tomorrow," she said to me. I did not understand why she said this and let it go.
We traveled by mini-bus from İznik to her hometown, then walked from the bus to her home. I met her sweet furball cat, was toured through her small yet abundant garden, and watched as she cooked a Turkish feast for two: çorbası in a pressure cooker, stuffed eggplant with meat, fried eggplant and peppers, and chopped salad. Watching the way she moved pots from her two-burner to accommodate more pots was like watching a dance. I said something about dancing and she started to belly dance. She noticed me watching her. "I used to belly dance," she said. I could tell. She noticed me watching her cook. "I used to cater," she said. I could tell that, too. The woman could cook. OMG. Oh My Goddess. The meal she had prepared was melt-in-your-mouth drooling-just-thinking-about-it good. I could not stop eating. I ate way too much and had a belly ache. It was too late to return home. I stayed overnight and did not sleep.
The next morning we decided to travel to the mineral baths in Yalova. We walked, me with my bag of nuts and onions, to the bus in her hometown. We took a mini-bus back to İznik and then another mini-bus to Yalova. It was a long ride. I slept on my new friend's shoulder most of the way. In Yalova we walked up the hill, me with my bag of nuts and onions, to experience the thermal pool and Hammam at Termal. I did not take pictures, though I can say quite emphatically that the very long trip while carrying nuts and onions was completely worthwhile.
That night we stayed overnight in a hotel where students practiced hospitality. The price was one-third of what we would have paid at the Termal hotel, and it included a full Turkish Breakfast. Turkish Breakfast is the third of my three favorite Turkish dishes.
We walked to the mini-bus terminal, me carrying my bag of nuts and onions, and traveled from Yalova back to İznik.
My friend wanted to show me places of interest in İznik. We walked through İznik, me carrying my bag of nuts and onions, and saw historical art on city walls...
...more defensive walls surrounding the town...
...signs of Islam...
...and another mosque.
We went to the İznik Müzesi (museum)...
...where we walked through pieces of ancient history, inside and outside...
...and walked to the restored ancient Roman Theater.
I found it almost sacrolage that we could see skeletons in the fill soil around the theater.
The theater and ongoing reconstruction was impressive...
Just outside the theater was a small cemetery for the more fortunate (unlike the less fortunate, who were buried in the fill soil).
During the many miles of carrying my bag of nuts and onions, and the many hours of being together (at her home and riding buses from place to place), my new friend and I communicated via Ms. Google Translate.
Ms Google T helped us talk about a lot of things. I learned of my friend's traumatic history. I learned that she was four years old when her mother died, that her mother was stabbed to death by her father who was then jailed, and that she and her siblings were raised by their grandmother and uncle. I did not ask all the questions swimming around my mind, about her family, about her feelings. My heart could tell that what she had shared was enough.
While staying overnight in the student hotel in Yalova, I learned that my friend was in the 1999 earthquake that killed between 17,127 and 18,373 people. She told me that since then, she sleeps with a light on and wears full pajamas (not a nightgown that can ride up and show your naked body when it is being recovered from rubble). She told me that she witnessed a lot of naked dead bodies.
At one point, Ms Google T helped us talk about the past and present politics of Turkey, the USA, and other parts of the world. We were skating across dictators and fascism when we entered Israel and Palestine, soldiers and dead babies.
And then the spew happened.
It started with her statement, "Maybe Hitler was right." I had a feeling I knew where the conversation was going. No, no, no, no, I was thinking. "Maybe all the Jews should have been killed," she continued typing. I had a great deal of compassion for my friend. I had felt generosity and warmth from her. I watched her phone as Ms Google T unfolded her words. I wanted to assume this sharp turn from compassion was a reactive dramatic generalization to pictures of the devastation in Gaza. It was. "Then there would be no dead babies," she concluded. She looked at me with conviction. I also saw a tinge of hopefulness. Was she hopeful I would agree? Hopeful that I would still like her, still hold her dear to my heart? I took her phone and typed, "We must learn to step back from generalizing."
It seemed time for proverbs. I typed, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." We stepped into the psychological idea that the oppressed become the bullies. I typed the saying, "hurt people hurt people." She scrunched her face at whatever the translation was for that, like she did not understand. I explained. She typed that we can not change others but we can learn to work through and change our own biases. She told me how she used to be biased about the Kurds until she traveled, lived with Kurdish people, and changed. Her story illustrated that her heart is larger now, that she has a greater capacity to love more people, that she understands that we are all naturally narrow-minded imperfect humans who have the capacity to expand.
She talked about having emotional reactions and then feeling badly about herself. She talked about the need to learn to sit with emotions and how that can help us to "act" kindly and lovingly, instead of "react." I shared how meditation is helping open and expand quiet space inside my mind and heart. I shared how I study and practice a spiritual psychology called psychosynthesis, and how I am learning to heal the hurt places I harbor inside.
She said that she numbs out so she will not feel all the hurt. I asked, "How is that working for you?" She said it was working just fine. I said, "It does not work for me." I thought about how, when my mom died, I experienced decades-worth of old wounds that had been scabbed over but not healed. She shared how she numbs out with "dumb tv" and drinking. I thought about my overeating while staying up into the wee hours of the next morning binge watching Netflix.
Facing the undesirable parts of myself feels better than not facing them. It is what Resmaa Menakem calls "clean pain." For me, the work starts with noticing discomfort and sitting with it. Facing discomfort is like being Mommy to that precious baby, only it does not start with the enormous depth of love ending up with spew. It starts with the spew and ends up in enormous Love.
I hear the spew coming out of my mouth, my thoughts, my emotions. I feel it as discomfort in my body. If I am paying attention and am in the right frame of mind, I know it is time to do subpersonality work.
Subpersonality work engages identification to parts of ourselves so we can understand those parts, and then disidentification from those parts so we can heal them. In the end, we synthesize the parts of ourselves we had avoided. After doing this inner work, I feel like there is more of myself available, more self love. I feel more whole.
"Sub work" asks lots of questions. What is this discomfort? How old is this part? What are its characteristics? Where does it reside (dormant) in me? What makes it wake up and show itself? How does it get my attention? What do I feel? What does it think I need? What is it trying to offer me? Those are its strengths. Are those strengths truly helpful? What aspects are not helpful? When it takes control, does it limit (the larger sense of) me? I understand that it most likely does not realize that it may be getting in my way of accomplishing my dreams and aspirations. With benevolence and understanding, I want to look at how it limits me. What are its limiting beliefs? How do they affect me? How can I help it let go of what does not serve (the largest knowing of) me? What does it need to calm down, to change this limiting belief, to heal?
When, for example, my inner critic spews negative self-talk at me, I want to become an observer to the inner critic. I want to listen to it, to see and hear it, to accept it, and to appreciate it. I might ask, "How do you think you are being helpful?" I also want to discern what is and is not helpful, and to help "it" see that too. The part may need me to hold its hand, love it, guide it, help it heal. I most likely have grown to become exactly what this part has always wanted and needed, what it has been waiting for. I can give this part what it needs.
Satisfied, confident that I (the larger Self) will do a good job handling what came up (and that it does not need to), it can relax. It can step out of the driver's seat and sit in the back of the vehicle, like a calm child, boosted and in a safety belt, looking out the window, enjoying the ride. I (the largest sense of myself) can get back in the driver's seat. My ("Big S") Self can then consciously choose how to move through my life.
My little wounded parts have been living inside me, waiting for me to grow up and be there for them. They do not need to make my life decisions. I do not want my wounded inner two-year-old (who can not even see over the dashboard to see the road) driving "our" car, making small or large, minor or critical life decisions. I want to clearly see my surroundings and the path ahead, to make sane and sound decisions as best as I am able, to listen to the Call of Self and (again, as best as I am able) follow it. I want to keep coming back to moving toward my realistic-ideal highest values, goals and aspirations.
Today a man who was on Fusun's land walked by me. He was just outside the fenced garden I was standing in. I saw him and approached him. He spoke only in the Turkish language. Earlier I had been working on remembering the phrase, "Üzgünüm Türkçe konuşamıyorum" (I am sorry I do not speak Turkish). I tried saying this to him. It is highly likely I completely botched it. He continued to speak in Turkish, in an animated way. I did not have my phone on me so I could not use Ms. Google T to help us communicate.
I felt worried that he was trespassing. I motioned that I wanted to see what was in the plastic bag he was holding. He opened the bag to show me the mushrooms he had obviously just foraged from Fusun's property. It had rained. It was a good time to forage for mushrooms. He started to open the gate to the garden (where I was standing). I felt worried that he was passive-aggressively trying to get in. I felt worried that he might want to steal from Fusun's garden. I felt protective of Fusun. I blocked him from entering and said, "Bye, bye." He stepped back, closed and locked the gate, and walked away. I watched him open and close the main gate to Fusun's property, get on a bicycle, and ride away.
Back at the house, I texted Fusun. She wrote back that he was most likely her gardener. "He comes after the rain," she said, "He loves mushrooms." I was both relieved and felt badly that I shooed him away.
Maybe I will see him again, with phone in hand, and invite him for tea. Maybe he will give me gardening tips. I am currently the caretaker here. That does not mean I am doing a good job at it. All this to say, I would like a chance to apologize.
Maybe the ancient energy of the protective walls around this town have seeped into my energetic field and spirit. Maybe my American cultural fear of strangers reared its head. Though I understand that fear and a sense of protection are normal human qualities - that we are wired for survival - I am sorry for the coldness I felt in my heart and the unloving situation that "survival instinct" created.
Generally, people I have met are kind and generous. When they do not seem kind and generous, and I scratch the surface a little bit, I find that they want to be. I wish to come back to this, to remember this knowledge.
I wish to trust people until they prove untrustworthy, not the other way around.
I wish to have my heart open until I need to protect it, and to protect it only as much as is needed, and only for as long as it is needed.
I wish to come back to my highest value. I wish to remember, especially when I feel uncomfortable, to chant my mantra: "I choose love."
These travels are not about protecting myself. I will be aware, my friend, do not worry. These travels are about finding, cultivating, and deepening compassion. What the world needs most is love, yes?
These travels are also about taking the time to write. I hear books calling me to write them. I have been hearing this call for a long time. I hear the call now, still. Why do I keep ignoring this call? All this to say, I may need to blog less often and you may not hear from me for weeks at a time.
I will continue to blog, though. I will let you know when I move from one place to another. I am committed to bringing you with me wherever I go. I need you.
I am re-committing to traveling with an open mind and an open heart. I am re-committing to chanting my inner mantra: "I choose love." I am re-committing to being in the compassionate revolution.
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