How I Stopped Being A Hater

Sadhana Yoga building, Pokhara Nepal

Sadhana was the kind of 10-day yoga retreat that asks guests to BYOTP. It cost less per night than a restaurant filet.

Unapologetically rustic and wedged up on the mountainside, what the concrete U-shaped building lacked in charm, it made up for in warm hospitality. The guru, Asanga, was a silent, intense, 100 lb Nepali man who was so focused and dedicated that he--at the direction of his guru-- drank his own urine for 6 months. (While others were completely mortified by this, I took it as a sign that I was in good hands. No more suburban housewives clad in lululemon chanting OM and pretending to care about their "spiritual journey". This guy was legit. He drank his own pee for half a year in order to learn something--I respect that).

If any of you have seen the movie The Best Exotic Hotel Marigold, arriving at Sadhana was a similar experience. It did not take long to realize that the place was a far cry from the advertisements. The heavily advertised “mud bath” turned out to be a bowl of dirt on the roof next to a mud-crusted hose, and the hot showers were limp icy trickles. My bed came with a couple of free ten-legged mutant crawlies beneath the pillow, and the shared rooms/bathrooms were never cleaned during our 10 days. The "colon cleanse" we paid for was nothing more than a giant vat of hot salt water that we had to chug while doing jumping jacks until we got sick and had to run (literally) to the toilet.

Despite all this, I loved the place. It was as far away from reality as you could hope to be. The neighbors were mostly farmers, and our daily silent meditation was peppered by the singsong flirtation of birds. Plus the food was amazeballs-- authentic Nepali dishes beautifully prepared by a sweet woman named Devi whose unemployed husband liked to hang upside down form the ceiling beams and tease her while she cooked.

Panoramic view from the Sadhana porch, compliments of my friend Julie!

Though the daily schedule is besides the point of this article, I thought it might be interesting to some:

5:30am                                   wake-up

5:45-7:00am                           group meditation

7:00-7:30am                           black tea and limes (which they call lemons)

7:30-8:00am                           nasal cleansing (i.e. used netti pot in the garden…I hope plants like snot)

8:00-8:30am                           reflexology (spiky wooden cylinder you step on)

8:30-10:00am                         yoga

10:00-10:30am                       morning hike

10:30am                                breakfast (FINALLY!!!)

11:30-12:00pm                      steam bath/mud bath (your choice; mud bath is weather-pending)

12:00-1:00pm                        group meditation

1:00pm                                  lunch (dal bhat, dal bhat, dal bhat)

2:00-3:30pm                          free time (code for “yoga practice time” if you want to pass)

3:30-4:00pm                          karma yoga (white slave labor)

4:00-4:30pm                          masala tea and popcorn (<3 p="">

4:30-5:30pm                          chanting (that’s right—shouting in Sanskrit w/ closed eyes)

5:30-7:00pm                          yoga

7:00pm                                 dinner

8:00pm                                  candlelight meditation (group staring at a candle trying not to blink)

8:30pm                                  lights out

Asanga, our guru

Now that the scene is set (you're probably absent-mindedly slapping mosquitoes from your arms--it’s like you’re THERE), let me tell you why these ten days matter to me at all. Sadhana Yoga Retreat is where I met someone who changed the way I saw humanity. Let’s call him "Langer".

My first impression of 18 year old Langer from Alaska was ugly proof that I am a hater. One of those teaching points where you pause afterwards and think well played Life, well played.

After a grueling 30 minute hike up precarious mountain steps, I checked-in sweaty (as usual) and out of breath. There was a scrawny bobble-headed boy in the lobby (Langer), awkwardly hunched over the front desk with his long neck like a wilted stem holding up a heavy flower/cranium. His white wrists were all bone in their too-big sports watch, and his skin had the pale luminescence of babies – so fair that it was translucent, like wax paper covering a road map of veins.

Sadhana DIY mud baths... 

It was clear (har har!) he had been one of those kids whose mother had lathered him in SPF 20,000 before letting him walk to the mailbox or sit by the window after 8am. His balloon lips were blustering in a clumsy mumble as he tried to explain (in a nasal Fran Drescher voice) that he had “diii-et-terry restrictions… soooo no sugar, no fruit, no meat, no daaiiii-ry.” The Nepali staff guy looked back up at him blankly, not even knowing what to ask. Langer sighed and clarified, “that means no rice, no grains, no milk, no carrots, no tomatoes…” And as he continued to list out every food except spinach, he solidified my suspicion that he was indeed a sheltered. little. mama’s boy.

You can imagine my dismay when the next morning Langer and I were the only ones left at the breakfast table (half my museli with curd and half his specially prepared plain boiled egg with sliced cucumbers—no salt). The curse of the slow eaters. Forever forced into these awkward mismatched table situations. 

We started out the usual polite way (hometown - age - favorite post-coital jam...). Then I asked him what led him to travel to Nepal alone at such a young age. His answer completely humbled me.

Langer grew up in a small town in Alaska not too far from Anchorage with his parents and older brother. For as long as he could remember, his mother was always a “deeply spiritual woman” (I mentally rolled my eyes at this; I knew these people: dream catcher over the bed, prayer beads draped over the mirror, and hemp milk in the fridge). Langer explained he was always very close with his mother. Looking back, she might have been my best friend.

However, when Langer turned 16, after two years of devastating struggle, his mother died. Cancer.

The view alone makes you a believer...

At this point in his story, I put my spoon down and lifted my eyes to meet his, which were squinting through a jagged slice of sunlight that had polished his face smooth and white as moonstone. “Wow… I’m sorry,” I said. 

He side-smiled shyly (the kind of smile that's not a smile at all, but rather a response to palpable discomfort) and met my eyes as he whispered “it’s ok” and then looked back down at his cucumber slices as though that brief moment of hyper-intimacy was all he could handle. It was all just too much to get out and look in the eye.

After Langer's mother died, his father “kind of freaked out” and fled the house with the excuse that if he stayed he would most likely kill himself. Langer’s older brother (who I believe was 18 at the time) took off with his college money to go traveling.

Netti potting in the flower garden

So 16 year old Langer lived alone in the deserted and increasingly filthy house for the last two years of high school, taking a second job working construction (to which I almost called him a liar about since he looked like he’d never lifted anything heavier than the spoon he was self-consciously cradling) to pay the grocery bills. In addition to being a typical teenager and having to come to terms with the loss of his mother, he explained that this part of his life was challenging because he was constantly asked to deal with all kinds of other random “adult” absurdities, such as the time a tree fell on his house and poked a hole through their roof, or the time an army of ants staged a coup d’etat on the kitchen cabinets.

Despite all this, Langer kept his grades up. Two years later, upon graduating he was planning to go to college in Hawaii and study geneology and botany (typical pale-kid interests) since he had always passionately loved science. But life had another idea. His brother returned from his solo pilgrimages around the world and gave Langer something that his mother had left for him but asked that he not receive until he was 18: her diary when she was pregnant. 

Best. Cook. Ever. I tried to offer Devi a US visa...

Langer read each page as though it were a sacred message from the beyond—his last connection to his beloved mother. But the small tattered pages contained an ugly reality.

With cringing honesty, Langer's mother confessed (to no one at the time) that she had not wanted him. When she learned of her pregnancy she had gone to a homeopathic doctor and taken herbs to abort him. Langer read on with horror at his mother’s continuous adamant reassertion, entry after entry, that she felt trapped by this "new development" in her uterus--horribly claustrophobic. However, against all odds (or maybe this is a lesson that you can’t use herbs to abort babies), he survived. 

Yet what should have been a slightly jarring and emotionally damaging discovery was quickly turned on it's head.  As he began to plump inside her, she could feel his presence in a way that she had not experienced with her other children, like a great and intoxicating energy. She grew certain that he was meant to be on this earth—that he had fought for life because he was somehow essential to the future--that he was going to do something exceptional for humanity. 

From that point on, she gave into loving him intensely. Throughout the diary were sporadic allusions to her spiritual beliefs and how they ruled her life. Langer was desperate to know more--to understand this entirely private and yet hugely instrumental part of who his mother was. Finally, as though she were sending Langer clues from the beyond, she had scrawled on the inside back cover in soft black ink the words “cosmic consciousness”.

Sadhana Breakfast Nook - full house

Langer devoted all his energies to decoding these two words as though they held the key to who his mother really was—the key to unlocking life itself. He felt he was finally seeing her as a whole person and not just a parent.

What he found was surprisingly scientific. Throughout time there have been a number of people who claim to have tapped into some elevated sense of being via the same experience or "symptoms"— though this has taken many names: enlightenment in Buddhism, unlocking the kundalini in Hinduism, gnosis in early Christianity, the Ching spirit in Taoism, Osiris in ancient Egypt, and various names in many Native American tribes (most notably the Hopis). In fact, this concept has been written about and studied for thousands of years, and is described in depth by the Greek philosopher Plato in his Timaeus.  

Yoga in the organic vegetable garden

Despite the names being different, each person describes the exact same physical phenomena – a slight tingling that begins at the base of the tailbone and then works up the spine and culminates in the brain, where it is usually accompanied by a vision of bright light and feelings of unparalleled bliss and peacefulness, and the ability to comprehend the concept of infinite and interconnected matter. Basically, it feels just like walking out into the sunlight after getting a brazilian wax, hammered.

In 1872, a prominent Canadian scientist named Richard Bucke (who looked like a cross between Dumbledore and Leonardo Da Vinci) dabbled in meditation for many years until he had this same experience and grew consumed with the desire to explain it scientifically. He traveled all over the world interviewing people from the farthest corners of the earth who had practiced any form of meditation to see what the commonalities were. Bucke was astounded to find that the experiences were the same!

From his studies, he began to form the hypothesis that there are three states of consciousness: simple consciousness (animals), self consciousness (humans), and cosmic consciousness (enlightened).

Y SO OLD RICHARD BUCKE?

Modern science conclusively proves that as humans we currently use less than 10% of our brains. Bucke theorized that cosmic consciousness was a product of using a higher percentage of our brains' capabilities (hypothetically, more of the right brain) to advance as a species. He asserted that this “cosmic consciousness” that some spiritual forerunners had achieved is in fact the next step in our evolutionary chain. Cosmic consciousness is the ability to look past the boundaries or limitations of the “self” perspective and tap into a universal energy that runs through all living things. It would mean the end of war, the era of uber-compassion. 

Unblinking, I watched in complete shock and rapture with curd dripping down the corners of my half-open mouth as Langer's pale-lashed eyes swelled with shiny pre-tear fullness as he explained that at this point he had read enough: he put the breaks on his college plans and took that money to go on a spiritual quest across the world in search of some understanding of his mother and of this crazy, stupid, mind-blowing idea (by the way—his house—totally unoccupied if you’re looking for a place to crash in rural Alaska). So here he is--18 years old and financially, emotionally, and literally alone in the world fueled by a single concept: existence. 

mo' yoga

What I loved most was the way he explained all these theories to me—how he still has the skeptical and painstakingly thorough mental process of a true scientist—arguably his greatest strength as he looks to uncover the truth about all this in order to ultimately feel closer to a beautiful woman that he realized he only half knew. 

Just then the steam/mud-bath bell rang and Langer blinked and shifted up in his seat, as if re-joining the present moment. He had never told anyone that before. It wasn’t a secret, he explained, it was just too hard. 

I had no real words for him, just a smile and some eye-kindness. I rose, touched him lightly on his frail shoulder, back-handed the remaining muesli from my mouth, and left to go simmer alone with this new information.

My testimonial in the guest book!

As I walked off, overwhelmed, impressed, and mentally brought to my knees, I couldn't help but stew in my own shame. Why do I snap-judge?

Why is it that for all the times we are proven wrong, we continue to think that we know anything about the person we met at a bar, at the office Christmas party, in line at Walmart, or a few times at the edge of our pillow? We know nothing.

Even more troubling, Langer's story made me wonder how well we really understand the people we love—the ones who raised us, the ones we raised. The ones we share a roof and a bank account with.

And why is it that it is sometimes easier to trade secrets with the stranger sitting across the breakfast table in Asia than with those whose physical lives we inhabit everyday? Should we wait for the heart-wrenching perspective that accompanies death to see what beautiful souls our own home harbours? How long will we take to work up the courage to bare that part of ourselves –that beautiful vulnerability that we keep caged like a colorful bird in our hearts?