From Don: 1 May 2013. I keep forgetting why we’re doing it, why we’re doing this nomadic life thing, especially when health concerns arise in the night as they did last night: what if my heart continues to be irregular, what if my prostate enlarges to the point where I need surgery, what if the pain in my right arm is bone cancer? All the bogies of the night rise up, rattle their chains and shake their bony claws to try to scare me. I’m seventy, for God’s sake. What am I doing gallivanting around the world with my younger and generally healthier wife? What’s the point, when we could have a nice little cottage somewhere and live a quiet settled peaceful life until I die quietly in my sleep: no more stress, no more worries, just an easy quiet end. Instead we have no fixed abode, no home of our own. We’re always on the move, and even when we’re not we’re thinking about the next move. Where will we go after Sweden? What about the longer term? Do we go to Montreal for a month and bunk down in Suzanne’s house with her and her family? And what after that? Do we go to Eastern Europe and then down to Greece? And after that where do we go? It’s endless, literally endless: no end in sight except the Big One. I feel like the Ancient Mariner, doomed to circle the globe endlessly with no place to rest. Jesus said the same thing: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.” So that’s what’s up for me: whenever health issues arise I start wanting somewhere to rest my weary head. I suppose that we always have that option: to stop travelling, to find a small place to rent and live a much smaller quieter life, but is that what is really wanted? In the beginning, as we went through the process of dismantling our old life, I wrote every day, and it was all so very clear then, and obvious, that we were doing the right thing.
There is only one moment in which to be alive and it’s this moment: all of life, all of existence is one continuous now. Whether you’re sick, whether you’re tired, it doesn’t matter, you’re still stuck with whatever is going on in this moment, because there are no other moments. There is no past and there is no future. There are only thoughts that keep past and future alive in the mind, and those thoughts always happen in the now.
I’m always amazed and delighted by how much of a shift in perspective can occur with just a few minutes of circular breathing and allowing feelings to arise without censoring or trying push them away. From being in the depths of despair to arriving at a whole new awareness of life as it really exists with just a slight shift of perspective. It’s always the same: the mind covers over the truth of whatever is occurring in this ever-present moment with a miasma of fears and lies. Whether it be feelings of fear, terror, sadness or grief, tales of regret and shame from the remembered past, or stories of doom and gloom of the imagined future, the result is always the same: the glorious truth of whatever is happening in this present moment is hidden under a coat of crap. The instant the crap dissolves the truth of life reappears, because it never went anywhere: it’s always here available whenever our minds get out of the way. It is the true nature of being: what is, as it is, without judgments or expectations, the totality of everything in the timeless ever-present moment that we call now.
Every now and then I come up to the surface and see how ridiculous it is to worry about anything!
Photo of the day: At The Bliss Villa in Siem Reap. Settled in.
All words and images by Alison Louise Armstrong unless otherwise noted.
© Alison Louise Armstrong and Adventures in Wonderland – a pilgrimage of the heart, 2010-2015.
Ahwz… you guys look totally cute!! 🙂
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Thank you. So sweet of you 🙂
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Thanks don. i totally relate. And I have to tell you that sickness brings up terrible fears for me and I have a fixed address. I think inevitably life will present us with the fact of our lack of control …..maybe no fixed address brings it up quicker (at a certain age).
Love and appreciation to you both , kate Brunton
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Good to hear from you and thanks for the thoughtful comments Kate. You’re absolutely right: having no fixed address does cause fears to rise to the surface very quickly. The positive aspect of this being that the impetus to address those fears also arises very quickly: it’s just too painful to stay stuck for longer than I / we absolutely have to.
Cheers for now, Don
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Love your photo 😀 😀 I am envious of the life you two lead!!! Keep it up!!! Life is meant to be lived…:D 😀
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Thanks Angie, you’re so right: life is meant to be lived to the full, and we’re doing out best to do so.
Blessings, Don
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What an exquisite meditation on life. I think as we get older (I will be 66 next month) these thoughts become more prominent in our minds..for you, the thoughts of having a resting place, and for me, fearing I won’t have the time to go out and travel. But then we see the beauty of the now and know we are where we are meant to be.
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Yes of course, Angeline, thoughts do only one thing, and that is to try to drag us away from this beautiful present moment.
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Hmmm–I think the Buddhist teacher Bernie Glassman is good about this, taking things step by step by step and not looking too far ahead, not over-guessing what the person I will be in 5 years from now will wish to do. Maybe a quiet place for some years will be the best step sometime! Right now your steps resonate with your integrity as you can know it now! Love and light, Judy
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Hi Judy,
I love your line about my steps resonating with my integrity. Thanks for that.
Love and hugs, Don and Alison
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Hi Don, ah but to die in your sleep anywhere would be a good way to go 🙂 but sitting in a little cottage waiting for it?
I fight anxiety at times though safe in my own little inner city bedroom….sigh
You two are really living 🙂 annie
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Hi Annie,
Your insightful comment brought to mind Edna St. Vincent Millay’s famous poem:
My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night; but ah, my foes, and oh, my friends – it gives a lovely light!
Better to burn out than to rust out, that’s what I say when I’m not lost in mind stories.
🙂 Don
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To the lovely light!
Yes I know the mind stories well.
If a time comes that you both decide to stay put where would it be? Or is that not even a question you’ve given rise to yet..
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We’ve certainly thought about the question, but nothing as yet has come up as an answer. When it does we’ll certainly let you know!
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Great post. Always love being point back to here. Love the photo cuties. 🙂
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Thanks Paulette. As the Army recruitment ads used to say: There’s no life like it!
🙂 Don & Alison
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This was a very powerful post, Don — for me, moreso than any others in your Nomadic Life series. You have a wonderful propensity toward introspection and an amazing ability to put your thoughts and feelings into words to create a clear picture of your spirit. Wowzers!
I almost hate to add any of my own mundane thoughts/responses, but you do stimulate esoteric discussion, you! And since you’re not able to sit and share my “cottage” for the while, I’ll have to write my thoughts here. This one has been a while coming, so, now, out with it!
Sometimes your blog makes me feel a bit self-defensive… I’ll explain. I’m not a world traveller, nor am I inclined to be. I’m delighted with my stationary lifestyle and, like you, always strive to live in the moment. In that we are similar, even if our “being” is in different locations. I know that you and Alison see your nomadic life as the answer — for yourselves. Travelling is your way to find yourself, in the sense of “wherever you go, there you are” [Jon Kabat-Zinn]. I’m simplifying my interpretation, of course, but I know you understand what I’m saying.
But then, sometimes, reading your Nomadic Life posts, I feel like defending my choice not to travel, my choice of the “cottage” way of living my moments. It’s like, wherever I * don’t* go, there I am too. 😉
So, my response to parts of this post feels like this: it matters not whether you’re where you are now, “circling the globe endlessly”, or whether you’re in a “nice little cottage somewhere living a quiet settled peaceful life”. You are where you are, you can live in the moment wherever you are, and as you say, the moment we are sharing right now is all that there is. So if ever your fears ask you to find that cottage, do you ignore them or not? (Yup, that’s what you were saying, right?) If you were sitting across from me, I’d responde with, Believe in the impulse of the heart and soul, for those are messages from your higher self. I can read here the struggle that arises for you when your body’s symptoms and/or your mind’s fears rise up. We all have fears to answer to, to explore, to struggle with — and I’ve come to realize that those are not thoughts/feelings to fight off, but rather to honor, to listen to, and to consider as equal parts of me, valid parts of my present moment. The message arising from your fears is as valid as the messages you wrote about when you began your journey. Those messages were right for you in that moment, and these messages are also right for you now. Sometimes taking a journey *might* be about finding out why not to take that journey. I’m just sayin’… [nod nod wink wink]
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As you said: “Wowzers!” Your comments stimulated a lot of discussion between Alison and me, and we came to the conclusion that there is another whole Nomadic Life post to be written about the things you brought up. The short version of that potential future post can be summarized as follows:
You’re absolutely right that you don’t need to go anywhere to find yourself. The inner journey can be undertaken anywhere. Satyam Nadeen, the author of a book called “From Onions to Pearls” describes his own awakening that took place while he was in prison.
However, for Alison and for me giving up a stable home life to go travelling all over the world was what provided the greatest impetus to change and grow internally. We know that the path we chose is not for everyone, but it has been and continues to be absolutely right for us.
The one place I disagree with you, Kate, is where you write about listening to and honouring the messages that arise from fear because you believe that they are valid too. In my experience the messages that arise from fear are never the truth. When the fears recede and I’m back in what I laughingly refer to as my “right mind”, I get to see that the fear messages had no validity. When I’m centred and at peace with the world then wherever I am is home and all is well. The home that the mind/fear wants me to have is an external physical home, the home that I’m seeking on this journey is an internal metaphorical/metaphysical home where all is always right with the world regardless of where I am or what is happening. That’s my heart’s home and my soul’s home.
Thank you for your ongoing willingness to share your thoughts with us.
Much love and big hugs from me,
Don, and from Alison too
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How cool that my post resulted in a lot of discussion between you two! Wanna be the fly on the wall! Thanks for your thoughtful reply and I’ll look forward to your future post on these ideas.
I think we actually agree in our ideas about fear-messages, at least in terms of the end result. We’re just coming at this from different angles.
If you’re finding that your fears are untruths and have no validity, I suspect you have explored them in the sense I’m talking about before coming to that conclusion. You aren’t just rejecting/dismissing your fears — you are first coming to an understanding about them, noticing their effects on you, working to lessen those effects, etc. I agree that fear messages are hardly ever the truth (“hardly ever” is more accurate than “never” for me), but how can we even know that unless we explore them, figure out their source, observe their effect on us, and so on — in other words, give them as much processing time as any other of the mind’s messages that arise during life’s experiences. That’s the kind of respect/honor I’m talking about giving to them.
Our mind is our life-processor, and, like my dang PC here, troubleshooting is a built-in aspect that comes along with the benefits of all this data management. In the computer world and in life, each time I’m done with a troubleshooting session, I find I’ve learned something new. Without my fears, there’d be a whole segment of my learning I would never have addressed or processed. I can take it further and say that there would be whole aspects of my personality that wouldn’t exist. (For better or worse 😉 And, very importantly, whole aspects of my physical health that would never have been addressed or healed.
To paraphrase several Wise People, a problem is actually an opportunity. Fears are generally seen as a problem when they come up…. OR…. they are yet another opportunity for personal growth. I read what you’re doing with your fears as you write about them, so I know we agree. Bringing this back to your original post above: “The instant the crap dissolves the truth of life reappears” — I’m just suggesting that the crap didn’t just dissolve by itself, that you helped it along by lifting up the coat of crap and processing what you found under it. My point is that those fears are honorable as opportunities to keep checking in, to keep confirming that you’re still on your right path.
All this thinking is a lot of work! So I’m off out into the sunshine now.
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Ah Kate,
When I was studying the brain and the mind in graduate school I found an old book in the McGill History of Medicine Library called, appropriately enough, “The Brain.” One sentence from that book has stuck ever since: The strong exercise of the mind, as everyone knows, produces brain ache.” So going out into the sunshine was clearly the smart thing for you to do after such a lot of thinking -:)
You’ve come to the core of the issue with regard to the mind and it’s devious ways: to challenge the mind’s fear stories does require delving as deeply as possible into those stories to discern what, if anything, about them is true. For me, the best way I’ve found to do that is to focus on the feelings that have arisen in me as a result of my initial reaction to the stories and then use a combination of circular breathing and EMDR tapping to loosen up the grip the fears have on me. Once the fears have dissipated then the truth, if any, of what the mind has told me can be evaluated more readily. So I guess at the end of the day you and I not that far apart in our approaches to the truth.
Yours in truth, and love,
Don
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Don,
If it took all your travels and your courage to “dismantle” your life in order to come to the realization you make in that last paragraph, then everything has been paid for in full. That is some of the deepest wisdom that applies to all walks, ages, and egos. Thank you so much for reminding me how precious and powerful the Now is. {{{Hugs}}} Kozo
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Kozo,
Your thoughtful comments made me feel that I’d really been seen by you. You really got it: it did take dismantling my life, together with all the weird and wonderful travels, plus the willingness to face everything I was confronted by with as much courage I could muster at the time to get to where I am now. I have to add that I would never, and could never, have done it without Alison’s adventurous spirit to challenge and encourage me.
Big hugs from me right back to you,
Don
p.s. My first reply to your comments got lost somewhere in the ether, but it was very much the same as my rewrite. Alison tells me that you may have had bad luck with regard to getting responses to your blog comments in the past. With any luck this time around you’ll get two lots of responses from me -:).
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Dear Don, Thanks so much for your honesty and your wise words. Very inspiring. Much love, Astrid
_____
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Hi Astrid,
Lovely to hear from you and thanks for your comments.
Love, Don
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Oh Don, you always bring me back to the reality of it all! The mind! It doesn’t seem to matter where we are, does it….we, or atleast I, seem to so easily get caught up in the latest thought, concern, worry, dream that I follow with relish until I notice how real I’m making the unreal….and then I create more unreal by demeaning myself for wasting the time having created miserable feelings. Such craziness! One might (again thinking) feel that by the time we have reached our age and stage of life we might, through experience, not fall into those old traps! Alas!!!! I love you and I love your musings, thank you for being you and love to Ali! Thank you both for sharing your travels and life experiences. You both are very very inspiring!
Margo
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Dear One,
Thank you for your comments and kind words about the post.
Much love, Don and Alison
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Hello Don and Alison, your photos and posts fill me with a sense of awe. What courage, what inspiration you provide. Thank you. Grace
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Grace,
How lovely that you’re following along with us on our strange but wonderful journey, and thank you so much for your feedback.
Don and Alison
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i love your photograph at the end…what inspiration! our life journey should become closer to both of yours because truly, worry and fret have no place if we (really) believe in the now…as you point out so well. thank you!! ♥
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Hi Sunshine,
From our now to your now, we thank you,
Don and Alison
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big smiles ☺
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I know this is an old post. I’m exploring where I haven’t been before on your post. I think you are both very brave doing what you are doing.
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Thank you for your kind words Louise. In rereading this post from more than three years ago I was struck by how little has changed: both Alison and I continue to have aches and pains that come and go, and we get lost in the mind stories from time to time, but then we get back into our right minds by meditating, and then all is always okay once more. We keep checking in to make sure that the nomadic life is still the one we want to be on, and so far that seems to be the case. So like Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot we go on 🙂
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