Autumn

I’ve moved.  My little oasis above the tool shed became too much of a utility drain with the colder weather necessitating electric reprieve from the lack of insulation in the building.  The process was itself…a process.  It worked its way into the themes I explored in my Tuesday night class: not wanting change, especially change at that deep heart centre that my room provides.  This mixed perilously with other themes that were more blatantly coming up that week.  When it comes to the room though, I decided I needed to do what I wanted.  I can’t always get what I want in life and yes, I’d made someone else move out of a room they’d brazenly moved into in a non-ashram sanctioned move, and then decided I didn’t want that room after all.  I wanted the room I’d thought I’d move into for a few months now, I wanted Lotus Bud.

In my weeks of preparation and putting off actually moving I’d been going through my things, trying to weed out what I no longer needed.  Perhaps weeding out things I’ve accumulated that actually didn’t have a need for in the first place.  I got rid of clothes and books, things from the library I’ve been hoarding for months; I reorganized and culled odds and ends, clearing space for space.  It felt good to get rid of things.  The room over the tool shed is huge, I’d been able to stash away things without it seeming as though I had a lot.

Lotus Bud, however, is not quite the same size.  In fact it’s smaller than half the size.  When I walk into Radha House, the building where it is, the smell reminds me of my Grandma and Grandpa Litwiller’s house.  There’s something so incredibly soothing about that smell.  I realized when analyzing a dream set in their basement that their house is the most constant house of my childhood.  It’s steeped in feelings of security, stability, and home.  I’m happy to be living in a building with those kinds of associations.  Bringing all of my things in felt like a hurricane.  A familiar hurricane, in the myriad of moves I can count in my life – Ashram or otherwise – yet a hurricane nonetheless.  How was I to organize all of these things?  These boxes of books, clothes, and random items?  I brought everything over just before lunch, went for my meal, came back and promptly had a nap.  I’m fitting into the Radha House schedule already, I thought to myself, with one of the elderly ladies of the community living here and having that very same daily routine.

Eventually I mustered up the energy to decide spots for things, do yet another comb through to get rid of things I actually don’t indeed need, and settle comfortably into my new room.  As relatively small as it is, it does have this spacious feeling to it.  One of the first things I attended to upon arrival was to continue giving my spider plants a refresh.  They’d had some dead leaves that I faithfully pulled off just before I packed them into their box in the old place.  Now that I was in the new space I clipped off the shoots, yearning for a new home and popped them into a glass of water.  The plants themselves looked so different now – they had freedom away from these stragglers that were clinging to them, sucking all their energy.  That’s what I’ve done, I’ve entered a new space and now I can nourish the little buds within me, the little lotus buds.  I’ll let these spider plant shoots sit in water until they form their own roots and then I’ll plant them in soil for them to flourish as plants of their own.  What a satisfying metaphor, I can let go of the old things, the dead brown leaves of my life, before stepping forward into something new.  Once there, once in my new room, I can decide what I what to nourish and where I want my energy to go.  I’ve always had spider plants around.  They clear the air and provide great company.  Being able to grow little ones of my own, especially ones that came from the ashram, is pretty special indeed.

I’m really enjoying the move I’ve made.  I like living in a house with other people, hearing them putter around for tea or seeing a light piercing through the crack of a door as I go to the bathroom and prepare for bed (even though it’s way too late for both of us to still be up).  This move tells me that I can create my own haven wherever it is that I will find myself.  Home, after all, is where the heart is.