The traveler has arrived at the first point of his journey. It has been a long journey and one in which the traveler’s faith was tested. The traveler often felt scared. The traveler often thought, “What have I done!” The traveler awoke mid flight and sobbed, realizing that this journey was indeed happening and he was going away. The traveler hoped no one would notice his tears as they flowed freely from his eyes as he thought of the people at Kingsgate gathered together to bid him farewell. The traveler realized that he was leaving a community where he first began speaking his truth and where he first began listening to the truth of others, and where a deep love this traveler received-gave. The traveler wept even more, more like a child, when he thought of Jason and Marybeth, Joshua and Benjamin because in their home, among the many other gifts he received, he received the love of a home that he had only imagined as a child. In their home the longing-for-love child in the traveler grew up and felt content. A lifelong search for a core confidence felt complete. The greatest miracle of the traveler’s life to have found this home. Tears flowed through the traveler’s eyes, which he now no longer tried to hide because he could now feel their humbling, truthful and deeply cathartic power, and now he wrapped the blanket given to him in the airplane tightly around him, and with grit and determination vowed that he will deeply honor this love he received by making it the wellspring of his life’s work. The vulnerability the traveler felt, now felt transformed into his power. The traveler now sat up straight and felt powerful, the salt from his drying tears making his eyes burn with his vulnerability-power.

A deep wisdom that the traveler has is that he will always do the dance of this vulnerability-power. How to keep this wisdom nourished and in his awareness, is in some sense, a challenge. As the traveler writes, he realizes all over again that he is undermining this challenge by treating it as one that can be noted and met with victory! There is no victory to be had here for this challenge is an existential condition of humanity. It is the challenge that Gautam Buddha talked about as one of the existential cycles of life, which if one breaks free from, one attains Nirvana. Inspired as the traveler was feeling in the grips of this subliminal awareness, he well knew that this subliminal awareness will soon leave him and life will become, in that sense, mundane and he will be given to experiencing the dancing partners, vulnerability and power, in a way that will feel untethered to one another, and thus each taking him on their own trip. The traveler realized, as if anew because so profound are these experiences, that sublime-mundane are also dancing partners. As he does in such unfolding of his wisdom, the traveler thought of the ultimate dancing partners: life-death. At this point the traveler tried to not think anymore and closed his eyes. The traveler realized the deep humility of our existential condition and in this feeling of humility and its related sense of an acceptance of the end of his wisdom, the traveler found himself drifting to sleep.

The traveler landed in Mumbai, and then traveled to Kolkata, Pune, Mumbai, and New Delhi before finally arriving at his first milepost of Boisahabi Tea Estate in Assam. The traveler has been dancing the dance of the yin-yang of all the extremes of his being. The traveler has often thought of the “Prayer for the Traveler”, which is the first post in this site, and has accepted its humbling invitation to share his journey. This traveler, with all the humility that he can summon, is going to try and step up to “share the insights and dilemmas he faces while walking with these intentions [bringing honesty and love to his daily experiences] in the world”. This traveler begins writing at this site with a prayer, foremost to pray for humility and courage to write honestly. The traveler knows the great power of writing-reading and speaking-listening from such a prayerful state. He knows because he experienced it in Columbia. This traveler is me, the one who is writing at this site, and my name is Arjun. When I am able to channel this prayerful state, I will try to share the dance of my struggles-insights as honestly as I can and honor the namesake of this site, Arjuna of the Bhagvad Gita.