the official countdown

The countdown officially begins today.

Four weeks from today my journey to the heart of yoga begins. Four weeks from today I step on a plane to travel overseas for the first time in my life. Four weeks from today, my life will change forever.

I don't want to sound too dramatic, but I know my time in India will transform me. I've been preparing for this trip for approximately a year, but I know nothing can prepare me for the moment I step off the plane in Chennai. India will smack me in the face like a wet, smelly towel.

Something has drawn me to Ma India, something more than the desire to study yoga, something inexplicable. More than one emotion is percolating at the same time -- fear, nervousness, excitement, love, passion. All those emotions rolled up together like kittens in a basket, piled one on top of another, inseparable; sleeping, yet ready to explode at any moment.

It is like when you meet someone again who was in your life a very long time ago, someone whom you loved and never forgot, and suddenly they reappear. Those initial moments of seeing that person again after so long -- fear, nervousness, love -- suddenly everything comes pouring out of your heart, and you are drawn, for an inexplicable reason, never to be the same again. You feel that it is a culmination of something, but you don't know what, and you don't want to know, because it doesn't matter. But it is also a new beginning. Hold your nose, close your eyes, jump right in, whatever happens, happens, om namah shivaya...

I've been told that my trip to India will be as if I am "going home". Who knows? Karma is karma, and our past karma works itself out in mysterious ways. All I know is that it is not because I want to go India, I have to go. I must go, at this particular time of my life, there is no question about it. Something deep in my cellular level is drawing me closer and closer and there is no turning back.