Melbourne, Australia. December 20th, 2009.
That’s where and when I began a month-long solitary retreat. Something I could only name as “irresistible force” was pulling me inward and away from the outside world of my work and social calendar. I disconnected from everyone and everything. I disappeared from the world. I began what was to become a profound journey of reflection, release, and renewal.
One day, my eyes closed. Shortly after, they opened, but I was no longer in my home in Melbourne; I was sitting on the banks of the Ganges river in the ancient city of Varanasi. I was at one of the several burning ghats, stone steps where hundreds of cremations occur every day, with bodies placed on wooden pyres, set alight with ghee, while priests chant sacred mantras. There I was, in some astral form, sitting quietly, taking it in.
