As Christmas 2000 was fast approaching I was about to begin what would become one of the most dramatic cleanses I’d ever experienced to date. As I was walking towards the washroom at the Phraharuthai evening Christmas party, held for students and parents alike, I did a little hop down a step and noticed an unpleasant sensation in the lower left area of my back. I hadn’t experienced anything like this since the more serious days of my back problems. I hopped on the same foot a couple of more times, just to test it. Sure enough there was something amiss. Because only recently the overnight temperatures had dropped quite sharply I assumed it had something to do with this, that is, the whole ‘changing of the seasons’ thing that Dr. Sullivan had told me about back in the ‘begging for Unemployment Benefits’ days.

Concerning my back, nothing much happened over the next few days. But a bit after Christmas, on my way to third period, I took a pee. Nothing out of the ordinary. After the usual introductory ritual at the beginning of class I sat down in my chair to flip through the day’s lesson. Oh Heavenly Goodness Glory That Be. The most incredible sensation of Love came over me. I was enveloped in Beauty. Everything felt so right. The class was a roar of incredible enthusiasm. Mine was a face of delight. Rather than attempt to conduct the class on my own, I quickly asked the yet to be nicknamed, StarLight Wonder Girl, who was a student I felt to have an incredibly special energy about her, to come to the front of the class and ask the other students some of the questions from the text. She jumped at the opportunity. The vibration in the room was that of Super Light. As the StarLight Wonder Girl held the fort with a smile a mile wide, I sat in my chair in a state of euphoria practically rocking back and forth with my arms wrapped around my upper body. As the students were on a high themselves and paying closer attention to the temporary substitute teacher than to me, my movements, I assumed went unnoticed. The words ‘Oh, I Love myself’, ran through my head. This was it. This was the Garden of Eden like I’d never experienced it before. There I was dressed up in a tie, holding down a job in of all places, a school – a situation that I would normally have avoided like a plague. Yet at this moment living just felt so good. It didn’t matter where I was. This was the Kingdom of Heaven.

After a fairly normal night of sleep, by far the best since coming to India, I decided to head out to Betul by rented bicycle. After polishing off the first ten-kilometer stretch from Benaulim to Mobar in excellent time, followed by the ferryboat crossing into Betul, I asked around about the ‘secluded idyllic beach’ that I had read about and was told it was four kilometers down the road.

After covering what seemed like roughly four K’s, which included a very steep incline at which point my left knee began to speak to me, I spoke with a woman who was walking by the road in the middle of an area that most people would liken to ‘nowhere’. She assured me that the beach lay ahead. Just follow the road for another ten to fifteen minutes. That’s odd, I thought. The book had said it was a half-hour’s walk from Betul. I was beginning to think that perhaps I’d missed the beach that the book had written of and was being directed to another. Oh well. I continued riding on what felt like a raised plateau. I eagerly awaited the drop in altitude that would take me down to the Sea.

Finally it came. I descended into a more humid and jungle-like atmosphere. The beach couldn’t be far now. Unfortunately, the road began to climb back up. The outside of my left knee was really beginning to act up, forcing me to walk the bike. After a painful uphill hike I found myself on the plateau once again. No beach. The landscape was burnt and dry. I was feeling more like I was in Spain than in India. Onward I biked. After riding for at least another ten minutes I stopped to speak with a woman who was waiting at a bus stop. Like the first person, she assured me that the beach lay ahead. Just keep biking in the same direction, she motioned.

With the Sun climbing ever so close to its peak in the sky, across the parched plateau I continued. Now my knee was hurting all the time. But on the flat the pain was minimal so I just cycled at an easy gentle pace, all the while telling myself that the pain was not real, or at the very least, that it was insignificant. I believed that the time I had was as good or bad as I would make it. The knee situation could be made irrelevant by the right frame of mind. (more…)