Aloneness

Stepping off the train and onto an abandoned platform at precisely 5.12am in Central Vietnam, I felt that combination of thrill and anticipation dancing in my belly.  Not a soul stepped off the train and not a soul in sight.  The train (my home and safety for ten or so hours) had now vanished into rural lands without a care for me.  

 I am completely alone, I thought.  No one in the entire world knows where I am.    

 I am standing on a rickety track with bags hanging from every limb (including an almighty trek bag on my back providing me with some sort of comfort, like a tortoise shell) and I begin to wonder… 
Where exactly am I?  Is this my destination?  Is this right?  Am I a bit fucked? 

 I continue to ponder and soak up my whereabouts.  It might be a good idea to step off the train track first.  So I do.  I see there are no signs, no ticket office.  Just the echo of creatures in the lush, dense forest towering over me.  I start walking, taking it all in. 

It is so quiet.  Besides the sound of nature, I am stunned by the sound of silence. I break it, as I squelch my feet on the muddy ground.  I am insignificant here, which makes me smile.  And oh, the colour!  That rich dark green of Mother Nature sprouting majestically at every turn!  That is what stays with me most in my memory of this moment.  That and the potent question - where is my fear?  Where is that ‘fight or flight’ adrenalin in me?  Why hasn’t my spiky saboteur piped up with a list of concerns, doubts and scrutiny over my poor choices and inevitable fuck ups? 

I am currently completely alone in the middle of the Vietnamese jungle.  Surely this is wrong.  So, where’s my inner creep to prod at my mistakes?  Where did it go?!  Because, I am currently so calm, centred and curious, which is not the usual (obviously utterly misguided) recipe for ‘productive’ problem solving.  Isn’t the ingredient usually control (again, misguided but that’s another piece).  Well, there’s no controlling this situation! 

I recall attempting to conjure up some of my usual worries that lurk in the reservoir of our psyches in order to kickstart a plan.  But that part of me seemed to have evaporated; she just wasn’t around!  She vanished with Vietnam Railways.  Instead, and with no remarkable entrance, a wiser self had taken the lead.  Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls her The Mother ~

‘There is a wild mother waiting to teach us’ and she exists in us all.

She felt powerful and peaceful.  Nothing particularly grand; she merely arrived.  And she said ‘I am here.  And it is well.’

There was a stillness of mind reflected by the stillness of my surroundings and it was charged with… Grace.

 I often think back to that moment and it really takes my breath away.  A simple moment, yet a big one for me. 

I’d never felt so empowered by my aloneness.  Generally, I’m pretty good alone.  Sure, there are occasions of loneliness (different) which can impale at times but most of us will have those waves at some point in life, encouraging really (the irony being we’re not alone there!) … it’s a zipwire straight to the truth of who we are.

But yeah, mostly, I’m good alone… I could monk away with my books for days, weeks!  And when I’ve been through a break-up, whilst there’s heart wrench, there’s also the fairly candid voice within saying, ‘I’m alone again.  Better.’  And that’s also something for another time… the pursuit of integration of aloneness with partnership.  Something I’m working on.  Astrologically speaking, Chiron is conjunct Venus in my natal chart.  In other words, love may be my wounded healer.

I digress…

 So, this usual comfort of aloneness I feel in my life was different to the aloneness I felt that day on the train track of Phong Nha.  A higher octave, if you like.  The safety in my skin, my body was charged with connectedness to my earthly surrounds.  This insignificant me, a dot in the vast landscape, had forged an allegiance with it all.  Impossible to put it to words really, but there was a Oneness felt - astoundingly pure – which simultaneously lifted and grounded me, leaving me whole.  In Sanskrit, the word is Purna.

Joseph Campbell wrote, ‘where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be all with the world.’  Yes.  It was that. 

  …It stayed with me for a bit, until I eventually found my way to a little man holding a sign with my destination.

They say it’s all about the journey… I reckon it’s a bit of both!