Last week Nayaswami Devi wrote a beautiful blog post titled “What Changes.”
The blog is full of insights and wisdom, but there was one particular sentence that stood out for me. Devi wrote: Time and space—they really don’t exist as we usually perceive them. We may be dreaming them, but our souls aren’t bound by them.
In fact, that sentence brought to mind an experience I had when I was living at Ananda Assisi. I’m not sure whether I can successfully put it into words, but I’ll try.
Before I found Ananda in 1998 I had been involved with an Irishman from Galway. I developed deep connections with the Irish-Irish (as opposed to Irish-American) community in San Francisco and felt a deep affinity for Irish music and culture. I even visited Ireland briefly in 1997.
Then, several years after coming to Ananda, I moved to Italy — another European country for which I immediately felt a deep affinity.
At one point I met two Irish women — I believe they were sisters — who were guests at the retreat in Assisi. We enjoyed a nice connection; no big deal.
But then there was one afternoon when they were approaching and as I went to greet them I suddenly was aware of feeling a strange kind of disorientation.
I caught myself thinking — although “thinking” isn’t really the right word; it was more that there was an awareness — that we were in Ireland and the two women were returning from visiting Galway. But with a figurative shake of the head, I reminded myself that, no, we were in Italy and they had been to Gualdo Tadino (a nearby city).
It was so strange! As though for just a few moments I had lost track of where I was in the dream.
Although it was a fleeting experience, it left me with the briefest sensation of the truth that none of this is really real.