A Walk Into the Void

"There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled.
You feel it, don't you?"
-Rumi

This short quote says it all for me. There is something in me that wants to embark on a journey to anywhere and everywhere the gods want to take me and never come back. Not until I am a changed person, that is. The candle in my heart is on fire. There's no doubt about that. It's burning bright and it's light reflects on the many dreams, which then shine like tiny stars in that dark void that's wanting so badly to be filled. Sorry, I'm getting a little cheesy on you, but what would the world be like with out cheese?
Over these past few months that I've had to reflect on the next step, I've had so many dreams stroll their way across my mind-field, only to make it to the other side and vanish into the forest of my memories. I keep waiting for one dream to find itself some comfort in the field, stay awhile, graze on its grasses and maybe even outgrow the space and make its way into reality. But nothing quite has yet.
I spent a week filling out grad school applications but never sent them in. I bought a ticket to Guatemala to study Spanish but never used it. I applied to an Americorp program to be a volunteer in a non-profit who aided in developing small businesses in poor neighborhoods of Los Angeles, but to this day have still heard nothing from them. Over the past month alone my plans have included, but not been limited to, going back to LA to do another yoga teacher training, moving to New York to study Creative Writing, and moving to Symi, Greece to experience what it's like to live in a culture of happy, healthy people. I tried to apply to the JET program to teach english in Japan but found out that I missed the deadline by over a month and they weren't accepting applications again until September '09. I even looked into spending a year in the hills of Northern China in a Shaolin Monastery to study Kung Fu. These days when I write to friends I put an asterisk by my new plan and at the bottom of the e-mail it reads, "*subject to change."
What does a person do when they just can't figure it out? They do the exact opposite. They stop thinking completely, or at least, they try to. That's my new plan, and folks, I'm really gonna follow this one through. I'm attending a ten day Vipassana Meditation course in Southern Georgia. This will be my second and a half course. Three years ago I attended my first course and spent ten days in silence. We meditated from the time we woke up at 4AM to 8 PM with hour long breaks spread through out the day. I did my best to concentrate, but my boyfriend was also attending the meditation and, even though the boys and girls were separated, he was a huge distraction for me. Probably because something inside of me was screaming that he was the WRONG GUY. The next year I went back to serve the meditation and found myself cooking for the same guy who had recently become my ex-boyfriend (the day after we broke up I saw him out at a restaurant with his new girlfriend... yeah.) Serving that meditation was a great way to deal with any negative feelings I had been harboring towards him, and there were plenty, because through out the meditation we were encouraged to invoke feelings of love for the meditators. So I lovingly served him and participated in group meditations with him, and to this day we are still great friends.
This time there is no man to distract me, not within the meditation nor without (thankfully because if there were he'd have a real hard time keeping up with all THIS). I'm very excited about this opportunity to once again clear out the rubbish that has collected inside my unkept human mind. Even with the distractions of the past meditation, I left there with a feeling of purpose I hadn't felt for a long time. I left there feeling close to everything. Feeling connected to everything. There is no telling what I will feel after this meditation, but I'm hoping that after the rubbish is somewhat removed, my truth will be uncovered and I will follow its lead where ever it takes me. With no hesitation, and no regret, I will walk into the void.