Email to Siridharma

Halloo Siridharma, how’s the life? Are you still in Amsterdam? Still teaching yoga? Still Siridharma or back to Joost? ;-)

I’ve been thinking about things today and doing something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, which is writing to many of the wonderful, special people that I met during my magical soul searching year back in America in 1999 and asking them the question, what do you think about those days and where did your life go after? Obviously you were one of those people and I know something of where your life went after because I was there, during our Amsterdam days in 2000. Personally, I have mixed feelings about that time – ‘cos I remember things like all the long and wonderful talks we had, and all our excitement and thinking ourselves like two angels walking on Earth and so many realisations and joyous sharings and stuff – but also things that make me feel bad and regretful, like how I didn’t stick with things at Yogi Tea ‘cos I was too high to see the sense it made, and probably how I pissed you off by doing mad things like flooding your neighbours apartment and not sorting it out and leaving half-built pyramids on your roof and getting you to delete your yoga book through my conviction that I was channelling God and could lead you to enlightenment. So much good stuff but so much mad! It’s like Amsterdam was the height of my crazy, Messiah delusions and insanity. Amsterdam, looking back, should have been my grounding – the job you found me, the roof you put over my head – but I blew it and I ended up paying the price by falling for that crazy Frenchwoman and really getting my ass grounded in a not very nice way which, though I’m grateful for – the grounding – I sort of feel like I could have done without the residue of the trauma that leaves me insecure and afraid around women. ;-)

Anyways, I just wrote a long mad letter to Saram Singh, the yoga teacher from Charlottesville, to ask him the same question, and it ended up being so long – we haven’t had much contact over the years – that I’m including it to others to save my poor brain and fingers. I hope you’ll find the time to have a think if not actually read the whole thing (it really is a wee bit long) and I’d of course love to hear from you. I think it’s a shame that we haven’t had much contact over the years, given that you really were one of my prime spirit buddies back in the day and a real good friend besides. I guess I’m a bit nervous of writing to you ‘cos of how embarrassed I am about the madness of my Amsterdam days and maybe ‘cos I think you don’t like me anymore.

Ha! How pathetic does that sound? :-)

Would be lovely to meet up some day, if not in the near future then at least when we’re wise old men with white beards and even crazier stories to tell.

Lots of love to you (and yours?)

Rory

PS Here’s that letter I sent to Saram if you want the full lowdown of what’s behind my question and where the hell I’ve been these past ten years. :-)

My dearest Saram...