Day 7 of 10: Ted and Cyril's farm - Condom, France.

Two more days and three more nights left on the farm. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to leaving and moving on to more exciting pursuits around Europe. I would also be lying if I told you I wasn’t enjoying myself here. Just now as Amber and I were taking the laundry down from the line, I caught myself imagining myself in another place I would rather be (Rome next week), and in an instant was mindfully drawn back into the present moment, with all its vivid, exuberant colors, collecting the laundry, with Amber.

Since we’ve been here, I’ve been afflicted by allergy. On the bright side I think I have become somewhat conditioned to its effects and the past few days hasn’t been as bad as the first couple of days. Even now as I write this I am intermittently sneezing, my eyes and throat are itchy and I am overall feeling pretty lousy. Peculiarly, however, I am not experiencing any joylessness or sadness. In fact, I’ve never felt better! Besides finding myself looking forward to what else my travels will bring me, I have never felt myself quite as content as I am now here on working on Ted’s farm.

Working on an organic farm:

In exchange for meals and accommodation, we agree to work on the farm for 4.5 hours a day except Sunday. We begin at 7:30am by sweeping up goat manure by the shed and turning the cheese in the shop. This is followed by breakfast. Then Cyril has a different job for us every day in maintaining the farm. To date we’ve collected firewood, mulched and weeded the vegetable garden (mum would be so proud), cleaned the electric fence and trimmed the hedges. We’re done by lunchtime and usually stop working when the allocated job is done and not when 4.5 hours are up. Ted and Cyril are easy to be with and let us do things at our own pace most of the time. Their English is reasonably good and we have not much trouble communicating. We have all our meals together and in the process have gotten to know each other quite well. Even though I am well aware of our differences, I like them very much. They also have a 29 year-old son who works in a tennis club nearby and comes over for lunch every day. Paul is very undemanding and pleasant to be around. At 21 he had a bad accident during a rugby game that caused him temporary paralysis on the right side of his body. It landed him in a coma for several days and lost his friends and girlfriend over this incident. He (and us too) couldn’t quite figure out why his friends had rejected him after this incident and recounted how painful this was for him. He’s doing much better now though, and I would not have guessed all this from his present-day agreeable nature. Ted and Cyril also have a 23 year-old daughter working in Brussels. On the farm there are 35 goats, 4 cats, 6 chickens, a bunch of sheep and 2 dogs – Pau? and Chana? These are in question marks because they are French names and I know I’ve mis-spelled them. Chana is an engaging  and personable sheepdog who loves to play catch. I will try to upload a video of her on Blogger.

Book:

I am enjoying reading Spiritual Liberation by Michael Bernard Beckwith, even though I do feel it might be a little bit more edifying for a rookie “spiritual seeker.” I do find myself highly resonating with Michael however and reading his book is allowing me to acquaint with his essence in a much more personal way. This will be my fourteenth book I’ve read this year and don’t have another on hand lined up. I’d love to get my hands on War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy. I hope I find it in Rome this weekend.

WOOHOO! Rome this weekend!

Day 2 of 10: Ted and Cyril's farm - Condom, France.

The many synchronistic events that have led up to me reading this book, what I’m doing in the world, and the readiness of my mind to absorb this message is astounding to me. I have asked, and the universe has provided, is providing, and now more than ever, faithful that the ‘gods’ will continue to provide.

The central message that was conveyed in Ishmael, is elaborated here in The Story of B. Somewhere in the passage of reading this book, I recalled the words of an scientist/metaphysician in ‘What the Bleep.’ -“The more I learn about quantum mechanics and its significance in the world, and more I feel we are living in a wrong paradigm.” I never fully understood what she meant when she said this, and now after reading this book, I have a better idea.

We are living in the wrong paradigm: Our world before ‘The Great Forgetting’ consisted of multitudinous cultures, and over time, one has propagated and presided – OUR culture. Totalitarian agriculture has spread throughout the world, bolstered by the belief that “ours is the right way” and the Great Forgetting has led to our world being over-populated (and continues to do so at an alarming rate!) and all sorts of other ailments such as war, poverty and crime as a result. It tackles squarely the question of how we are living, why we are doing what we’re doing, why it’s not working, and how we can change. Humanity had been living harmoniously with the planet since the first humans. Then, from 8000BC, one culture ‘eats from the tree of wisdom’ and decides, using totalitarian agriculture as a method, what lives or dies. This ‘new’ lifestyle and mindset had made us out to be wise as gods and made the world to be a piece of human property. Our egocentricity has made us believe that God has made man to conquer and rule the world, and that’s what we’re doing - subjugating other ways of living to OUR way of living, destroying the world in the process.

What I love about this book is that it is riddled with scripture from the bible, making the words of Jesus come alive and practical to my sensibilities. Having put down this book, I find myself living synchronously – on an organic farm, accepting people, living simply, re-learning to live self-sustainingly and naturally with the planet.

I set out on this 1-year odyssey with Amber intending to learn and discover the ‘best way to live.’ I might not quite have related these feelings to Amber in quite the same words and I suspect she might respond to you, if you asked her, that we’re on our spiritual adventure/travel/honeymoon – which I also completely harmonize with. What I have learned and discovered most invaluable so far, is not being in Times Square, the Eiffel Tower, or the Matterhorn (which we passed up to be with Sonya in Verbier, by the way) – but by living and being with people.