Trekking day 2: Pothana to Landruk

I really liked this chapter from Adyashanti which I am reading. Here are my favorite parts. "The deepest experience is when you realize that this open, radiant, empty mind and open, radiant heart have always been open. They don't need to open; they are not going to open; openness has always been there. . . . Free yourself of all limiting identities and embrace the infinite.

What allows this opening to take place at a great depth is to realize we are already the openness into which we are opening. . . . It has been eternally here from the beginning, and, in that, our humanness finds a welcoming to open itself. This is so because we are not opening ourselves into a mystery that is alien, or foreign, or different, but into what we have always been.

If you touch the sacred quality of winter inside yourself - that quality of everything returning to its most essential form - you find yourself falling off the end of the mind and into openness. . . . When you find the courage to allow yourself to return to the essential, you are actually returning to the very root of your own self.

This openness is actually the core of who everybody is. Stop waiting to let go of everything, and then your true nature is realized. When it is realized, then live it."

Sunrise at Pothana



Susanna from Canada and her guide Mike. It turns out not only does Susanna have the same birthday as me, but also the same year, and maybe even the same hour (I have to confirm with my mom when I was born). We spent the evening becoming friends, drinking to many things - our mutual birthday, Noah's sense of travel adventure, and other things that I can't remember.



The town of Tolka - three times while walking through this village we were stopped by a sign and a person asking for a donation. The first was for a hydro electricity, the second was for a school, and the third for a trekking guide who lost both his legs in an avalanche.