Antevasin

I treated myself to the movies to see Eat, Pray, Love, not knowing if I'd like it since I'm not a big fan of romance. I left there connecting in so many ways and needing to pick up the book for more analysis. One thing that stood out the most was finding that there is a perfect word for where I am.

Antevasin

In her book,  Eat, Love & Pray, Elisabeth Gilbert describes “Antevasin” as follows:

“So I saw it during my last week at the Ashram, I was reading through an old text about Yoga, when I found a description of ancient spiritual seekers. A Sanskrit word appeared in the paragraph: ANTEVASIN. It means, ‘one who lives at the border.’ In ancient times this was a literal description. It indicated a person who had left the bustling center of worldly life to go live at the edge of the forest where the spiritual masters dwelled. The antevasin was not of the villagers anymore-not a householder with a conventional life. But neither was he yet a transcendent-not one of those sages who live deep in the unexplored woods, fully realized. The antevasin was an in-betweener. he was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.”

And there it is. I am tonight, at the cusp of my 43rd birthday. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist. I am no longer a sleeper, content in the safety of the familiar. I am awake and I am a spiritual seeker, an in-betweener searching for her gypsy soul. And with that I wish myself a Happy Birthday.