Bernie Gourley is a writer living in Bangalore, India. His poetry collection, Poems of the Introverted Yogi is now available on Amazon.
He teaches yoga, with a specialization in pranayama, and holds a RYT500 certification. For most of his adult life, he practiced martial arts, including: Kobudo, Muay Thai, Kalaripayattu, and Taiji.
He is a world traveler, having visited more than 40 countries around the globe.
I don’t like music by its genre, much to the chagrin of the streaming service that would like to make recommendations but is stumped by the mix of folk, symphonic, rock, instrumental, jazz, international, country, heavy metal and easy listening music that I bounce through.
That’s a tough one, but I have to go with a trip to the Peruvian Andes about twelve-ish years ago. As a person from Northwest Indiana (where anthills appear on topographic maps,) it was my first time in the Very High Altitude range. We hiked through the Salkantay Pass (15,000+ft / 4500+m) on the second day of a trek with me vomiting (water, as my stomach was long devoid of other contents) every couple switch-backs. I’m told I was literally green, but can’t confirm for lack of mirrors. But I trudged through, one glacial step at a time.
At the end of our trip, we were in Arequipa and needed to get back to Cuzco for our flight out. After buying bus tickets, we discovered that the road from Arequipa to Cuzco would be shut down by a transportation strike, and that everyone was honoring the strike as they sometimes turned violent. After a day of frustration, we surrendered to the situation, traded in our Arequipa-Cuzco tickets for Arequipa-Lima tickets, and we got into Lima (where we had a layover) early enough to arrange to join the flight there.
The reason this stands out as such a wonderful trip (besides all the beautiful sights: Titicaca, Machu Picchu, the Andes, all the Incan ruins and old Spanish churches; not to mention the delicious food) is the powerful life lessons it taught me. First, I’ve never felt closer to death than crossing through Salkantay Pass, and yet one step at a time got me through. Second, I learned not to butt heads with changing circumstance, but rather flow over, around, or under. Lastly, trips where things go wrong produce the dividend of great stories. Nobody cares about your trip to Paris where everything went smoothly, but they can’t get enough about the trip to Zaire where you got Malaria and were caught up in an insurrection or the cruise where passengers started turning to zombies.
If by authority one means “having such expertise / understanding that you can just take my word for it with regards said subject,” then I claim no such authority — graduate degrees and certifications notwithstanding. I certainly don’t take anyone else’s [single source] word for anything, and I take the Jnani’s view that all knowledge should be subjected to one’s own experience and reasoning.
If, however, one means “having more insight than anyone else about the subject,” I would claim authority on the experience of operating the mind / body that is typing this reply.
