personal: prakriti

I feel that I’ve had a lesson in learning prakriti recently. The power of illusion. Of distruth. Of being challenged and pushed to far from purusa. Of being entirely enveloped and unable to be pulled from chaos. Of being brought so out of balance that I didn’t even know where balance could be found.

Prakriti: unconscious materiality; the ‘seen,’ the ‘experienced’; illusion; distraction

Purusa: pure consciousness; the state of our true nature; it can be understood as the ‘seer’ or the ‘experiencer’; our true self; truth

The two of these give rise to the manifest world. The conjunction of purusa and prakriti is the root of suffering and illness because purusa is disguised by prakriti. Truth, love, light, is hidden by illusion, distraction, suffering.

Three days after returning from a MAGICAL road trip with my love, Nico, I was sitting on my couch and something crawled across my lap: a bed bug. Now, I knew immediately what this bug was because I’ve had not one, but two prior experienced with bed bugs.

If you’re not familiar with the terror and horror that comes with these, let me give you a little summary: they are these super flat and small bugs that can fit into super tiny places (baseboards, cracks in the walls, corners of furniture, pages of books, etc.), making them extremely hard to get rid of. They bite you, and live off of your blood, leaving massive welt-like painful hives. But, they can live without eating for a ridiculously long time, dormant, just waiting for their next meal. They lay eggs, and pesticides don’t penetrate through the egg walls. They hitchhike, they travel. They can move between apartments through electrical outlets and heating systems and vents. They can make their way onto clothes and travel from home to home. They. Are. Resilient. So, in order to deal with this problem you need professional extermination, and it needs to be done RIGHT. It needs to be taken seriously. But before the exterminator can come in, there needs to be preparation: everything you own needs to be sorted through. Everything that can be washed, needs to be put in the washer and dryer at the highest heat. Everything else needs to either be inspected, wiped down, killed by heat or frozen, or simply just thrown away. Each book needs to be opened and inspected closely. Every corner of the space and every crevice of furniture needs to be vacuumed. Furniture needs to be moved away from the walls, pets and people removed from the home, and then the exterminator comes and sprays your home with chemicals that kill. And then, 14-21 days later, they come again and do it all over again in case any eggs were missed being vacuumed, and had hatched in the meantime.

So many hours of cleaning, organizing, sorting later; 4 hours at a laundromat and $129 later; tears and tears and tears later, we were ready for the exterminator to come. We decided to move out for the time being, as to not risk ourselves and our cats, and to ensure we didn’t have to wash everything we owned again in case anything was missed in the extermination process. Thankfully, Nico’s parents welcomed us in with open arms, and hearts - with so much generosity.

Now, I’m sure you can imagine that his is horrible. And I don’t really believe that these few words are doing justice at explaining just how horrible this process is. And I don’t really think anyone understands how bad this is unless you’ve gone through it. Our lives packed away, or thrown away. Out of our home. Emotionally exhausted. Paranoid beyond belief - how tedious is too tedious? And there’s a ridiculous amount of shame that comes with bed bugs - which is absolutely ridiculous because it is so far from our control. We live in a nomadic society, lots of apartment living, lots of opportunity for these resilient little hitchhikers to move around. And I thought that this time, a THIRD time with approaching this, it would be easier. The first experience I had was in another apartment I had when I was about 21 - same. freaking. ordeal. The second experience I had was in a hostel in Malaysia. Much less of a big deal given the fact that I could simply go to a laundromat and toss my backpack and few things I owned and carried with me in the washer and dryer and move on with my life. Third time? Had to be a breeze - I’m a seasoned expert at this point, right? Oh how wrong I was.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt so distraught. So exhausted. Consistently on the verge of tears and/or a mental breakdown. So far from being myself. So far from being happy and content and excited about life and all the good things I have going on. The exterminator left lights on in our apartment ($$ we would have to pay), broke our couch, and I was not very confident in his professionalism and his dedication to taking care of this properly. I had been on the road for the majority of the month of May, and then immediately sent back out into limbo after only being home for a few days. I was entirely unsettled. I was entirely sucked into this hell of bed bugs. And I couldn’t pull myself out of it.

In reality, I was fine. The bites, the bugs, they don’t carry any diseases. The bites went away as soon as I was out of the apartment. The cats were with us and doing okay (although it took a while for one of them to adapt to being in a new space). Nico and I were tackling this super efficiently and together. We had a roof over our heads. We had family and friends supporting us. We aren’t in school at the moment. We both have incomes that can cover the costs incurred. I was displaced, but I was okay. Why did I have such a hard time feeling that, feeling okay?

It really was difficult for me to wrap my head around - I’ve done so much traveling, I’ve lived out of a backpack for many many months at a time, I still had everything I needed. I try to practice detachment, recognition of prakriti, seeking of truth and contentment, even if it’s uncomfortable. But it wasn’t connecting for me. No part of this was okay for me. I kept trying to find the whole “everything happens for a reason” mentality, a letting go of control and trusting in a bigger reasoning, seeing the “okayness” of the whole situation. But I couldn’t find it. I could not see past my own suffering.

This all started June 3rd. About half way through the month we decided we would look for a new place to live entirely, and we found a beautiful half duplex. We moved July 1.

The day we moved, we found an alive bed bug in the apartment. We hired our own exterminator (another big financial cost to us) to meet us at our new place, had him spray down all of our furniture, and the inside of our new home. About 6 days after that we found another alive bed bug in our new place (luckily, just a fresh egg that hatched and was in full on panic-mode due to the chemicals in our new place, and the exterminator talked me out of my own full on panic-mode). When does the worry stop? When are we in the clear? When will we escape this HELL?

Here it is July 23, and I think we have finally escaped. I think we are in the clear. I think we have overcome this fucking disaster that has been thrown out way. I’m feeling like myself again. I feel that I have a home. I am embracing the fact that I have simply landed at a place in my life where a physical home is so dang important to me. I am embracing that there are just simply things I need to be grounded and centred. I’m not feeling ashamed about it. I’m not forcing myself into a place of “detachment” from material things.

Instead, I am allowing myself to fully enjoy how fucking glorious it is to be sitting on my deck right now in the sunshine, surrounded by a garden of potted plants, breathing in the incense I have burning, watching my cats roll around in the grass and chase the squirrels around the yard. THIS is not attachment. This is presence. And gratitude. This is awareness. This is a step closer to purusa, to truth, to being able to breathe fully into becoming the best of me that I can be. I am fully allowing myself to take care of myself, to nourish these roots I’ve needed to plant so deeply, for so long.

Throughout all of this, I’ve really tried to search for a reason that this has happened to us. Maybe it’s because we needed to find this beautiful new duplex, moving away from the apartment life. Maybe it’s so that we could find mature and wonderful neighbours to connect with. Maybe it’s so that we could really meld our lives together in home initiated by both of us. An opportunity to clear our pasts a bit so we can step forward into life together. Maybe it’s preparation for the last year of university, coping with the stress and chaos associated with that. Or maybe preparation for the inevitable challenges that Nico and I will be faced with together. The inevitable challenges and difficulties of this journey through life. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent searching “the spiritual reason for bed bugs” on google. But the thing is, I don’t know why this has happened to us. And I don’t think I will. But I do this that this was a massive lesson on learning the power of prakriti. Of how REAL illusion is. How strong the hold of suffering can grip. How terrifyingly lost you can get within it. And I do now that I am so lucky to have Nico as my partner, my support, to navigate this crazy existence with.