Questions about Ashrams and the realities of dedicating my life to a Spiritual quest

Hello Indiamike, this will be a rather long post but I hope you bear with me. I am in need of your help and guidance with all your knowledge and experience. This will be a mixed post with alot of questions and me explaining the ideas and thoughts that I have and wonder about.

I am a man in my early 20s if that has any relevance and am planning a trip of several months, maybe years, or if it feels right enough maybe even my whole life. Because most Ashrams are in India and that, that is the only spiritual center I know of my search has been limited to this country but I am open to staying anywhere in Southeastasia with all its different places of spirituality and nature. I want to get away completely from normal life and technology. And I feel that by staying in a spiritual center in the western world I would be trapped in the western mindset for which my preconceptions tell me are narrow. But if i'm wrong about that please tell me.

I have very recently started searching around for a place (mainly Ashrams but am looking for alternatives too, whatever they are) where I can stay and learn meditation and from thereon meditate on my own and also in groups and when needed to receive guidance from a spiritual teacher/guru or whatever it's called. I would probably be interested in learning some form of yoga also but meditation is my main concern. The idea that I have in my mind is that I want to meditate in a place close to nature and not in an urban setting, and with this I want to see where it will lead me, which will decide the lenght of my stay and indeed maybe even my entire future.

I want to see into myself and learn more about myself, to know my true inner self, to highten my senses and feel my surroundings.
This means that i'd rather not worship or acknowledge some kind of deity or God, I am however open to the matter as I think hmm maybe those deities and Gods are just symbolic references to these things. But yeah i'd rather not say my thanks to an outer deity and instead focus on myself and find my own answer and my own feeling of the worlds energy. From what i've gathered so far alot of the Ashrams belong to different hindu Gods where they perform various rituals and prayers to these Gods, how common is this? I wonder are there Ashrams that don't have rituals or prayers? And are there Ashrams where I am not required to participate in the rituals but at the same time not lose out on what the Ashram has to offer? And also are there similar spiritual centers like Ashrams in and outside of India? Like Nepal, Thailand, etc. I've read a little about Silent retreats, one of them in Nepal, are they spiritual centers kind of like Ashrams? Other than Silent Retreats and Ashrams are there other possible centers for spirtual practice for which I can look?

Cause I was thinking maybe I could stay in India for 6 months going around different Ashrams, and then stay in Nepal for 2 months or more until I return to India again. I will be staying on a tourist visa of course. And then repeating this process over and over again by going in and out the countries when my visa expires. If I later choose to stay life-long then of course I will have to apply for another visa.

I also wonder the different ways of paying to stay at an Ashram. I would mainly like to work in the spiritual center in return for food and room, but I have no specific skills so my work would include cleaning, dishing, learn to cook from them to help them prepare the meals etc, how rare is this nowadays? Will I have to look harder for these? I also read about some Ashrams that accept just a modest donation fee and that's it. I have little money so in worst case scenario I would consider paying a very cheap daily/weekly fee but i'd rather not.

If all goes well I would perhaps be willing to (if possible) pursue a long-term path, maybe even life-long to know my true self and
be more in touch with the living energy of all that surrounds me, some call it the one-ness, whatever that may be. Of course this is very much a future matter and not even reality yet and i've told myself to leave those matters for later and instead just try it out for myself a few months to see if it suits me and if it gives me a deep peace and joy. For that is what I feel I lack in everyday life, I am lonely and without any specific goal or passion in life. I don't think too much about what is and what may happen or not happen if the spiritual path is not for me but when I do I feel that the quest for spiritual knowledge and "awakening" might be the only thing that can release me from the near apathy and sense of meaninglessness I feel for my own life and future. The thought of being at a work I dont like with people I dont like coming home to an empty apartment sitting in front of my computer being entertained, day in, day out, wasting my life away just to pass the time until death comes takes me isn't exactly something to look forward to...

Now I was thinking of a life away from all of that, a life where I through meditation, yoga and the peace of nature reach for that peaceful state of mind that Osho attained, that Eckhart Tolle attained, that Byron Katie has attained, and that an acquaintance of mine has at least partly attained, and that of course many others too have attained. And in that state of mind, be in touch with nature and feel it, and just enjoy being, and not having to satisfy my numbed mind with mild entertainment just to pass the time in the most meaningless way and waste my precious life away.

So I was thinking if I find out during the months or years I spend in various Ashrams or something similar that this is something for me, then would it be somehow possible to dedicate my life to it completely and move in an Ashram, buddhist temple or similar spiritual center and if necessary work in exhange for food and room? The first thing that comes to mind might be a language barrier if the plan is to stay loooong-term, and of course the issue of visa application to where I decide to stay, if indeed I plan to stay in an southeast-asian country. And I probably won't own a single dollar when I choose to stay wherever I choose to stay considering I won't be working for money but for the spiritual center itself. But other than that why shouldn't it be possible! There are monks that dedicate their entire lives in their temples together, why can't I? Well please tell me why I can't or even better why I can ;D Or just inform me more of the matter please! Maybe even own experiences or friends that you heard about?

Some of you may see me as naive talking about these things with no knowledge or experience, but that's exactly why I have come for the assistance of you who are more knowledgable and experienced in these matters.

If you read all of that, wow, thank you! ;D

A very honest first post. But maybe you are wanting to jump in feet first,it may be wise to start with a regular meditation practise at home,that's where you will find the peace you are wanting,no need to go anywhere.If you do go to India you will require money to survive even in a ashram,otherwise you will just be a financial burden to them,it costs money to live,why are you expecting someone else to want to pay for you to live? Usually there is no shortage of work/seva volunteers at ashrams from part visitors,so they won't be desperately looking for someone like you to come & do work for them & live for free. Ashrams in India aren't often how you've imagined or described them to be. KK

Welcome to IndiaMike. On visa and immigration issues in India, kindly carefully study also:

http://www.immigrationindia.nic.in/,
http://www.mha.nic.in/, notably currently its http://mha.nic.in/ForeigDiv/ForeigHome.html,
and for those of Indian backgrounds over the past few generations, http://moia.gov.in/.

The bottom line is you can't just stay there for as long as you like, there are rather strict requirements, as there would be anywhere.

EDITED:

No, to keep doing so forever is likewise a dream of the past, to the extent that it was ever guaranteed to work; regulations have been and are being made more restrictive, precisely to prevent this. And there is no "visa" as such to allow you to stay there life-long.

I don't know where your given location of Soed places you, but like KulluKid said, in many cases you can get started on what you're looking for right at home, or near to there.

Hmm, yes. What to do? Take some of your points, toss them up and down, tell you what I think is right and wrong? It would take an age, it probably wouldn't come across right on the net ...and (forgive me) it is now past my bedtime.

So I'll do the other thing I'm quite good at, which is woffling on about myself. Please excuse the multimedia presentation thingy, but I've been listening to that sort of song, and its in my head just now. Something, somewhere, in the following may be of some use, today, tomorrow, or sometime, according to the Big Lesson, that learning from other people's experience costs less than learning from one's own...

A song...

Read your book and loose yourself
In another's thoughts,
He might tell you 'bout what is,
Or even 'bout what is not
And if he's kind and gentle too
And he loves the world a lot
His twilight words may melt the slush
Of what you have been taught.

A tarot card (and whoa, guess what? apparently tarot is actually a modern invention. Whatever...)

The Searcher. Simply this: He has to learn down at his feet, and see that he is standing in his own patch of diamonds

A lesson, about going to work doing something you don't like with people you don't like

When I was about 39 I found myself out of work, redundant, and facing the offer of a pretty good job in a City (London) insurance company. I'd gone from being a long-haired hippy to working in a publishing company

Music:
Child of mine, you'll never get far:
I'll tell you the reason,
You ought to know,
There isn't really very far to go.

Back to work: Yes, as you can tell from my song lyrics, I was full of the Grateful Dead and the Incredible String Band (did I mention a decade doing some weird cultish stuff and other esoteric odds and ends?) and I despised the very thought of working in "The City," even if bowler hats and compulsory umbrellas were long since gone.

Anyway, faced with the inevitability of accepting this job, I asked to be shown around, and saw what I expected to see: dull office types, accounting types, underwriting types. I took a deep breath, accepted the job ...and found out that, even at 40, I hadn't learned not to judge people like that. Oh yes, there were people there I didn't like, but there was nobody boring. Nobody that knowing what not a part of life experience. And I stayed eleven years.

Conclusion of that with another musical snippet:

One of these days, they know they gotta get going,
Out of the door, down on the street all alone

A dozen years later, due to takeovers and redundancy, I was out of work again. To cut a long story short, I, changed my life entirely. By coincidence, I ended up living in India, but the point here is that I was a little older, and a little wiser, and saw and understood that changing my life was not the same as changing me. I did not expect to wake up a different person in India than I woke up in London. But, by heck it's warmer here!

Read some books; listen to some music and let the lyrics stir something inside. Smell the flowers where you are. Find some diamonds, stub your toes on a few rocks looking for them.

Of course, India might shake you up a bit. It's a great place for a bit of awakening. Shock treatment and all that . It's also a place where it takes years to sort out the difference between fantasy and reality. Yes, "your western culture" may seem a bit narrow to you, but at least you have a head start in bullshit detection and wheat/chaffe separation (and heck, we still get it wrong).

And if you read all of this, thank you!

I hope I confused you: it'll do you good

Come now, isn't it the goal in life to stick it to other people? I'll smoke & drink and leave the medical expenses to the govt. From the top, I'll cheat & take extraordinary risks. Because banks are too big to fail, stick it to the govt. From trust fund babies to the lower classes they're doin it (to us). Wait, I need my unearned retirement benefits..

@Kukkulu.
I'm not expecting someone to pay for my food and room, I am willing to pay, just not in coin but in terms of exhanging work for the basic necessaries of survival and some minor meditation teaching. If I am not mistaken this is not something unprecedented in the world, but maybe the world has changed, now everything is money because of course people are willing to pay, there is a market for it. It is a little disheartening to hear that this might not be possible. Ok so if paying ends up being the only option, do you have like an approximate estimate of how much the daily/weekly fee of the cheaper Ashrams cost?

The reason I am so anxious to leave is because I kind of stand at a crossroads, I have applied for university on a program i'm not really sure if I even want to pursue but being forced to because of a lack of options. So I thought ok now I found a different option, different from the path that everyone tells you to go and that people feel forced to go, and I felt so fortunate that I had found a new possibility and something actually appealing. Reading this makes me think all of this is just a stupid dream, gotta wake up, reality calls you, you have to either go the university or struggle to find a job in this fierce competition with no background experience. My god is this the only possibilities one has in life? I thought that it wasn't, now i'm not so sure anymore.

@Nick-H.
Yes I get some of what you are saying ;P No need to search, whatever it is you are searching for is right beside you or inside you or whatever ;D And I also have kind of realized that I won't change just by moving to another place, I have had that feeling earlier on in my travels, still feeling that lonely emptiness. I'm not afraid of meeting dull office people, I don't want to meet any of them cause I can't connect with any of them, being alone in an apartment wont do me any good. But being alone near nature and learning how to feel nature and be completely okay by just being, whether that is being alone or not and not fret on what I don't have and still be happy and peaceful about what I do have, it's easy to understand with my mind but it's not something that is easy to honestly feel. I can't in my current state smell the flower and feel its wonder, I dont feel it, at all. So I wanted to learn about myself and the world so I can feel it and many other things, to open up myself to the wonder of the world and appreciate the peaceful stillness.

@machadinha.
Thank you for the taking the time and find those links I will look them up more detailed later. Ahh so they are preventing that! Haha it just gets harder and harder doesn't it ;D

Oh dear, I didn't confuse you enough.

If you can't connect with "dull office people," you can't connect with anyone. People everywhere are ...people. Even in India.

Is it all a dream? No,a more accurate word would be fantasy ... which is why KK suggests that you check out all this stuff and get into itin your own home city.

Haha did you want to confuse me! ;D Exactly my point : ) I can't connect with any people which is why my "fantasy" consists of meditating in a secluded spiritual center near nature.

But is that really a fantasy, is it really that far-fetched? I was hoping this forum of spiritual people would prove me otherwise! ;D
Of course it does sound very unlikely considering it would be very hard to get something like a citizen visa if even possible. Maybe I can do something similar in Europe or North America after having learnt meditation and perhaps yoga. Maybe I will find some way.

But even if the life-long commitment of staying in India might be highly unlikely wouldn't it be a very fruitful experience to live in some Ashrams or similar spiritual centers for a few months instead of just learning meditation at home?

Korosh - your yearning seems genuine and rather than offering advise on what you could do (kind of stopping myself with full force... screech), can only say, I agree with KK. Having said that it is not impossible to find a place which will take you without money, but you will need to come here, look around and search with a reasonable chance of success as well as failure.

Then you have a human problem which you need to seek human answers to.
It's a fantasy because you have no idea what the reality is. ie, the fantasy is about swimming when you don't know what water is. Or deciding you want to become a doctor when you don't even know what medicine is.

Maybe I should have just left it at KK's words of wisdom. Go check out all this stuff locally. You might hate it!

always amazes me when people want to escape their world thinking that is the path to enlightenment, a deeper spirituality, nirvana, or whatever you want to call it.

Daily life is where the rubber meets the road on the spiritual path. There is no enlightenment outside daily life. Make the commitment to apply spiritual principles—such as generosity, compassion, loving-kindness and mindful awareness—to every single facet of daily life. Paying attention pays off. This is the secret of living in the Holy Now that you're looking for. Looking for "it" implies that you never had "it" to begin with and that is the constant lie that we keep telling ourselves and believing.

I still don't know where you are, and you don't need to tell us if you don't feel like it, but indeed both in Europe and the US (and no doubt in many another place), besides classes at home, there are many of these retreats, often situated in nature, or even in Christian monasteries, and the likes (so forget about the Christian here, they'll just host some such meditation retreats, perhaps a bit of gardening and wine making and stuff while you're at it. And of course the Christian monastic life's pursuit isn't essentially different, hence I guess indeed the natural link in some of these places, besides for more pragmatic reasons, it no doubt garners much-needed income, and nowadays with these monasteries emptying and so forth. And as indeed those monks are just your fellow human beings, just like anyone else is. If you can't learn to see that, there'll be little progress in other fields, you'd think.) Friends of mine do attend such, zen and yoga and vipassana or doing some handicrafts and whatnot. Of course it won't tend to come for free.

Now you don't need to invest in a long trip into the unknown for this, you speak the language and can find your way around, etc. (One Tibetan monastery in India I know of requires students to have a firm grasp of Tibetan to join, logically so you'd think, and indeed much if any English spoken there isn't at that place. Of course there exist other outfits there more geared to Westerners. For free they again won't tend to come, again logically you'd think. I do happen to know that same Tibetan place instead directs prospective Western students to indeed retreats or monasteries of theirs in Europe and the USA, btw.) Nor of course will it happen overnight, for such a retreat it will no doubt be handy if indeed you'd already followed some courses in whatever interests you and now clicks with them, and so on.

Of course it's relevant. I'm not much hung-up about age, but a young wo/man not sure how to get on with life and having their doubts about all these material pursuits and things we'll all have been. And good for you to even give it any pause.

Of course there's nothing to stop you from visiting India, if so desired. But you asked for the realities of it, and people are trying to give you that Again, you can't just up and leave to there and stay for as long as you please, the country doesn't allow for it, even less so than other countries don't. Nor expect to find your instant solutions there. If anything, India has a lot of harsh reality to it, chances are much more of it than you'll be used to. That can in fact be instructive to witness, but perhaps in entirely different ways than you imagine.

And unless of course if you choose to ignore those realities, lest they should interfere with whatever peace and calm you're thinking of. Now ask yourself what good is that peace and calm if it gets that easily disturbed by reality. One does indeed meet such folks there, doing their hardest it seems to drift along in their own happy aloofness, but in fact indeed striking one as socially totally inept and not at all able to cope with India as such, outside of their ashrams or wherever they choose to hang out. So what is the more important, to learn to be able to relate to your fellow human beings and other living creatures or indeed even the inanimate world (in short, isn't all that the "nature" you speak of?), or to strive after some highly personal salvation? What is that anyway, some definitive end point? How could it be? One doesn't become "a mathematician," or a pianist or whatever, does one, in the sense of now I've mastered this and so there's no further development.

I'm sure someone like Sama above and many others here could attest, she's been working at what she does for many many years, and indeed as far as I know even managed to make that dreaded "living" out of it. I often regret not having further pursued my karate training which I was good at as a kid, I imagine I could have been a teacher now and finding pleasure in teaching it to others, and what I but not just me perceive to be its "spiritual" core, if you will, besides of course just doing the body and mind some good. Oh well, life comes with its regrets, and one always takes a left turn, or a right turn, doesn't one

In short, it is what we came here for.

Anyone who did not want to experience and deal with its hassles, pains and suffering (along with its joys and delights!) need not have bothered to get born.

I'm not saying that there is never a valid reason for some sort of retreat, but the reason should be positive, not escapist.

And, for all that, I seem to manage to spend quite of time being a bit of a hermit!

Here's my prescription for Korosh:

My God ! Such long posts ! Can someone send me an executive summary ? How about you Ed ? Brevity is your forte..

sorry to burst your bubble, but yes, it IS a fantasy. part of being on a spiritual path means being IN the world but not OF it. you're in your world, wherever your world is, but your reactions to it and others in your world change. that's progress on any spiritual path.

and why do you have to be near nature? do you not think epiphanies happen for people in the middle of a concrete jungle, with someone living a mundane life in a tiny apartment? I can assure you they do.

not necessarily and that's a facile assumption. again, sorry to burst your bubble. I have been on many retreats since I got back on my yoga path in the mid-90s, and I can tell you many stories about egos that run rampant on retreats, the egos of both participants and teachers. yogis on retreats are some of the most high maintenance people there are! egos run especially hotter on silent retreats where people can't speak for 10 days. oh boy... I myself was the brunt of a woman's shadow self....

you think everyone who goes to or lives at an ashram is the pillar of spiritual practice? maybe some are, as for the rest, in my experience, certainly not.

usually the ones who have trouble relating to the outside world are the ones who want to seclude themselves from it, thinking that will solve all their problems. it doesn't, and sometimes seclusion creates new problems because you HAVE been secluded away from the real world in which you live.

you don't have to leave your country to learn meditation and/or yoga. there are plenty of good teachers of both everywhere. India does not have a monopoly on yoga or meditation teachers. a good teacher is a good teacher regardless of where they live. my own long-ago teacher traveled to India three times in the '70s looking for a guru. so then he decided to stay home and found his guru, an Indian swami living in Austria. my teacher said, "who knew that he was here all the time...."