Return from the East

i just returned this Monday from a three-week visit to my in-laws in China.  My mother-in-law has been having health problems, and we went to try to cheer her up and help out around the house.  i love my wife's parents and her brother (who visits at least once a week, despite his busy job and the awful Beijing traffic) and enjoy spending time with them.  Sometimes, though, this means spending a little time on my own, when they go out to see the doctor.  i've usually not been very good at handling alone time, but it helped this time to bring whatever work material i could safely bring abroad and spend a lot of time reviewing source code and papers.  To me, the silence of the gods is deafening, and so i've never been very good at using idle time to develop the spirit. 

It did help, though, to take some time to cultivate consciousness of the Higher Self.  This is about all the religious discipline i can manage these days without feeling ridiculous or ashamed.  My impression is that the Higher Self has a Name which can be used devotionally.  This use helps reminds myself that the end goal is returning to the Source and that the access mechanism is through the Higher Self, which functions as an interface.  (i realize i'm using computer science terminology; i suspect Pythagoreans would prefer it (or even category theory) to geometry as a source of metaphysical vocabulary, if they came about today.)  Daily life then aims towards that goal of returning to the One.  (Honestly, i tire of my individual personality and am really hoping that i get to give it up at the end of my days.)  i'm not sure whether this is accurate, but taking this approach during my trip seemed to help me gain perspective on being alone in a place that can sometimes feel alien (not at all due to my spouse's lovely family, though!).