Himalayan Sabbatical

Himalayan Sabbatical documents a journey, both inner and geographical, that occurred from early September through mid-November 2023. However, its roots lay in the Covid-19 pandemic that gripped the world in 2020-21. Quarantine isolation affected everyone, but each in their own way. I welcomed the forced isolation as an opportunity to dive deeper into a midlife introspection I had begun prior to the pandemic. I flipped my school consulting work onto Zoom and found time to read philosophy, explore remote counseling, and fill many journals with morning pages inspired by Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way.

One pandemic lesson is that life is unpredictable and may be shorter than you think. This realization opened a door in my mind about what was possible. A sense of “if not now, when?” This shift precipitated positive evolution in my work and relationships and lit a fire under my long dormant wanderlust. I decided it was time for a sabbatical.

I am blessed with a supportive partner and family and, as a self-employed consultant, I didn’t need a boss’s permission to take time off. Decades of careful budgeting and saving provided a level of financial independence. However, I did need to lay the groundwork. Average projects that I worked on lasted 3-9 months. The lead-up to an engagement could add 3-6 months in front of that, as conversations with potential clients led to pitch meetings and presentations, which led to proposals and contracts. I decided in November 2022 that I would block out the second half of 2023 for an extended sabbatical and began telling potential clients about my coming unavailability. I gave myself over six months to wrap up projects in the pipeline, and as it turned out I was working late until June 30, 2023, to finish the last piece.

I embarked on pausing my work life without having any firm idea how I would spend the sabbatical time. Turning away interesting new projects was hard and a little scary. Would there be any work for me after the time away? Would I still be interested in doing the same work? Everywhere I turned there were questions without answers. That's really the point of the sabbatical, to ask myself questions that don’t have easy answers, and be willing to sit with the open question.

In my journaling leading up to the trip I wrote about the desire to turn inward, to not be focused on the current that pulls my Chad ego through the material world, but to more deeply connect with the part of me that is bigger than ego, the part that is connected to the cosmos. I wrote about the sabbatical being a kickoff of a new life stage and a chance to better understand what this current incarnation is all about.

“I want to improve at being here, now, conscious of the world around me, to grow the inner me, and become more capable of making a difference in the time Chad has left,” I wrote. “Embarking on my Himalayan Sabbatical, I feel the call to pull back from the party of ego gratification, materialism, and consumption, and an aspiration to become a bodhisattva, a person focused on service to others, supporting universal enlightenment. Being a source of loving kindness is part of where I want to go in the onward journey.”

At one point I compared myself to a car, thinking that the sabbatical is like my 90,000-mile service, the big expensive one, where I’d get a spiritual transmission drain and fluid replacement, and possibly need to rebuild a psychological construct or two. This trip was not about self-indulgence or vacationing. My “needs service” light had been on for a while and had been flashing since the pandemic. Before setting out, I envisioned that post-sabbatical I would drive out of my existential mechanic’s shop, back into the traffic of life with my fluids clean and topped off, ready to cruise the multiverse and be of service.

What follows is an under-the-hood look at my two months in the cosmic auto shop.

Reed / Chad Tew
Konchok Tharpa
December 2023,
Los AngelesLeia mais