After our stay in Sultanpur Lodhi, I travelled with my daughters and granddaughter to Ludhiana, Patiala, Chandighar, Delhi and London where my eldest, Nirinjan Kaur, continued her research on Sikh Kirtan and its practitioners.

During my early morning meditation in the hotel room my mind suddenly went somewhere else this morning. “How did I end up here?” I wondered, when I realized my focus had shifted. After days of traveling on the Metro in Delhi and the Underground in London I instantly heard the warning of the sweet female voice, reminding us to “Mind the gap!”. This is the constant advice you hear for boarding and stepping off the trains, to watch out for that space between the platform and train. How easy to mindlessly leave the steady platform of focus and awareness, letting the mind take off on a track of its own. Do we even notice when we’ve crossed over? Stepped out of remembrance and started traveling? Down the line there are infinite possibilities for connections, destinations, places to visit for a while. If you catch the Heathrow Express, you could end up on another continent! And then we wonder, “how did I get here?”

So that is the reminder for today as we literally prepare for international travel, home to the US, and as we prepare the mind for meditation. “Mind the gap”, step with awareness, be present, remember your home as you travel, maintain the awareness as you work in the world. The daily practice is just that- practice for real life. When I learn to focus in my quiet room, I can mind the gap in a noisy crowd.