A Mind is a Terrible Thing

Hello Imaginary Readers and assorted voices in my head, I’m back.  Another busy day here in Boulder Creek, although after yesterday’s total blow-out—and prompted by today’s insane amounts of rain—I took it easy on the physical stuff and stuck to easier pre-moving tasks.

This doesn’t mean my day wasn’t full, however.  I’ve had to catch up on updates for Alx and Jonathan’s Karmatalk website, and get started on a little job I agreed to do for my old technical writing contract friends.  (I’ll get some money, but this isn’t soul prostitution, because it’s not very much money at all and only a few hours of reviewing and testing a new web tool.)

For the previous entries in this tale, see:

• Part 1, "The Genesis"
• Part 2, "Welcome to B’Lore"
• Part 3, "The Ashram Experience"

Picking up where I left off, I’ll recap a little first.  In my initial post, I went over a lot of the background and the reasons I went to India in the first place.  (India?!  What was I thinking?  Oh, right… that little thing called one’s heart.)  That finished with our departure from San Francisco.

In part 2, I described the insanely long flight to the other side of the globe, literally 24 hours in transit, but due to flying east, local time in India was only 12 hours ahead of when we left—resulting in some mega-fun jet lag.  Although not nearly as bad as when we got home coming the other way.  I’ll get into that later.  Here, we learned what it was like for someone on her first overseas trip to a very foreign place—a whole lot of culture shock, but I adapted fairly quickly.  Bangalore (B’lore) is a bustling, busy city, once very poor, but now with pockets of rather startling affluence and high technology.  Streets crammed with vehicles of every size, including the occasional ox-drawn cart.  And quite honestly, the people there were all unfailingly friendly and kind, even those who weren’t merchants looking to extract rupis from my wallet.

Part 3 brought us to the ashram, also known as the Shiva Sai Mandir, located about three hours’ drive north-northeast of B’lore in the village of Penukonda, Anantapur District.  I spent a great deal of time meditating and writing, and together my partner and I purchased a 99-year lease on an apartment at the ashram.  I spoke of the people, the food, the surroundings and so forth.

I’ll cover a few things I noticed I didn’t have, then move along.

I’ve gotten many questions about the climate.  "Is it insanely hot, rainy, or what?"  Actually, I would have to say that provided you shift the seasonal timing around a bit, the weather in Penukonda was very close to what I experienced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, albeit at 900ft altitude, rather than ABQ’s mile high nose-bleed inducing height.  In February and March, it was hot, but only occasionally humid.  The heat itself isn’t what I’d call brutal at all either; I don’t think we topped the low 90s (F) on even the hottest days.  According to the records we were able to dig up, sometimes it gets into the low 100s during the hottest summer days.  As for lows, the nights are cool, but the temperature hardly ever drops far below 60F.  When it did get humid, it would be late in the afternoon usually, and in those cases there’d be some cloud-cover.  We had rain—a torrential downpour—just the one night, and we were told that was terribly out of season and normality.  (Hello?  Global warming anyone?)

The natural flora was mostly high desert in varieties—yucca, scrub brush, plants well-adapted to low moisture environments.  However, with the intercession of people, lots of places are far greener than nature would have them.  In those places, one can expect to see rice fields, palm, bananna and coconut trees, neem and Ganesh trees, and even roses and gardenias growing nearly year-round.

In terms of fauna, many of the usual suspects.  Lizards, mice and rats (which exist anywhere there are people), toads, crows, raptors.  Occasionally, over on the mountain, I could see domesticated goats and dogs.  There was that one small cobra I mentioned in my Part 3 post…but those are said to be very rare inside the ashram walls.  I’m told there are other kinds of snakes around, too.  If I hadn’t seen the one stand up, it probably would’ve been assumed to have been one of these other kind.  Oh, in the evenings, a large flock of parrots would come, right at dusk, and raise a HUGE racket of chirping and squawking, usually in the trees right next to the main apartment building.  They were so loud, it’d be impossible to hear anybody.  Fortunately, they’d do this only for about 45 minutes.

As I mentioned, I quite enjoyed the daily schedule routine of ceremonies, meditation, writing, seva, meals, and socializing with really nice people.  The overall quality of my meditation sessions and poetry improved vastly, in my opinion, and this coupled with the feelings of extreme peace are what led me to able to leave my indecision concerning my immediate future behind.

There were two big events during our stay:  One happened on February 24th, which also coincidentally happened to be my 43rd birthday.  Late that morning, we all had the privilege of witnessing a Naming Ceremony, for Kaleshwara’s baby daughter.  It was beautiful, complicated, and very long.  At least twice, Swami thought it was over, only to have the priest tell him no, there was more yet.  The other event was an Indian-style wedding between two of Swami’s German students—a very beautiful ceremony, with a lot of elements reminiscent of our own western traditions.

Based on my prior personal encounter with Swami Kaleshwara, you might be wondering at this point how it went for me with him in India, on his own home stomping grounds.  Funny thing:  Except for a few waves or head-nods in greeting, and I think one actual spoken ‘hullo’, I had no direct personal interactions with him whatsoever.

We saw each other in the temple a few times, maybe three occasions out on the ashram grounds.  Once during a group process, where I was just one of about 15 others, we saw him (this was the same day as the wedding, which followed in the evening).  And of course I sat in on the evening talks he gave on the nights of Shiva Rathri, but there I was just one of at least a couple hundred.

Now you might be thinking, "Why didn’t you just go over and say ‘hi’, isn’t it rude not to?"  The answer there is no, it’s not.  The rule is that because he’s such a busy guy (including sometimes being crazy-busy even when it looks like he’s just sitting there in his hanging chair), you don’t bother him unless he asks you to.  Or unless you have a really serious problem or issue that urgently needs his help or advice.

I never really had any problems bigger than I could handle.  Or handle with a little help from my friends, at any rate.  What’s more, from the day we got there, Stephanie and I had gotten word by way of Cindy, one of the senior ashram managers and the lady who showed us the apartments, that Swami wanted very much to talk with us.  They weren’t sure it could be arranged in the days before Shiva Rathri, almost certainly not during it, but we were staying a few days afterwards, and it was thought that might be the best time for it.

What was also funny about the whole situation though is how we kept getting second-hand word and comments from Swami, usually by way of Cindy (but not always).  Upon our arrival at the ashram, during the check-in and course fees meeting at the Mandir office, Cindy said that Swami had been asking after us, wanting to know when we were due to arrive, etc.  A few days later, when it was time to go apartment shopping, Swami told Cindi to show us a "theater room" built on the roof level of the older apartment building—because the layout was similar to what was possible for a ‘triple’ in the new building, and also showed what the new design would look like when completed and all spiffy and shiny.  Our purchase decision still needed his approval—which was relayed to us as "He gives big smiles and two thumbs up!"  About a week later, after Alx & Jonathan had had an impromptu conversation with Kaleshwara, Alx said that he’d referred to the four of us—Stephanie, me, Maya and Sage (who also bought an apartment, a double right next to ours)—as "angels."

But the meeting never happened.  As the date drew nearer, it was supposed to have happened sometime in the afternoon or more probably early evening of March 8th, the day before we were due to leave for Bangalore.  Then some kind of minor family emergency came up, and he had to go deal with it.  Swaha.

I suppose there are people out there who’d be quite reasonably bothered by this missed chance, but in all honesty I wasn’t.  Simply knowing he was aware I was there was enough.  Sure I would’ve liked to have had a meeting and talk, but I really am okay with it not having happened.  It in no way impacted the quality of the rest of my visit…and besides, I’m going back.  There’ll be plenty of opportunities in the future.

Okay… it’s getting late and I didn’t quite get to our departure.  Rather than keeping you all waiting until I get on with the writing, I’ll go ahead and post this.  There’ll be one more part to come, either tomorrow or Thursday, I hope.

Here’s Part 3 of my Indian Oddysey travelog.

For Part 1, see "The Genesis."
For Part 2, see "Welcome to B’Lore"

By time we arrived in the village of Penukonda, it was full dark and we couldn’t see a thing.  There were some smallish houses, a long wall, and then the driver turned to the left and headed down a narrow road between high white walls.  We stopped at a gate where we all had to sign in, and finally pulled up to the ashram apartment.

It looked pretty much as we expected from the pictures on the ashram’s website.  A really pretty building done up in a kind of British/Indian style.  There’s another building to the northwest, currently under construction, but we couldn’t see it at the time.

Because we were there well ahead of the crowding associated with the actual Shiva Rathri observances, Stephanie and I were able to get a room to ourselves for the first week; later on, we’d have to double up with Maya and Sage, friends of ours who currently live in Felton.  When we did move in, I quipped, "At the end of this, either we’ll really like each other a lot, or we’ll kill each other."  Fortunately for us, it turned out to be the former.

As for the rooms themselves, most of them are small tidy studios.  One large room with furniture, a small kitchen area (which might or might not have any actual kitchen stuff, like refrigerator or stove), and a bathroom with a western-style toilet.  The room we stayed in at first had a pretty big bathroom, too big really, but virtually no kitchen whatsoever.  Just a fridge, which ended up being taken away after the first few days anyway because it was deemed not in good enough condition to be used.  Maya and Sage scored a nicer kitchen.  Their stove didn’t have any propane, though, but this didn’t matter because none of us did any cooking that required anything more than a hot pot.  I’d have to opine that the bathroom in that apartment was very poorly designed.  Toilet at the back, shelves over it, and an open shower head between the toilet and the door, with fixtures beneath.  Clearly not exactly designed for easy use.

Alx and Jonathan already own an apartment there, but had to deal with the aftermath of what was called "de-glasing"—an adaptation of a German word for clutter and dust.  Seems the various rooms had reached critical mass and Kaleshwar said it was important for the entire place to be cleaned up—even those rooms which hadn’t been used much.  An unfortunate result is that for the first few days, Alx and Jonathan had to reassemble their previously carefully arranged apartment.

On that first night, Stephanie and I settled in and despite the relative hardness of the beds, had a pretty decent sleep.  The following morning, we had a brief orientation with Gunther, one of the long-term residents of the ashram and student of Swami (of course).  Mostly, it was just to tell us about the customs and rules, what we should and shouldn’t do, where things were and so on.  Also information about the temple, the student and ashram offices, and how the days would typically go in terms of routine.

What can I say about the weeks that followed, other than that they were a remarkable time.  A sizeable number of Kaleshwar’s students are German, so I got a chance to unlimber my horribly rusty Deutsch (4 years of high school…and no use thereafter; still, quite a bit did come back to me).  The meditations, which often ran for hours at a time, were deeper than I’d ever gone before.  Even though the days were full with the meditations and various regular ceremonies, I still found lots of time to write.

What surprised me was how much better I wrote there.  Mostly poetry, but not exclusively—but of a quality and quantity that surprised even me.  Early on, following an impulse, I began transcribing a poem a day onto paper—I composed using my little Vaio laptop—and posted each on the ashram announcement board.  Late in the trip, Maya told me she’d seen a small crowd of people reading my latest, one person copying it down, and someone else translating it into German for their friend.  Another time, a young woman made my day—or rather, a bright spot in what at the time was a difficult day—by greeting me with, "Oh, you’re the poet!"

I could try to describe the sheer peacefulness of the ashram, but they’d just be words.  How can you truly convey peace so deep it has a physical sensation?  I’d say, "Think about what it’s like for a young child to be safe in its mother’s arms.  It was like that, only all the time."

I can’t honestly say life there was totally hassle-free, either.  There were stresses and pressures of various kinds.  The worst part for me was the mosquitos.  They adored me.  They loved me above all others.  After our arrival, each day and night, especially overnight, I would collect between six and a dozen new bites.  With each bite, my body reacted a little worse.  Two weeks into the stay, I was getting hives.

It ain’t easy meditating when you want to flay your own skin, but I managed, and usually with good humor.  Still, after the hives started, I finally got myself over to the ashram physician, who advised me to do whatever I could to avoid future bites (duh) and also gave me some benadryl capsules to take down the swelling.  It worked, and made the rest of my stay a lot more pleasant.  I’d also been helping in the student office in the evenings, which was the worst possible time to be in a room open to the outside, so I switched to early afternoon.

Which brings me to another detail, I suppose, and that’s the notion of service.  Most folks who come to the ashram are asked to help out with the work.  Sometimes it’s as simple as cleaning the communal dining area after meals.  Or helping carry cases of bottled water to the apartments.  Or running the ashram bookstore.  It’s called "seva" and it just means "selfless service."  My seva was pretty simple, just to help take care of paperwork—filing and whatnot.  Stephanie helped with dinner cleanups, and also volunteered to work in the rose gardens.  Maya also worked in the student office, and Sage provided muscles for some heavy garden work, carrying luggage and water, and some technical expertise because he knew how to refill inkjet cartridges for the copy machines.

A typical day there for me would follow a pattern.  Get up super-insane early (4:15-4:30am) for a pre-dawn ceremony in the temple.  When that was done, a lot of folks would go back to bed or head off for personal meditation time until breakfast was served.  Me, I eventually took to making myself a big mug of coffee and working on my morning journaling.  First time in ages that I saw the sun come up not just on some insomniac night, but nearly every morning—and because I’d chosen to be up.  Sometimes I’d write a poem then, or later on in the morning or early afternoon if I had a chance.  Stephanie would take the time to meditate, then go work in the garden for an hour.

Then we’d have breakfast, interesting Indian-style fare.  Most days, I’d get either an Utepam (think pancake, but with chopped onions and spices, and a spicy chutney sauce) or Masala Dosa (like a crepe, also with chutney sauce, and spicy fried potatoes on the side).  There were other choices, but those two were really tasty.  We could get fresh bananas and coconuts, too, if we wanted.  After breakfast, I’d try to get some exercise, walking around and stretching, and I might write some more.

As the days went by though, and particularly during the Shiva Rathri week itself, I would spend from 10am to noon in the temple, meditating until the noontime ceremonies.  Then lunch, served buffet style.  In case you were wondering, both lunch and evening meals tended to be similar, but varied enough to stay interesting.  Often there’d be fresh raw vegetables of some kind—tomatoes, carrots, and beets made frequent appearances.  Plain white rice in abundance, and flat breads (not sure what they were called).  I remember spiced rice dishes, potatoes in a light curry, okra in sour cream sauce, all kinds of bean dishes, and lots of things where I said, "I have no idea what this is, but it’s really good."  There would also usually be either fresh yogurt or curds from the ashram cows—and back home here, I couldn’t be persuaded to eat either of those things, but there it was delicious.

After lunch, I’d have seva (service) for an hour or two most days.  Then back to the temple for another two or three hours of meditation.  A short break, then dinner, similar offerings as lunchtime, but more of it.  Evening seva for those who had it—for me, this is when I’d work on more poetry and usually post a new one on the bulletin board.  By 8pm, it’d be time to head back to the temple for evening bhajans (songs) and a closing ceremony for the day.

If Swami Kaleshwar was going to show up to give a talk, this is usually when he’d do it.  We’d be singing bhajans, and he’d walk into the temple, sit down in his chair.  He might ask for a few songs in particular, but then he’d get into whatever he wanted to talk about for that night.

When done, whether he’d given a talk or not, we’d all head back to the apartments.  Maybe sit and chat for a little while, quietly, and then go to bed.  Most nights, we’d be down by 10:30, if not sooner.

This wasn’t the precise schedule every day, but pretty much the usual routine.  One night, there were huge storms, quite unseasonable, and we all got soaked going back to the apartments.  Another night, on our way to bhajans, I saw a small cobra under a bush; later, I had to go back to help point out where I’d seen it, because the staff takes them quite seriously.  The concern there was that people had been putting their sandals near that spot, and the juvenile cobras tend not to avoid humans as much as they should.  Jumpy and aggressive, is how they were described.  (Like the fox, I was told that seeing a cobra was also extremely auspicious, especially during Shiva Rathri—because cobras belong to Shiva.  Me, I was just shocked to see this silvery creature reared up and obviously looking at me for several seconds before it withdrew.  I’d say it was a bit over an inch in diameter, and had stood maybe three or four inches high.  No hooding though.  Probably didn’t see me as any sort of threat.)

On still another night, Swami had us all sleep in the temple, which was an interesting experience—in part because I was going through a very strange spiritual experience at the time.  (A personal matter for more private discussions…)

Backtracking a little though, at the outset of the trip, I really wasn’t sure of my direction in all this.  By time we were on our way, Stephanie knew already that she wanted to attend Kaleshwar’s year-long ’spiritual university’ program, and we both agreed that it made sense to go ahead and buy a 99-year lease on an ashram apartment.  She’d certainly be there at the ashram a great deal, and the likelihood is that I’d be visiting frequently.  We even set things up with our broker to arrange for stock sales and wire transfers.

What I didn’t know is what I’d be doing during this time, or anytime thereafter.  I figured I would spend some time in India, but how much?  No idea.  I wasn’t even sure if after the Shiva Rathri trip I’d want to go back again.  Probably, but no guarantees.

Although there are always permutations and combinations of choices, mine essentially came down to three:

1. Keep our house here in Boulder Creek and visit India from time to time (or not).  I’d have to go at least occasionally, for the sake of my marriage (or domestic partnership, if you prefer the term).  To support this, because the mortgage, taxes, insurance and living expenses are high here, I’d have to revive my technical writing business.  I wouldn’t necessarily have to do it right away, but we’d be hurting financially if I waited more than a year.  I really wasn’t looking forward to this choice, being very tired indeed of my former two decade career.

2. Sell our Boulder Creek house and rent or buy something much cheaper, either in this area or elsewhere (I didn’t particularly want to leave this area though).  The proceeds from the house sale could be invested and that’d enable both travel and living expenses for a while—although not forever.  Eventually, either I’d have to hit it as a successful author or go back to the tech writing.  I called that one the "Ten Year Solution", if renting.  If we bought another house, at best it might be five years, probably less.  The advantage of this choice is that it would allow me to spend as much or as little time in India as I wanted.  Also, we’d have a good place to store all our stuff, and an actual house to return to whenever we came home—whether for short stays or long.  When we left on our trip, this is the solution I was leaning towards most strongly.

3. Sell the BC house, put everything in storage, and just move to the ashram for the foreseeable future.  Before the Shiva Rathri trip, there’s no way I would’ve gone for this option.  Even before we left though, I knew that this was the choice with the maximum flexibility, in terms of future plans.  We could stay there for a year, two, five or more.  Invested wisely, the proceeds from our current house could enable us to live in India comfortably, if not extravagantly, indefinitely.

Upon arriving, I knew almost immediately that the ashram was a peaceful place where I could find great contentment and spiritual stimulation.  More and more, I got to thinking that I’d like to do the spiritual university program after all, and there were substantial discounts on the tuition for couples attending together.  Plus, I knew that my writing would benefit from being there in that nurturing distraction-free environment.

My moment of decision though came during the first week.  Cindy, one of the senior ashram staff managers, was showing us the new apartment building, northwest of the main gardens.  Only the bottom floors had been built and some of these apartments weren’t even complete, so sometimes we had to use our imagination as to how things would look.  Still, there was one finished single, and it looked really nice.  Marble counters, tile floors, very attractive design.  The doubles were twice the size, with an extra room available, plus a small secondary powder room for guests.  Triples… well, that just seemed like way too much space for anything less than a full family with kids.  Or people with way more money than us.

If we got one, the place where our apartment would be built was nothing more than bare rough concrete floor, piles of bricks, support pillars and a ceiling overhead; the next floor up didn’t even have the pillars done yet or its ceiling.  Still, it was enough to see what our view would be like, and having seen the other apartments, we could make some customization requests.

Standing back from the totally open edge, I still could see down into the gardens.  Across the way to the original apartment building.  Over to the right, the temple, and inside it, deep in the shadows, the tiny flames of lit candles.  That was when I said to myself, "Y’know, I could write here.  What better place could I ask for?  What better gift of as much time as I need and total freedom from worldly distractions?  And as a bonus, I get to be here, studying under an actual spiritual master."

I’ll show you here what the view looks like.

To the lower right, the big circular pool with the greenish water is the garden fountain, not running at the time.  Across the garden, the big structure is the older apartment building; closer in, there’s a one story temple building.  To the right, there’s a larger two story temple, and that’s where we did most of our meditations.  Behind it all, Penukonda’s mountain, a very holy place indeed.

I could come up with lots of words to describe all the reasons why the decision made sense.  Really though, it came down to seeing the view, looking across the way into the temple, seeing a row of candles burning in the shadows, and being struck with a sudden and overwhelming desire to live there.  Everything else was just the various realizations and rationalizations as to how and why it makes sense to me, and what I want to do with my life for the next unknown number of years.

The benefits include an atmosphere ideal for creative writing pursuits.  Near total freedom from having to worry about earning a living doing something I’ve come to hate doing (technical writing).  A spiritual path that is coming to make more and more sense to me. 

And yes, it’s crossed my mind that right now might not be a bad time to be away from America.  There’ve been some promising events in the last few months.  The GOP scandals and corruption finally coming to light.  High-level resignations.  Bush’s poll numbers dropping through the floor.

But the country of my birth, and which I love, has done things recently that are utterly shameful and completely contrary to its founding ideals and principles.  An unjustified war of aggression with Iraq.  Imprisonment of suspects without charges or trial.  People being imprisoned secretly.  People being tortured.  Searches, wiretaps, and surveillance being conducted without court warrant.  Antiwar groups, pacifist groups, vegan groups and ecological groups being spied on by the FBI.  A President who declares that he is above any and all laws, as long he invokes national security (doesn’t even have to be true, he just does it).  Horrible crimes against humanity and the planet itself, being done in my name as an American citizen.  And now threats of nuclear war with Iran.

Meanwhile, because I am a progressive liberal pacifist, there are those who would call me a traitor.  Because I question my government, I am accused of giving aid and comfort to America’s enemies.  Because I dissent and say war is always wrong, I am called a coward and appeaser.  Because I say that imprisoning innocent people and torturing anybody for any reason whatsoever is evil, I am accused of being ’soft on terrorism.’

I don’t want to be in America, earning money and paying taxes—not when some of it goes towards the purchase of bullets, bombs, and chemical munitions which are being used against unarmed civilians half a globe away.  I don’t want to support massive giveaways to wealthy people and corporations, which then have laws written that benefit only them and screw everybody else.  I’m tired of rampant selfishness, pollution, and seeing massive gas-guzzling SUVs with "support the troops" magnets on the back.

Folks, unless America changes its ways soon, it’s in for a slapdown of epic proportions.  Global warming is a reality—it’s already here and the ice caps and glaciers are disappearing fast.  Those endless huge hurricanes in 2005 were merely a hint of things to come.  With China and India rapidly advancing, oil supplies will soon start tapping out.  And just how long does America think the rest of the world will tolerate massive deficit spending and trade deficits?  Not much longer, especially if our government keeps pissing off everybody else.  Unless something changes dramatically, the coming economic collapse will dwarf the Great Depression.

So yeah, it also makes other kinds of sense to sell the house now, invest as wisely as we can, and hang out elsewhere until the inevitable feces-storm passes.

But again, I’m not running away from America.  I’m running towards something else, a place that calls to my heart.  I’ve tried to imagine how I’d feel if I suddenly changed my mind and stayed put, and all that comes up is overwhelming sadness and a sense of having lost out on a huge opportunity.

So I’m not going to miss out on the chance.  I’ve talked for many years about wanting to see the world, to gather new experiences, and this is it.

Tomorrow, assuming I have the time, I’ll write a little more about my ashram experiences, including a few more details and impressions about Kaleshwar, and the trip home.

As promised, here’s the second installment of my India trip travelogue.  For the first part, see my previous post, "Becca’s Indian Oddysey: The Genesis," available HERE.

Deposited by a friend at SFO (San Francisco International) midafternoon on Sunday, our check-in was swift and uneventful.  Even my huge hard-side suitcase was within the weight limits, although not far off from the max.  Besides certain essentials such as coffee, batteries, and international power adapters, I also brought a small folding beach-chair—an ingenious little thing with backpack straps.  It saved my life in India during some of the longer meditations, but at the cost of about 7 lbs added weight.

Our airline, British Airways, left San Francisco just about on-time, around 4:30pm, for a gruelling 12 hour flight to London.  Surprisingly, the food was edible, and by booking early we were able to reserve seats in one of the rearmost 2-across rows in the 747.  Stephanie slept for some of the time, meditated for some.  I meditated, too, particularly for a thing we’d committed to doing at midnight on full moons.  For this, we did it twice—once when California local time was midnight, and again when we were over Newfoundland, when we calculated that it was actual midnight.  Mostly, I just watched movies on the little seatback LCD screens.  Saw "Serenity" twice nearly (interrupted 1st time for dinner), the Capote biopic once, as well as the Johnny Cash one.  Oh, and Chicken Run.  Kept me entertained.

Upon landing at Heathrow, we had to walk forever—just to get to a long queue for security re-clearing.  That took close to an hour all by itself.  Then a shuttle to another terminal, where we sat and waited… and waited.  While we were there, I walked around some just to stay awake and alert.  Stephanie managed to find a currency exchange kiosk and got both some British pounds and a bunch of Indian rupies.

We both already had a taste of jet lag.  Our bodies thought we’d just stayed up all night, while local time was early afternoon already.

The next leg was rather more crowded, on a smaller plane (777).  Here, we got a nice lungful of something Alx had warned us about, some kind of insecticide/disinfectant required by the Indian government.  Don’t ask me why, I haven’t a clue, other than it stinks like hell.

Fortunately, we were both able to get some sleep during this flight, another 10 ½ hours into Bangalore.  It was now 4:30am local time, and we were both totally travel-zombified.  We took well over half an hour to clear Customs and another 15 minutes to collect our luggage.  Stephanie was pretty zonked, so I summoned my reserves—especially when it was time to deal with the travel arrangements.

Thanks be to all the divine beings Alx told us exactly what to do upon arriving.  We found a porter—making sure first he was wearing an official uniform and badge—to help with the luggage.  Then I bulled my way to the pre-paid taxi window, ignoring all the drivers in various states of dress from decidedly informal, all the way up to British Raj era gear (no kidding).  Several of them tried to get my attention, offering rides and I just kept shaking my head, wagging my hand and saying, "No, thank you.  We are doing pre-paid taxi."  We paid the guy at the window, 180 rupies for our destination, and made our way outside.

Even more crowds, all looking to scam, scheme, deal and beg.  I couldn’t believe the crowds at that time of the day, it was crazy.  I was holding together, but not so well.  We found a driver, no problem, but along the way to his minivan we were accosted by a bunch of guys who wanted to "help".  Meanwhile, Stephanie saw a nearly naked one-legged beggar and gave him money—but then she got in trouble with all our ‘helpers’ because they wanted tips, and all she had was big bills.  Gah…

Finally, I had to tell them all to go away, stop bothering us, there was no more money to be given.  So sorry, we didn’t ask for the help in the first place, etc.

Again remembering Alx’s coaching, I made sure to repeat our destination several times to the driver.  "It’s the Empire Hotel, near the Museum Inn, on Church Street, near Brigade Road," I would say.  "Yes, yes madam," the driver would reply.  Apparently, there’s another Empire Hotel, hence the warning.

Alx also told me a magic phrase for getting full attention, but only for a couple seconds.  It’s "Do one thing"—then quickly say, in as few words as possible, what you need.  Really does seem to work.  Even better if you can say it with a bit of an Indian intonation:  "Listen, I am telling you: Do one ting.  Empire Hotel, Church Street, near Museum Inn and Brigade Road."

The roads were nearly empty at this pre-dawn hour, and our driver drove like everybody does in India—totally without fear and with questionable sanity.  Again, we’d been warned about this, so I just tried to sit back and not worry about it.

We arrived at the Empire, actually one of the side entrances, along Church Street, and at first I wasn’t sure we were in the right place.  Luckily, we were.  A small crowd of red-uniformed bellmen (on duty at 5am?!) took all our bags in.  Here’s where our karma paid off:  After getting out, Stephanie accidentally left her wallet in the cab.  The driver found and returned it to her, right away.

As for getting checked in, if Jonathan Rosen weren’t already married to Alx and, well, not really my type, and I wasn’t already claimed…I’d marry him.  He’d set up everything beforehand with the hotel staff.  All we had to do was sign in and we were shown to our room.  Which was just as well, because I was no longer quite coherent, and Stephanie dead on her feet.

Jonathan, Alx, and our friends Maya and Sage had preceeded us by a couple days, by way of Singapore, and we planned to meet up with them later that morning.  Meanwhile, we got to crash for a few hours.  After a quick breakfast, around 10am we all met up to embark on our first day of orientation and shopping in Bangalore (or B’lore as many call it), starting with a rickshaw ride over to the Brigade Road shops.  Alx and I split off to get coffee and start the process for acquiring a cell phone (for foreigners, one must have some passport-sized photos).  Everybody else started their own shopping.  Eventually, we reunited and continued.

Same thing on Wednesday and part of Thursday—lots more shopping and getting ready for the trip out to the ashram in Penukonda.  I have to say, it was literally invaluable having Alx and Jonathan with us, as they were the best possible ‘native guides’.  They knew where everything was, how to work the system—even how to arrange for a pair of very nice vehicles for the 3-hour ride into the countryside.

It was quite a culture shock for me…but I’ll admit that I had a peculiar thought upon arriving in B’lore, that the place seemed oddly familiar.  A kind of bemused resignation, also.  Something like, "Here again…I really thought I was done with this place…"

But first, more about B’lore:  A sometimes jarring mix of old and new.  There’s abject poverty right next to affluence, and everything in between.  Lame beggars in carts, blind women on sidewalks, and often children putting their fingers to their mouths in a universal gesture of "Hungry"–wherever possible, and where it made sense, we would give them 1, 2, or 5 rupi coins (1 rupi = 2.25 cents).  We learned the word "beh-la," which means a firm "no" (I got a hint later that it was slightly rude…but sometimes one does need to be a touch rude with extra pushy vendors).  Later on, especially when being confronted by endless street merchants selling hand drums, plastic cobras, huge laminated maps of India and lots of other stuff I didn’t need, I found an eyes-closed head shake accompanied by a shake of my hand in my own universal gesture for "No thank you" to be effective.

It would take some weeks for me to learn the Indian head-waggle.  Usually accompanied by a small enigmatic smile, I gathered it more or less means, "Yes perhaps, but I cannot guarantee."

For example, "Can you have these clothes ready by 2pm Thursday, for sure?"  "Yes, madam.  I shall endeavor."  Head-waggle.

It wasn’t just beggars (of which there really weren’t that many, perhaps a couple each block) or wandering sidewalk merchants.  Mostly just great crowds of people going here and there with great purpose.  It felt a little weird at times, to realize that with my white skin and red/brown hair, I was very distinctly in a small minority.

We did the majority of our shopping on a length of Brigade Road (pronounced ‘Briggid’), or MG Road (Mahatma Ghandi Road).  For the clothes though, as well as linens and some other items, we hired some cars and spent an afternoon on Commercial Street.

Both areas, shops and stores would be crammed into every available space.  Street level, below and above.  Plus people selling stuff on the sidewalks and in the streets.  A total cacophony of commerce.

As for the shopping itself, we had a specific list—but also, Alx and Jonathan wanted to show us as many places as possible, because we all knew we’d be back through again from time to time (little did we realize…).  So we checked out coffee shops, electronic stores, money changers, housewares stores.  Besides having some punjabi-style clothes tailored (plain dress, leggings, and scarves, all in white or nearly so), we also bought a few off-the-rack outfits.  As I mentioned, we bought an unlocked cell phone and a pre-paid SIM card for the B’lore area, a hot-pot, some dishes and utensils, towels and linens, and other odds and ends.  Cushions for sitting in the temple.  Lots of stuff.

Labor is obviously still very cheap there, because in situations where here in the States we might have one person doing the job, there they might have three people—all very eager to please, to bring tea, and to show you everything in the store.  Literally, ask to see a sari, and in ten minutes they’ll empty the shelves in front of you.

The labor costs are reflected also in the prices.  If something merely takes work—like clothes—it tends to be ridiculously cheap.  I got an entire embroidered punjabi outfit for about $20(US).  A gorgeous scarf might run $6.  If it requires expensive materials, like electronics for example, expect to pay about as much as we do in the States.

About the pricing:  I did not see or experience what I would call true bazaar-style haggling.  However, if we were in a store for a long time and buying a lot of stuff, especially if it was on the expensive side, we’d try to get a dialog going with the owner.  If we were around long enough to be offered tea or chai, we both knew that the merchant was about to score a big deal and we could likely get a 10% discount off the marked prices.  Win-win for everybody.

Alx’s travel tip #67:  When in a good chat with someone, especially if you are doing business, try to make a point to ask for a business card and the person’s "good name" (their first name).  As in, "Excuse me sir, but might I know your good name?"  Or, "Thank you, madam, could I have the honor of knowing your good name?  And do you have a card?"  (Check ankles for bracelets and toes for rings…otherwise, if the woman is young and anklet-less, she’s ‘miss’.  Usually, if she’s working in a shop, she’ll be married.)  Write it down.  Keep the card.  Next time you are there, as for that person by name.  Save lots of money, have a good shopping experience.

Of the stores we visited, I’d have to say I found Chandni, the deity statue store, to be the most enjoyable and magical.  Imagine walking into a small shop crammed into a corner of what used to be a government utility building—and all around you, on every shelf, on tables, on the floor, and hanging from the ceiling, there are Indian deities and divine souls.  Ganesh, Laxshmi, Vishnu, Bramha, Kali, Durga, Shiva, Hanuman, Rama, Vinkateshwara, lots of others…and of course, Shirdi Sai Baba.

We were in there for at least two hours, and we got the full-on Welcome Customer treatment.  Each of us had our own salesperson showing us things.  We were served delicious hot chai.  We were told stories about some of the items in the store.  One of the reasons we’d gone to this place in particular is that it’s Kaleshwar’s favorite statue shop in all of Bangalore.  Being in there, feeling the pervasive energy, I could understand why.  I was like being surrounded by divinity, contained within it.

Adding to the fun was the fact that power was out for much of that afternoon, a not uncommon event in India, just about anywhere. In the countryside, power fails for a while just about every single day.  So there we are in this dimly-lit shop, buying statues and jewelry and generally being treated like we were the most important customers they’d received all week.  Marvelous.  After finishing our choices and getting the totals however (minus 10% of course), we couldn’t complete the transaction because they were unable to run our credit cards.  With the total running into the tens of thousands of rupis (several hundred dollars US), we really couldn’t go with cash.  The remarkable thing is they simply wrapped up our purchases, gave them to us and told us just to come back in a few hours to complete the transactions.

I said to Alx, "Wow, they trust us that much?"  She grinned and replied, "They know we’re going to Kaleshwar’s ashram.  Would you want that kind of karma? And what would happen when he found out?"  My answer was no, emphatically, but neither could I imagine not paying.  I was just surprised at the trust engendered solely from a personal second-hand relationship.  They knew and loved Kaleshwar; we were his students—therefore we were assumed to be utterly trustworthy.  (We did, of course, go back a few hours later and paid for everything.  The address is Shop #12, 1st Floor (which in India means 2nd floor to us Westerners), Public Utility Building, MG Road, Bangalore, 560 001.)

So that was shopping.  Imagine lots of cramped little shops with linens, housewares, electronics, clothes, etc., and you have the basics of shopping in India.  In most cases it’s hard to buy more than you can carry at any given time, unless you’re able to arrange either for a car or for delivery back to one’s hotel.

How about more of the B’lore ambience?  I was warned about the smells.  I’m sorry to say, often very bad smells.  No, not the people… personal cleanliness is a high virtue in India.  But if you ever saw standing water, it would be a good idea to give it a wide berth, because there’s a good chance it came from a very bad place indeed.  The trucks and rickshaws (the latter of which ran on kerosene) would belch smoke and fumes into the air.

Then there was the noise.  A near-constant cacophony of voices, traffic, and horns.  I wrote about this in a poem, but relaying it here: The drivers in India communicate extensively and expressively using their horns.  At night, they use their lights, too—brights, regular, parking and off.  They have to, because the roads are so clogged with trucks, tractor-hauled lorries, vans, SUVs, cars, motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles and pedestrians, it’s a wonder they can move at all.  Volume that would cause utter gridlock here in the States is a normal day for these folks.  Painted lines on the streets to indicate lanes are merely a suggestion.  There are some traffic lights at the bigger intersections, but even these are rare.

For a few hours late at night, the city grows quiet.  Say from about 2am to 5am.  But as soon as the city wakes up, so do the horns and a constant dull roar of voices.  The Empire Hotel was right across the street from a private school, and we could often hear the kids shouting and laughing on their way to and from there, or out in the walled yards for exercise periods and recess.

The language:  Almost everybody there with any education has at least some English.  But be prepared for British-isms, because that’s where they got it from.  Interesting in an odd way, how even though they’re gone, the British gave India the one thing it had lacked previously: A common language.  Of course, this does not mean the speaker is intelligible to the average American listener…  I had to say, "Excuse me, could you repeat that?" far more often than I would’ve liked.  I imagine I’ll develop a better ear for it in time.

The food:  Okay, this was always really good, but possibly because Alx and Jonathan knew the best places to eat.  The Bamboo Restaurant in the Museum Inn had fabulous Chinese and Thai food, and not only did we all have a late lunch there one day, Maya, Sage, and I also stopped in for dinner on our way back home (Stephanie was ill that night… more on that later in this travelogue).  We also visited the Oberoi Hotel a few times, a super-swanky five-star establishment that simply oozes luxury.  It was totally out of our reach for staying there, but the restaurants on site were totally reasonable.  For what we’d pay for a cheap dinner at our local Boulder Creek brew-pub, we could have a very nice meal at the Oberoi, and in stunningly gorgeous surroundings.  The gardens there are worth the visit alone.

On Thursday, our third and final day in B’lore before leaving for Penukonda, we completed our final shopping.  Bought a last few essentials, hit the grocery store for last minute supplies and foodstuffs, gathered all our gear and luggage and crammed it into a pair of huge SUVs.  Having worked his connections, Jonathan scored us a couple of the ashram’s own vehicles and drivers.  Probably a good idea since there were the six of us, plus a ton of luggage and junk.  Along the way out, we stopped at the Commercial Street store where we’d ordered the punjabi outfits made up—and lucky for us, they were all ready.

It took a while to clear the city.  Alx kept remarking at how much the roads had been widened and improved in just the year she’d been gone.  Apparently a lot of the two-lane roads are being replaced by actual 4-lane highways.  Progress…

About halfway to the ashram, we stopped briefly at a roadside convenience store for some drinks and to use the restrooms, then pushed on.  Soon after, it was dark—and that was when I learned how drivers use their lights to communicate.  They also drive just as crazy, and pass in situations where even I wouldn’t.  (And I’m often considered rather wreckless…  No way in hell I’ll ever drive in India.)

We drove very fast… often going even faster in the tiny, and obviously very poor villages along the way.  We’d been told that there are sometimes brigands along the roads, and that to stop is a very bad idea.  Especially the further out from the city you get.

At one point late in the drive, we stopped for gas.  Shortly after pulling back onto the road, our driver spotted a fox crossing the road ahead of us.  Supposedly this is a very lucky and auspicious thing to happen.  I just thought it was pretty cool.

Thus endeth today’s installment.  Join us tomorrow for "The Ashram Experience."

A poem for you, my friends… I promise I will continue with the India story itself tomorrow.

Out of India

During his last public appearance
Paramahansa Yogananda recited his poem
"My India"
He closed with these lines:
     I love thee, O my India,
     And thy love I will give
     To every brother-nation that lives.
     God made the earth, and man made his confining countries,
     And their fancy-frozen boundaries.
     But with the new-found love I behold—
     The borderland of my India expanding into the world.
     Hail, mother of religions, lotus, scenic beauty, and sages!
     Thy wide doors are open,
     Welcoming God’s true sons through all the ages,
     Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves and men dream God.
     I am hallowed; my body touched that sod!
…and promptly, tragically, collapsed and died.

Beyond any doubt, Yogananda
had India in his heart
and in his spirit

I am home less than a week
from India

Surrounded by all the
Trappings
of my old life
     the people
     the places
     the distractions
an experience I thought to hold dear
has already deserted me

No peace
no serenity
no contentment
     only stress
     digestive upset
     insomnia
     and migraines

I have never
felt so far from India
    (my India…)
as I do now

It was easier
when I was ignorant
for I did not know
what I was missing

Homesick already
for a land I barely know

My body is not hallowed
though it has touched that sod
that sacred ground
and part of me has remained behind

That part, that absent piece
feels more alive and vital
than all the rest of me

There is only one solution
for my dilemma:
     To return
     and to stay
To make India
     mine

- Becca Morn, 16 March 2006

Good day, dear Imaginary Readers,

I know I’ve been promising the story of my recent spiritual adventures in India for some time now, but haven’t delivered.  I offer today the first installment.  Each day after this, I hope/plan to post more.

This first post deals primarily with the background.  Basically, how and why did I ever decide to go visit India in the first place, and what drew me to study with Sri Swami Kaleshwar.  Here we go…

Procrastination and distraction are mighty powerful here back home.  People keep asking about the various things—How was the trip?  What happened?  Why did we go?—and I’ve offered up bits and pieces.  The questions become all the more insistent when I let it be known that my partner and I are planning on moving to India in June.  And with no immediate plans for a return other than to say, "Someday…"  (I had a particularly difficult conversation with my mother one morning not long after our return…)

First of all, if you’re at all curious about where in India I’m going and some of the details behind my personal spiritual journey that led me there in the first place, I direct you to my blog entries—particularly those in the blog category related to Sri Kaleshwar.  You might want to read them in reverse order, too, to get a better sense that this decision to move to India wasn’t impulsive.  Nor, as has been suggested, is it a reaction to the current U.S. government (which has taken a disturbingly authoritarian bent in the last couple of years…).

Not have I gone insane, although I’m sure there are some who would call my sanity into question anyway.  Whatever.

It’s incredibly hard for me to find the beginning of any particular story, because I’m always asking, "Yes, but what happened before that?"  If I had to pick a beginning for my interactions with Kaleshwar (or Kaleshwara…I’ve seen it pronounced/written both ways), it was (believe it or not) a dream I had, back in the spring of 2000.

I’ve often had vivid, significant dreams, but this one was off the scale.  It was one of those huge carnage and violence nightmares.  Cars crashing, people injured and dying in very messy ways, flames and destruction—and needless to say, I was freaking out and near to panic.  Then, all of a sudden, a young, skinny dark-skinned guy literally bounced and danced into view, like gravity barely existed for him.  He dropped right in front of me, grabbed me by both shoulders and, with his face mere inches from mine so that all I could see were his eyes and huge grin, he said, "Don’t worry!  Everything will be okay!"

He gave my shoulders a quick reassuring squeeze and jumped away, disappearing who-knows-where.  Still in a little shock, I looked around me at the explosions and wreckage, and realized, ‘My god… this is obviously too much.  I don’t know how I could’ve been fooled—of course, this is just a dream, an illusion.’  Despite knowing I was just in a dream, there were all these injured people around me.  Dream people, not really real, but still I felt responsible to try to help.  So I took off my shirt, tore it into strips, and began binding the wounds.

Later that day, still feeling like something weird had happened (I mean, beyond my usual strain of ‘weird’), I went to have tea with my dear friend, Alx Uttermann (she of the Alx & Jonathan Karmatalk fame).  She was recently returned from India herself, having been over there on her own spiritual journey (back then, she still spelled her name ‘Alex’).  Eventually, I told her about my crazy dream.  When I got to the point where the skinny brown guy showed up, she grinned hugely, and gestured toward a photo on a shelf in her kitchen.  "Look familiar?" she asked.

Dumbfounded and feeling a little shocked, I said slowly, "Ye-s-s…but the guy in my dream had much shorter hair.  Not all bushy like that."  He definitely looked like the young fellow in my deam, no mistake, except for the hair.

Alx laughed.  "He just got a haircut last Saturday!"

I was intrigued and we talked more on spiritual matters, including what Kaleshwar was doing, his philosophy of making masters of his students.  Alx gave me a personal mantra, and within a few weeks she left for India, not to return for any length of time for years.

Here’s a funny detail:  I completely blocked all recollection of the dream, the talk, the mantra—all of it—until just a few months ago.  I mean, I could remember that she and I had gotten together a few times during her infrequent returns, but that dream and conversation?  Nada, nothing, nichts.  When she reminded me, at first I thought she was pulling my leg…and then the memory came back.

As I said though, in some ways that doesn’t quite feel like the beginning of the story either.  There was the fact that Alx was literally the first super-close non-romantic friend I made here in Boulder Creek.  So I could possibly go back to the day, sitting in the no-longer-existing Boulder Creek Bistro coffee shop, working on my novel (still unsold, alas), and the sudden urge I had to introduce myself to this sparkly, vivacious young woman with charisma like a 500 watt spotlight.

Or further back, to my decision to relocate to the Santa Cruz mountains in the first place, discovering upon my first business trip visit that the whole area called to me as home.  Somewhere where I wanted to be, even though it was completely alien to any prior experience.  Until then, I’d not been west of Chicago in my entire life, and had lived either near Pittsburgh or in eastern Pennsylvania right up until age 34.

Still, I suppose the dream marks the most logical starting point.  The reason I’d prefer to start there is because of what came after.  After Alx went back to India.  If I have my chronology right, later that year, in the autumn, we were having financial difficulties.  My partner Stephanie’s salary from the company she helped found, Modular Integrated Technologies, had dried up due mainly to the dot-com bust.  (They’re still limping along, hoping for a buyer for their unique command/control inventions.)  Me, I’d been struggling to find technical writing work and not having a lot of luck.  Eventually my fortunes turned though, and I landed a sweet contract at Cisco.

What happened after that was essentially the fulfilment of any ambition I might’ve had in launching a career in technical writing in the first place.  As word spread of my reputation for hard work, perfectionism, and technical expertise, I began landing more contracts.  Eventually, I had more work than I could handle, so I drafted Stephanie to join me in what became an LLC partnership company, Morn Enterprises.  Together, we made more money than I’d ever had before.  At one point, I was working a little over 2 ½ full-time contracts…and that’s when I crashed and burned.

One of the clients was Cisco, and I was determined to do right by them, working on documentation for their new terabit routing systems.  Another was a small wireless networking start-up…which had woefully misrepresented the state of their source documentation.  And the third part-time (I’d actually call it about 2/3, because I was putting in over 30 hours a week for them) was serving as a recruiter and candidate screener for another technical writing contract house.

Long story shortened slightly, I completely trashed my arms and hands.  A whole cascade of repetitive stress injuries including carpal tunnel syndrome, ulnar neuritis (nerve compression resulting in finger weakness and numbness), lateral epicondylitis (aka ‘tennis elbow’), and DeQuervain’s disease (an inflammation of the thumb joint, very painful).  In time, I had a full recovery, no surgery required, but only because I took my doctor’s warnings seriously.  I cut down to just a single contract, and followed religiously my physical therapist’s directions.

Nevertheless, I knew something wasn’t right with my life.  Where were all my dreams of writing novels?  Was this all I had to look forward to, another 20 years or so of writing computer-related crap that’s obsolete within months of publication, followed by a retirement in which I wonder where all the time went?

I had a suspicion that the physical problems weren’t just an indication of overwork, but also something far more basic.  Later, I would learn the word kriya—literally meaning ’soul-cry’.  Essentially, it means that your soul cries out in some non-verbal fashion, and something big happens to get your attention.  Well, being faced with the reality of not being able to write my fiction and poetry anymore?  That got my attention, big-time.

I wasn’t quite done though.  In taking all those contracts, I got to see what life would be like if I spent virtually all of it in the pursuit of more money, more money.  I switched from the terabit router project at Cisco to a different one, under less stressful conditions.  However, even with just the one contract, I learned of the other possible path ahead of me, the one leading inexorably towards a safe and stable career—with me moving into project management.  Although I started out merely as a senior contractor writer for a new router product line, I was the documentation project lead during the last three months of what was literally a billion-dollar market rollout.  I had a half dozen people reporting to me, and although I wasn’t making any more money and actually there wasn’t any particular risk to my hands, my work-days kept expanding.

Believe it or not, even before I agreed to serve as substitute Doc Lead (the original Cisco staffer needed to go on extended leave), I already knew it was nearing time for me to get out.  At the end of that contract, I opted not to have it renewed and also scuttled any plans to have me hired as a regular employee (that had actually been in the works).

I went on what I called my sabbatical, and rewrote my epic fantasy novel manuscript, and began shopping that around.  This took me up to the springtime of last year, 2005.

Then Alx came back home, this time ostensibly to stay, with her new husband, Jonathan Rosen.  They began teaching what they’d learned in India, and I was curious enough to see what it was all about.  I attended fire pujas, learned mantras and meditation.
That’s when the really weird stuff started happening.  Against my better judgment, I interrupted my sabbatical and took another part-time contract at Cisco, doing maintenance-type documentation work on that same router product line.  Low stress, part-time, higher than my normal rate, and nobody reporting to me.  Should’ve been a piece of cake, right?

Wrong.  Especially ‘wrong’ when one’s soul decides to start shrieking again.  A surface explanation is that I had the bad luck of suffering two accidents in quick order, resulting in badly injured sacral-illial (SI) and right hip joints.  Su-u-ure…  It’s obvious to me that something in me really, really did not want to go back to that old career again.

This left me with a deteriorating physical condition though, one which grew steadily worse as the weeks went by.  (I discussed all this elsewhere in my blog, so I’m going to avoid recounting it yet again.)  See my posts from July of last year for the details.  Through the intercession of Jonathan, Alx, and Stephanie, I received a miracle healing.  Overnight, boom.  All better.  Neither my doctor nor chiropractor could explain it.

This got my attention.  I still didn’t know what to do about it, and again, a lot of this stuff is discussed in various posts on my blog across the last year.  Fast-forward to last November when, in Laytonville, I’m standing in front of Kaleshwar—who has just performed a miracle in front of me—and he’s saying I should come to India.

So I did.  I’d thought at first it might be this coming June, but Stephanie in particular seemed anxious to go sooner, and so we decided to attend the festival of Shiva Rathri, plus add some weeks before it and some days after.  Including travel time, this padded the entire trip out to four weeks.

(Thus endeth the first installment…  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about my initial impressions and adventures in Bangalore.)

I apologize, those of my Imaginary Readers, who might still be haunting this place despite my long absence.  Before leaving, I was given all kinds of warnings about the dangers of drinking unfiltered water or eating certain foods.

In India, I was fine.  No problems whatsoever.

This changed the day after I got back home.  Since then, I’ve been sick as the proverbial dog, and I have spent entirely too much time reaquainting myself with our bathroom.

I promise a much longer accounting of my adventures in India, both in Bangalore and at Kaleshwar’s ashram in Penukonda, to be posted at some future date.  Also, I might as well break the news here and now: I am going back in June, to attend Kaleshwar’s one year university program.  We’re selling our house, putting our stuff in storage — and we’ve already bought an apartment at the ashram.  (Nothing says one is serious like a real estate investment, eh?)  Unlike this last trip though, I am going to try to get some moderately regular Internet access set up, and although I won’t be able to post daily, I should be able to manage weekly blog posts.

What I won’t be able to do — nor am I inclined to continue — is my political commentary, at least not to any huge degree.  If you’ve visited here much at all, you know how I feel about the current U.S. government.  The GOP is a hopelessly corrupt and criminal political party basically so wrapped up in keeping power and making rich people richer, they don’t care what they destroy.  As for Bush and his administration?  Both incompetent and pathologically megalomaniacal.  In fact, probably the only thing that’s kept us from total destruction at this point so far is the fact that they’re so breathtakingly incompetent.

Kinda like the way Doctor Smith never quite managed to destroy the Jupiter 2, on "Lost in Space."  Or maybe a more apt analogy would be Gilligan, only hopped up and all sociopathic on a stash of crystal meth that floated into the island lagoon one shipwrecked day.  That’s Bush for ya.

Anyway, I had some really remarkable experiences.  B’lore, as we call it, was a loud, crowded, interestingly-aroma’d city — but a lot of fun, especially once I got the hang of the shopping thing.  And the ashram… well, I’ve never been anyplace more peaceful and serene.  If anything, I’m having severe adjustment problems, being back — especially as I look forward to three months of packing and getting our house ready for sale.

Now then, I promised you folks a poem, and I keep my word.  This is one I wrote at the ashram, and with utmost honesty here, I have NO idea where it came from.  I just sat down one night, and this thing practically wrote itself.

Signal Fire

Light the signal fire, my friend
for the armies are on the march

Dust raised by tens of thousands
of tattered leather boots
creates inadvertent prophecy for us
in a blood-red sunset

They bring spears
war-elephants and chariots
battle-wagons and battering rams
siege engines to fling diseased corpses
over the parapets

Light the signal fire
for though these walls are high
and have never before been breached
nothing stands for an eternity

Were their generals to order
the men to turn aside
still, mortar crumbles
rain, ice and wind
merely taking a little longer while
than hurled boulders

You say we shall withstand the armies
and keep our walls in good repair
What happens when you are gone
and your sons, and their sons after them
leaving none to remember
in the chasm of time
why the walls were ever built
in the first place?

Eventually, inevitably
they will fall
We are but temporary stewards

Yet light the signal fire, I say
for this is our place
our duty, in this time
to fight and stand true
to die, if that is our fate

What comes after
is not our concern

Light the signal fire
or, if you will not do it
give me the torch

- (c) 2006, Rebecca Morn

I know I was a little cagey about my recent time away from the blog — but that’s because I was just in India for the last month, attending an event known as ‘Shiva Rathri’ at the Shiva Sai Mandir Ashram (the one run by Kaleshwar) in Penukonda.

I’ll write lots more soon…but suffice it to say that flying back from India in two hops (Bangalore to UK, and from there to San Francisco) was a rather arduous journey to be making in less than 24 hours.  I made it, but one of my checked bags didn’t (it’s supposed to be delivered sometime tomorrow or Sunday), because it failed to make the connecting flight.

Anyway, I’m tired but very happy.  I had an amazing time there.

Hello my dear Imaginary Readers,

If you’ve been reading this blog over the last year, you might think that my primary focuses are:

• Political commentary, particularly from my own progressive/liberal point of view
• Creative writing and poetry
• Technology and gadget reviews
• And the old Jeopardy category of "Potporri" — in this case a mix of humor, recipies, and occasional weird items I happen to run across

Then there’s the other stuff.  The philosophy and religion.  Given the search engine hits I see on an average of 4-6 times a week (sometimes more), by typing the name Kaleshwar (some say Kaleshwara), I’m going to generate a bunch more hits.

For those curious, you’d probably learn best from the source, his website, HERE.  His mission, to put it simply, is to make living saints out of all of us.  Everyone.  A truly amazing thing to be promising, that anybody who does the work can literally become a Master.

I have to come at this, of course, from the other side of things.  And in my own peculiar way.  I am always asking questions, wanting to know ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘what for’.  Plus I didn’t wake up as a divine soul when I was a kid.  I spent 43 years slogging along, just trying my best to be an ordinary human…while at the same time suspecting there were a number of decidedly un-ordinary things about me.

About ten years ago, I went though some huge life-changes.  Like really huge.  Only these just brought more questions.  The old "Who am I?" became even more pertinent than ever, and the answer to that much harder to formulate.  Particularly since there are things about me that simply refuse to fit the normal categorizations.

So I’ve been seeking.  Seeking what, I didn’t quite know until recently.  The main thing was I’d come to the conclusions that (1) a general policy of Agnosticism wasn’t working out for me, and (2) I wasn’t getting anywhere on my own.  It was like being inside one of those little brass djinn bottles on the shores of the River Styx (I’m a bit of a scholar on the topic of Dante’s Divine Comedy).  Bound up in a pocket-universe with little in the way of good answers, excepting for what I could glean from friends and learned persons… and I also have had a personal ’spirit guide’ or angel or OverSoul keeping an eye on me.

The trouble with ignorance though is that not only don’t you know the answers, you also can’t even formulate good questions.

On this topic, I’ve given a lot of thought, too.  And ever since the miraculous healing I experienced last summer (happened way back HERE), I’ve gotten lots of wake-up calls — almost all of them pointing towards Sri Kaleshwara.  The message, too, seems clear:  I need a guru.

Now, get those images of paisley and the 60s out of your head, John Lennon and all that.  At the surface level, guru simply means ‘teacher’.  Someone who knows more than you do, and can help teach you what he or she knows.  The term ‘guru’ however takes on spiritual connotations, correctly so, but also includes an essential fact:  That the guru is himself or herself willing to do whatever it takes to teach the student, even if it is difficult or causes the guru suffering.

In this, for instance, Jesus was just about the greatest guru there ever was.  He gave up his life, to teach generations the lessons he brought.  The guru feels such love for the students that any sacrifice is not too much.

But the student must be willing to listen.  To have an open heart and mind.  There’s a lot that Sri Kaleshwara teaches that does not make sense to me.  I don’t "get" the whole concept of Vaastu, particularly not if this whole reality we live in is an illusion anyway.  Even the ideas of the Five Elements and energy channels and all that — I quite frankly don’t understand those either, even though I have done the forms.

The thing that balances it out and keeps me going are indeed the ongoing weird events, added to the decidedly significant internal changes in my attitudes, moods, and general outlook.  Truly, when people ask me these days how I’m doing, more often than not, I answer "Absolutely great.  You?"  Not all the time — I haven’t become a Stepford Wife robot nor some starry-eyed mystic chaser.

I’m still me.  Approaching my 43rd birthday later this month.  Still feeling entirely human and normal and bound by the same concerns that affect everybody else.  I like my toys, including especially my little Miata (that’s a material attachment, in case you were wondering).  I have good days and bad.  Something in me feels entirely ordinary, an average gal like everyone else and unique in the same way everybody’s unique.

And yet, there’s this quiet voice that’s beginning to suggest that maybe I could be more.

So, hence the need for a guru.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there, not as a plug for Kaleshwara himself or these specific spiritual practices — although if you want accessible, clear, powerful, and relatively quick, I haven’t seen anything else even close.  Even not understanding the ‘why’, I keep seeing that his teachings actually do work.  The real point though is to keep an eye out, not just for a teacher — although those are essential too — but rather for those gurus who enter our lives.  And this applies, in my opinion, to every religion, every faith.  There are gurus in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zen, Hindu, Native American faiths — all of them.

Me, I think I’ve found mine.  Of course the next step will be to see if he wants me as a student.

Early last year, dear friends of mine, Alx Uttermann and Jonathan D. Rosen, returned from India.  Since then, they’ve embarked on a spiritual teaching venture, with healings and miracles and everything.  As I’ve said elsewhere about Sri Sai Kaleshwara, these folks are the Real Deal.  Honest.

Something I’ve done for them recently has been to assemble and manage their website, KarmaTalk (there’s a link to the site in the right column of this blog).

They also happen to belong to a music group, The Mystic JAMMS Band, along with Maya & Sage (hugely talented musicians themselves), and Martin Lawrence.

The reason I’m mentioning this today is that The Mystic JAMMS Band, has released a new single, and it is an amazing work, both gorgeous and haunting at the same time.  Derived from a powerful mantra given by Sri Sai Kaleshwara, this song can bring incredible soul peace and divine blessings.

It’s called the "Om Mama Blessing Mantra", and is available here in MP3 format (along with several other tunes).

Enjoy!  And please feel free to share this with whomever you like.

When I saw Sri Kaleshwar Swami (SK for short) last November, he manifested a gemstone for me. (To ‘manifest’ means to summon or create out of seeming nothingness.)

I won’t get into the deeper significance of what was actually a really intense teaching / soul-communication experience.But here I am with this gorgeous pink / purple / blue gem, oval brilliant cut, roughly 20cm by 16cm, 6cm deep. A few very minor flaws, and what looks like inclusions. The cut itself is exceedingly well done, with an incredible number of facets on the backside of the gem. I described the color as I did, because it keeps changing its apparent shade, even under similar lighting conditions. Sometimes it’s pinkish, sometimes more purple (dominant hue), occasionally seems just sky blue with only a hint of any reddishness. I’ll put it away, get it out a few hours later, and suddenly it’s something else. Also, sometimes the color is quite intense, other times it’s almost clear. (As I write this, it’s in one of it’s ‘nearly clear’ phases.)

The prism effects, when you put it up close to your eye and look at a light source, are very strong, and with the exceedingly flashy ‘fire’ of the jewel, it obviously has a high index of refraction. It’s rather heavy, too.

(More after the break) (more…)