Harmony and Bliss

Some places just feel different.

Like memories of grandmother’s kitchen – either of them, a warm place filled with love, hope and dreams.

Focusing on only the positive places of these for a moment, there are many that are commonly feeling – that everyone can share that same positive feeling about.

Vestibules of churches, usually have this feeling – from all the weddings, services and general positive energy that has passed through them over time.

I know that part of what makes these places feel different is concerted effort, but its also just daily routine of consistency. Energy flows, and if it repeatedly flows through a place in harmony then the place will have a harmonic feeling to it.

Much like if you paint over a wall green for long enough, eventually the wall becomes green, the essence and sense of green.

I’m not certain what I expected to find coming to India, I had a friend tell me as a well wishing as I was on the flight here, she hoped I found what I was seeking. I really didn’t understand that I was seeking, but I do now.

Sometimes the best things in life are the ones that stop and run you over like a happy wave of positive emotion.

I love it here. Its crowded, and bustling, and my rational mind can think of all sorts of not pleasant things to describe the reality of it here. My heart however, is so busy soaring, that it refuses to allow my mind to take root with any of those things.

When I return home, I’m certain the reality of the specifics will bend its will around me once more, but for now, for this brief moment of respite, I will embrace and indulge in the harmony and bliss I feel utterly swept up and contained within.

It feels like a comforting warm blanket of hope and possibility. I keep finding incredible irony in the fact that this city is just as crowded as NY was, and I do not feel engulfed and swallowed here, I feel embraced.

We did sight seeing yesterday. Its a festival time here in Pune now, and there are decorations all around, so many people all dressed up and happy, moving from place to place.

We sat in the hotel lobby yesterday morning after breakfast, and enjoyed people watching. There was a large baby shower gathering in the hotel conference center, and it was wonderful to watch all of the people arrive to the hotel dressed up and in local attire.

There were children running screaming and playing in the lobby, and I was caught up in the moment of enjoying it, rather than feeling that overwhelming sense of dread that someone should be scolding them. I looked around, and the adults, they were just allowing the children to be children, and this was such a profound sense of rightness to me.

We went shopping, I got to haggle — not something I find particularly enjoyable — and apparently made good trades. I found so many wonderful and beautiful things, we shopped, toured, and explored all around Pune.

We had lunch at this chain Indian Barbecue style restaurant, where they put the charcoal in the middle of the table, the food was great, and we ate far far too much. The vegetarian options seem to be something I’m actually enjoying significantly more, and they are just so much more prevalent in abundance.

The next stop was a coffee shop, a local version of a Starbucks, on a cobble style street, with very high steps, as this area apparently floods in the rainy season – which the humidity here attests is stretching to linger a few weeks longer than normal. P was sweating buckets in a few of the places in which we shopped, I personally have found the temperature, all be it very humid, not uncomfortable. Its warm, but the air moves, and there is not a stifling sense in the air. Even when the air is still, there is a sense of well being, hope and abundance that permeates the air. Permeates the soul.

We did a tour of the city from air conditioned vehicle, I will explore out a bit more later this week, to walk some of the pathways. It was nice with the car though, we paused at some of the many many temples and shrines, and there were many opportunities to say a quick silent prayer to the goddess for continued enlightenment.

So many things struck me as heart and soul warming. So many sights, from the bustle and sheer insanity of the roads, where people sneak by with a quick friendly (yes I did say Friendly) tap on the horn to say “I’m here and I’m passing”.. to the families riding on a small small motor bike, pressed 3-4 deep with out helmets, in close full regalia for the festival. The traffic is, well I’m very glad not only for the perspective of having very very experienced drivers to navigate us around; on the opposite side of the road — thats another thing, the driver being on the other side of the car, is unusual enough, but watching them cross across traffic to get to the other side road is a little bit terrifying. It feels much like a real life version of Mr.Toads Wild Ride – and yet somehow, even in the midst of all of this craziness of the traffic, the roads being 3 lanes and cars being piled 4 and 5 lanes deep using the lines as a mere guideline of where to separate — Somehow even through all of this, the sense of overwhelming peace and harmony pervades.

Not saying that it would not be possible to try and maintain some other sense, I’m certain it might, but the cost and tax on the level of energy would far exceed any potential desire I could muster to do that.

India gets into your skin, the smiles and the true connection – the sheer compassion for humanity, its just overwhelming in a very positive and harmonious way.

I am truly blessed to have been afforded this opportunity to travel here, and this experience will remain with me. And while I recognize that I am experiencing this from a very sheltered angle only, I can’t help but feel that this is one of the most uplifting and positive experiences I have ever been able to experience in travel.

My heart is happy to be here, and I am truly deeply in love with India.

Crowded Spaces

So yeah there are times in life when you have periods of extended ecstasy, these are easy to recognize in hindsight when you are in the periods of the other things, which we will lovingly define as challenges. Sometimes the periods are longer for either of these and sometimes the period is shorter for these, but then tend to ebb and flow from one to the other, and only retrospective defines truly whether they were one or the other. Atleast this is how it has been for me…

Until now.

Now I seem to be stuck in what I’m hoping will be considered in hindsight a challenging period, because if this is a period of ecstasy then I’m thinking its time to turn in that hat, and never walk that pathway again.

Some things, and stuff have happened, and areas I had figured were going to be sleeping silently decided to wake and show their shiny faces…. so I’ve been exploring all new areas of myself that I hadn’t known existed, and I’m finding some I like and some I don’t know what to do with…

For example, I’ve finally decided I like beer – not like before where I enjoyed some beers – more like they taste different now. I can taste layers of flavors in them that I had never noticed before.

Coffee tastes better, it has alot more depth.

Garlic – something I’ve always been epic in love with – now suddenly burns, not in the necessarily horrible bad way, but surprisingly not in the amazingly good way either.

Hot foods, which I’ve always had a high tolerance for – memories of ghost pepper burgers with extra sauce from only a few years back ringing in my mind – are now squashed – much above mild is now so hot I burn in a rather painful way — not that I’m anti pain for the sake of some things, but pain in taste, where the pain is overriding to the flavors is not a good thing.

Its like I can suddenly taste pheromones….. I can walk into a room or bar, or club and taste the feeling of sex and discontent on the air… I can sense it with my mouth – its the oddest feeling, but I can sort of feel it now, and its a very very oddish weird feeling.

While its appealing in many ways, when I am sitting at a happy hour to just feel the relaxation and the … exchanges going on around me — its quite disconcerting when in a conference room with dissatisfied individuals – or at a doctors office.

I’ve been overflow in my head for months now, but I’ve managed to avoid having to blog about this, by perpetually spamming random friends with a stream of consciousness to clear overflow. To all of those friends that I’ve overwhelmed with randomness of the moment, my bad.

Just trying to figure out a topic to keep my mind in one place long enough to clear mental cache and move on.

Met some interesting people though – through the stream of consciousness. One of them is even biblical. More on that later.

I need to figure out somewhere to drive my van – yes I have a van. Its Square, and its been recently cleaned and its ready to rumble, just haven’t figured out how to drag race with it yet – and until I do I think it will sit comfortable parked in the garage.