Giving Time, The Earth is Alive

Hello everyone! Well it is Sunday morning, and I am lingering over a rare treat, COFFEE. :) I have been thinking recently about spirituality, and where I fit into the universe of spiritual callings. I have never thought about in as concrete a way before; I have always just internalized the awareness that I am a spiritual person. However, when you look at spirituality from a more academic lens, and realize that there are major labeled spiritual paths, it becomes an interesting interaction. 

For our class, we are now reading about earth "religions", or worship of the earth. Such paths include "Gaia spirituality", and "Gaia Naturalism". However, similarly, there is also "Spiritual animism" and "natural animism". These are all basically slight variations on the same sentiment: that the earth is sacred and alive. (I never knew people could break it down into such sub-categories!) And I suppose, when talking across borders, these kinds of categorizations are at least helpful. And why not bring spirituality into the academic realm? It is true that until recently, it hasn't been considered appropriate to speak of personal spiritual experience in the world of academia. And yet, this is such an essential function of human life. It does feel a bit awkward trying to box my spiritual beliefs into such terminology, but it is a useful exercise. I am not actually aiming to define it, but it is helpful to exercise my brain in the pursuit of communicating my experiential wisdom in myriad settings. 

So, I realized that I feel akin to this idea of Gaia spirituality, and so I bought the book The Secret Life of Plants. So far it is very interesting: plants and humans do communicate!

Other than that, I had a wonderful day on Friday. I helped in Anandi's kitchen all day to prepare for a big raw food buffet! We made raw soup, mashed cauliflower, salald, chocolate mousse, cheesecake, and a whole gala of other sorts for about 150 people. Then we went to serve it, and it was a flurry of marvelous activity! I can say that I was really in a kind of heaven- serving masses of yummy sacred raw food to so many people! And all my friends were there coming through the line. It was magnificent, and I snacked on raw chocolate mousse the entire time. (I could live on that stuff!) Somewhere in the process, though, I realized that for the first time really, I really received so much joy out of just giving my effort and time to help. There was no exchange of money in it for me; I just wanted to absorb myself into the act of giving my services. It was a really energetic experience! Especially since I have so much care for raw food, it was easy to give so much time and energy to just this simple task of giving. 

It made me reflect on the value of volunteering though- to really put your agenda aside to give your time and energy to someone's cause is really rewarding for everyone involved. Good karma, as they would say here!

Here are a few pictures highlighting a couple of fun events in my life recently:

There was a world dance show in Auroville a couple of nights ago! Amazing dancers :)

The puppies just opened their eyes a couple of days ago! They can almost walk too.

Adorable affectionate money family just chillin' on a temple.

Jacky, this is for you: Shiva's sacred Bull, Nandi. There are cows ALL over the temple!

So tiny!

I love you all so much! And as always, thank you for the inspirational and heartfelt, soulful comments~ We are so connected!

Mohanam Kids and the Village Threshold

So, I have not told you about the Mohanam kids yet!
Every Wednesday, I am going to the Mohanam Cultural Center, to interview different villagers with my camera, and also to play with the kids! Every week, I am giving the children dance workshops. The kids are between 2 and 4, so these mostly consist of guided improvisations. We put on Indian music, and they mimic my movements and vocal expressions, like this: "Wave your hands in the air! Now dive down! Pat the ground! Now grow up, like a flower!" -It is so fun. The kids are SO cute, and they just come alive when we dance! At the end of each song, they all scream and jump and clap, "YAAAAAYYY!!!!" Sometimes it becomes very chaotic, only as expected when you have 20 three-year-olds running around, knocking into each other! Some of them get into fights vying for positions on my lap! They are all so adorable though, and it is so fun to dance and play with them. For all the kindergarten teachers out there, I don't know how they do it everyday! These kids have SO much energy, and consequently I am exhausted after being with them for three hours! But once a week is a special event for all of us to come together.
Going into the village each week is in itself an event. Since Auroville is such an oasis, there is a definite feeling of crossing a threshold when I enter the village. I go over this rough hilly pass, through two small lakes and a beautiful grove of trees. Then I enter the village, through a deep, ever-existing puddle of brown water.
People say that India is the fastest-developing nation in the world. I don't see that. Instead, I see: a man reading the newspaper barefoot on his porch at 9:30 AM. I see three women, sitting close together under a palm tree, braiding flowers into each other's hair. I see a gang of dogs and a couple of monkeys having a face-off on the corner of a dirt road. I see tiny huts made of earth and straw, and old women napping in the entrance.
I also see trash everywhere on the sides of the streets. I see standing pools of brown, algae-ridden, disease-laden water. I see about 10 mangy dogs on every street. I see beautiful trees overlooking ponds- eucalyptus, acacia, and other swaying types. But the trash at their feet impinges upon their naturalness.
In the village, I see people- living close to the earth. I see people living close to their sacred cows, and their stray dogs. I see people living a life that they know in their bones is theirs to live. Do they want to be living it? Maybe not. It does not matter- because they live so close to the earth, they can hear its wisdom thumping on their bare feet. It is like the Tamil-Indian Heartbeat to which they are connected.

Solitude Eco-Music Fest

So, yesterday was a kind of culmination I think- or maybe just continuation- of this familiar feeling I have been having!
I spent all day at the Eco-Music fest in Solitude Farm. There were over 800 people there total, and many bands played!
I hung out with the other yearly student group that comes to Auroville: Living Roots. It is a US program that sends young people to different Eco-Villages around the world. Everyone on the program is really down-to-earth. We jumped into the deep well at Solitude, which was really scary at first, but it felt SO refreshing to swim in un-chlorinated water!!
We then played hackey sack and danced at the music stage. It was weird, I had this feeling of deja-vu that passed in and out of my consciousness the whole time. Maybe it was because being with a bunch of American hippie-folk dancing to live music in the sunshine felt SO familiar, and yet I would look around me and see banana fields, Indian people in saaris, and remember that I am in INDIA! It was a very interesting sense of community: many travelers were there, from around the world, just passing through this place. There was a feeling of new-ness; Auroville is only 40 years old, so it doesn't have that feeling of roots or history; it has fresh-roots, building roots. It is young. None of us have been here very long! SO it is a lot of very different, international people coming together to create community. It was a very unique feeling.
The music was great though, and I even added to it by - did I tell you I bought the guitar?? Yes, a cute little pink guitar named Lyla. She fits in my backpack! She has a BEAUTIFUL sound for such a teeny lady, and is a perfect travelling guitar. I sat up on a bamboo structure and jammed for a little while with some of the Living Roots girls.
I then had a BLAST helping to sell kombucha with Anandi and her helpers. I was kept very busy by people who wanted kombucha, and it was fun to tell people about it who didn't know! I felt like I was helping to share the living foods spirit by passing on information. :)
Then, by nightfall, there was an international jazz band playing: a tall-thin African bass player with dreads down to his knees, an old French drummer with a white turban, a rockstar Indian guitar player, and a European female singer in a wheelchair. I liked their diversity, and they were incredible! So, I GOT. DOWN. ;P It felt SO good to finally rip-roarin' DANCE it out under the stars: orion's belt was right above me!, and the tall banana trees, and so many dancing happy people!
Then an awesome Brazilian/Portuguese band played: "Yemadas" is their name. They used to be "Nomadas" because they are nomads, but wanted to be positive instead of negative so they changed the "no" to "Yeah". I liked that. ;)
Well, they had people dancin', and when later on they called out, "We are waiting for a samba dancer to come up onstage!", I bet you can guess who raced up there first! ;)
All in all, it was a great experience; I feel like I am getting more and more integrated into the community of Auroville. I am starting to recognize many people, and make connection between friends. In opposition to my usual 9 PM bedtime, though, staying out until 2 AM made me feel almost hungover this morning, and made me appreciate the more mellow lifestyle I have been living so far!
~*~*~*~
Ahhh, it is so beautiful here though, and it is hard to stay bad-feeling for long. I am now sitting at the American Pavilion, listening to the birds, hitting away the flies, enjoying a raw cacao-&-cashew bar, and feeling sleepy. Halfway through my Auroville trip, here I am. :)