Let the pounding of your foot against the dirt reverberate through your body and feel it in the smallest bone of your back as you walk. Hear those singing voices that are riding on a warm breeze. Look up at the pink/blue sky and breathe out… and decompress.
Maybe there was a knot in your stomach 15 minutes ago and maybe this past week carried with it a force you have not reckoned with in some time.
~~
I was looking for Oamjie and some of the girls; they went for a walk. Make a direct left out of the ashram and you find yourself in wilderness. Every path strewn heavily with rocks that I stubbed my toe on a couple of times and each tree rustling with chipmunks and singing like birds. I couldn’t find them and I stopped walking. Squinting my eyes against the sun and letting it beat down on me, my mind became quiet.
Realizing I wouldn’t want to be around that many people anyway, I headed back. Left, right, left, right… working through every thing in my head and I swear I’m getting better at this.
Most often I feel I am a person in progress; a fetus with potential. That belief has only entered my mind since I arrived. I am trying so hard to form, and wondering if I’m not formed already and if this isn’t just another example of me doing myself a disservice.

Big questions.
~~

Turn right into the ashram and walk up the path, but stop. I heard a little voice go “Hey hey hey.” It was Cheche (sheh shee) and she had folded herself into the footrest on a scooter. In between the steering handles and seat. I wiped the sweat off my face and she asked if I had been jogging. I told her walking. She didn’t understand so I walked in front of her and said walking. I asked her what walking was in Kannada and she told me, but of course I’ve already forgotten. We talked for a little while and she hasn’t talked that much to me since we’ve met.
She makes me happy. The kitchen staff makes me happy. Being patted on the butt by Big Jamma made me happy today and I was happy when I talked to her about her headache and she taught me Medicine in Kannada. Marta or something like that.
I am going to teach Cheche English and she’ll teach me Kannada. We’ve decided.
~~

Sitting in the meeting circle in front of a large statue of a female Ganesh I take my sandals off and rest my feet in the red dirt. And I relax and I smile because I’m here and I know everything is going to be fine. Maybe I am not as formed as I can be. Who is? In the past month and a half I have gained and accepted complete trust. I have exercised it and I am living it. I am living many good things. Love, excitement, passion, consciousness, perseverance, will power.
~~

It’s dusk now and I think I will go sit in the tower and look at the lake. There is importance in being with yourself and only yourself. For years I have been afraid of it: the silence, the thoughts running around, the missing out on what’s going on “out there”; but I am teaching myself to be comfortable with what’s happening “in here”.