Auroville 2007 Spring

I took a trail less travelled by

and it has made all the difference! Just updating a bit on summer adventures post India amazingness. I hiked the Long Trail in Vermont, and had a wonderful time! You can see the trail journal at: http://shmear-ripened.livejournal.com/ I hope everyone is enjoying where they are, and remembering fondly where they've been! Peace, Debbie

Adam's Artistic Alliteration

Our dear Group member Adam made this alliterative rap poem/reading that really touches on a lot of his learnings and experiences this semester. It's best to hear him perform it, and certainly there are things that are not universally understandable blog material, but I though it worth sharing:

Red Earth, Blue Sky

Sustainability translation for Auroville to home: Good lord, translation! I was thinking about this in the midst of flying halfway around the planet. The fact that I can even get halfway around our planet in one day is quite interesting; a lot of the experience in India was seeing and trying to understand how another culture and people are handling the same stuff I do concerning globalization, industrialization, and of course just living as best we can. Observation ended up being...

It's all up to us to be the change, now!

Morning Yoga Imagine a place where you can lose your shoes for five days and it does not matter. Imagine being kissed by a blind woman because you gave her the equivalent of 5 cents. Imagine harvesting your entire meal and savoring its flavors. Imagine two tropical diseases in two...

From local to global

Saturday, April 28, 2007 I woke up this morning and it hit me: Tomorrow evening is our final community dinner for all the Living Routes students, faculty, and Aurovillian friends; tomorrow afternoon I will cram all my possessions into an enormous hiker's backpack; Monday morning I leave for Mahabalapuram for a relaxing day to say goodbye to India; Tuesday evening I take a bus to Chennai and depart with the rising full moon early Wednesday morning. Over the past week, I was...

A Quiet Smile.

ta-da! A writing about Global and Local Sustainability, concerning women, spirituality, and the environment in India (see 'more').

Sometimes two minutes is all we get...

Get into a comfy asana, let's make the most of it.. After ten days of feeling wonderful again, it happened- I relapsed into another bout of typhoid fever. Just as the first time was valuable to me after I surrendered to the reality of it, this return is quite a learning and life-changing experience as well. I've been examining the continuem between the Earth Body and the Human Body (Global warming and Debbie warming, haha!) and really appreciating every last moment I spend in...

Step inside the collective consciousness

April 21, 2007 After two days of guided and self meditation, flooding my mind with new imagery and thoughts, I had to jot down a poem of the experience to make sense of it all. It developed into a conglomeration of all that we discussed in our Body, Mind, Spirit presentations in some way....

11 days until departure...

April 21, 2007 ...but from where am I departing? I returned on Tuesday from my community stay at Solitude Farm. Not only serving as a smoother method of transition back into Auroville from Hampi, it was a practice in conscious living. No computers, no shoes, nothing unnecessary. The joys of harvesting a days worth of eggplant, sweet peppers, okra, basil, sweet corn, and long bean in hand-made baskets is indescribable. One can come close to my overflowing well of bliss by tasting...

moods a swinging on the mood swingset, salsa as dancing AND delicious sauce!

The past two days have been devoted to student seminars, and I am simply amazed at the talent, thoughtfulness and intelligence that is manifested through the collective mind of the group. I have so much respect for each and every person with whom I am living. Molly and I did a seminar on Gender Questions without Answers- it went really well and every felt very safe and engaged I thought. I remember applying to the program and having no idea what southern India was like, so further into...

Spring Fever

I've been feeling restless and jittery- partly because I am recuperating from Typhoid fever and am ready to get on with life and to stop being a big question mark as to my status within the community. It's also spring fever time of year, strange here because there has not been what I would consider cold enough temperatures for a winter, and it's only getting hotter, so spring is happening within me primarily, as a personal cycle. I felt ready to move, go to the next part of my life....

Coming down the mountain...

April 9, 2007 Wow, has it really been a month since my last blog entry? Our cohort returned to Auroville a week ago Saturday, and although I was full of things to say about our travels inland to Tiruvannamalai, Fireflies Ashram/Bangalore, and Hampi and the Ecodaya Reserve, my body and mind was not ready for my normal level of operation. In fact, I'm not really sure what 'normal' is for me anymore...

Community Stays

This week, our learning community begins a 10-day community stay within Auroville. This is a time for us to delve deeply into Auroville's innerlife through taking up residence in one of Auroville's intentional communities. Here is a list of where individuals in the group are staying:

VERITE COMMUNITY - Jamie, Jack, Gautier, Maya SOLITUDE FARM - Emily, Dory, Drew, Adam, Will DISCIPLINE FARM - Jess, Carlin, Micaela ADVENTURE COMMUNITY - Nikita, Molly BOTANICAL GARDENS -...

So much to do, so little time

Okay, okay... I'm sorry! It's not all sun tanning and laying in hammocks here. I apologize for the delay, but we've been going full tilt. Since I last wrote we have been on the move, and since we got back (March 31st) I've been working on a project about sustainability....

Typhoid strikes!

I apologize for not posting in the past week and a half- in the midst of my internship at Discipline farms I grew feverish and ill with what turns out to be Typhoid fever. I've been unable to leave bed very often, and certainly not College Guesthouse so that I could rest and get a full recovery. Typhoid fever entails a high fever that fluctuates but never really goes away. I all but lost my appetite and that is slowly coming back now. My liver and spleen are still enlarged, and I have...

Glorious Failures

One of the notions I've been thinking about lately has been that of "glorious failures"- after all, not everything in life comes out perfectly synchronized. I've personally failed gloriously at meditation or quieting of the mind. I can do it for about 3 seconds, but then I'm off thinking about a myriad of different things. I feel that meditation does have profound effects on the collective consciousness of the global community, and so it is something that I will continue...

The long awaited Body Mind Spirit Inquiry!!!

This is a paper that I started in Hampi- it's a bit long, I feel I got to the real root of many things. About 5 seconds of internet time remaining, so I'll try to post again soon!

OM mani Padme

Sooo many thoughts- I've been in Hampi for a 10 days with internet access an hour walk away, but after a week at the Fireflies Ashram with both cohorts, I am preparing for the return journey to Auroville. I'll be starting my internship at Discipline farms next week, a lot of physical labor and farmwork on a Permaculture farm. I've finally figured out how to get pictures on the blog, so read on for more pictures and thoughts!

On the road again

My deepest apologies for keeping everyone hanging. We're in the traveling stage of the trip. We left our humble abode at the College Guest House last Sunday, and we'll be away until the end of March. I have been keeping on top of photos, so here's a few to keep...

Beauty Update

So, living with a mindful eye for beauty has awakened me to the things around me. The thing I've noticed most is how much I am seeing things that I had simply overlooked. Things that were right in front of me all this time. There is an incredible difference between looking and seeing. Or maybe there's not. Who am I to say?