2009 09 20. Sunday.

I was doing my morning sadhana around 7am when my room was suddenly filled with a beautiful golden light. My main window faces east. It started out as a cloudy morning but suddenly the clouds cleared and the beautiful dawn light came pouring in. Very nice.

Outside my room is a small grassy field where they tie up a few cows in the morning and give them some hay. Normally they're pretty quiet; just chewing their hay and farting happily. But this morning for some reason they were making a lot of noise. Sounded a little like an old recording I used to have of a group of humpback whales singing.

After being here a while, and following Amma since 2002, my feeling is that a big way that Amma helps us grow is by creating an environment where we have to learn to guide ourselves. I think one of the biggest things that Amma's subtle energy is creating in Her disciples is independence and self-sufficiency. Amma wants us to really think for ourselves and operate independently as much as possible. The main qualities I hear that Amma wants us to cultivate is deep faith in Amma and God, dispassion in the face of life's ups and downs, introspection or always looking within and lots of adaptability. I think all of this is Amma's way of showing us how we can always be connected to our "inner Amma" which is just our own inherent divinity. In Amma's life story, this is what She had to do in Her solitary spiritual search as a young child and teenager.

Had a funny short dialog with the fake American sadhu. I was heading back to my room and he walked passed me moving pretty quickly. He said "There's a lot of cars here." (Lots of Indians come from all over to get Amma's darshan on Sundays.) I said "Just the usual Sunday visitors."

Him: "Yea. Visitors from another planet. I wish they would take me with them." (Typical of the strange things he says. I have no idea what he meant.)

Me: "I thought the best place was always the here and now."

Him: "Not if I pee all over the floor!" He quickly went to his room. I smiled. Strange guy but I like anyone who can make me smile.

This evening after dinner I was standing outside the big hall talking with Mukhunda (one of the yerbs) about some compost plans when suddenly he jumped up in surprise. I quickly saw that some young Indian boy had reached down and touched his feet as a sign of respect. Mukhunda, the boy and the boy's parents then started laughing and chatting away in Malayalam. It was a pretty funny scene. I thought he would be used to people touching his feet by now. He's been a yerb for a long time. The red robed swamis constantly have devotees touching their feet. I do it myself once in a while when I feel inspired.

Amma's 56th birthday celebrations are coming up Sept 26 and 27th. There's gonna be about 30 to 50 thousand people here, or more. A lot! Our original plans were to just dig some pits and bury all the food waste (it'll compost just fine in a pit, albeit more slowly). But I found out Amma wants us to compost it the usual way (which takes a lot of work). Its gonna be a huge job to compost all that food waste if we get as much as I think we might. Oh, well. I won't be doing the work with my injury; just managing. Still, there's a lot of planning work to do to get all the materials and helpers. I was told all the programs will be at the Amma college on the other side of the backwaters. Yay! That means there shouldn't be lots of crowds here at the ashram. I go a little bit crazy in big crowds. I have A LOT of respect for the crew of people who go on all the tours with Amma. They have to do a crazy amount of work surrounded by these huge crowds. Somehow they seem to always do it with grace and calmness in spite of getting very little or no sleep many days.