They told me a bus would be going to the ashram this morning from AIMS (free ride! yay!), but after waiting around for an hour they said it was canceled. Pooh! So I had to grab an auto-rickshaw to the local train station. On the way there I saw another auto-rickshaw with a rear window picture of a traditional small Christian church covered with snow and surrounded by snow covered pine trees. I had to smile. Now there's a scene that's a million miles away from hot, steamy tropical Kerala! Also saw a sign for a "Pollution Test Center". I laughed. Just take a whiff and you'll have no problem detecting the pollution!
At the train station I got my ticket and sat down to do some mantra japa. Some strange acting man tried to hand me some bananas. No thank you! He then put them on my lap. I promptly tossed them in the trash. Definitely don't take any food from strangers here. Lots of stories of thieves putting drugs in the food and then stealing from you.
I did some chanting and mantra on the ride home and that seemed to help my mood. Was feeling better when I got back to the ashram. The auto-rickshaw dropped me off at Vallikav (the little town next to the ashram). Walking back I fell into step with Upasan, a very nice and thoughtful tall young British guy. He had just come from the internet cafe where he said he just finished watching "7 Years in Tibet", a movie about the early life of the Dalai Lama. He shared his ambivalence about his love for spiritual movies and books vs. the other part of him that says he should skip all that and just do sadhana instead. His thoughts and feelings on this issue echoed some of my own and it felt good to hear him share many things that I also thought and wondered about. The more people (especially westerners) I talk to here, the more I realize how much we all share in terms of our spiritual path with Amma. Seems most of us have similar concerns and worries that get resolved in similar ways.
This evening as I was stepping out of my room to go to Amma darshan I fell into conversation with James, a nice middle aged American guy. He did some energy healing on my hurt pinkie. Felt really good! As he was gently touching my left hand I was feeling waves of wonderful tingling pleasure all over. After he finished the healing he rambled on aimlessly about various topics; his spiritual path, things I should do to help my finger heal, etc. Because his healing felt so good I listened politely for a while, but finally I had to pull myself away to go to darshan or I sensed he would talk at me for a long time.
At darshan, as I was in Amma's divine arms She was talking to someone else. I was feeling such deep appreciation for all the love that Amma gives that I started to cry just a little. Amma quickly whispered "My darling son." a few times in my right ear and let me go. The emotion I experienced in Her arms felt cleansing. Thanks, Amma! As time goes by I'm feeling more and more how much Amma really means it when She whispers that we're Her darling children. Its really true! She's definitely always with us if we just reach out a little to Her.
After dinner a very short Indian man saw the splint on my left arm and asked me how I hurt my hand. I told him and he said "Whenever an Amma devotee gets an injury like that here at the ashram, you can be sure its Amma's way of preventing some much bigger problem in the future." I replied that I feel he's totally correct. He's definitely preaching to the choir on that one. I can imagine some of my friends and family may think that's a strange way of looking at things. But I'm sure some of my relatives who are deeply Christian feel the same way that Jesus is always watching over them and helping out. At first I was feeling very frustrated about my finger injury, but now I'm getting used to it healing slowly and appreciating that its probably removing some of my parabdha karma.
Getting connected with a living master guru like Amma has given me a perspective on things that's very different in many ways from the mainstream mindset. Oh, well. Its just one big ball of Reality, no matter how you look at it. When I open a disco I'll call it the "Reality Ball".
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