Ashram Speed

Starting to get a handle on the ashram living/benefits. Everything is in slow motion, but all of the same life stuff is still present with the container of humans coming and going. If you are working on cleaning the lint off of your filter (not a requirement for ashram attendance, but probably hard to get around consciously or unconsciously with the amount of divine energy present), you get to observe yourself picking up the lint and then what you do with it.

A short example of what I am observing and learning from my internal teacher at ashram speed:

After the meditation breakthrough, I felt like I was in a different groove when I left the hotel. (My walk everyday is like the acid test: trash, smells, children begging, people staring, men propositioning me, traffic, horns honking, etc. The actual activity of walking is lovely.) Lint screen feeling cleaner than usual. At the 3/4 point, I observed begging children heading towards me (no problem, I am armed with cookies to hand out--lint deflection technique gathered from the natives), but a tourist disturbs the anticipated pattern by asking me to take a photo (no problem, happy to do it) so the matrix gets a tweak. The children start to act rude at a level that my anticipation isn't ready for, so I opt not to give them the cookies (or money.) I continue to walk, but I notice that my heart energy/filter just got some stuff on it. Somehow energetically something shifted out of what alignment I had been experiencing.

Onward I walk, as I approach the gateway of the ashram, I start to feel that I am reaching the shore after being lost in the waves for awhile. But, there are men working at the gate on the construction project, so I didn't get to rest on the beach quite yet. As I continue up the hill, I notice someone in orange out of the corner of my eye and fill some bowing of my energetic field, but I am determined to reach the beach so blinders on, I march up the hill to the ashram. Now, I have two lumps of stuff on my filter, because I didn't stay present and open to what was without ego. And crap, the orange was Gurudev, so now I have "acted in a less than humble, loving way" in the presence of the God Gateway. Nice work Sue's ego-- two marks on the ego scoreboard.

The next morning as I began my walk, the challenge was did I learn anything from the day before? I was getting a do over opportunity. Check, made it today. Of course, there were other opportunities showing up, but I had a chance to observe, sense, and be with small fragments of life (ashram pace) instead of our usual mega pixel life matrix. My goal is still to be in any situation and stay present/loving, but the ashram environment is giving me a petri dish to study the process of how to get there.