Gaia Comes to the City

About a decade ago, when I first wanted to dip my feet in the still waters of meditation, I found myself in a pattern. The pattern went something like this - I'd sit down expecting bliss, soon after the thoughts would come rushing in, then the voices in my head would multiply and later, I would abandon meditating. This pattern played out cyclically, each cycle lasting anywhere between a week and a month depending on how determined I was to "get it right." Things did improve incrementally as my patience improved, my expectations lessened and my mind wavered less. Even then, one part of the pattern continued - the part where each voice in my head, for entirely different things, would fire and say, why me, why this, why now, why not now...why, why, why.  An unshakeable little jerk of a word.  Why.  That comes with massive proportions of self-doubt.  Why.  Screaming until all else that makes sense quietens down.  Why.  Well, I don't need t

Let the party start. Let the fun never end. Let the affirmations roll. Let the changes be seen before another year goes. The voices that swarm around us at a time when the road curves and one year flows into another, are all too well-known. They are hedonistic, like there's a conspiracy and our pleasures face the threat of being halted soon. They are self-righteous, like there's a want to set things straight, all for good reason I'm sure. Writing this, on the third day of another new year, I am marvelling at how the curved road just a few days ago, taught me something completely new. After a beach start to Christmas and dilly-dallying through most of the days around, I went over to a friend's place in Goa. Set in the middle of nature, surrounded by man-made structures created with heart, I was introduced to a tiny, shivering being that ran off at the slightest touch. A frightened puppy that had appeared in my friend's garden a week before I had arrived. Let m