shanti = peace

The journey began in 2005. I met at woman called Yvonne at an education in alternative therapies. I was supposed to talk to her about herbs. We never came to that. Before I had a chance to think I heard myself say: "I want to go with you on your meditation journey to India". India? I had only been abroad one time before, in England, and I had only seen airplanes high up in the sky. Now I was on my way to India. Just the thought of it scared me.
Decision
As soon as she sent me the details of the journey I paid the deposit. I knew that if I had waited I would have been to scared to go and the voice of my heart was to strong to ignore. A lot of discussions and agony followed. My parents was not so happy. But the deposit was paid and the decision made.
I still have the same feeling when I put my feet on the ground in Mumbai airport as I had that first time. A feeling of coming home. The smell of old carpet, dirt, sweat, spices and incense that is so thick that its almost like walking into a wall, it makes me happy and calm. And calm was the feeling I kept through that first journey.
Ayurvedic treatment
The first week we spent in Goa for ayurvedic treatment. I spent most of the time close to the toilet. A lifestyle full of stress, bad food and even worse daily routines made my body go through a big cleansing. I was not feeling sick, my body was just getting rid of all the bad things I had been feeding it with.
Osho ashram
After that week it was time to take the train to Pune and the Osho ashram. The days there changed my life.
I was silent for almost the whole time there. Not because anyone told me. It was just that the world was so beautiful and my experience so strong there were no words to describe it. So I kept silent. It was like I had opened my eyes for the first time. I could see everything, every small green grass, every flower with its unique color, the golden rays of the sun, the dew on the leafs that the night had left behind. It was magical and a great bliss. And it was with great sorrow I left. And I don´t think it was Osho and the ashram so much as me being in the right place, in the right time, surrounded by people that gave me what I needed just then and there, that gave me that lifechanging expirience.
Promise to myself
When I came back to Sweden I promised my self to go back as soon as possible. But I also promised not to go back until I had experienced the same bliss as I felt there. Some part of me must have known that if I had gone back before I would have been stuck in the thought that India was the only place where I could feel true bliss.
Shanti
Time went by and life more or less forced me to take a break from my once again stressful lifestyle and focus only on my self. I moved to a house almost in the middle of nowhere, close to a lake and far away from streetlights and people. I spent my time walking in the forest, taking care of my flowers, resting under the trees in my hammock,creating new paintings, doing yoga, meditating and during the sleepless nights I wrote poetry. And something happened. I started to feel the same way as in India, but only short moments. Those moments of bliss made me realise that soon it was time to go back.
It took three years, but finally I was back. Back in the place that makes my heart dance and my soul sing, the place were I feel so much at home. This time I went to Pune and the ashram first. Of course I didn't have the same experience this time as the last, I had changed and I had new lessons to learn. This time I decided to do the Osho sannyas. Not because I wanted to dedicate my life to the Osho movement, not because I wanted to follow some guru, but because I wanted to make a new promise to myself. A promise to listen to my heart, to let it expand, and to live my life the way I feel is best for me. When you become a sannyasin you have to pick a new name. I wanted a name that would be a reminder for me in my everyday life, something that made me remember the promise I was about to give myself. I chose Shanti. Shanti means peace. Peace in body and soul, with a heart filled with love.
After that I went to India as often as it was possible. This time I returned because of love. Love to people I met there. Love for the country. Love for the colors, the smell, the sand, the dirt, the food, the ocean and the trees. And it is love that keeps me going back.

Teri ore....

Walking word flow meditation?

The words just keep coming. And I keep walking. 30 minutes of walking word flow meditation. Never heard of it? Neither have I. But it is what best describes what I do every day when grandma wants to take rest. For about half an hour I walk around in the forest and just let my thoughts flow as they wish. I look at them, the same way as when I lay down on the grass looking at the clouds as a young girl. I see them passing by, some of them I notice more than others, some are really beautiful and makes me smile, some are just lose fragments and don't make any sense. Some of them leads to new thoughts, some of them maybe you will read here someday and some of them continues their journey out in the universe, maybe hoping that someone else will notice them.
It´s like watching a river that flows. It makes me calm. It makes my heart expand. And for me, that is what meditation is all about.

Love and sorrow

I'm sitting on a rock in my childhood forest. The sun is shining with its warm rays on my face. I hear the birds chirping from the trees next to me and my heart is filled with love and sorrow. Grandma wanted to rest so I went out in the forest, to gather strength and clear my thoughts.
Many times my small feet trudged around in the moss here. As a child I walked here with my grandmother to pick flowers, look at butterflies and ants, and listen to her telling stories of all the creatures in the forest. That's why I feel love. Love to my grandmother and for all that she gave me. The sense of nature's greatness that she passed on to me. Thoughts on how we can take the help from nature to keep us healthy.
In almost all her life, she has been healthy, until now. Now her energy is running low, the cancer has almost taken her last strength. Sitting on a chair listening to a woman from the municipals social services who can´t offer any assistance is more, much more, than she have the strength to do. It hurts me to do this to her. It hurts that the system is so inflexible.
My thoughts take me to India, to the little village Phardapur and to the family that I visited there. Four generations living together. Grandma in the family is the first I meet. She sleeps on a mattress outside the house and she sits up when I come. She peers at me with her brown eyes. She does not say much, and I can hardly understand the few words she say, but she makes me feel welcome. I see her from the place where I'm sitting inside the house. She lay down again and pulls her blanket around her. One of the chickens that run in the courtyard decides to keep her company. He jumps up and falls asleep in her lap. It looks so peaceful.
My mind automatically makes a comparison.
Here we do things in a different way. We make our elderly stay in a retirement home. In our minds, we have neither the energy nor the time to take care of our elderly relatives ourselves. Therefore, we will send them to an institution, where others are working to take care of our relatives. Others who also have relatives, who they cannot manage to take care of just because they take care of ours. Before, I thought it was natural, right now that equations don’t make sense to me.
I sit on a chair in the kitchen. Wood fire crackles pleasantly behind my back and I hear grandmother's heavy breathing from the bedroom. I no longer know if I want to send her away to a retirement home. I would rather stay with her as long as she is still here and as long as she wants me to be with her. I have more energy now, I´m able to think new thoughts. I have a new equation now, one that I actually think make sense.





Many thanks to all my wonderful friends, for your love, support and care. It means a lot to me.

Also many thanks to Janesh Vaidya, for the love that you spread around you. It gave me energy to make a decision with my heart.

If you want inspiration, visit http://www.janeshvaidya.com/, he is a man with a big heart and a beautiful mission and generoulsy spreads his words of wisdom over the world.