It was bright and blue, the strong orangish band of color slipping up from the Rishikesh valley below indicated it had been a cold night, indeed it had dropped enough to have to use the in room heater for the first time. Up early, it is Christmas morning. Out for a walk to explore the grounds before breakfast and take photos, which, by the way, are going to be downloaded to the drive today. I can start adding some pix in the next entry hopefully.
Ananda is tucked in the hills. The main offices housed in the former Maharaj Palace at the top of the hill. The road serpentines through lush trees and foliage down to the hotel, spa, and restaurant. These lie on the top of a flattened bluff with panoramic views of the Ganges River below...on a clear day you can see forever...though, especially during this time of the year that is a rarity. Just off the hotel entrance is an amphitheater, the very one that had the Christmas Eve party last night, I walked down and explored left and right seeking photogenic scenes. There was no shortage. Up the hill to discover isolated overlooks with benches and statuary, simplistic scenes that yearn to be photographed. I obliged and then headed farther up the steep drive. At the top at the same level as the entrance palace is an ascending staircase with trenched water falling down either side, very zen-like. A man is sweeping the 50 or so steps with a rustic, but effective broom. Passing him, he stops and brings his palms together at mouth level and says, "Namaste"...the traditional greeting that acknowledges the God in each of us.
At the top is a pavilion, an open air structure surrounded by a reflecting pool. It faces out into a large open green grass space that is fenced in by flowers. It is a peaceful scene, especially the reflecting pool, which in the still morning air, is showing the sky and trees and the pavilion in beautiful, reversed image Wow! Can imagine impromptu concerts here...time to go back, breakfast at 9:30...
At the bottom of the stairs I meet a couple, he from Malibu, CA, and she from Galveston, Texas. Saw them last night at the party...they are here to escape the bustle of Mumbai, to the south, where they are in the 2nd year of a two year relocation to India, for work and life experience. Conversation is immediately reflective and philosophical, how can it not be...but then heads to California and surfing and guitars..delightful
After breakfast I grab my recorder and head for a waterfall I discovered near the amphitheater. It is potent. I sat near it and recorded 7 minutes of its soothing frequencies. I know I will use it alot in future tracks for ambiance and relaxation and attunements...
The morning is moving towards the body work session I have in an hour. I head for the spa to do a sauna...the inner cleanse is winding down so I want to support its effectiveness by sweating away. But first, a half an hour in the gym to jump start yesterday's professed intentions. Now, 15 minutes of dry heat, and then over to the steamroom where another 15 min softens me up for the Ananda Fusion. Still in the frequency, and now in the living it out steps, of yesterday's revelations, I am led by the man to the room down the long and winding hall. On the way are windows opening to still life's from outside...perfect pictures of peace. Up the steps and to the right I look out the window, and there is my friend, the peacock....reminding me of who I am really, not this temporary experience I have manifested along the journey. Thank you my friend...
This session is remarkable. After establishing the level of intensity I desire...deep, I am given the choice of the oil blend to use...rejuvenating, relaxing, cleansing, grounding, or spicy...spicy, I say without hesitation...but then I think cleansing because that is what I am doing...then I think grounding...but then it hits me...I am grounded...I am cleansing, and truly don't need to support the old pattern of digging deeper...so, spicy it is...that is the new frequency of this man of passion
85 minutes of 5 different techniques...swedish, reflexology, hot stones, acupressure, and damn, that's intense! Needless to say, when completed I feel as if I had knocked 30 years of debris off my life. In the semi, out of body haziness I shuffle my well-oiled body back to the locker room, where I remember that we are leaving grounds in 30 minutes for the land below and our date with the Ganges. Advised to keep the oils on my body and in my hair, I throw on clothes and head out for adventure. My oiled dark hair has me reflecting on Uncle Bill, a Greek man who put olive oil on his hair every day of his life. Though everything he touched was greasy and all who touched had to clean off...he died with a head of jet black hair.
If you have been to Disneyland you may remember a ride right near Dumbo...Mr Toads Wild Ride...this is very much what it was like in the bus on the twisting, turning, bumpy, near-miss 40 minute ride down the mountain to Rishikesh. It was simply in God's hands...into the narrow streets of this suddenly appearing city of over half a million souls we descend and parked. Crossing the road we catch first glimpses of the late afternoon vibration of the holy, swift moving Ganges. Descend further into the narrow market streets...keep track of your belongings the guide admonishes...stay together...our wide eyed party of eight drinking in the panoramic experience that unfolds with each step towards the river. A quick right and the steps appear that lead us down to a boat that crosses the river. There is a deeply spiritual air of timeless quality that brings to awareness the millions upon million of beings who have walked these very steps to do that which we have come to experience. It is majestic and humbling...it is vibrant, filthy, intense, demanding, moving...it is life. To the left on the river a bridge connects the sides. Upstream there are visible cliffs, as it appears that the Ganges bursts from the Himalayas onto the flatlands...and indeed there is reference to the penetration of the Ganges into the fertile grounds here and beyond...the constant cycle of reproduction and birth and death...it is hard to drink it all in..and to the right the red ball of a sun drops lazily toward the horizon..damn the light is good...the people crowd onto the boat and we embark on the 5 minute crossing. Pilgrims, holy men, tourists, devotees, pick-pockets, children at work, families, seekers, lost souls, temporarily deranged...all are on this ship of fools...intense. And here I am with camera and Flip and digital audio recorder all on to capture this chataqua
Once across, our young lady guide whisks us down the shop lined corridor past beggars and holy men and tourists and entrepreneurs and thieves and cow after cow toward the place where I don't really know what is going to happen is happening. The camera is smoking since I am taking shots so fast...the recorder is grabbing the sounds of life...the horns of the swift moving cavalcade of motorbikes punctuate the voices...and through it all I do not hear one moo from a cow...
We stop along the way to purchase eight offerings, a small bowl of flowers and fish food with a stick of incense stuck in the top, to place in the Ganges. Our intentions/releases put into form to place in the healing waters of this remarkable life spring of God in action. In the middle there is an ashram, a holy place for devotees...just beyond an entrance where we move through large stone gates under the watchful eye of a 20 foot high representation of Hanuman...some words are exchanged by an attendant and our guide... she is frustrated and says we have to place our offerings on the table..cannot take them in...then another man rushes over and, clearly upset, tells us to remove them from his table...we grab our holy offerings and stick them behind a wall to grab later...we do find out that the monkeys ate our offering during the ceremony...ha...the circle of life. Off with the shoes...we are told to take off them and give them to a man behind a scaffold of metal cubbies where he takes them and puts them for safekeeping...just like at the bowling alley. In stocking feet we follow the flow towards the music
A hundred rows of step like seats lead down to the Ganges. Before us a walkway juts out from either end of the steps. In the middle of the expanding walkway there are four musicians giving a chant concert over a powerful high watt PA system...it has the vibe of a major concert in any back home venue...but this one is outside and we are inches away from the swirling, dancing waters of this river. The music is beautiful. Through the crowds we find seating on the step to the right of the stage. 15 holy men in varying saffron and white robes are in the back above us...they peer through the dimensions as they oversee the festivities...all around there is activity. Gold and saffron robed monks , huddled in the center, suddenly arise and head for the back of the crowd. They reappear with brass plates with burning incense and disperse them into the mass. The crowd undulates to the faster paced chant...many chanting along...many moved by the vibration itself..clockwise the incense circles in the hands of the individuals. Now the monks return with brass tiered towers with multiple platforms of incense and disperse them. Then brass incense holders with a cobra head looming over the burning embers...it is a fast escalating scene that is leading to what I do not know. The red ball of the sun has settled right behind the musicians...silhouetting them in a mystical scene...a well buffed marble white 15 foot statue of a youthful Krishna looms over and behind the musicians. The sky shifts color and lights come on...the mood escalates and Krishna appears to be sweating...his body glistens as the incense and fires on brass dance in the darkening light. The smell is strong, the smoke is acrid...suddenly the music stops and a woman announces something in the native tongue...we watch for cues from the crowd. And there they are...movement, and a surge toward the waters. Individuals bringing the unique experiences of their own life moving forward to lay it all down for one moment in time...trusting implicitly that this mighty, magical, mystic river will do the work that they have not been able to do... an Indian man, clad in a Berkeley hat, takes his young son to the water and steps onto the submerged step...the holy water washes over his feet...a ritual is passed on to a new generation...some drink the water...some wash it over their shoulders...some put it on their head...some cup it and speak over and into it, releasing it gently to return to the river...the music, now from the PA, not the musicians, blares loudly over the speakers. The crowd joins in on this obviously familiar chant. The throng moves in time in dances as one like they have done for thousands of years. Each in his or her own reverie they bring special meaning to the moment of union with the water. And we, moved by our own process, inspired by the sound and vibration, peel the socks and head for the water. I stand there before I step in and breathe and reflect and pull up the wisdom of my being to capture the life of this moment and lay down the very thing I have come all this way to surrender...in one hand the audio recorder, grasped so it will not drop into the inviting waters of the Ganges...in between thumb and forefinger the Flip faithfully videos this unrepeatable experience...my Canon Rebel grabs life from the throng and records it to document my presence in this time and this space...hell yes, I was there! Multitasking, I return to my inner agenda and step into the river...mind pulls up warnings about the water and its filth and pollution...fuck that...I am in... the water embraces my feet and I utter something about release...the past...the moment...the future...my body...surrender....and tears fall to be consumed by the river...I feel something deep within me...my attention slips to the Flip video...I look at the tiny screen and see my feet...cleansed by the rivers of life...it is so mystical...it is so powerful...so now...
And then it is over...the guru has come from the ashram and sits in a protected posse to deliver his message...it resounds over the PA in Hindi and then in English...something about saving the earth and pollution...what?...feel like I am at some protest of sorts...it is interesting but i drift away and return to the I Am within me....I lose sight of my group...but I know how to get back to my shoes...Hanuman to my left, the master to my right, I follow the holy man in filthy robes through the throngs. I look back and remember...I do not yet know what it means but i have been changed...later over dinner back at Ananda I say to Sonia...I am not who I was...
We give a donation and receive the dot of colored earth on our third eye...we retrieve our shoes and follow our guide up the narrow walk into the ashram and into a garden area. Everywhere there are statues of deities enclosed in glass...a wax museum walk of spirit...The Canon goes crazy with this...click, click, click...intoxicating. To a man in a well lit single room standing in the middle of it all, we make an offering and receive a blessing from the monk in the form of four clumps of sugar. Into my hand and into my mouth...cool...and then the reminder that hands had been in the Ganges...side track thinking pattern of oh, shit...impulse spits out the sugar...down the road visions of the trots and more....be calm my little one...subsiding and after a few more spits i return to a center and let that all go...now back down through the corridors of cows and shops and motorbikes and beggars to the bridge, a narrow suspension bridge that must provide shared passage for two lanes of travelers and motorbikes, bicycles, and cows...all with very little light to show the way...like some kind of test we follow guidance to reach the other side unscathed. Turning left we wind back to the bus.
We give expression to our experience, but it does not give clarity to what each of us has been through...to whatever degree, we have done something brand new, something that has tradition and pilgrimage and spiritual life and surrender and release and expansion oozing through it...how can words describe...it is a feeling and a knowing that something has happened...something transformational...and like most transformations, the limbo land of the inbetween looms on the horizon..that period of integration where the old frequencies and ways step aside, hesitatingly, to allow the new vibration and subsequent action...we shall see what unfolds
Actually, what started to happen was irritation for the group..suddenly moods fell upon us like nets from above....and we oscillated between the bliss of the experience and the fact that we were tired and had not eaten and had just given our past back to the fish...one is bound to cop a mood...I don't care who you are...something is gonna show up...back to the bus and the mood sat down beside us...I was last to get there and so I earned the back of the buss...damn...I am older so why didn't someone...you know the routine!
The massage was catching up to me. The earlier manhandling of my physicalized past experiences was paying dividends through the inevitable toxin wash though the system as it moves toward clearing...i felt like shit...my cleanse was feeling like the flu..I was a little boy whining about something...wanting only to get extra self care from mama...it was obvious...but the back of the bus...it was Toad's Wild Blind Ride in the Dark in the Back of a Speeding Bus up the insanely twisting ascent to serenity...for awhile looking at the side of the cliff speeding by worked. Then I tried to talk and forgetaboutit...the first hint of queazy...then I stopped that and looked up the aisle and out through the windshield. It was a blur of turns and road markers and lines and signs i could not read...queazy returns...45 minutes...let us get to the washout part of the road and it will only be another mile to the grounds...so, I open the window and suck in the fresh cold air...and I return to a place of balance...breathe grasshopper...stop the monkeymind
Back at Ananda we walk down the hill on the darkened road to the restaurant. I will be in in a minute...my Virgo self is calling for some hygiene. I wash my hands with soap, brush my teeth, take off my shoes and wash off my feet...it softened my mind to have done this...plus I just needed some alone time from the group frequency...rejuvenated, I returned to much needed sustenance. I sat and kind of just stared into the lights...I leaned over to Sonia and said...I am not who I was...she nodded from her own mysterious, personal place.
Ananda is tucked in the hills. The main offices housed in the former Maharaj Palace at the top of the hill. The road serpentines through lush trees and foliage down to the hotel, spa, and restaurant. These lie on the top of a flattened bluff with panoramic views of the Ganges River below...on a clear day you can see forever...though, especially during this time of the year that is a rarity. Just off the hotel entrance is an amphitheater, the very one that had the Christmas Eve party last night, I walked down and explored left and right seeking photogenic scenes. There was no shortage. Up the hill to discover isolated overlooks with benches and statuary, simplistic scenes that yearn to be photographed. I obliged and then headed farther up the steep drive. At the top at the same level as the entrance palace is an ascending staircase with trenched water falling down either side, very zen-like. A man is sweeping the 50 or so steps with a rustic, but effective broom. Passing him, he stops and brings his palms together at mouth level and says, "Namaste"...the traditional greeting that acknowledges the God in each of us.
At the bottom of the stairs I meet a couple, he from Malibu, CA, and she from Galveston, Texas. Saw them last night at the party...they are here to escape the bustle of Mumbai, to the south, where they are in the 2nd year of a two year relocation to India, for work and life experience. Conversation is immediately reflective and philosophical, how can it not be...but then heads to California and surfing and guitars..delightful
After breakfast I grab my recorder and head for a waterfall I discovered near the amphitheater. It is potent. I sat near it and recorded 7 minutes of its soothing frequencies. I know I will use it alot in future tracks for ambiance and relaxation and attunements...
The morning is moving towards the body work session I have in an hour. I head for the spa to do a sauna...the inner cleanse is winding down so I want to support its effectiveness by sweating away. But first, a half an hour in the gym to jump start yesterday's professed intentions. Now, 15 minutes of dry heat, and then over to the steamroom where another 15 min softens me up for the Ananda Fusion. Still in the frequency, and now in the living it out steps, of yesterday's revelations, I am led by the man to the room down the long and winding hall. On the way are windows opening to still life's from outside...perfect pictures of peace. Up the steps and to the right I look out the window, and there is my friend, the peacock....reminding me of who I am really, not this temporary experience I have manifested along the journey. Thank you my friend...
This session is remarkable. After establishing the level of intensity I desire...deep, I am given the choice of the oil blend to use...rejuvenating, relaxing, cleansing, grounding, or spicy...spicy, I say without hesitation...but then I think cleansing because that is what I am doing...then I think grounding...but then it hits me...I am grounded...I am cleansing, and truly don't need to support the old pattern of digging deeper...so, spicy it is...that is the new frequency of this man of passion
85 minutes of 5 different techniques...swedish, reflexology, hot stones, acupressure, and damn, that's intense! Needless to say, when completed I feel as if I had knocked 30 years of debris off my life. In the semi, out of body haziness I shuffle my well-oiled body back to the locker room, where I remember that we are leaving grounds in 30 minutes for the land below and our date with the Ganges. Advised to keep the oils on my body and in my hair, I throw on clothes and head out for adventure. My oiled dark hair has me reflecting on Uncle Bill, a Greek man who put olive oil on his hair every day of his life. Though everything he touched was greasy and all who touched had to clean off...he died with a head of jet black hair.
If you have been to Disneyland you may remember a ride right near Dumbo...Mr Toads Wild Ride...this is very much what it was like in the bus on the twisting, turning, bumpy, near-miss 40 minute ride down the mountain to Rishikesh. It was simply in God's hands...into the narrow streets of this suddenly appearing city of over half a million souls we descend and parked. Crossing the road we catch first glimpses of the late afternoon vibration of the holy, swift moving Ganges. Descend further into the narrow market streets...keep track of your belongings the guide admonishes...stay together...our wide eyed party of eight drinking in the panoramic experience that unfolds with each step towards the river. A quick right and the steps appear that lead us down to a boat that crosses the river. There is a deeply spiritual air of timeless quality that brings to awareness the millions upon million of beings who have walked these very steps to do that which we have come to experience. It is majestic and humbling...it is vibrant, filthy, intense, demanding, moving...it is life. To the left on the river a bridge connects the sides. Upstream there are visible cliffs, as it appears that the Ganges bursts from the Himalayas onto the flatlands...and indeed there is reference to the penetration of the Ganges into the fertile grounds here and beyond...the constant cycle of reproduction and birth and death...it is hard to drink it all in..and to the right the red ball of a sun drops lazily toward the horizon..damn the light is good...the people crowd onto the boat and we embark on the 5 minute crossing. Pilgrims, holy men, tourists, devotees, pick-pockets, children at work, families, seekers, lost souls, temporarily deranged...all are on this ship of fools...intense. And here I am with camera and Flip and digital audio recorder all on to capture this chataqua
Once across, our young lady guide whisks us down the shop lined corridor past beggars and holy men and tourists and entrepreneurs and thieves and cow after cow toward the place where I don't really know what is going to happen is happening. The camera is smoking since I am taking shots so fast...the recorder is grabbing the sounds of life...the horns of the swift moving cavalcade of motorbikes punctuate the voices...and through it all I do not hear one moo from a cow...
We stop along the way to purchase eight offerings, a small bowl of flowers and fish food with a stick of incense stuck in the top, to place in the Ganges. Our intentions/releases put into form to place in the healing waters of this remarkable life spring of God in action. In the middle there is an ashram, a holy place for devotees...just beyond an entrance where we move through large stone gates under the watchful eye of a 20 foot high representation of Hanuman...some words are exchanged by an attendant and our guide... she is frustrated and says we have to place our offerings on the table..cannot take them in...then another man rushes over and, clearly upset, tells us to remove them from his table...we grab our holy offerings and stick them behind a wall to grab later...we do find out that the monkeys ate our offering during the ceremony...ha...the circle of life. Off with the shoes...we are told to take off them and give them to a man behind a scaffold of metal cubbies where he takes them and puts them for safekeeping...just like at the bowling alley. In stocking feet we follow the flow towards the music
And then it is over...the guru has come from the ashram and sits in a protected posse to deliver his message...it resounds over the PA in Hindi and then in English...something about saving the earth and pollution...what?...feel like I am at some protest of sorts...it is interesting but i drift away and return to the I Am within me....I lose sight of my group...but I know how to get back to my shoes...Hanuman to my left, the master to my right, I follow the holy man in filthy robes through the throngs. I look back and remember...I do not yet know what it means but i have been changed...later over dinner back at Ananda I say to Sonia...I am not who I was...
We give a donation and receive the dot of colored earth on our third eye...we retrieve our shoes and follow our guide up the narrow walk into the ashram and into a garden area. Everywhere there are statues of deities enclosed in glass...a wax museum walk of spirit...The Canon goes crazy with this...click, click, click...intoxicating. To a man in a well lit single room standing in the middle of it all, we make an offering and receive a blessing from the monk in the form of four clumps of sugar. Into my hand and into my mouth...cool...and then the reminder that hands had been in the Ganges...side track thinking pattern of oh, shit...impulse spits out the sugar...down the road visions of the trots and more....be calm my little one...subsiding and after a few more spits i return to a center and let that all go...now back down through the corridors of cows and shops and motorbikes and beggars to the bridge, a narrow suspension bridge that must provide shared passage for two lanes of travelers and motorbikes, bicycles, and cows...all with very little light to show the way...like some kind of test we follow guidance to reach the other side unscathed. Turning left we wind back to the bus.
We give expression to our experience, but it does not give clarity to what each of us has been through...to whatever degree, we have done something brand new, something that has tradition and pilgrimage and spiritual life and surrender and release and expansion oozing through it...how can words describe...it is a feeling and a knowing that something has happened...something transformational...and like most transformations, the limbo land of the inbetween looms on the horizon..that period of integration where the old frequencies and ways step aside, hesitatingly, to allow the new vibration and subsequent action...we shall see what unfolds
Actually, what started to happen was irritation for the group..suddenly moods fell upon us like nets from above....and we oscillated between the bliss of the experience and the fact that we were tired and had not eaten and had just given our past back to the fish...one is bound to cop a mood...I don't care who you are...something is gonna show up...back to the bus and the mood sat down beside us...I was last to get there and so I earned the back of the buss...damn...I am older so why didn't someone...you know the routine!
The massage was catching up to me. The earlier manhandling of my physicalized past experiences was paying dividends through the inevitable toxin wash though the system as it moves toward clearing...i felt like shit...my cleanse was feeling like the flu..I was a little boy whining about something...wanting only to get extra self care from mama...it was obvious...but the back of the bus...it was Toad's Wild Blind Ride in the Dark in the Back of a Speeding Bus up the insanely twisting ascent to serenity...for awhile looking at the side of the cliff speeding by worked. Then I tried to talk and forgetaboutit...the first hint of queazy...then I stopped that and looked up the aisle and out through the windshield. It was a blur of turns and road markers and lines and signs i could not read...queazy returns...45 minutes...let us get to the washout part of the road and it will only be another mile to the grounds...so, I open the window and suck in the fresh cold air...and I return to a place of balance...breathe grasshopper...stop the monkeymind
Back at Ananda we walk down the hill on the darkened road to the restaurant. I will be in in a minute...my Virgo self is calling for some hygiene. I wash my hands with soap, brush my teeth, take off my shoes and wash off my feet...it softened my mind to have done this...plus I just needed some alone time from the group frequency...rejuvenated, I returned to much needed sustenance. I sat and kind of just stared into the lights...I leaned over to Sonia and said...I am not who I was...she nodded from her own mysterious, personal place.
What a ride you are on Mark! With awe and wonder I thank you for walking us through the beauty, awe and wonder of this mystical and majical world. I can see, hear and feel it all....oh yea and just maybe pick up a fragrance here or there. It is only in the immersing of the culture, the land, the people, that we see the beauties we are not accustomed to seeing. Soak up the delites of the spa in all of the healing modalities. Oh....and Merry Christmas! teri harris
ReplyDeleteSo beutifully written ..that I felt the experience of the cleansing and the Ganges..loved it..did you get some of the water of the Ganges/to use for blessings of a higher order/ the water spirits answer your prayers...you only need ask...peace and order..Connie in K*town
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