About the Workshop

25th August happened to be my birthday and at the end of the day I was able to tell Ariela and the rest of the group quite sincerely that it was one of the best I ever celebrated. It was the day of our workshop session. It went off really well and there was a lot of closeness between us, much warmth, which came out of the free space we managed to create between us for dialogue - about feelings and fixed patterns and how to be more in contact with each other.

The theme which Ariela had chosen was "Finding one's place" on earth. In a way similar to Samuel's theme of coming home. Looking at it we found that it also has a lot to do with living in the moment, because to find one's place doesn't mean snuggling into a little box or pigeon hole and remaining there for life. It also means doing the thing that is right for you, every moment.

I think that among the people who changed or benefitted the most, was a woman from Munich called Rumirah. At some point one of the other participants (Petra) asked her what her name meant. It turned out that it didn't mean anything and that it was a concocted name which just made her feel good. The name which her parents had given her was apparently "Ruth" which she hated, because it reminded her of her "peasant" origins which she wanted to deny. Well in the course of the evening it turned out that the name "Rumirah" was a shade too fanciful and that Rumirah herself had realised the need to live more simply, to be more accepting, to refrain from always wanting to be in the limelight - which she tended to do and which purpose the concocted name served, in a way. Towards the end of the workshop Rumirah decided to experiment with going back to her old name Ruth (which all of us frankly preferred to the new name) and so we started to call her that straight away.

Well generally things are fine in Prien. Yesterday Ariela and I dropped off Lulu (Ariela' s daughter) at the farm where she is going to be spending a week and then stopped off at a Greek restaurant for an early dinner. We were joined by Andrea and Petra who lived close by and who had also attended the workshop. (I guess some of you remember those two - they had come to Goa a couple of years back).

That's it for today. Hope to provide more news in a day or two.