Last week's visit to the doc confirmed that the bones are mending okay, so now I'm allowed to stand and put about 10 Kg weight on my leg. Hmmm. How much is ten Kg? Hard to tell. Ruth had taken me to Munich for the appointment and when we got back home and I saw Ariela I excitedly said to her "10 Kg!" Instead of reacting with delight she looked horrified. It later turned out that she thought the doctor had advised me to lose 10 Kg and she wondered how I would manage that.Meanwhile it gets dark here so quickly it is incredible. At half past four you cant see a thing out of the window and indoors too you cant manage without lights. Luckily the days are not bad. When the sun shines it gets quite warm and is very pleasant.
Nothing earthshaking in the last few days. But we're slowly gearing up for Xmas. I am making progress with the guitar and Lulu and I practise together almost every day for our special Xmas show. We have made up our own version of "This land is your land" which is half in German and half in Hindi. (For those who know the tune it goes "Yeh rasta mera... yeh rasta tera... Prien lekay Mumbai... Deutschland lekay Indee-ah...etc). Everybody here thinks it's cool and we've named our band "DFI" - Deutsch-Indisch Freundschaft". (German-India Friendship band).How does that grab you!
website: www.basicindia.net
"You can learn a lot from a flower - they're beautiful and then they die." I recently came across this quote and liked it. It communicates a truth that is simple, concise and hard to accept - for most human beings. How many of us - who swoon over flowers and natural beauty - accept the laws of nature? How many of us have the humility to recognise the fact that we are no more and no less than a flower, growing in a garden or a forest or by the roadside. That we are born, we live and we die. Mostly our fear of living prevents us from even blooming. That's life. The life of a human being. What a pity.
group website: www.basicindia.net
Marlis is back in Prien to help me with a physical fitness programme. So we have been hard at work and I feel I really earned my lunch today.Transferring the idea of fitness to our mental capacities, I wonder if something similar doesn't happen to our minds. The same way that our muscles get slack when we dont use them, our minds too, after a certain point are not able to respond effectively and quickly. That means we keep doing the same things and making the same mistakes because we are not quick enough to keep up with what is going on.The more we stagnate, the more rigid we are and the more we stick to known territory, the less our minds are able to “move”. I sometimes feel enlightenment has to do with regaining our mental flexibility back, which I think we were born with, so that we can move in any space we choose and not feel threatened. Even when our bodies (and with it our egos or personalities) go through the doors of death.
www.basicindia.net
It is rather weird when you find yourself being treated by another therapist, who uses the same methods as you do. Yesterday evening this friend of ours called Kiko turned up for dinner (he is staying with us for a day or two because he is attending a course in Prien). We got talking about my leg and after the others had gone to bed, he asked if he could work on me. I said okay. He did a kind of visualisation exercise with me very similar to what I do with my clients, about feeling and trying to visualise what is within. He made me visualise my connection with my foot which was broken, to see which part of the body connected most strongly with the foot (it was my heart!) and to see the colour connecting my heart with my foot (a kind of silver band) and so on. At the start I remember a heavy feeling inside me but as we went along, the feeling subsided and towards the end I was left with quite a light feeling. This evening he will be back for some more exercises and I am curious.There is no doubt as far as I'm concerned, about the role played by our minds in healing. It may not be possible immediately because first it seems necessary to clear up a lot of garbage in the mind which makes it difficult to concentrate or rather to pay attention to your body. But then you begin to simply sense how your attitude and general feeling affect your health. And it is not just our own personal health but the vibes in the environment too which are affected.In the 1990's I believe an experiment was conducted in Washington in which over 100,000 people were invited to meditate over a period of time (I forget how long but I think it was about a month). The persons conducting the experiment wanted to prove that meditations like these could help bring down the crime rate. And in effect the police department helped in this effort. At the end when the checked out the statistics they discovered that the crime rate for the entire period of meditation had indeed dropped by 25 per cent.What do you make of that?group website: www.basicindia.net
Brazilian woman The weekend with Andrea and the kids was very nice even if a bit wild. Watched the movie "Bleep" a second time and enjoyed it. It's one of those which gives you something extra to think about each time you see it and also the opportunity to catch up on the bits you missed. It really helps you to see a few things, about why change doesn't happen even though we often say we want it. And as we have been learning in Samuel's workshops the makers of Bleep also recommend that to break a habit you have to learn to sit back and watch. In other words, learn to be still.Well Andrea left us early on Monday morning and now Ariela's mother is with us. She is good fun and we spent the whole morning playing - Lulu, Felix and me. She is good at making up stories.Meanwhile I spoke to Suhail and Shasha yesterday evening, we chatted for over an hour (one of the rare times when I have been so long on the phone - normally I HATE it). They felt that in many ways Brazil was pretty much like India but over a period of time they began to see the difference as well and the fact that the people there are a lot more free and there is none of the sexual repression one finds in India. In concrete terms that means that as a woman you can walk down the street without being stared at by every man in sight. Suhail said the women also move differently and even the ones who are fat, seem very proud of their bodies, and their entire being shows it. How lucky!
Group website:
www.basicindia.net
Autumn had barely begun to unfold here, what with the glorious sunshine and warm weather we had enjoyed till last week, in fact several of the trees have yet to shed their leaves and yet to my bewilderment it has started to snow! Daybefore yesterday when I emerged into the winter garden from my room I noticed that the mountain tops were white. The same evening it started to snow in Prien and by morning the rooftops were covered with icing sugar snow. The branches of the trees, look especially charming with a powdery white crust over the brown.
Indoors of course one doesn't feel the cold but temperatures outside have dropped from something like 25 or 27 degrees last week to minus 5. Today the sun was out so of course it was slightly warmer. From Ute, the woman who comes to help with the chores, I heard about the winter last year which began in November and went on till April, so there was no real spring. It's a strange mix of seasons. The weather seems quite confused about which of its faces to show the world at any given point.Meanwhile it is bedlam at home. With Ariela and Thomas gone to London to drop Lilly off at boarding school, Lulu, Felix and I are looking after the fort with friend Andrea and her two kids to keep us company and boy! What a riot! The older girls, Lulu and Lisa are in the kitchen, tossing pancakes, their culinary skills interspersed with loud shrieks and fancy dance steps. The younger kids are being slowly coaxed towards the bedroom and I am taking a break from the high energy end of the house in my own little retreat down the corridor.
Group website:
www.basicindia.net
Last week's visit to the doc confirmed that the bones are mending okay, so now I'm allowed to stand and put about 10 Kg weight on my leg. Hmmm. How much is ten Kg? Hard to tell. Ruth had taken me to Munich for the appointment and when we got back home and I saw Ariela I excitedly said to her "10 Kg!" Instead of reacting with delight she looked horrified. It later turned out that she thought the doctor had advised me to lose 10 Kg and she wondered how I would manage that.
