The spiritual India

The blessed sisters

Tiruvannamalai has been the first city where we have been able to interact with the people that live in India, where we have visited its ashrams, meditation centers head by a spiritual guru, and mainly where we stayed with Rebecca and Deo, Cat's sister and brother-in-law.

Deo playing tabla

During the three weeks that we stayed here, we met some people that came with the idea of spending a few days or weeks, and they have been here for months. At the beginning I did not understand it, I did not see anything special, but after these three weeks I understood it. India is a place where people come to find themselves....this is our first introduction to spiritual India...

Sri Ramana and the sacred mountain


This is where we have had our first ashram contact, the Sri Ramana Maharshi ashram. Even though he died more than 50 years ago, his disciples carried on his teachings. His thinkings are based on the answer to the following question: who am I? Following his teachings, you could get to the conclusion that we are nothing but a part of a whole, or in other words, we are already the divine. This way of thinking on a day-to-day basis makes that our ego, our 'me' disapears and it is converted into the energy that unifies us.

I, personally, do not agree with all the points of his thinking but some of the ideas can help you to have a happier life: We must be aware that our thoughts and our feelings come and go, and they should not direct our lifes. In every moment we have to keep our mind calm and be able to see our thoughts and feelings from outside.

The hinduism pelegrinage

For the Hinduism religion the mountain that is circled by the city of Tiruvannamalai is sacred, and for this reason the Sri Ramana's ashram is here, because he left everything to live in the sacred mountain. The people, following their gurus' advices, come to this city as a pelegrinage and go around the mountain as a sign of adoration. And on full moon nights, this walk gathers hundreds or thousands of people coming from close villages, cities or even from other states. The walk has to be done when the moon is out, meaning evening or night. We made sure we arrived for the full moon but we didn't know that it was the second most important full moon of the year, so we were going to take part in one of the most important religious events in the area. We walked the 14 kilometers during the night with thousands of people and hundred of cows. It was quite interesting, walking with thousands of indian devotees, passing by  different temples and trying to avoid the cow pats!

The stage of an ashram

Another guru experience in Tiru

In this city there are a lot of ashrams, and one day we went to another one. The guru of this ashram was a woman who stopped talking a long time ago. You go into a big room,  sit and wait until the guru gets in. When she gets in, she sits down in a trone in the middle of the room and by looking at the people, she blesses them. So there I was, waiting to be blessed by one staring guru. She got up and passed in front of me, but I was not looking because I thought that I did not have to. Rebecca said that the guru looked at me but I did not feel anything.
Then the guru sat down again and started to meditate and the rest of the people in the room did too. I looked at her, and suddently she looked back. I do not know how to express what I felt, but even if she transmitted a very calm and peacefull vibe, I could not keep looking at her and I turned my stare away from at her. I did feel something, even though I do not know what, neither how to explain it, anyway I do not need to find the words to explain it.

But the best of all  so far, was to feel at 'home away from home'. We have been travelling during 5 months and to find a place where you feel at home is like arriving to paradise (we already felt like that during the trip but not for 3 weeks). Rebecca and Deo treated us as kings and they have make us feel at home. It was very hard to leave their place, leave the UNO games, the afternoons laying without doing anything but chatting because it was too hot to go out. But India is waiting for us, and thanks to their tips and a better knowledge of the country, our trip in India will be more intense and confortable at the same time.

The sisters in a restaurant with a hole in the first floor

A summer afternoon