Next morning, practicing yoga, lying in savasana on the rooftop deck and I hear a noise, what sounds like a human sitting next to me eating. I open my eyes and sitting right there are the fucking monkeys!!! They were back! Two monkeys just sitting on the balcony eating some of the spilled oats. (Read the last paragraph of my previous post – hilarious!). At first, I was kind of scared of them. They were just sitting there staring at me! I wasn’t sure if they were going to attack or something. But then I realized they were just chillin and I started taking pics of them. After practice, I went downstairs to get some coffee and casually told Vijaya that the monkeys were back, thinking nothing of it. Same as last night, she looks at me frantically, picks up a broom stick and runs out of the house and up the stairs screaming at the monkeys, meanwhile leaving a dosa cooking on the stove! I flipped the dosa and continued to throw a few more on the pan for her while she was upstairs screaming at the monkeys and yelling at her husband to come help her, who wasn’t far behind with a stick of his own. I didn’t realize how big of an issue these monkeys were!!!! I seriously find this all so funny. I couldn’t stop laughing.

After this, I went to the golden globe to meditate. Another indescribable experience. You go in this global structure and as soon as they shut the door for the meditation session, you immediately begin to drop into a meditative state. It is so quiet inside that structure, that the silence is loud. You might have to stop and think about that for a second, but this is the only way I know how to describe it. The silence is loud. The silence is so loud that you have no other choice but to go inward. You are almost forced to start meditating. If you start to think about how silent it is, you might go mad! I could almost see this being frightening for someone who doesn’t meditate. Although, you probably wouldn’t be coming to this place if you didn’t meditate… I guess thats the whole point, right?

Today over coffee, I met an Indian who lived in Austin, TX for 15 years working as a tech engineer, but now lives back in India and periodically comes to Auroville for a few months out of the year to practice somatics with a specific teacher here. Had a great conversation with him about the whole place of Auroville, the concept, and other life-stuff. I told him I had signed up for a mandala drawing class this afternoon, and he said something that really stuck with me… “Art can be a powerful force if you stop thinking about creating beautiful art. When you do it for the sake of doing it, that is when the magic happens.”