Breaking free from the known and easy

Almost everyone reading this will be familiar with the Stonehenge, a prehistoric monument in England, which consists of standing stones – but not many know that there is a theory that calls it a “place of healing”. One of the articles I read about this said, “People came to the Stonehenge to be made well”. When I thought about it, I took solace in imagining that many thousands of years ago, a community put piece by piece together to enable the good of mankind at a very EQ level. 

My experience at Gramya Manthan can easily be summed up in the above paragraph but there is more I have to say.. and much more that I am grateful for (and I now believe that somewhere in this world, people will listen). It’s amazing how these 10 days were spent as far away from my routine life as possible and yet I don’t remember the last time I felt as close to my own self as I did during this time.   

Magical things I witnessed: 

• How safe it felt falling asleep under the stars while being immersed in a heartwarming conversation with “kaka and kaki” (as we fondly called them) from the village
• The beautiful ways in which nature welcomes you when you let go of your fears and embrace 
• Found myself listening to words/thoughts and thinking “This person is special. How do I appreciate that?” more than once 
• How pure and infinite it felt to look inside and go to the deepest darkest corners of my own mind
• How liberating it can be for an individual to be in a community that welcomes, appreciates, and most importantly, nods
• Realised on many occasions that everything I did up until that point was a matter of habit, and once I challenged myself to go beyond is when I truly felt liberated 

Through my time at the village, I kept thinking that a greater velocity of life did not bring happiness -it was a feeling of community, a feeling of belonging to a place that felt somewhat like “home”. Perhaps, a greater realization was that in the end, human beings belong to each other. We belong in a world where people aren’t separated by the boundaries of their houses or hearts - where empathy is the ultimate truth and is the guiding factor for every decision this world makes.