Archive for July 10th, 2007
We woke up at Uncle Igor and Aunty Ryuba�s. Some early birds, such as Nishi didi and Kevin bhaiya, took the chance to shoe-beat and meditate in the lush garden. In a joyful mood, we took the time to refresh ourselves, have chi, chat, and pack. Today is an important day. We are going to downtown Chicago to give self-realization in the festival of the city �Taste of Chicago.� But first, Saraswati didi from Chicargo invites us to her house for brunch. Mukesh, Denis, and Nishal bhaiya from Chicago collective come to lead our way to Saraswati didi�s house. Ruthvick and Gisela from Michigan also join us. Before leaving Uncle Igor and Aunty Ryuba�s house, we have a collective meditation. Mitchell leads the meditation. The vibration is beautiful.
Saraswati and Amisha didi prepare a feast for our arrival. Everyone is content and has a wonderful time. After the brunch, we have another collective meditation. Gisela leads the meditation. Her calm voice carries soothing vibrations. The power of pure desire is awakened within everyone. We are in deep meditation. The whole collective sits still like a picture while enjoys the moment of Nirvichara.
After meditation, aunty Prerna, Pragya, and Chetna have to catch a flight to return to Texas. We enjoy their company so much in the tour that it is hard to say goodbye. They leave with all our best wishes. When the car drives away, several yuva shaktis run after the car. We will meet again soon.
So, here we come, Chicago, the wind city, is our subtle battlefield of the day. The �Taste of Chicago� is the largest festival among the events we have participated along the way. Hundreds of people come for the festival. Soon after we set up the Sahaja Yoga booth, it is filled with seekers. The collective separates for a while in the beginning while some people help to park the car and carry the equipment. Yogis who arrived earlier all go out to give self realization, and have to work on several seekers at one time. Therefore, we are very delight to see the arrival of our fellow companions. The Bhajans carries the vibrations through the ether, calling the attention of the seekers. Many Spanish speaking seekers come. The only two Spanish speaking yogis�aunty Tracy and Gisela are so busy that at some point they even do not have time to rest or eat. When the subtle systems get overloaded after working on seekers, yogis sit down to meditate for a short while, receiving vibrations or a massage from their brothers and sisters, and are ready to go back to work. Most seekers have their self-realization effortlessly, just like the way we have ours.
Time passes quickly, the Chicago collective prepare to perform a puja. We pack up the booths, together with hundreds of Chicago inhabitants that head back home; we leave the fair and take a walk to the Millennium Park for a brief sight seeing of the wind city. Some of us lie down on the grass for Adi Bhumi Devi to clear the tiredness. Nearby, the Chicago philharmonic begins to play a beautiful symphony. Soothing breeze flows around us. We chat and enjoy the beautiful summer evening.
The puja is held in Nishal Bhaiya and and Ekta didi�s home. The whole Chicago collective prepared the puja for the end of the Realize America tour. We worship Adi Shakti in the form of Shri Ganesha. All the members of the tour are offered the opportunity to wash Mother�s feet, offer flowers, prasad and the bhakti in our hearts. The tour is successfully done. It is already done before we set off for the journey. We are just fortunate to have the chance to witness the beautiful Divine Leela as both players and audience. We have done nothing but receive the bliss. The bhajans continues; the musicians express the bhakti of the Spirit harmoniously.
We return to Uncle Igor and Aunty Ryuba�s home for the night. Uncle Igor said that the mid-west region is the heart of the United States. It is very auspicious that we have Kevin bhaiya from England to work on the heart of the United States. The heart muscles need to be strong and persevered. Can the heart of United States be strong enough to love, day and night, night and day, at every moment? Can the heart of the United States be clean and pure? Let us be strong, courageous, persevered, and loving, so that the land of Shri Krishna can have the strength to overcome all the superficiality, isolation, karma and Badhas.
July 10th, 2007
Friday began at Auntie Lyba�s, where everyone woke up late at 9, which means I woke up at 11. We then had breakfast which consisted of an array of scrumptious pastries, cereals, and fruits. Today�s meditation was going to be out in the garden where we would be doing paper burning. We ended up writing 2 pages worth of negativity and burning it. The Aunties told us to drink lots of water so we wouldn�t get dehydrated, resulting into a vicious drinking contest which goes without saying that we had to stop a number of times to use the loo. Hitting horrible traffic changed our plans from going to Milwaukee to Lake Michigan. So we ate lunch at Subway, which knocked us back a while, meaning we got at the place around 5. It was a beautiful park overlooking the lake. We sat down and immediately got to the bhajans and giving realization. It wasn�t one of our most successful days in the number of people that received their self-realization. After a few hours the sun was setting so we hit the beach. We did foot soak in the delicious water and played a round of the infamous game Bibbidy-Bibbidy-Bop, which originated from Austria.
A BBQ awaited us at Uncle Tom�s and Auntie Francesca�s home with many of the Chicago, Bloomington and Peoria, IL yogis in attendence. The food was hot off the BBQ and was a pretty gourmet dish, I�m not gonna lie to you! We had shrimp, and lamb and chicken and all sorts of dishes. The collectives exchanged presents, had a few speeches and thank-yous. The yuv shaktis hung out in the little kid�s room and played the quick answer game. Which is pretty much just one person saying 2 things real quick, like �blue or black�, �cold or hot�, or �Laxmi or Savita�, and the other person picking one as fast as they can without any thought. It�s supposedly the �subconscious� speaking out. As you can probably imagine, it�s a dangerous game to play without supervision, but an absolutely hilarious game to play never the less.
Music was trickling upstairs from the basement, so we went to see what was happening. Bhajans were being played full stream by none other than Ruthvick, an amazing singer and harmonium player, who by the way, just got married to Gisela from Brazil little over a year ago. The yuvashakti had been dying to finally have their dance party, so we didn�t even hesitate to jump up and dance at the first Quwaali and got the whole room in motion. It was getting late so we left earlier then we would have liked, because we had a big day ahead of us tomorrow. But that doesn�t mean that we were tired by any means, at least not all of us. So we went back to Auntie Luba�s and ate some small bites. I was throwing grapes into my mouth and others joined in, and soon enough we were all chucking grapes into each others mouths, from all sides and angles of the room. It�s funny how we can be entertained by such random things.
Yassir, Sonia�s brother, was cracking our necks and backs after, cause he said he had taken some class for it�or so we thought� dun dun dun! Nah just kiddin he was actually pretty good at it. At this point we were all well tired, so we made our way to our cozy sleeping bags.
This is Savita on, �The Realize America Tour�, thank you for listening, and tune in for tomorrows edition of, The Tour!
Over and out!
July 10th, 2007
Everyone was really sleepy this morning and it took some time to wake everyone up since we all stayed up really late till around 4:30ish the night before. I woke up by the sound of Laxmi and Chetna telling everyone that breakfast is ready and that they had made chocolate-chip and banana pancakes which sounded really good to my starving stomach so I woke up right then and went downstairs and sure enough there were two dishes full of chocolate chip and banana pancakes, scrambled eggs, and all the other good stuff for breakfast. Some people enjoyed their breakfast outside in the deck which was very nice and faced the pond. After everyone was well satisfied with their breakfast we had a collective guided morning mediation which was great. Right after that we had a long discussion about uncle Manoj�s e-mail addressing mother�s concern about the state of Sahaja Yoga in America which was quite interesting because everyone was really concerned and everyone was being very active and coming up with different ideas which made the conversation keep going on for some long time and Chen-Chia being the organized person started taking notes about the stuff we were talking about. But everyone was really deep in discussion so we totally lost track of time and decided we should start packing and get ready to leave. In the meantime we had lunch and listened to music which made Chris and Jeremy start dancing. We were really sad that Dennis couldn�t come with us back to Chicago anymore since he was leaving for Cabella, Italy on Saturday. We were all just saying bye to each other when suddenly a bee decided to sting my leg which hurt pretty bad and its still itching to this day. So after our very sad goodbyes we left toward Chicago. And the ride was like any other day in the van some people chatting, some eating snacks, and some were dancing and singing bhajans. After long drive we stopped at the Indiana Dunes beach and swam for a while. It was so much fun! By the time we left the beach everyone was tired and we all wanted to get home but we kind of got lost which made it take it even longer. But finally we reached aunty Luba�s house at around midnight who is a great hostess and gave us turkey wraps, soup, chicken, rice, and so much more food and fruits. After eating dinner we all just went to sleep since we were pretty tired even though we didn�t do a lot today but after all it was a joyful day.
Sonia Keyvan from Peoria, Illinois.
July 10th, 2007
We all got to enjoy waking up late again this morning because we didn�t have any specific time that we had to be somewhere. It was a relaxed morning with eating a nice breakfast and then having a collective meditation. Most of us wore our realize America shirts or any other shirts that had red, white and blue on it to celebrate the fourth of July. We relaxed around Dennis�s house for about an hour, where some of us sang bhanjans outside, while others talked in the living room and in the kitchen. For lunch, we headed over to Uncle Prashant and Aunty Sveta�s house. It took about thirty minutes to get to their house. When we arrived there, we were all amazed at how big and nice their house is. They have a three story house with tons of glass windows looking out to the forest. It was so nice! In their living room there is a humongous flat screen tv on the wall, where most of the girls were enjoying watching Hindi movie songs. Some of the other yuvas got sucked into playing carem, which is sort of like pool but is played on a flat board covered in powder. For lunch we had lots of delicious Indian food and watermelon. After finishing we had a quick collective meditation. We then headed out to downtown Detroit. In the middle of downtown there is a huge water fountain that we all put our feet in. Julia and Shreya were having so much fun in the water that they ended up getting completely soaked. It was pretty funny. Good thing it was sunny outside, so they could dry off easily. In the same area we could see the lake that separated Michigan and Windsor, Canada. I had no idea that Canada was so close!! While our entire group (which included the Michigan collective) were standing for a group photo, we all spontaneously started singing Ganesha, Ganesha. It was so nice. It reminded me of the Von-Trap family from the Sound of Music.
After leaving downtown we headed to Kensington Metro Park where all the Fourth of July festivities were taking place. We got there about 5:30pm. This was a very big park which overlooked lake Michigan. Some of the yuvas played �bibbity bibbity bop� which was a lot fun. We wanted to establish vibrations in the area so we all started singing bhajans which drew a very big crowd to our area. We stated giving realization and did not stop being completely packed and busy until about 10:30 when the fireworks started. Some of the reactions people had after getting their realization was so nice! A little girl who was about 8 years old, that I ended up filming, was so excited to feel the cool breeze above her head! She was constantly putting her hand over her moms� and sisters to feel theirs too. She described it as a �cold windy day� above her head and said that she wanted to go back to concentrating. The bhajans continued the whole time that we were giving realization. One of the yogis went and brought us all dinner, which we ate while watching the fireworks. During the fireworks, Anjana, Savita and I were having so much fun that we were able to come up with a different noise for each firework. Like �KABOOM!� or �HOLY GAUCAMOLE�or �WAWA WEE WA�. When the fireworks finished, we had a collective footsoak in the lake. We ended up staying at the park until one in the morning singing bhajans and qawwalis . The vibrations were so strong and so amazing!! When we got back to Dennis�s house most of the aunties and uncles went to bed, while the yuvas stayed up and talked and just enjoyed ourselves. We put on a movie and didn�t end up going to bed until 4:30 in the morning! It was great fun! It�s so amazing how time doesn�t seem to exist in Sahaj especially when you are being showered in vibrations
Pragya Richards (Dallas, Texas)
July 10th, 2007
We woke up for morning meditation. Everyone loaded into the vans to go across town for realization at Carnegie Park during the Beethoven, Back, and Burch. This was where a Jewish group played music while everyone from the area had breakfast. We set up right at the top of the hill with meditation on one side of the path and the picnic on the other. Since there was music playing we weren�t able to play music. This did not inhibit us from giving people realization. It was really easy at the park because we had most of the yogis from Philadelphia help with everything. Auntie Tracy did not have a permit for this year and the office was close even though Auntie Jane had applied for it. We had no problem what so ever because later in the day we meet the lady who was in charge of event got her realization and invited us to another event later in the day. As we winded down at we had time to decide what to do with the rest of the day. We decided to go to the second event that the lady invited us to. The second event was a Garden Party in another park in a completely different part of town. This was another interesting event because the area was in an area of town that was vibrationly getting better. There were many different people who got their realization while we sang bhajans. The most memorable person to get their realization was a clown on stilts. After that we went up to Mount Washington to see where the miracle photos from the last seminar in Pittsburgh. After taking lots of pictures in front of the city, we decided to go get ice cream at a shop on top of the mountain. After wards we went back to the house for dinner and to relax, play an extensive game of charades that lasted an insane amount of time and to prepare for the next days trip to Detroit.
Jeremy Tischuk from Pittsburgh
July 10th, 2007
