After the wonderful retreat in December some magic had to happen and I had the fortune of attending the retreat as a participant in the month of November and in the very next month I had the opportunity to serve. During the retreat there were number of experiences that made me smile, cry, reflect, introspect and at the end move something within which I would love to share in this space.



My experience with silence: As a student in school one instruction that I always use to hear from my teachers was, “please maintain silence”, I did not understand why they use to say so and I being a chatter box would never follow their instruction.

During the Retreat, between all the transitory phases a minute of silence will be held, be it between the session, food area, meetings or any other space. When our beautiful anchors use to say lets maintain a minute of silence my mind use to often think what will happen in 60 seconds? Why not just start or end a session just like that?  But as many say experience is your best teacher, I experienced that that one minute can do wonders where I see my thoughts, anxiety, fears  vanishing in that one whole minute and I could see my mind as still as water in the pond helping me reflect and look at my patterns.  I would love to thank all the anchors especially Sheetal Ben for the wonderful experience around one minute silence that I had. 

Another wonderful experience around silence happened while walking from Ameyapur village to Kabir ashram, thanks to Suresh bhai. It was the second day and all the participants were distributed in to two groups for the Hands Activity. As soon as we reached their different activities like cleaning the school area, toilets, gardening, cooking started followed by lunch which was hosted by the people staying in the village. Personally for me up till the time I left the school and started for Kabir ashram, it was only my hands that were working with point one percent awareness about what is happening internally while I was cleaning. But after Suresh bhai who shared of walking in silence from Ameyapur to Kabir ashram my heart started working and reflecting of those magical moments that I experienced while doing all the activities with the kids. I was the learner and they were my teachers. Once all the activities were finished, we all along with some of the kids prayed for the space, food and love which was served to us. In silence only we hugged and said bye to the little angels. As I started walking I felt a little hand holding my hand with so much love, She was 3-4 years little girl who started walking with me, holding my hand and came with me till the gate of the village. That gesture of her touched my heart and I went back to my childhood with my mother and I carried her and started walking. I would have hardly walked some 20 steps and I started feeling tired and that was the time when I had some glimpses of me and my mother where she carried me for how many miles I don’t even have the count, and I remembered all that time where I couldn’t share that gratitude which I was feeling while walking with that kid. It was the power of silence that took me to that moment which I am grateful for. Thank you

At the end I feel grateful for Mehta family to start Awakin with the very thought of sharing and opening the space for the community. I don’t know how many ripples it has created up till now and how many it will be creating. Secondly I am grateful to Harshida aunty and Dinesh Uncle, whose subtle yet powerful presence gave birth to Baroda Awakin.  For me Awakin has been a very beautiful, pure and scared space, where every week I hear insightful experiences from people, ahaaa moments of the week that bring smiles and joy on our faces. It is also gives me a space too to share my inner most emotion without any fear of being judged. I alone wouldn’t have experienced the joy without being part of the community. Thank you all :-)

Posted by Trupti Pandya on Dec 22, 2013 | permalink