Spiritual Refugees in the Journey Back Home

To speak about how I feel about Auroville or what makes me feel a part of Auroville is always really difficult. It is almost like a mission impossible. But since I’m playing this game I would bet on one word that I can relate to: Auroville for me is Aliveness. I’ve been here for little more than one year, but I feel as if I’ve been living many lives at once. Each day here is so charged with intensity. In one year I have experienced more events, changes and realisations than in the 27 years of my past life.

Is it because of Auroville? Is it because of me? I don’t know, and maybe I don’t need to know. What matters to me, what I have been learning here, is daring to fully embrace the feeling. If I observe and allow the sentiment right now, I can describe it as a deep nourishing, sweet and feminine gratitude. Gratitude to this place, to these people, to this moment, to life, to God, to Mother, to all mothers that have made my incarnation possible right here, right now.

What brought me here? Who knows? What is more important is what makes me want to stay, especially after going through what I would call the most difficult year of my life.

I came from the country furthest away from India, Chile.

It is so different in so many ways, and disturbingly similar in others. I left everything that was familiar to me behind: “my friends”, “my family”, “my house”, “my job” - my old identity. I came with nothing else other than my backpack, my husband and my heart full of dreams. In one year all the plans changed, and my life made a big turn: I separated from my husband, moved house five times, changed my job a couple more, met totally different people, faced totally new realities, started healing deep wounds, started dreaming again…This time, my dreams are not only more grounded, but they are also held in the support of a collective. They are meeting dream-siblings. They feel, for the first time, that they belong. They have found their right place in the sky where they can play with others.

I have known for many years that crises in life are actually good: they are the way to pull you out of inertia and shake you up, to help you shift. This was not the first big crisis in my life, but this time it felt totally different. Auroville awoke something new. Being 27 years old, facing a divorce in the middle of India just a couple of months after arriving, was not necessarily a great time for me. Yet I’ve never been so grateful for a crisis before, and I’ve never lived one with so much joy and trust. I became so interested in what was happening inside, that I couldn’t avoid diving in. The deeper I went, the more truth I found. It was in the air: every quote that I read was the precise one that I needed to hear at that moment, every activity that I explored gave me a new insight, every job that I took - with its conflict and challenges - showed me what I needed to acknowledge. But maybe what has been more revealing to me is to realize that every new person that I met had a new clue to give me. Everybody was in fact helping me, not only with kindness and love, but also showing me the corrupted side, the shadows of our egos. The right Aurovilian always appears at the right time, for good and bad.

I taught myself to not have fear about losing my stability and then, a new understanding of what stability means was born. It has been growing since then and now, it is not limited anymore to any particular place. Here I have learned from experience like never before. I’m seeing my thoughts manifesting into actions, and from those manifestations I’m breaking through to some deep feelings. I started a simple, but not easy, practice of feeling what is there until the very bottom.

HOME

I am sure I am only one of thousands with this kind of story and with these kinds of realisations. And it is precisely because of this that Auroville is so interesting: It is full of seekers. It is made out of souls that cannot stand the fakeness of the world as it is now, souls that are not conforming. Idealist minds. Compassionate hearts. And, what is maybe more important: youthful energy. We are willing to create something new, even if we don’t have a clue about how to do it sometimes.

What makes us come together for Human Unity is that in the end, we are all spiritual refugees, and Auroville is The Home that has been beautifully created for us to awake to The Truth, and then to share it with the world.

After spending some time in Auroville, I needed to come back to Chile for a visit. Trying to reconnect with family and friends was a bittersweet confirmation that even when there’s so much love and history between us, familiarity has nothing to do with home. Not necessarily. I see now that the real baggage that I am unpacking is called Conditioning and Fears. To be able to see them is actually the first step, but then, what will you do to transform them? That is part of the great adventure that Auroville encourages you to live.

In my own journey here, maybe the most beautiful realization that I had is that actually serving “The Divine” is nothing different than serving your Divine Self. That one that is pure unconditional love. That one that is probably hidden between layers and layers of not-you, so the adventure to unfold you cannot be more challenging, and at the same time cannot be more exciting.

Auroville is not perfect. Not at all. There are so many things that don’t work yet, still being very far away from the ideal. Many times it seems to be more chaos than divine chaos... But for me that’s precisely why it is so interesting! There’s so much potential and still so much work to do. I see a rough diamond; I see a reflection of myself.

It is difficult to explain to someone who has not been here, to communicate why this investment of my life is worth it.

If it is measured by the yardstick of the outside world, it doesn’t seem to have any logic. You come here, you work for free, you give your money, time and energy to some purpose, apparently “outside” of you. You have to find different ways to fulfill your material needs, which can be complicated. At the same time, you learn so much. Much more than any university can offer you, because you learn from deep intense experience. So it may not look like an intelligent material investment. It is not: it is a life investment.

NO FEAR & DEVOTION

Since I was a teenager, I’ve been accumulating a lot of spiritual tools and practices. In Auroville, I found a new brick that holds the wall together. I dare to call it devotion. I never truly met that quality before coming here. I was raised in a rigid Catholic society where the norm is religiosity, where people live through their minds. There was always a feeling inside that didn’t find the right space to express itself. At times, I even felt embarrassed to experience and share this natural sense of gratitude to the creation. I usually felt like an outsider, so I suppressed my sentiments and adapted to the context. That’s what humans do, we adapt to the environment that we are in, so in an unhealthy disconnected context, you most probably will live in that way. Here, that is not the norm. God is in the air, and I finally feel I don’t have to sacrifice my authenticity anymore.

For me, devotion is not a quality learned from outside. It doesn’t even have to manifest in some outer way. It may be helpful to evoke some image, some representation that carries meaning to you. You can also name that quality by different names, using many different figures, shapes and faces and to manifest it. Eventually, you may light a candle to a deity; you can do your pujas or allow whatever wants to be expressed. I have many rituals, but I found none of them matter if I don’t light a candle for myself first. If you don’t know yourself as divine, you will never meet The Divine. And once you know yourself as God, how can you believe in your fear any longer?

This is the place to grow bigger than fears.

I’ve also been observing myself the way I resonate with Mother’s words. It awakes powerful things that have always been inside, as I’m the one that is being read by a much wiser someone. What do I see when I look into her eyes? Love. Compassion. But also: myself, and this realization makes me want to keep feeding not only my connection with her, but also the connection with everyone; to joyfully accept the gift of mirroring and being mirrored. Auroville is a really good place to put that in practice, and this is the only way I see human unity possible.

CONSCIOUS CINEMA

I see such a big potential and so many things to do and create in Auroville that I can only be enthusiastic for the future ahead. There is so much to learn here! What I want to focus on the most is putting the skills that I have been developing through my profession as a filmmaker to use in a meaningful way. Cinema is a relatively new art, younger than any other, and yet it is the most powerful and impactful one nowadays. As quickly as the world is progressing, audiovisual has become the main communication system. It is not only an artistic expression anymore; it is a new language. I feel in Auroville this powerful tool is not yet well-developed, and I want to be a facilitator for this development to occur.

You can use a tool in many different ways. “From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the consciousness that you put into it (…)” The Mother, CWM Vol.14, P:36.. There are some films that have a special quality, the power to touch what is beyond the emotional body. They can be fictions, documentaries, animations, experimental films. Many times they offer you storytelling too, but what they have in common is they touch a bigger place of awareness, offering you some truth. That quality doesn’t speak to the mind, it doesn’t disturb the vital, it touches a deeper sense of self.

What if we can use movies as a useful path for our karma yoga, to motivate us in our inner discovery?

A film is more plastic than anything, and it has everything inside. In that way isn’t Auroville a good place to make films with originality, and to make not only the product but also the process more conscious? What does Auroville have to offer in this area of expertise to the world? I am just starting out on my path and I don’t have the answer. I have so much learning to do, but what is really wonderful is to feel that I am in the right setting to start such an exploration. Not only do I want to know: I want to create it. I want to make it happen.