Caked with mud and happy about it

There are defining experiences in our lives that help shape us. Being an aid worker just after the genocide in Rwanda was one of those for me as it gave me the gift of being completely shaken up. I found I was not as strong inside as I would have liked to be and my perceptions of world order cracked. I was at a point in my life where I had left a career in marketing and communications and moved back to the west of Ireland, where I had grown up. I had just begun to renovate an old house and run a guest house with one of my sisters. It was a fertile, supportive ground on which to start an inner journey and after Rwanda it was clear to me that I needed to work on myself. So I spent seven happy years exploring my inner reality through psychotherapy, yoga, Ayurveda, dance, shamanic journeying, pranic healing and holotropic breath work. At the same time, I got involved in local community initiatives with people my age, trying to create change in our small corner of the world.

My first contact with Auroville was when I toured South India with a group of pranic healers in 2000. We had a brief stop in Auroville to have lunch at the Centre Guesthouse and I saw the Matrimandir from a distance. Auroville didn’t feature in my active consciousness for the rest of the trip.

But as soon as I got back to Ireland it happened, in an invitation to come to Auroville the following year on a yoga intensive with Sama; a week later I received an invitation to attend an Ayurvedic massage course with Umberto in the west of Ireland. I jumped at both.

As preparation for our trip, Sama showed us a film about Auroville and I heard the words from A Dream for the first time. I had a ‘wow!’ moment and wondered what such a place could look like. The possibility of Auroville being something totally new touched me in that moment.

Arriving in Auroville I felt the potential of the place but I also reacted. The villages around seemed so meagre compared to the big houses and leafy gardens of Auroville and I had the distinct feeling of one class of people who served and another that were served. As Ireland was a British colony and I come from a family who were very active in the freedom movement, I was super-sensitive to this. I had loads of questions and I was lucky to have chance encounters with three Aurovilians who spent time with me.

The first was Kathy who shared her journey of personal growth and pointed to Auroville’s role in providing such a ripe field for personal transformation. The second was Dhanya who cautioned me to leave space for emergence to happen in my life. And the third was Subash who shared his journey to Auroville and his connection with The Mother. These conversations made me curious enough to take the three day Auroville Experience tour to dig a bit deeper, beyond the surface reality that I was experiencing.

Ross was leading our tour. They were three great days. It gave me an insight into the wider intention of Auroville. I saw work that seem to me transformative and a defining moment was when David led us around Adventure. He spoke of their attempt to build an intentional community and then uttered the words “evolution of consciousness”. Something resonated deep inside, like when I first heard A Dream. We were standing in the space under Abbey’s hut, her easel was in the middle of the floor and looking out on her stone circle I thought, “I could really grow and be challenged here.”

I then wandered into one of Aster’s conferences. It was way over my head but I loved just sitting in the back row and listening. I had come to a point in my life where I had, from an inner point of view, gone as far as I could in my life in Ireland. Something new was now strongly calling and I had the thought to come back for six months and just study. But another voice in my head said ‘You can’t do that”. So I came for a number of years for short periods that eventually got longer and finally, in the middle of a vipassana course when my mind was still and I was touching something deep inside, I was clear it was time to move fully. This was hard for me on another level as the west coast of Ireland is very beautiful, and I have very strong family connections and good friends there.

I was rewarded with a wonderful first year in Auroville. I was naturally drawn to village development work. I joined the Auroville Health Services team and worked on outreach health education, including ecosan toilet projects. The year after I connected again with Kathy who, with Thulasi, was starting Thamarai in an effort to bridge Edayanachavady and Auroville and, in particular, work on well-being and empowerment for women and children. So we started a play group and an after school service and two years later the Edayanachavady Healing Centre and lately an environmental programme at the Edayanachavady Government school. Now, nine years later, the projects are doing well. The Thamarai children from the early days have grown into university students doing their masters or even Ph.D’s and are now the Thamarai teachers guiding the next generation. There is an emerging educated youth in the villages that give me hope.

I worked in L’Avenir d’Auroville for two years, which was a fantastic learning experience even though it was, at times, very challenging. It gave me a good insight into our system of governance and also a wider lens on the bioregion. I left to join the team at Pitanga which I see as a beautiful space to support us on our journey of inner and outer development. As it has well being and growth at its core, it also fits very nicely with the work I am involved in at Thamarai and, in particular, at the Healing Centre.

Ever since I joined Auroville, I have had my ups and downs. I went through a very intense period of questioning in my 2nd or 3rd year. On an inner level, it was fear; on an outer level it manifested in my reflections on all the things that I perceived as not right in Auroville and I questioned my choice to live here. Had I made a mistake?

I prepared to go back to Ireland but then went through a period where I couldn’t see myself back there, even though I would have been very welcomed. I felt I did not fit in there any more. But here I did not feel right, I would wake up crying, feeling totally lost. Some people saw that happening, and I remember supportive conversations with Andrea and Loretta. This was another defining time for me, as it forced me to surrender and ask for help.

I was going to regular classes trying to understand the works of Mother and Sri Aurobindo. In one of these classes, the topic was how Grace works. I was feeling very vulnerable and had a fever. I turned to Her photograph and asked for help. Something beautiful happened in that moment that lasted 4 or 5 days. I knew instantly that underneath the surface messy layer something else was at work and being worked out here. It was intense and I felt renewed. There was no longer any doubt. I had been house-sitting for four years, moving from one house to another, but there was now no longer any fear and I contributed to a flat and moved on with my life here.

I still find it challenging at times but I have no regrets. I know this is my field of growth. So much happens in a day and I think the diversity that we are and the instability of life here is such a fertile field for self-reflection and a tool for stretching us. In everyday life I meet the bits of me that need refining. They are being mirrored back, often the same old patterns that I started out on my journey of growth, but now at a deeper level. No doubt it is a journey of a lifetime, but what a blessed journey it is!

A Dream is very close to my heart. Today, instead of being critical, I try to ask what is missing and take steps towards minimising the gaps. It is a long stretch, but together we can make it.

I once woke up at three o’clock in the morning with a crystal clear dream that came after a heated discussion I had with a friend about Auroville. I had felt hurt by his criticism and I had got into reaction and defence. In this dream, I was in one of the mud pools in Sadhana Forest community. I was caked with mud, the ground underneath my feet was very unstable, there were many people like me with mud all over them, our bodies were very close and the heat between us was intense. These were other people on the edge of the pool looking in, genuinely very interested and feeling connected but clean, without the mud. For a moment I became aware of the muddy water on my skin and knowing it was doing something to me, as was the intensity of the bodies and instability in the pool. I looked again at the people on the edge and realised that the jumping-in had made the experience different. I woke with the realisation that I was very glad I had joined Auroville, even if I still cry when I leave Ireland. It’s a grace to be here and sharing this journey.