Satsang with Satyananda in Bristol

Last weekend my mum and I went to Bristol for Satsang with Satyananda. Satsang is where a group of people sit with a guru and discuss their questions or problems with him. Often questions or problems in Satsang are more about, "Finding one's self" and spiritual things like that rather than specific questions like, "I am studing for exams and I'm really stressed. What should I do?"

I had to wake up at six thirty in the morning to take the train to Bristol, which should have been fine, but I went to bed at eleven twenty or something, so I was really tired during the day. the morning was actually fine, but when we got to  Satsang later in the day I started to get really tired. Probably because we weren't walking around or rushing to get to places anymore, and we were sitting down in a really quiet room. It was so inconvenient that I was tired; I couldn't concentrate properly for some of the Satsang and I couldn't sleep either as the chairs weren't very comfortable. In the end I lay down half on the chair next to me and fell asleep. My mum had to wake me up when the first part (Which had lasted two hours) was over. We went to outside to the park across the road and ate our sandwiches. (BTW mine was fried salmon with chive Philadelphia cheese which I had been looking forward to for ages - and it was really tasty.)

I'm going to explain to you a bit about what Satyananda and other Satsang gurus teach. But I can only tell you what I understand.

Satsang is about finding yourself. Not the thinking, mind part, but the part that is actually YOU: The pure consciousness. The part that doesn't have a personality or judgements or a gender. That means really concentrating on YOURSELF - or rather, inside you. Finding the inner you. Which isn't finding a calm part of your mind, but finding something totally different from your mind. From what I understood, that means you have two parts: Your mind and your consciousness. You need to find the latter, be the latter. That might feel like leaving yourself behind, but what will happen is the two can fuse together - so you can still make decisions, but from a clear viewpoint, so you can see things neutrally. Maybe what you're thinking is, "But I am conscious - otherwise I wouldn't be able to think." But if you are conscious, that doesn't mean you are CONSCIOUSNESS. and this probably sounds really confusing, like I'm playing with language and not really helping you to get it. If you understand, great, but maybe a better way of explaining it is how Satyananda himself explained it; You do not find peace; you are peace.   That means that you're not with peace either, peace is you. and peace is not the mind because the mind is always busy - quite the opposite of peaceful. When you are peace you can make clear decisions because peace is not affected by the mind.

After the break we went back to Satsang, and I didn't fall asleep. Even if you don't go up to speak (I didn't) it's interesting to listen to what other people have to say. And sometimes funny too because Satyananda makes jokes.

Me and my mum couchsurfed that night, and the next morning went to the second half of Satsang.

The second part was better than the first (The chairs were comfier) especially when Satyananda talked about how you can change the past. You don't need a tardis. When you change your perception of the past, the past changes.

At the break I bought a cup of tea, then we sat drinking it for the second half.

When the Satsang was finished, we started making our way back to the train station.

The next Satsang with Satyananda will be in St Ives...

Happy new year everyone!

New year came fast this year. Really fast. I didn't really 
realise that it would be 2014 soon until Christmas. In fact, 
Christmas came as a surprise because I was still getting out of
the, "Rome mood" and because... well, I hadn't really been looking forward to Christmas - not because I don't like like it but just cus I don't generally tend to get so excited about it. So anyway, I was really surprised when it was just three days to go before 2014. Not really pleasantly surprised though because I felt a bit like 2013 went too quickly. There were projects I wanted to have finished earlier than I did. And things I wanted to have done before the new year. It feels like only a few months ago that 2013 began. And (Yes I know this makes me sound like an idiot but trust me I am not an idiot,) just as I got the hang of writing, "2013" instead of, "2012" I had to change to, "2014."

This year I didn't write a list of resolutions, but I have decided to write more; I'll try do post on my blog more, I've started keeping a diary and I'm going to start a scrapbook. Also I will try to be better at replying to emails!

Rome

Hello fellow people of planet Earth! I have just got Back from Rome!  Have you been to Rome? If you have you will know how wonderful it is. If you have not then you will have to hear me tell you before you go, and I am sure you will go.

First of all, coffee + sweet pastry in the morning = delicious/ great/ you have a good day ahead of you. The coffee and pastries in Rome are one of my favourite parts. I don't really drink coffee that much, but in Italy you can ask for, "D'orzo" in pretty much every cafe you enter. D'orzo is fake coffee, which tastes a lot like real coffee to me, but it doesn't have the caffeine of coffee. If you don't think it tastes like coffee, even then it is still delicious. In Italy, ask for, "Aragostine." It's like a small super crispy croissant filled with Nutella - wow. Also ask for, "Canollo," which is like a crispy wafer shaped in a tube filled with sweet cream. It can also be filled with other sweet things.

Canolli

What I haven't mentioned yet about Italy (Which is a pretty big thing to miss out) is the gelato. My favourite flavours are, "Nocciola," (Hazlenut) "Yogurt" and, "Menta." I will understand if you don't like yogurt (Or mint; I once had someone say to me that mint is a flavour for toothpaste, not ice-cream) but, "Nocciola" is something you can't miss out on*. It took me a while to pluck up the courage to order it for myself, but you don't need to worry about blandness. Nocciola is wonderful. And about the yogurt ice-cream, if you like frozen yoghurt, it's basically the same thing. However, if you want to try something Italian, don't order it. Go for something like, "Stracciatella." Sometimes when you've said your flavours, you get asked, "Panna?" This means, "Cream?" Say, "Si" if you would like to try it with your gelato. It's usually free, and sometimes the staff stick a mini cone in the cream.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did other things apart from sitting around eating food all day. The Colosseum was amazing! It was weird seeing it for the first time. It's like, I'd always heard of it and seen pictures and stuff, but I'd never thought of the Colosseum as something I'd one day VISIT. Not that I wasn't interested in it, just that I'd never properly imagined visiting it. It was definitely worth seeing. We passed it a couple of times while walking around, and stopped to take pictures, but on our second day (Of the holiday) we actually went inside. The Colosseum was bigger than I expected it to be. Not that much larger; just a bit, but I guess part of the reason it seemed bigger was because I was actually inside it, not looking at a video of it or reading about it in a book. After we looked round for a bit (And after I'd taken tons of photos) we got a tour guide to show us the Colosseum in more detail. At first it sounded like she was speaking Italian, but once I tuned in, the tour leader was quite interesting. We got to see some parts of the Colosseum that you wouldn't have seen if you didn't go on the tour, since you needed special access. We went down below and saw where the slaves worked to hoist up the cages for the animals, which was quite dark, and not as interesting as up above - but still, we saw a part that we wouldn't have otherwise seen.

The Trevi Fountain

If you've been to Rome, you've probably visited the Trevi fountain. It became a larger tourist attraction after the film, "La Dolce Vita," which has a scene showing a group of young, fashionable Italians hanging out there. It's said that if you throw a coin backwards into the fountain, you will come back to Rome some day. I threw in lots of coins, so I hope that means that I'll go back to Rome more than once.

Statue on the Trevi fountain

"La Bocca Della Verita" is one of my favourite things to do in Rome. Once a large drain cover, "La Bocca" is now one of Rome's major attractions. Engraved in it is a lion's head with an open mouth. According to legend, if you place your hand in the mouth while telling a lie, your hand will be bitten off. As a result of this, lots of tourists pose for photos with their hand in the lion's mouth - obviously not while lying. I was unpleasantly surprised (And slightly angry) when it turned out that you had to pay twenty cent to go up to the drain cover for a photo - which they don't even take for you - but we paid anyway and my sister and I had our photos taken by our parents. It was actually surprisingly... well, I wouldn't call it scary - but slightly nerve-wracking putting my hand in the lion's mouth. I mean, I knew it wouldn't bite my hand off - obviously - but still. Before we got there, I was like, why's my sister scared of putting her hand in, "La Bocca"? It's not like it's gonna bite her hand off, probably even if she tells a lie. But when we got there, I mean, when we we actually there, standing with our hands resting inside the, "Lion's" mouth, I could barely let the weight of it rest there. I couldn't even put my hand further in. And I was kind of (And this is a bit embarrassing) relieved when the photo was taken and we could go look at the church behind, "La Bocca Della Verita." I think it's the way the top part of the mouth was a sort of separate slap of stone, like it could come crashing down any moment. It's really weird how before I got there I was in no doubt about the lion not biting my hand off. But when it came to it, it was totally different. You probably think it sounds really stupid, but if you go there you might see what I mean.

After we saw, "La Bocca Della Verita" we went to the church behind it and payed fifty cent donation to light a candle. And after that we went to the tourist shop of the church and I bought an ashtray for my aunt with a picture of, "La Bocca" on it.

Another thing we saw was The Pantheon. The Pantheon is quite confusing because there are a few attractions around the world with similar sounding names.

Pantheon = Roman Temple, now a church
Parthenon = The large Greek temple on the Acropolis in Athens
Pantheon (With an accent on the, "E") = In Paris

The Pantheon was bigger than I expected it to be. And it had a hole in the ceiling that let in most of the light. Wow! It was beautiful.

One of the other things we did was go on a walking tour of lots of Roman sights with a guy from Couchsurfing. On the tour were two other people, both youngish women. We all stopped for a gelato and I had one of the best, "Nocciola" gelatos I've ever had.

The Roman Forum is one of Rome's top sights. It's like the Roman Parliament and it's huge. But not one of my favourite sights because of the amount of walking involved. The ruins were cool, but the distance between them and the amount of time we spent there was a bit long.


On our holiday to Rome, we actually visited two countries, Italy and the Vatican city. The Vatican city is the smallest country in the world, but it's a state too. The most famous sight in the Vatican is St Peter's Basilica. It's a tall church with stairs going all the way up. There's also a lift, but my dad, my sister and I wanted to walk for the experience and the view. It's a tiring journey up the stairs especially if you've already been walking around Rome that day. When you get to the top indoors and look down, it actually doesn't feel as high as when you were climbing up the stairs. but outside, the view lovely. From that high you can see very far, and if you look carefully you can point out the different famous landmarks.

Statues on the roof of St Peter's Basilica

In St Peter's Basilica there's a gift shop, where I spent a long time browsing, before buying a small small cross that came without string or a chain to wear it with. But it has a nice blue stone or gem in the middle, and a little hole in the top so I can thread a piece of string through.

View from inside the Basilica

When we came out of the church, the moon was a beautiful orange colour. It was quite strange, almost like an eclipse, but my dad says it was just the evening dust making it seem that colour.

On the night before we left, our hosts (Whom we hosted before in London - they are so nice!) took us to get Tiramisu from a really good bakery. I think it's quite well known around where they live. It's bigger than most bakeries and sells a lot more pastries.

Italian pastries!

More Italian pastries!

And after that, our hosts took us to get even more pastries from a different bakery. It was really cool because there was no way I would have been able to guess that it was a bakery if our hosts hadn't walked into it. Inside there were about a dozen trays with different breakfast pastries. There were some yummy looking doughnuts filled with custard which our hosts recommended to me (I wanted to choose it anyway :-)  .) Unfortunately there was also a temping chocolate croissant, and I couldn't decide between it and doughnut; I was told I could get both. I don't think I had the chocolate croissant in the end (I think my dad might have eaten it) but the doughnut was delicious. The next morning I heated it up in the apartment microwave (I never use microwaves so I was surprised when it only took thirty seconds!) and the custard was hot and yummy.

When we had to leave, I was surprised to find how upset I was. One week went so quickly. On our first day it felt like we had so long in Rome but later on I wished we could have stayed longer. Even though I have been to Italy many times, this was my first time in Rome, but I'm definitely going back. In fact, I better seeing as I threw so many coins into the Trevi fountain.

I can't get over Italian pastries!

*Unless you're allergic to nuts.

P.S. Ever since I got back from Italy I have not had a drop of Rooibos tea. Instead I have been drinking d'orzo! (Just so you know, before I left Italy I would drink about three cups of Rooibos a day.)