I looked down at the creaky, heavily rusted bicycle that was included with my lodging. It is only eight kilometers. Should make it.

Backed out of the parking space, I turned down the red dirt road that led to street cows, people, cars, “scooties,” motor bikes, goats and dogs all sharing the same narrow broken asphalt drive down to town. The tires are hardly pumped enough. The hospitality felt low in this moment. I am just a guest, I suppose. I don’t live here. There wasn’t time to turn around. I put the frequency of a pinch-flat out of my head. My thoughts have been manifesting faster these days, so it was too risky to allow that one to linger.

Scooter

Scooter

Dog

Car

Human

Car

Car

Car

Cow. BRAKES.

BEEEEEP; from two inches behind me. A good reminder of how close they drive.

I found a quiet road and wondered how you could live here. I know how, but how. I assumed this feeling would start to fade. Auroville felt strange so far, but it was early.

The healing center felt better. The juxtaposition of the crumbling homes and the well-kept brick suites rising up next to the only grassy areas I had seen felt less confusing. Both areas were clearly what they were; they just happened to be adjacent.

I had come to try something called Watsu, which was a type of pool therapy. Allowing another human to swirl my body through the water felt like a good next step in my quest for ascension, (maybe I wasn’t aiming at ascension specifically anymore, but it sounded right for the sentence) but it also felt unnecessary. Just a few days before I had realized yet again, that the only way I can really let go is on my own. It doesn’t make sense to keep seeking outside. How many times would I need the lesson in the form of an expensive therapy trial? The feeling of this next attempt being unnecessary was at least some progress. I did come to Auroville to try this technique out, so I let the thoughts go.

The surface was fine. I felt like I didn’t need to hold my body up against gravity (because I didn’t) so it was easy to allow myself to be moved about. Then Petra dipped me under the water. There it is. The fear rushed in and eventually turned into the feeling of managing myself with anticipation of the session ending. This all calmed. I adapted to the situation quickly, as I always do, but as I did I realized why I’m probably afraid of drowning. It must have been something during birth. I was in for quite a long time after my twin had made his exit via the natural route, then lifted out via C-section. Maybe during that time I felt like I was drowning in amniotic fluid, if my twin had started our transition off before I was prepared?

I tried not to think as she rolled me face down under the water and pulled me in circles by my arms, my body dragging along after me, but I kept noticing my head flexing into a fetal position. It was the only part of me that was noticeably not relaxing. It felt consistent with the theory I had formulated. Theory or information received? It was all I had gotten during the hour and a half. Maybe it was enough.

As she brought me back to the wall, I looked out at her. I laughed. My usual manifestation of nervousness, but I didn’t feel uncomfortable this time. I told her what I noticed and she said…nothing. I immediately saw the value in this and reflected on all of the times I had given patients a play-by-play of what I was noticing in their body as I worked.

A few days later, I met with a man who seemed to have similar tendencies to me. I spat out information I had noticed about him and myself. It felt channeled. We were in a phase of noticing what is wrong with a situation rather than what is right. When I talked to patients, it just felt like I was giving objective information. Then, as I watched my new friend unconsciously prove himself to be worthy by explaining his qualifications with regard to his own practice of a water-based therapy, I realized that all of the explaining to patients I had done was really just me attempting to prove my worthiness to someone who didn’t need to hear it. Was my waterfall of observations about their biomechanics even helpful? I doubted it at this point. It was probably just overwhelming and fed their perception that there was in fact something wrong that needed fixing.

Being in Auroville, it feels easy to follow the signs. Every where I’ve gone has been followed with a very obvious presentation of exactly the reason I had ended up there. I had met my new friend in this way. I was on my way to yoga, misjudged the timing, and then instead ended up at a contact dance event; something I had never done and cared nothing about, but enjoyed. It is becoming obvious that the only reason it is so easy to follow the signs is that I have no attachment to what I do while I am here at all. I don’t have plans and if I miss something, I don’t care. I’m happy to float about.

What I can tell, is that an intentional community feels fun and is filled with opportunity to be whatever you want to be, but it doesn’t feel right for me. I used to think that an intentional community filled with other people that also “didn’t fit into society” (a resident described the typical Aurovillian this way to me today and the sound of it helped me see that I no longer viewed myself that way) would be a wonderful sanctuary and place to live. Now, living in a place like this doesn’t fit. It feels limiting. I feel like I’m meant to be in the world with all of the people, but I can say, the frequent opportunity here to talk about astral projecting, coming from other planets and practices of letting go is pretty fun.

It feels peaceful here, but it doesn’t fully feel like reality. Maybe I am just missing the chaos of Mumbai.