I am now in a hill station staying in a beautiful but snort imitation of my manhattan dreamland penthouse, a large confortable bedroom, with two large windows and all surrounding views on the hills and forest: a rarety in India, as it even has warm water which is precious cause it's cold uphere in the moisty mornings and sunset foggy airs.
I came here to the top of the mountains in the pursuit of quietness and solitude for a deeper meditation and hoping that the high latitude with its extra gravity power might somehow enlighten and bring some sort of clarity into this buzzy New Yorker Londoner, bull shity, addicted brain of mine (attempt of short duration as you can see, I'm back on line, right here well caught up on the mouth of the monster!!!)...

But how interesting is the irony of life, I reckoned, when on my arrival to the internet cafe down the hill, in the busy bazaar, where the shops gather and the people pass in less frenetic walks then the ones I'm used to in the back yards of London, I met this guy, coincidently american, who I noticed by his angry shouts and frantic whacks on the table, caused by a visible impatience towards the very very slow internet connections we get on the hills!!! ( Please do appreciate my effort to write you by the way!)

Disturbed by his nuisance and alarming speedy breath, I attempted a calming conversation with him to soothe his anger. I advised him to calm down, "after all you're in India for Gods sake, why don't you come back later or try somewhere else in another town, may be a big city close by like Madurai, for that matter, you're getting yourself in a useless state man, chill out" and let me try to bloody log on in fucking peace, all right?
Shanti...shanti...OM

Then he told me, "no, no, that wouldn't be possible. This email was very important and he didn't have the time to travel for two hours to Madurai, what the fuck was I talking about?" He came all the way here and he was staying in a monastery, on the highest hill, a wonderful place, very quiet "you should come", he said " you are so isolated there, no noise, just you and the nature, full on peace, is awesome, you should really come, man, no one to bother you, there you're totally away from it all, no contact!!"
- Yes, sure!- I said, ironically, smashed with the explicity and specific irony of the school of life.


So, here he was, the radical practice of the wished isolation of my honest pursuit for the spiritual life, entangled in a monastery for the last two months and perfectly unable to cope with its most close and foremost reality, something as simple and unstressful as being in India, in a regular broad internet cafe.
Here is the anger well spot on the table that has been tactly unexposed and submersed in its pure state, while the man in its most naivity relies on a convent to heal his inadaptation and clearly neurotic New York life!!!

And so I learned, quickly and promptly, that we must be careful with our isolation and understand the real purposes of our meditation or sadhana.
We must understand why we really want to get away from it all, are we hiding from something or are we afraid of something else?

Are we meeting ourselves or are we disconnecting even more from the realm of our existence?
Anyway, philosophies apart,one thing I realised by being here, breathing the fresh solitude of the mountains: we can not forget that ultimately our inner self development is meant to serve the others, or god, if you believe on a higher sort of purpose in your skanky life!!!

Ultimately even if you have the deepest level of meditation, and an extensive knowledge and self awareness, that becomes pointless, if you can not use it for the service of your community, and the realm of your society!

We are ironically and controversly meant to live in groups!!!