As I look back..........I begin to see more and more clearly how this whole journey started. This journey that has taken me deeper and deeper into my own self......this journey that has taken me deeper and deeper into a space of silence within those layers of noise.........this journey that has taken me more and more into a realm of peace and joy into my own being........this journey that seems to have no destination, no goal.......this journey that seems so purposeless and yet so exhilirating, this journey that seems so difficult and yet in synch with my hearts calling..........this journey that had a beginning when i first took a jump into the unknown calling in my life almost 4 years ago....this journey that some call seeking.........others call a path...........and which i call........a dance into the unknown.......

As i see it now.........this journey for me started with a search for true happiness in my life. Up until then I had studied in a good school, had a good education, found ways to fit into the ways of society, found friends that were adventurous and fun to hang around with, found a job that was in synch with what I believed was the right thing to do and had not failed to create a pretty good act for my life. I am not even sure when it started taking a hold of me.........this utter feeling of being tied........this feeling of being suffocated in my own being.........this stifling feeling that started taking a hold of me. It was the beginning of my search for happiness............and for me happiness meant doing what i really love. And that is where the search began. In the midst of my job I started studying for the medical entrance examinations the following year. It was my feeling that I wanted to do something to help others..............that doing something to help others would bring me joy and happiness. The way at that time that came most naturally to me was becoming a doctor.

A few weeks into my classes for the exam...........I lost my job. For me this was like someone taking away the very base of the ground that I stood on. With my sister and mother leaving the country in a few days, and me for the first time left in an alien city by myself................I felt the whole world collapse. I broke down and cried for days. I cried alone in my room........I spent time alone for days on end. And then I got an offer for a job. It was a really good job with a presigious company...........it would probably lead me to the status in the world that i hoped to achieve..............it was everything a computer science graduate would want to begin their career with..............but to me it was another dead end in doing things that my heart was not into. I went to visit the company and felt suffocated...........felt stifled. Everybody said it was like a dream come true..........I wanted to believe it was a dream come true...................but my heart wouldnt listen...........that is the first time I felt the call of my heart.............and i listened. I rejected the job offer and sat jobless for 3 months. Utterly confused, utterly aimless.................searching and searching day and night for a career, to do something, to study in a course, to learn something that I liked, that i loved. To find that happiness that I searched for. Now realizing after 4 years................that I was searching for joy in what I would do.

This search was so utterly desperate. It was as though my whole life depended on it. If I talk about it, it almost seems crazy.............the number of sites I looked up, the number of calls I made, the number of people I met, the number of places I visited, the number of times I made desperate attempts to find it.........to find that it............that it that made everything click!

Medicine led to education, education led to coporate training, that led to teaching in schools, which led to storytelling..............which led to dance. Dance......beautiful beautiful dance.................dance to me was like I had found my soul. When I danced I felt like I had found that soul that I had lost for lifetimes too many. When i danced I knew I had found it.............When i danced nothing mattered.................it was only dance................I loved it, I loved it so much.............I was ready to give up my everything for it.................And that is when I injured myself very severely. It was almost as though the universe were playing a nasty trick on me. When I had found my hearts calling, found what i loved the most..................it was snatched away from me. Injured, in pain, I continued trying..........trying so hard to dance.............hurting myself more, in more pain that ever..............but I could not let go. I tried so hard..........until my body gave up...............and I collapsed.

My body collapsed.........and yet the mind would not give up...............there was something more also within me that wanted to see my potential realized in my work, in what i did..................then painting happened. After almost 20 years of having left my paints aside.........they came back into my life........art came back...........sharing of art with children around me came.....................and yet still there was an underlying compulsiveness i felt in my system. I continued with it despite this feeling.......searching for schools of art............searching for teachers..................searching for ways to make my place in art.........my place in the world. But I couldnt understand if art was the reason for happiness in my life then how was it that i could go weeks on end without touching a pencil or paint, being involved in something else..........and be so happy.
That was when even art fell away....................................

When it fell..............something in me fell as well. There is nothing that I can point a finger on and say....this or that fell...........but in many ways I fell. The purposelessness, the aimlessness i felt within me was harsher than anything i knew. There was no reason, no purpose to anything if i wasnt aiming towards anything. There were days i would bury my head under the pillow with the feeling that i would loose my mind, that my head would explode.

In all of this uptil now............I did not write about one of the hugest thing that had touched my life in my search for happiness as i call it, more than 3 years ago. I had attended a yoga program with Sadguru........an enlightened master in the Isha ashram at Coimbatore more than 3 years ago. In the program we had been initiated into a powerful yogic process. For me that initiation had brought an experience that i can never verbalize. During one of the meditations I had experienced the absolute seperation of myself from my body, from my mind................it had left me in awe.............it had left me crazy..........but my mind could not deal with it, could not understand the enormity of it at all.......and so even though the experience had been replayed in my head several times........it was beyond all my understanding.

In the next 3 years of my time with Sadguru, with Isha............I had many life changing experiences, I even experienced the whole chemistry of my body transforming........my mind becoming stronger..........energies in my system that I never knew could exist. And yet through this all.........I could not let go of the strong strong desire within me to keep searching for happiness through what I do.

It was only in the last 9-10 months that I began volunteering with Isha in Delhi. For me volunteering began almost as no choice. Something within me had become so strong, some feeling was so strong........like a thirst.............which pulled me to Isha..........pushed me to get fully involved........do things that in normal circumstances would leave me bored and listless. I began to experience myself doing each and every task with such utter ease, with such little effort, with so much involvement.........the involvement I began to experience while cutting cucumbers into little pieces during kitched work at Isha became the same that I would experience as I sat sketching a drawing, the involvement I experienced washing dishes became the same as I experienced flowing to music as I felt myself dance...............................I could not understand how this was possible..................
A person who thought doing and happiness were so connected.................started realizing that the joy was not in what I was doing, but rather the joy was coming from involvement.........from uninhibited, unrestricted, complete involvement in anything and everything I was doing.....from sitting silently, to doing the most intense action.

As I began to experience this more and more...............I kept getting drawn.........more and more drawn......................towards what I still do not know..............but drawn towards that feeling of involvement, drawn towards that passion I experienced within myself in involvement............

As art fell off..............the beauty of this involvement became stronger. It was as though I had finally freed myself from the shackles of joy from what I was doing. The feeling remains.......that compulsiveness comes back sometimes............I experience more and more clearly that the compulsiveness comes as a shadow of fear. As fear of uncertainity, as fear of situations engulfs me.........a dark cover of compulsiveness takes over. Yet it is softer now.............gentler to me now.............we are starting to become more and more friendly to one another.
I think that friendship has been brought by faith. I cannot fully define it............the beauty that faith has brought............like a peace engulfing the soul. Faith...........something that I had lost within myself. Something that deep within me had lived, and yet I had completely removed from the concious level of my life. Such deep pain, such deep hurt...............I had forgotten, I had lost faith in something far bigger than myself.

It is a stage in my life where i feel 'i dont know' vibrating within me..............and when I give it a chance to vibrate with all its energy it brings freedom, it brings faith, it brings reverence. When I dont allow it expression and am engulfed by fear and doubt.........i feel a suffocation, a stifling. To bring this 'i dont know' as a constant vibration in my life my journey......................how this will happen, where and where not it will take me, what do i have to do to achieve it.................I realize I dont really know...................