Exams...

Feels quite surreal, even antagonistic today, to be in this tropical garden, with herbs, trees from all around India, a university surrounded by a botanical environment, one of the most beautiful ones! as well with high electrified fences to protect the 800 hectares of the campus... from wild elephants, sometimes coming down from the surrounding mountains... and taking everything apart! and to fight with integer numbers, factorials, Pythagorus...quantitative, verbal analysis! while hearing peacocks taking their turns in weird screaming sessions!

Well first leg of the PhD exams done today
... was indeed quite hard, even ... impossible as a matter of fact: to finish, and to score honorably. But in the end I guess I am still in the run, in the first 5 to be selected...

But gosh is this process of PhD demanding, not really in the tests themselves but the reality of it...here and now... actually a real path, journey...

The way things are organised here, the way people commit to support and dont... even for simple things like expenses for a conference they send you to, where they use all you do there and ask you more... in the end need to ask Amma's permission to reimburse you! or even go further.
This I have learned is the most common answer when people here do not want or cannot support you: lets go and ask Amma... Poor Amma, she was asked 3 to 4 times already to confirm my role here.

In the past 6 months I have had 2 real challenging times, real examinations: one was medical and scary and the other one is the PhD, not as moving but just as much... bringing a lot of insecurities to surface.
And in both times felt isolating.
Utterly... alone.

Detachement!
This is what I am really really learning, time and time again!
Not to expect anything

It really helped in this vacuum of infinite field of research...to exchange ideas, even just hear some familiar voices yesterday.

I alone can do it...

alone in front of doctors
alone to become one (is it really about a title? do I really want this? I should have asked myself the question before you will argue), in front of the Multiple choices...or the frustration of the way projects are handled here which do not always give me the greatest motivation to go through all this...

but I cannot do it alone...
I learn I guess to earn my freedom in this isolation...

'Just like a bird on a dry branch, knowing it can break at any time...
knowing you may have to fly away! at any time'

Amma's satsang is coming at me today...so true.
Be ready to fly away! any time