A community spirit as opposed to the ascetic approach of a monastery

Very often in my travels the flow and energy of people I meet depends on the first people that kind of introduce me to the place.

In the case of Auroville, Dr Lucas was the first person I contacted for waste mgt and my first meeting the first day in Auroville.

What a great guy, humanly, technically, spiritually…

And of course he directed me to all the good people to meet to enrich my reflections on SWM.

…

Here you cannot go wrong.

Indeed you cannot loose your way when they are no wrong turns.

You can turn and just discover new things, or just as well still find your way back, as the whole community, communities are more or less built in circles around the Matrimandir, light and center of this dream.

Each step was bringing me closer to nature in a quite a poetic manner: from bamboo huts in Aspiration to organic farming in Discipline, to French memories at the Boulangerie in Douceur, to Eternity and Serenity beaches, passing by concrete projects like Solar Kitchen...

I felt as if that magestuous banyan tree in Matrimandir garden, the shrubs and flower trees, especially the frangipanes were my old friends.

Auroville gave me the quietness and reflection I was after.

The friendship and breezes of hopes I had stopped dreaming for.

In a way Auroville had a touch and felt like a place where people wanted to build communities, ways to live better together where ashrams had felt to me like places of solitary practices, very ascetic in many cases, even selfish quests at time of maximum attention and contacts with a Master.