Mysuru - Secret discovery journey in the Royal Palace

by Salome | Jul 12, 2023 | Crazy, fun, shit in India

The great thing about traveling is that you meet completely unknown people, often even for just one day, but you sometimes create shared memories that will last forever.

Such a day I experienced in Mysuru, the capital of the former kingdom of Mysore (1399-1947), capital of culture of the state of Karnataka and residence of the royal family of Mysore to date (Wodeyar dynasty). Here I met Prashanth, a dynamic Indian man who agreed to do his friends a favour and show his hometown to a foreign European woman (Thank you Ramya and Kaushik for enabling this for me! You guys are great :-). Prashant is a self-employed entrepreneur, passionate reporter, fan of his hometown Mysuru which he even has dedicated a website to: 

Please find the link to askmysuru.com here

On a hot Thursday afternoon, Prashanth picks me up from my guesthouse with his car and an adventure begins to unfold. Thanks to his press card, we are on the guest list for a privately guided tour through the city's landmark: The Royal Palace. Together with 2 Japanese, a nimble museum guide leads us through the corridors of the palace, which is the most magnificent treasure chamber that I have ever seen in my life. Opulent porticos with turquoise ceiling paintings, gold-plated ornaments, meter-high hinged doors made of pure silver and giantic elephant heads staring at you from the wall, tiles with wonderful floral patterns as far as the eye can see. The generosity and richness of this building can be seen in every single detail. 

The secret room in the palace

At the end of a side corridor, the museum guide leads us towards a slightly hidden door and tells us to go inside: Away from all tourists, we stand in a darkened room that is filled over and over with ancient sabers, robes of warriors and ... stuffed animals. The museum guide emphasises that taking pictures and making videos is strictly prohibited here. Huge tigers snarl at us silently, gigantic buffaloes stand row in row and crocodiles at the size of minibuses are lying on the ground. I shudder at the thought of all the hunts that must have taken place to equip this space... I stand in the middle of a room that belongs to a long-gone era and I am reverent of the ages people and animals have gone through in this country. What fights they have fought, what pain they have suffered, what obstacles they have overcome, what splendor they have created.

The miracle at Chamundi Hills ...

After visiting the palace, Prashanth and I decide that there is still time for a second adventure. We head for the sacred hill of the city, from which you can look over the entire valley plain: The Chamundi Hills. There on the rock of the hill, Sadhguru, who later became worldwide famous as a spiritual teacher, had his first moment of enlightenment at a young age. At the top of the hill is the Chamundeshwari Temple and people flock daily from near and far to pray there.

But, we have a problem: It is 5:50 p.m. and in 10 minutes the temple doors will close! There are still over a hundred people in front of the entrance, the temple is extremely popular due to its powerful energy and location. It is impossible to get inside the temple and my departure was already booked for the next day. And at this moment, a remarkable characteristic of Prashanth becomes evident, which is his great strength: excellent networking capabilities. Three phone calls later, we rush past the long queue, get steered through side doors by temple employees like VIPs and shortly before 18:00, we stand in the blessed Sacrament of the Temple to pay our tribute to the goddess Chamundeshwari. I can't believe it, we made it!

When I later ask Prashanth how he managed to get us into the interior of the temple against all the rules, he says these words that have been imprinted on me: "It is not helpful to call the highest representative of this temple; the cleaning staff and door porters are the ones that rule the place. I cherish the relationship with them and we help each other.”

A wonderful day is coming to an end...

In the evening, I am falling into my bed with the happy feeling that this day was one of those days that stand out like diamonds on my trip through India and that I still will remember at the age of 84. Today, I was allowed to visit secret rooms in the royal palace of Mysuru, I have experience a miracle at Chamundi Hills and enjoyed the generosity and smartness of a young Indian man whom I now can call a friend.

An Instagram reel was created from this adventurous day in Mysuru, which I am happy to share with you:

Please find the Reel here

Lots of Love,

Your Salome

In the ashram of Sri Kaleshwar or Welcome to the world of the supernatural

by Salome | Jul 7, 2023 | Crazy, fun, shit in India

Eleven days I have spent in the ashram of Swami Sri Kaleshwar, which is located in the small village of Penukonda near Bangalore, Southern India. I visited Guru Purnima there, a festival week that takes place every year at the time of the most important Indian full moon in June/July. Guru Purnima is celebrated euphorically by the entire Indian population, the ear-deafening music from the nearby Hindu temple could not be overheard in the ashram for 3 days. By the way, an ashram is a place of spiritual teaching and the place of living of a Swami (spiritual teacher); you can imagine it like a monastery where one can attend further education courses lead by an inspiring person. 

In Penukonda, the earth is magnetic...

...so the statement of Sri Kaleshwar, the Swami and miracle healer, who founded the Ashram in 1997 and went to Samadhi in 2012 (i.e. left his earthly body which means he died). Kaleshwar has been present as spiritual teacher all over the world (especially in the US, Germany and Japan) and is surprisingly little known in India. According to Sri Kaleshwar, the energetic vibrations in Penukonda are as high as only in a total of three selected places on planet Earth. 500 years ago, the great king and Saint Krishnadevaraya lived in Penukonda, who was the richest man in the world at this time and invited thousands of other saints from all over the world to Penukonda to perform spiritual rituals. Penukonda is also considered the birthplace of the goddess Kanaka Durga, she is the Divine Mother in Hinduism and stands for the quality of unconditional love. In Penukonda, it is said, she has appeared on earth for the first time in a concrete form. Kaleshwar's words about why Penukonda is the ideal place for spiritual practices and an excellent place for meditation: 

"If you want to hunt a tiger, you have to go to a tiger reserve. There you will find tigers. First and foremost, it was a great number of amazing and divine spirits and divine souls who came to Penukonda who practiced their spiritual rituals here. There are many Samadhis (burial sites) of supernatural saints here. Of course, you can draw the energy to you wherever you meditate in the cosmic energy, but it will be a little more difficult. Here in Penukonda, the vibrations are very powerful. Here the magnetic earth, the magnetic force is very present. The Shiva energy and the energy of the divine mother are extremely strong."

As crazy as it sounds, I can confirm this statement

In the sacred halls of the temple complex you get goosebumps although it is oppressively hot inside, your bio-organism is working as if you were digesting things that do not consist of food and your mind is so clear and deep as if you were taking a journey with psychedelic substances in your brain. I have meditated in many places in my life, in my apartment, in yoga studios, in meditation retreats in Austria and Southern Germany, in my sister's basement, but I never have had such profound meditation experiences like in Penukonda. After the time in Penukonda, I can confirm that it does play a role WHERE you meditate and that your meditative receptiveness is much higher on the top of a mountain than at home next to the buzzing refrigerator. However, Penukonda will be remembered by me forever especially for the fact that I was experiencing there how a number of complex wishes of mine have come true all while Guru Purnima.

In these eleven days, I made three great wishes during the ceremonies and temple rituals, which were performed in honor of the Divine Mother, in honor of Shirdi Sai Baba (another saint known and revered throughout India and Kaleshwa's teacher) and in honor of Sri Kaleshwar himself. The crazy thing: All three wishes have come true! My first and most complex wish was that I wanted to have a fundamentally deep and existentially formative experience of self-love. When we have experiences, the findings are engraved in the body and available forever, when you have a really profound experience, then it is forever an inner resource and reference point. If you have felt your own love for yourself at least once deep inside, you can remember it again and again and reconnect to this feeling. That’s exactly what I wanted.

So what happened?

On July 4th 2023, on the American Independence Day, on the last day of Guru Purnima and at Scarlett's birthday (an inspiring woman from Singapore who was also in the ashram), I was given a moment of enlightenment that I had been yearning for so long. In a ceremony lasting several hours in honour of Kanaka Durga, the priests prepared a wonderful Absishek (cleansing ceremony) for the statue with several CumCum washings under continuous chanting of mantras to increase the vibration in the room. Then, the Ashram visitors were allowed in groups of three to go into the sacred interior of the temple and briefly stay in this extremely pure energy. The ritual prescribed that when entering, you have to bow in front of the statue, touch the feet of the Holy Mother and then get up again, circle the statue three times and directly leave the temple room.

When I enter the room, the air is hot and heavy of wonderful jasmine scent and the smoke of the blazing oil flames. When it is my turn, I kneel down in front of Kanak Durga and touch her feet to express my wish, which I had memorized very well to not forget in the decisive moment: "Please give me the ability to experience deep self-love for myself." 

And now hold on tight!

In the fraction of a second, which seems like an entire era to me, a whole series of realizations happen in my head. Even before I am able to get back up, inside of me it goes like CLICK, CLICK, CLICK and finally in my mind it makes "AHA!" As I kneel in front of the statue, suddenly an amused voice speaks in my head. The first comment of this voice is that my wish is STUPID. I am surprised. A feeling spreads within me that I somehow have made a fool of myself. The voice tells me that it's not about training a skill, as if you wanted to acquire a new competency or strengthen a muscle so that you can win the self-love championship one day. The voice assures me that every person has the ability to love themselves since birth anyways.

The voice continues and says that it is more about lifting all veils that have obscured the view of one's own natural beauty and the value of one's own being. It is about taking off the filters through which we often perceive ourselves so unlovingly and thus also reject the divine in us. The divine is inherent in all living beings all the time and therefore we devalue it in an unbearably condescending way and pull it into the dirt. The voice makes it clear to me that I am part of her creation and that there is no question whether or not or how much I am valuable and lovable. Everything in her creation is valuable and endearing, every flower, every animal, every plant, every person and of course also me. And exactly in that second that I stand upright again in front of the statue, there they were, these words, crystal clear in my head, an answer, a mantra, an impressively simple essence:

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

The voice in my head speaks clearly and tells me a little strict in a commanding tone:

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

Instead of practicing something new, she gives me the instruction to not be blind and ignorant of my own value. 

«STOP BEING BLIND!»

Yes, damn, that's the key.

This experience has left a lasting impression on me. I experienced it in a fraction of a second and at the same time in epic width inside of me. No one can take this experience away from me anymore. Not even myself. Read these words carefully, because they come from an energetic channel through which I received a message that does not come from me. This wisdom applies not only to me, it applies to all of us. Let us all stop being blind to our own beauty, because we are part of this creation, and creation is perfect, and so are we. 

Lots of Love,

Your Salome

The day of departure

by Salome | Jun 26, 2023 | Crazy, fun, shit in India

Here I'm sitting now, it's 09:13 am, Monday morning, June 26th 2023, and in 7 minutes the boarding for my flight from Zurich to Mumbai will start. I don't know when I will return to Switzerland, I am holding a one-way ticket in my hands. I am sitting in the middle of an Indian family in the departure area of the terminal and somehow feel safe, although the Indian mum is looking at me quite skeptically. I am writing this article and want to reflect on my feelings that I have experienced during the last 24 hours. I find that often we deal too little consciously with our feelings and this moment in my life is an excellent opportunity to do this as an example. There is enough to write about it - believe me, it’s enormous what you can feel in 24 hours.

Love

Exactly 24 hours ago, my feelings, if I had to describe them in colors, were bright orange, pulsating red and sunny golden yellow. Warm colors have enveloped me into honey yellow light, I was caressed by sun rays like a sunflower. I felt I was very loved. I was wrapped in the arms of my loved one, his wonderful smell, his kisses and our lingering in a golden ball of light made me happy deep inside. Love whispers to you that you are in the right place, that you are connected, that you can surrender to the wave of happiness, because this moment is simply perfect.

Everything feels right

You flow with the golden energy and feel: "Oh, how much I am loved and how much I feel love in me." It is a beautiful feeling to be able to immerse yourself into this highest and most beautiful of all feelings and to bathe in it like in warm water. It is the most beautiful gift in life that I know.

Love has also been in every hug I have received in these special 24 hours of my life from people who have said goodbye to me. I love to be embraced by people and to feel the physical manifestation of love. I enjoyed each of the 9 hugs given to me to the fullest and felt the love of these people for me in their arms.

Sadness

Farewells make the preciousness of life clear to you. Tears show you the value of what you are crying about, and also the depth of the loss, because it hurts so much. The feeling of being alone is spreading, the severity of the loss weighs on my shoulders and the colors around me start swirling in crippling black and dense, dark, opaque blue. Clouds start sliding in front of the sun and I bend on my chair, at home, alone, and feel the emptiness and sadness without crying. The farewell of my loved one, without whom I will now continue my life path at the other end of the world. How it hurts.

The farewell of my neighbor, who not only lives next to me, but enriches my life with plates full of cakes on my doorstep and beautiful flowers in the mailbox and cheerful voice messages with invitations for dinner. When I return back to Switzerland, she will no longer live here and the meals together with her family will no longer take place. Oh, how this farewell hurts. Changes can make you sad, they can make you aware of how good your life is and how much you are about to lose when you reshuffle the cards of your life. Gulp.

Fear

This uncertainty. This incredibly great uncertainty. And this ambiguity, like a jump into cold water. Liquid, exploding shreds of color swirl around me in all shades, dark colors predominate, and repeatedly painfully hit my cheeks like shrapnels. I also feel the fear physically, it’s wrapping itself around my heart like an iron band. The nasty question that mercilessly haunts me the day before my departure: "What the hell were you thinking about the whole thing? What the hell, please, did you think? Taking 12 months an unpaid Sabbatical and flying to India?"

The inner critics shows up

My inner critics rears up and continues to torment me: "Why are you flying to India - why India? And then all alone? You have no plan what to expect there! You totally underestimate the challenges of this country! You hand over your apartment into someone else's hands and when you return, you won't be able to feel comfortable here again."

When packing my travel backpack, anxious worries are haunting me. I am constantly tormented by the question of whether I have made the right selection of objects and clothes, whether I have forgotten something important, whether I have packed the right things. When packing, I realize that I'm gearing up for an adventure that I don't even know. I realize that I leave all familiar people behind, leave my beautiful surroundings behind, leave my routine behind that gave me stability ... I just leave EVERYTHING and EVERYONE behind and set off into the unknown... a few brain cells from the Stone Age in my head are shouting at me that this was a highly shitty idea and that I may never come back alive from this journey without protection and social affiliation! Well, fear doesn't always have something to do with reality... but unfortunately that doesn't make it any less scary.

Gratitudet

In exuberant abundance, however, above all I have felt one thing in the last 24 hours to the present second: gratitude. Gratitude is like a pink scent that permeates everything with its silky scented smell and envelops you in a cloud of lightness and purity. Gratitude feels like a mixture of tears of happiness and amazement at so many good things in life and the certainty that all of this is not self-evident. It is nothing but an exclusive gift from the universe to you.

Do you know jam jar moments?

I like to collect jam jar moments. These are moments that are so beautiful that I don't want to forget them anymore and therefore put them in a transparent imaginary jam jar and preserve them there for eternity. Then I can take them off the shelf at any point in time and look at them again and enjoy their beauty. Within the last 24 hours I have collected a lot of jam jar moments.

I'll give you an example: I'm sitting in the plane on the runway in Zurich and we're waiting for take-off. On the screen at the seat in front of me there are commercials about watches and perfumes. I don't want to look at them, I'm not in the mood and close my eyes. When I am opening my eyes again, the following sentence just flickers across the screen:

«"Every trip is a challenge and a step out of the comfort zone. What the step is worth taking for are the unforgettable moments (Swiss Air)." (Swiss Air).»

My seat neighbor, an Indian man from Mumbai with whom I had previously briefly spoken to and who is informed about my travel motivation, nudges me and says: "This message was for You." Exactly THIS is a jam jar moment. The universe waves in your face and gently shouts at you that it loves you and supports you with all its heart. 

What feelings have you experienced in the last 24 hours? Take a minute to look back on your life and think about what situations you have experienced and with which kind of feelings you perceived them. This will train your self-awareness and allow you to get to know and appreciate your emotional richness better. All your feelings are valuable, just like you!