Just call me Rose, Mystic Rose!

3 weeks of laughter, crying and unbelievable silence and it's all over now. Now we just sit back and let the rose bloom. They say it keeps blooming for months ....lets see what happens. In the meantime, its getting bloody hot in this city. So hot that you take a shower, and by the time you step out and dry yourself, you are wet again....with sweat!! It's horrible. I moved to my apartment today and now I am already thinking of leaving here and going to the Himalayas! Looks like me and Arun are going to Nepal. There is a beautiful Osho center there in the mountains. It would be nice to breathe fresh air, feel cold again. I don't know what it feels like to feel cold anymore. I've been in warm weather for almost all of the last 6 months. I've thoroughly enjoyed it but now its too hot. So off I go.

My day starts with the birds at 5:30 am. I meditate around 4 to 5 hours a day, an hour in the morning, an hour at noon, an hour before tea, and 2 hours in the evening. The rest of the day is spent dancing, swimming, reading, talking to friends, listening to birds and just enjoying each moment. What a life! I have started seeing changes in me but it's easy to live this lifestyle in this environment. I don't know how authentic my transformation is so I've decided to take myself for a test drive. And not just any test drive....this is the most scary race car track of life for me. I've decided to visit Vancouver again! Yikes! Every time I think of it, I get scared. So many painful memories there! I want to go visit and see how I am able to deal with the past. Also have to sign my divorce papers and deal with the rest of the shitty stuff that comes with divorce! But I am also looking forward to seeing my beautiful friends again. I want to enjoy the beauty of Vancouver because I don't think I ever really explored it before. So, I'll be arriving there on May 7th for 3 weeks. I'll be calling and bugging you to come out dancing with me when I get there. Looking forward to it. Love you all :)

Spongy, I hope this email wasn't too intense LOL! I love your emails, so funny. I am glad you've found more mossies to keep you company. I wish I could see your lovely alien forehead with the bulbous bites. So, off to see Steve...keep me posted about how things go with him. You know you could always come to visit me if things dont go well. Heck, I'd even go to South America with you to track down Jose! Love you spongy :)

David, so nice to hear from you. Now you know when I am coming to Vancouver. You're gonna have to take me to some trendy places in Vancouver. I'm so out of touch with trendiness. I walk around in my maroon robes with no makeup, hair all over the place...Lol! Do you think that look would get me in any of the bars on Granville? Looking forward to seeing you.

On a lovely starlit night, soft breeze flowing thorough my hair, surrounded with people from all parts of the world esp Israeli Jews, I watched Borat! Wow, what an experience that was! We had a great laugh all together at the stupid Americans. Infact, on the next variety show nite, one of the funniest guys I've ever met, also a jew, is gonna perform a skit as Borat! Can't wait....Wawawewa!!!!

After a week of incessant laughter which ended up leaving me in such a state of euphoria that at times I didn't want to be constrained by my body. I felt like I wanted to expand and share my joy with the entire existence. It was the highest high I've ever experienced in my life. My feet didn't touch the ground...I was literally flying. Imagine the endorphines level in your body after 3 hours of laughing a day for a week. No amount of drugs can reach that level.

Today I finished my week of crying. After crying over Rick, Ashley, my baby and everything else I could come up with I started to cry for no reason at all. It was like a dam burst inside me. No thought in my head....just my body was crying from all the years of repressed pain. After 3 hours of crying I felt so refreshed as if I had taken a dip in cold water on a hot sunny day. Now the week of crying is over and I am back in the state of euphoria. Tomorrow, we start silence and I am ready for it. A week of silence...sounds like bliss. But tonite we shall party!

Now a bit about my love life. Remember Anthony, the good looking, funny, english guy...well turns out I got bored of him. He sounds too much like my ex husband...too good on paper. I am definitely gonna be just "friends" with him. I've met this lovely guy in the ashram..a guy my parents would certainly disapprove of just based on his physical appearance. He's an ex skin head, covered in tatoos and piercings and used to be a bass player in a death metal band in Switzerland. Such a bad boy! But what makes him even more appealing is his spiritual side...he's such a buddha. He goes out and learns little words in hindi to say to me. Just last nite, he told me I was beautiful in Hindi. Its so funny coming out of his mouth coz he's such an unlikely hindi speaker. He used to be heavy into drugs, dark music and shit and now he does yoga to death metal. He says he loves Osho coz he allows him to be himself and still be spiritual. Well, lets see what happens after mystic rose. We are both doing it together and lets see where things go. I do have to say that I am in love with him today but my attention span these days is very short. It's because I have no desire to be with anyone so I don't really put in any effort. It's funny how when you don't want someone in your life, they come to you from all directions.


My long term plans....don't know as yet. I am renting an apartment in Pune for a year. Beautiful penthouse apartment, a block from the ashram, surrounded with trees and a beautiful terrace. Nice place to have parties! Might be going to Vancouver in May....but who knows. We shall see where life takes me.

Lemme start with a real funny joke Osho told yesterday: One day the pope is doing a crossword puzzle and he comes across a clue that stumps him. He asks his pastor, "do you know a four letter word used to describe a woman that ends in unt?" The pastor says "aunt". And the pope says, "yeah, that's it. can i please have an eraser?" LOL! Every evening we go to the meditation auditorium to listen to osho talks. Every profound message he talks about ends with a joke. He'll be talking about stuff like compassion, forgiveness etc etc and he always has the dirtiest sex joke to drive the point home. His whole idea is not to get too serious coz a lot of meditations tend to make life too serious. So, after every meditation, we have time for celebration. So, every joy, every experience you have felt in the silence of meditation, he asks you to express it in dance. Live life playfully and joyfully. Having said that I have to say that my emails can tend to have a seriousness to them esp. the last one. I wrote that one during one of my meditation highs and reading back today it seems quite hillarious. Very over the top and some could even say a bit conceited. I have to apologize coz that was not my intention at all. It's something that just came out of me spontaneusly. I don't mean to say that I've found the right way and the society is still living in misery. I love all of you guys and that's why I write these emails to share my joy with you. If you've been with me over the past two years of my life, you know I've been on an emotional roller coaster. I've been restless, I've been scared, I've been running around the world looking for happiness. The whole email was just about me. I think the last straw for me was in South America. I really absolutely hit rock bottom there. I'm sure Sponge, Jess, Crazy, Maharani and Brett can really vouch for that. I would wake up every morning and just as I came to consciousness, my tummy would start to knot up in anxiety. What was causing my anxiety? Worrying about the future...what's going to happen with my life? who am i going to marry? what am i going to do as far as work is concerned? why can't i want normal thing? so on and so forth. I was so scared to be alone that even when I got the opportunity to get a room by myself I absolutely refused. So scared I was of my loneliness. Every evening I would look forward to drinking alcohol to settle my anxiety, to not feel the knot in my stomach and the pain in my heart. Every single day I drank so I could go to sleep. I had hit my lowest low. I still had a good time visiting places, seeing new countries, meeting new people but it was at a very superficial level. On the inside I was always restless and the people I was close to could really see that. I am so glad for them and I will cherish their friendship forever. So, now I have come to this place and within a month I have begun to see so much transformation. My body doesn't need alcohol any more, I wake up to the sound of birds chirping with no anxiety, I don't worry about what's the purpose of my life, about whether I'd get married or not. To have such feelings of peace and contentment after such a long time in my life, I sometimes get overwhelmed with gratitude and happiness and then I write my emails to share my joy with the people I love. I believe marriage is a beautiful institution if you are with the right person and someday if I meet a person like that I would love to experience it again. But, it's not a necessity in my life now. I am not worried about it (like my parents are)! So, please I want you to not misinterpret my words and just see it for what they are....just an expresssion of my joy! Today was the first day of what Osho calls "the meditation that's going to revolutionize the world of meditation". It's called mystic rose and it's 3 weeks long. First week involves laughing 3 hours a day for a week, then 3 hours a day of crying for a week, followed by 3 hours of silent meditation a day for a week. Everyone I know who's done this meditation is completely transformed. They say it cleans out the emotional garbage that we've been carrying for many many lives. After the detoxification, we can go really deep in silence. SO, today was the first day and I laughed for 3 hours. What a great meditation...grown people acting like little kids. We laughed and laughed and laughed until our tummy's hurt and there were tears in our eyes. I can still feel it bubbling inside me. I have to thank my lovely friends for giving me food for laughter. Picturing Spongy doing her sponge bob dancing on the booze cruise, crazy baring her ass and being rescued by the cute boy on the boat, maharani saying "bicks baporub", our lovely "ode to jose" that me and sponge wrote, jessica dancing to grease lightning in cusco, jess and sponge falling on the dance floor, ashley's joke about bees being like suicide bombers, or the one about pope wearing prada. Lol! I'm so lucky to have such amazing memories to bring laughter in my life. I would love it if I could get more material in this week. Jokes, funnies, anything is welcome. I'll send my laughing energy your way if you send me some material. Don't worry, I won't be writing another email during my crying week. LOL! Anyway, I just want you all to know how much I love you and even though I don't get responses from all of you, I know you are happy for me. You've all been there for me during my sad days and I want you to share in my joy as well. Lots of love, hugs, kisses and laughter, Ritika Ria. PS: Ritika Ria is my new name which means flowing laughter. They say your name can manifest itself in your personality if you meditate on it. I want nothing more but to laugh away the rest of my life. No more tears .....please!

I am still flying high and loving every minute of what I now know life is all about. Finally, I am totally and utterly free. I am soooooo lucky, so blessed that God gave me so much. I think every good deed that I’ve ever done in my life has paid off for now I have found this beautiful place. To have financial freedom, to have freedom from society, from work and finally to have freedom from the fear of loneliness. This is the best space I’ve ever been in my entire life. I have so much trust in existence now that I am just going with the flow and I know, without a doubt, that wherever I end up is going to be beautiful. Sorry mom for asking you to back off a little bit. I don’t want a safety net. Until there’s fear in me, I won’t venture out and will never know how high I can fly. I want to be absolutely free to continue this amazing journey, without any restrictions, without any limitations, without any demands.

These days my daily routine consists of about 6 hours of meditation, couple of hours of napping, swimming and then dancing the nights away. I’ve realized that total freedom is to be free of every kind of societal conditioning. Some may call it brain washing and I have to agree. My brain is being washed of all the shit that has been fed to me in the last 30 odd years of my life. Get an education, make money, get married, have kids, blah blah blah! I have allowed myself to fear so much esp. fear ending up alone…a fear that was fed to me by society, by my parents. Out of that fear I married Rick, out of that fear I went out with Ashley, out of that fear I held back. But something deep inside me was always yelling out to break free of that fear. Hence, even though things with Ashley were going beautifully, and even though he was offering me the world at the time, I couldn’t take it. I knew I had to try and figure out the cause of this restlessness. Now, with these meditations, a lot of stuff is coming up. All the mud that had settled to the bottom is getting stirred up. Some days my head is so muddled that I can’t think clearly. But slowly and surely, transformation is beginning. I am realizing so many things…for one how big and how fragile our ego is. It’s so easy for someone to come and tell me how beautiful I am, how I have a beautiful aura about me….it takes so little to stroke my ego. To make me have this lovely opinion of myself and go about my day thinking I am beautiful! At the same time, someone can come and say something not very nice, or not treat me well and my bubble bursts instantly. That’s how we live our lives just a slave to our reactions. Opinions of others is what constitutes our personality. Obviously I enjoy the attention I am getting…and I seem to be getting a lot! It’s all fun but I am not letting it go to my head. I am learning to understand myself, to love myself, to nourish myself.

I’ve been going out with this English guy, Anthony. The same guy I met at the hotel when I first arrived to Pune. He's been living in Pune for almost a year, working for some multinational company. He’d been gone to London for a couple of weeks and asked me out for dinner when he got back. He's been treating me really well, five star living! He's cute, he's funny, and he's rich, he's humble and over all a real gem of a human being. He's as “normal” as you can get according to societal standards. He even said the typical “I’m not a spiritual kind of a guy” bullshit when I first met him. So we first went out for dinner and he told me I’d changed…that I was buzzing with energy and giddy with laughter. He had to have a couple of drinks, he said, to get to my “happy” level! Since then we’ve been out a few times and he even asked me the other night to give him an osho talk cd. LOL! I haven’t tried to “convert” him at all. It’s all because he sees that I am so intensely happy all the time and he wants to know why and how. I know one hour of listening to Osho is going to ignite a thirst in him. Watch out Anthony….

I haven’t watched tv since I got here, no movies, nothing to occupy my mind. The other day Osho was talking about the difference between lonliness and aloneness. What he said about loneliness really resonated with me. He said that loneliness is the most painful emotion a person can feel so he tries to run from it. He makes lots of friends, he goes out drinking, watches tv, joins clubs, drowns his loneliness in music, surfs the net…etc.etc.etc. But he never ever just does nothing. Coz when he’s doing nothing is when he realizes that he doesn’t really know who he is. And that scares him so he runs out again. That’s what I did all my life…so scared I was of being alone. Everywhere I went I made lots of friends, partied lots, went out all the time, drank, smoked weed...anything to run from lonliness. And Osho put it so beautifully…he said that we don’t realize that we don’t need to run anywhere. All we need to do is to close our eyes and go in and then the darkness is over. Aloneness, he said, is the peak of human existence. I enjoy being alone now, just watching the birds, feeling the breeze on my skin, watching my thoughts. It’s beautiful! After my morning “no-mind” meditation, I get so silent inside that I can go to a rock concert and be alone. Nothing can penetrate that blissful silence. There is so much energy inside me these days that I sometimes feel nauseous. My head spins with this energy that is rising inside me and it’s visible. People keep telling me how my skin has become radiant and how it glows. I’ve completely stopped wearing makeup. It doesn’t really go with my maroon robe…lol. All this meditation makes me less hungry and my weight has started to drop. I have never felt more healthy, more happy, more beautiful in my life.

I’m limited by language to express what I am feeling right now. How do you explain the feeling of an orgasm to a person who has never had one? Words aren’t enough! I just want you guys to know that I consider myself to be utterly blessed to have found this beautiful place. I will venture out of here soon…go to north India for the summer months. Dharamsala, land of Dalai Lama, Nepal, then Italy, Greece, maybe Canada sometime in July and then off to Bosnia and Iran. I’ll be visiting a lot of osho centers and other spiritual places. What a way to combine my love for traveling with my love for my inner journey. Life has a beautiful purpose now and I’m flying high.