Friday, July 20, 2007, 3:00 p.m. Auroville, India

Greetings.

Today I have the time, energy, and motivation to write an update on my
thinking, feeling, and doing.

My recovery from the typhoid infection is progressing well. My temperature
has for the past several days been about normal and the only lingering
symptom is fatigue that comes at odd times. I’m taking plenty of time to
rest and read and meditate.

Asde from my health challenge, you might wonder what it’s like to be in
India and Auroville.

Well, I’ve been around long enough to have learned that my frustration,
anger and resentment arise from my unrealized expectations. To wit:

I expect the electric power to available to run the air conditioner that I’m
paying extra for to keep me cool;

I expect to be able to plug my laptop into an available network and get
access to the Internet;

I expect that connection to be at least as fast as the dial-up connection I
had at home;

I expect the people who run the guesthouses here (I’ve stayed for varying
lengths of time at four different ones this trip) to provide, without my
having to ask, soap, towels, and toilet paper, and critical information
like, where do I go to find purified drinking water and the breakfast that
is included with my room rent?

I expect to be able to get around the community easily and safely.

Alas, the power is often out for hours at a time; each network connection
must be properly configured, which means finding the local network guru who
knows the right numbers; once the connection is working it often slows to a
crawl or fails to send/receive at all; guesthouse managers sometimes act as
if guests were a bother for them; what passes for a transportation system
here in Auroville is narrow dusty dirt tracks and a few one-lane paved roads
that connect the widely scattered facilities and settlements which one
negotiates by bicycle, moped, motorcycle, taxi, motorized rickshaws, or on
foot.

On the journeys one must also compete for space with cows, goats,
oxcarts, TRUCKS, and other vehicles that crowd each other off onto the soft
uneven shoulders or into overhanging brambles. Outside of Auroville, on the
main road to Pondicherry, for example, the traffic is so chaotic, I refuse
to venture into it except by taxi. I’d like to know how many people are
injured or killed in traffic around here.

All of this is not to complain (well, maybe a little bit), but to give you
sense of my experiences here and how I’m responding to them. I’m relearning
important lessons about attitude. As Eckhart Tolle says, our challenge is to
meet each situation with either enthusiasm, enjoyment, or, at least,
acceptance. If we wish to avoid causing pain for ourselves and others we
need to practice non-resistance, non-judgment, and non-attachment.


Progress on Projects

Despite all these difficulties, some progress is being made on the projects
we’ve undertaken here in Auroville. There is a good team of interested
people who have started to work together, and we’re close to completing a
grant proposal for our project, Building a Sustainable Economy for Auroville
and Its Surrounding Bio-region.

This proposal draws heavily upon the outline
plan for Regional Economic Development Through the Organization of Local
Trade Exchanges, that I circulated and posted previously. This is the kind
of proposal that can easily be adapted for implementation in any region. If
anyone would like to see it, just let me know and I’ll pass it along.

Olivier’s temporary absence and my departure for the next ten days will slow
progress until our return around the first of August.

New post at the Beyond Money blog.

I’ve been inspired to do some work to better develop my explanations of the
credit clearing process. This latest attempt is a simple example that I
think illustrates all of the important points. It consists of a brief
description, a spreadsheet, and two charts. I strongly urge you to take a
look at these new items under “Pages,” starting with:

Greco

Best wishes to all,

Tom

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 7:01 am and is filed under Tom Greco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.