After having spent one week in Pondicherry and Auroville, I feel completely refreshed. I disconnected from my laptop and simply indulged in the rural scenery. I also visited the communities that I support monthly and of course checked myself into the ashram daily.

These are some beautiful lessons from my India trip and I hope you find them useful too.

• You can manifest anything you want, however it has to be for a bigger good

Mother who fleshed out Auroville from an idea to an exciting community of 2,000 population. She visualized it as a community to evolve human consciousness and recognize each other’s skills and talents. And play down the materialism which everyone pursued but never found real happiness in it.

Her courage and strength to negotiate a piece of land from India government and determination moves me to tears. If a lady like her can build a town from a desire help a community, anyone also can achieve anything that they desire, if they come from a good intention.

Seriously for me, if your vision of the future does not scare you, you are thinking too small. I always loved having goals that terrify me. And I have an exciting new idea coming to life for 2011, designed especially for my students. Look out for it!

• Change the context of your life to be happy

When I met the people from Auroville, I found them much happier and peaceful. When I went for the massage, the masseuses were very kind and went to the extra mile to heal my body. I knew that they wanted to heal me through the conversations that we had and how they treated me. It is completely different from other massages because their intention was completely different. Other masseues wanted to give me a good service or it was for money. By changing your intention, the same service changes completely and you feel happy because it has a deeper meaning.

A story would highlight this. A man was walking on a pathway and saw 3 men working on stones. He went to the first man and asked him what he was doing. The first man retorted saying, “Are you blind? Im cutting stones!”. He walked to the second man and asked the same question. The second man said,” Im doing work to fill my stomache”.

He walked along and approached the third man with the same question. The third man smiled and said, ” Im building a beautiful temple for my community to pray and connect with God.” All three of them were doing the same thing however how they approached the work was completely different. Guess which person will be the happiest?

By changing the context of your life, you will be much happier.

• Terrible moments in life are designed to evolve and help you indirectly

When the tsunami hit Tranquebar, the world thought it was absolutely horrible. It definitely occurred lots of deaths and misery, however the outburst of support after the disaster was not seen by the public. Many foreigners set up associations to help these villages by educating them and providing them with a means of new livelihood. The India government realized that it was time to look into Tranquebar and chose to invest into their dutch history to build it as a touristic site. Finally, they acquired new investments and the village people enjoyed improvements in their future.

Of course, they had to go through a lot of horror and pain in order to reach to this level. Maybe God has a plan for bigger things to come when terrible things arrive. So when something bad occurs, hold on and wait to see what lessons or help will arrive after it.

I absolutely loved India and will be visiting them more frequently in 2011. After all, I bought too many Indian clothes and need to wear them in the next trip. Wishing you a lovely Christmas!