We were free for most of the first day and so a number of us walked into the near by town at which point someone mentioned there was a Satsang (not 100% of the spelling) about to happen at one of the ashrams from a famous Brazilian Guru. Part of me was thinking “won’t we have enough of this in the next month anyway, let’s enjoy the free time” but I decided to go anyway, with no knowledge as to what it actually was that we were going to.

Turns out it was a session in which there was music which could be sung along to like mantras and then the Guru reading questions from people and giving his advise. The chanting at the start before the guru arrived was quite fun. It was the part when the guru was there that I was less sure of. He sat, and read a letter from someone saying they were depressed, didn’t have job or friends and what could they do. His advise to me though just seemed like almost platitudes or like an unqualified attempt as psycho analysis. There didn’t seem to be any particularly enlightening or enlightened information imparted but yet all those around me were furiously scribbling down notes and/or crying as he talked.

That made me feel quite a lot like an outsider anyway for just not understanding why everyone was so enthralled and emotional about what this guy was saying when quite frankly I was bored. It’s not that I was fidgety and needed to be someone, I was more than happy to sit and relax but what was being said was no greater than the advise I or anyone of my friends would give someone if they came to one of us with the same problem.

I then got back to the school. keeping my opinions kinda of quite, just in case, to hear people saying that they’d found it so powerful and uplifting and had even started crying just as the guru walked into the room as his presence was so powerful.

I had to leave the conversations as I just didn’t know what I could say without lying, offending a lot of people or most likely doing both at the same time!