breakfast smoothie

Okay, so recently I bought KALE. I had no idea what to do with it, but everyone had been talking about how amazing it is, I bought it. Here’s one thing I’ve done with it so far:

Breakfast Smoothie:

• 1 ripe banana
• 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup blueberries (I used frozen, but fresh is always my first option)
• 4 heaping spoons of plain Greek Yogurt (I use 0% Fage)
• 4-5 leaves of KALE (not a lot, because it is a bitter veggie, and you don’t want it to overpower the smoothie and make the whole thing taste bitter)
• 1/4 cup of any juice (or liquid) that you like (orange juice is always a good option, or coconut water is a great added boost of nutrition)
• 1 scoop of vanilla flavored protein powder (optional)

We have a blessing of a Vitamix at my house, but with any other blender, blend until completely smooth. I had to go back and reblend longer than I usually do with my smoothies because of the kale. You want to make sure its really smooth, or you’ll be chewing pieces of raw kale, and that’s not the yummiest thing ever.

Enjoy!

talk about a green smoothie. disregard the background being my car!

*ps, word on the orange juice: Texas oranges are in season right now, and have GREAT juice. Go for natural orange juice, squeezed fresh, instead of store-bought. WAY tastier

it’s like a web

It’s been a few days since my last post. nothing extremely exciting has happened. I think I’ve finally gotten settled in and have a routine to follow everyday. The days are still going by pretty quick. I mean, I’ll be home in 70 days (and for all you Christmas extravagants like myself, that’s 70 more days until Christmas). There haven’t been any monkeys since my encounter on Friday with them. Thank the freaking goodness. But, I did see a peacock! My aunt’s friend has a weekend house about 25ish minutes away from the city (long way away, remember?), so I went with them yesterday afternoon. There are a lot of peacocks in the area. I didn’t get any pictures, but peacocks are everywhere in India, so I’m sure I’ll get one soon enough. Fun fact: the peacock is the national bird of India. Not sure what the U.S.’s is. I think Tennessee is the mockingbird. Not really sure though.

Anyways, I guess the other cool place I went to yesterday was the Kakaria Lake (wiki link). It’s this huge lake in the middle of Ahmedabad. Definitely check out the link. Lots of cool things go on in lake area–they have a zoo, aquarium, a train at night, light shows, food vendors, etc. My aunt and uncle took me at what seemed the crack of dawn for a morning walk. I kid you not, when I say this place was JAM PACKED. I didn’t realize there were so many morning walker enthusiasts on a Sunday morning here. Fortunately, it was somewhat cool outside.

Where I’m getting at with this, is going to the lake reminded me of a verse I learned in Sanskrit class the day before:

Shashina cha nisha nishayaa cha shashi

Shashina nishaya cha vibhati nabaha I

Payasaa kamalam kamalena payaha

Payasaa kamalena vibhati saraha II

Here’s the rough translation: The moon shines because of the night and the night shines because of the moon. So, the sky shines because of both the moon and the night. In the same way, the lotus looks beautiful because of the water, and the water looks beautiful because of the lotus. So, the lake looks beautiful by both the lotus and the water.

Essentially, what this shloka, or verse, is getting at is this ideaa of “paraspara”. What it means, is that we are who we are because of the relationships we have in our life. A husband is because of his wife, and a wife is because of her husband. A shopkeeper is not a shopkeeper without customers. A brother is not a brother without a sister, etc. You guys get the drift. But, this idea of interdependence is pretty cool if you think about it. We’ve created a huge tangled web with the rest of the world and the people who live in it. Pretty neat huh? It really hits on the quote “no man is an island”.

I went to Texas this summer, and remember having a conversation with a friend a long the same lines. When I wake up and have a cup of coffee, it’s not just me that poured the cup. But, you have to think back to the origin of the coffee plant. Someone had to plant it, harvest it, bag it, ship it, package it, ship it again, shelf it, etc. Our actions are never really solely done by us and us alone. There is someone else always involved in the process.

I think this is especially important for anyone on any kind of spiritual path. The relationships we create in our life all play a huge role in our ultimate relationship with the Divine. We are all a little piece of the Supreme, so by the friends we pick and the relationships we nurture, we are surrounding ourselves with small pieces of the Ultimate. So, don’t ever feel like you’re alone in any situation. There is always a presence of someone else, an invisible hand if you will, that has helped you get where you are. Having this attitude can bring humbleness into our lives, and humility is a virtue all religions endorse.

Mosquito Bite Count: It’s never ending; 5 | Serious Craving: Caramel Lattee

entrance gate to the lake

how pretty is the sunrise?

if you look closely, you can see different color rings around the sun, getting brighter and brighter.

an island in the middle.

tick tick tick and tock.

Yesterday, I was at my cousin’s place just hanging out. All the kids here take essentially what I call extra tutoring classes for everything. And I don’t mean just the ones struggling, everyone. For every subject. It’s a little ridiculous and I wouldn’t have survived in school or college here. They call it “tuition” (pronounced tyoo-shun) and they literally go to these things for hours upon end. She was getting ready to go to her tuition for accounting. She’s taking the last step for the equivalent of our CPA in May. Anyways, I asked her how far it was from her house. And she goes, “Yeah, it’s pretty far. Like 15 minutes away.” I thought in my head, are you joking? 15 minutes in America is nothing. Even in big cities where you have crazy awesome public transit, 15 minutes is nothing. It takes me 20 minutes just to get to Wal-Mart from my house. I was really shocked at the perceptions of time here. Even when I landed at the airport, I asked my aunt and uncle how far home was, and they said it’s about 15 kilometers (which I quickly figured out in my head, based off of a 5k being 3.1 miles, is about 9ish miles away). To me, that was nothing. 9 miles is an easy 20 minute car ride. But here, 20 minutes seems like the equivalence of 3 hours. I thought back to the countless number of times I drove from college in Birmingham, AL all the way back home to Memphis. That was a long 4 hours. But 15-20 minutes…?

I started to think about the importance of time, and the utilization of it. We’re always complaining how we don’t have enough hours in the day. I wish I could count how many times I’ve said myself, or I’ve heard others say, 24 hours just isn’t enough. But, when you look at it from a bigger perspective, it really is. I’m 22 years old, that’s the equivalent to 192,720 hours. Now, tell me that’s not a lot of hours. So the question becomes, how can I stretch every minute I have as far as possible? How can I really utilize each hour that I’m awake so at the end of the day I’m not complaining that I didn’t have enough time to get X,Y,Z done.

The past few months, I’ve been living at home with my parents and just working on applications for grad school and stuff. But other than that, not doing a whole lot more. I have a routine, but I definitely have plenty of free time during the day when my parents are at work. A really good friend of mine semi-got onto me for not making the most of all this time I have. And, he’s right. Instead of watching 5 episodes of HIMYM, I could cut back to 2 and spend that extra 1.5 hours to read or perfect a skill, or learn something new. But, it’s just so much nicer to be passive than active, right? Well, we all know that quote, “an idle mind is the devil’s playground” or some variation of it. So back to my original question, how can I stretch one minute to make it last “forever”?

Every morning, I wake up and meditate. Not for super long, but I try to for at least 30 minutes. I really recommend everyone just sitting by themselves for even as little as 5-10 minutes and just clear your mind and try to just focus on being in that moment. Anyways, this morning I was you know, meditating, and without thinking, my hand moved to my face to scratch an itch I had. Now usually, when you just quickly scratch your head or arm, that sensation goes away fast. Go ahead, try it right now. Experiment time: how long after do you feel that scratch? Ok, so I went and scratched my face. And I know this may sound crazy to some of you, but I kid you not, that sensation lasted for at least 5ish minutes, and more than that, I felt it deeper than just my outer most layer of skin, seriously permeating through however many layers of skin there is, down to muscle and bone.

I think this is the answer to my question. We need to figure out a way to make these sensations and eventual perceptions that we feel last longer than a few seconds. One way to do that is the ability to control our senses. This is one of the messages found in the Bhagvad Geeta. As humans, it is easy for our senses to control our mind. We like something, we’re attracted to that, we want to taste that, all of this then controls our actions. But, really, it should be the other way around. Our mind should be strong enough to control our senses. I don’t know the science or philosophy behind this, but if we can control our senses, than I think we can control what we feel, and make that feeling last longer than it really does. In turn, we might be able to make our time last longer, because we would be able to feel the after effects for much longer. Any experts out there please feel free to comment!

I woke up from my nap today (napping is somewhat mandatory here. Ha. Everyone takes a good hour, two hour nap if you’re home in the afternoon), and found a bird trapped inside the house. There are 3 windows we have, and the middle one was open, but it was trying to escape from the window that was closed. But, the funny thing was, the solution to his problem was literally right next to him. He just couldn’t see. This is so applicable in our lives, if not for you, than definitely for me. The answer to so many of our life questions is right in front of us, but the hard part is realizing that it’s there. My life has become now, more than ever, a spiritual endeavor to seek truth. And the solution to this thing we call life is here. It’s written by our ancestors and sages and saints and thousands of people who have come before us. But, if I don’t stop watching TV all day and try to uncover what’s out there, how am I going to be able to travel down this road? It’s as easy as stretching the minutes of my life as far as they’ll go.

Mosquito Bite Count: 2 | Serious Craving: back to Taco Bell. Yum.

the little bugger trying to get out.

he’s out. and free.

last one. he’s so cute.

hey folks. i’m back.

i know it’s been a long time. a year. more than a year. i know. there’s no need to really linger on what my life has been like since my last post. but i will say this. i have met some pretty incredible people, and have begun to do partake in cool things that are changing the way i look at life and how i see my future. it’s exciting really. i don’t really wanna get into details right now. i’ll start unfolding these thoughts over the next couple of days.

but what i do want to tell you all is about the current journey i just started about a day ago. i am going to india for three months. i left the states october 1, and am currently sitting at the dubai airport waiting to start the final leg of my travelling. i’m exhausted. and i’m not going to lie, i broke down and couldn’t stop crying for about 3 hours because i’m scared. (okay ps there is a baby right now WAILING and the mother is not doing anything about it. what the?!).

i decided i wanted to go to india for an extended period of time around before i graduated college. i mean, i’m taking the year off. i won’t have an opportunity like this again. here are the goals of my journey:

• to become a yoga fean. i’m taking private classes for the first month, and then when my mom gets to the motherland, we’re both partaking in this 10-day intensive at an ashram. and i don’t mean just for exercise purposes. i mean everything. this yoga experience will seep into every aspect of my life, and bring a consistency to the way i live. we, or maybe just me, compartmentalize our lives. this is me at school, at home, with my family, friends, significant others, work, etc. but i’m never the same me with the same thoughts and same motives in every aspect. this ultimately is hindering me to reach the higher truth. i need to be stable in my personality-intellect, body, mind, and soul. i think yoga will help.
• to begin to understand sanksrit. and i mean read, comprehend, write, the works. sanskrit was the very first language in the human world. how cool?! and a lot of what we consider ancient languages (greek, latin, etc.) actually derive from sanskrit. another cool thing. if you’ve read my “this is me” page, you know that i read the geeta. well, one of the things i have to do when i read is read a transliteration of the meaning in english. when i do this, the real meaning of the words change. so i’m changing that. and i’m gonna learn sanskrit. a dude on the plane said it’s one of the easiest languages to learn. crossing my fingers it is!
• travel. i’m an avid traveler. a lot of my friends can attest to that. my belief is that there is just a ridiculous amount of culture out there that every person should to some extent be exposed to. india, has some of the most spiritual and beautiful sights to exist in the world. when my family comes, we will be travelling to south india, as well as some spiritual and holy places. we will also be paying our respects to the one man who is responsible for a majority of what makes me, me by going to his hometown in Roha. i cannot be more excited.

these are only just snippets of my overall goal. my new tagline for my blog is that this site is a compilation of experiences and thoughts i have had on my journey to seek truth. my hopes from this trip is that i leave india, understanding a little bit more of what makes me nishita. spirituality is a key ingredient here. if i can leave india a little bit more spiritual, then i think that my goal will have been accomplished.

i’ll be sure to post pictures of everything, and my notes, and thoughts, and anything else you guys ask for! i hope this journey becomes something more than just for me, but through my experiences, you can understand yourself a little bit more as well.

until next time. peace to all.