Traffic Jamming.

What would you say if I told you that a Bangalore taxi ride is the way to enlightenment? Forget India’s temples and Holy cities. This is the most profound manifestation of the mystical divine in operation that you can experience. Read on dear seeker, read on 😉

This morning I took an Uber across Bangalore to a meeting. Not my first trip of this kind but a pretty enlightening one nonetheless. The cab pulled up to the street where I currently reside and I opened the door, greeted the driver and made myself comfortable for the trip ahead. The cab did a three point turn and we were on our way. I have become somewhat used to the traffic here and the ebb and flow of it all. My worries about the driver not looking right or left before crossing or merging with traffic have now evaporated. It is what it is. We moved forward via a network of small tributary roads, buzzing with Friday folk picking up food, grabbing breakfast or dropping off kids. The streets, as always were awash with colours and sounds. We were approaching the wider more congested main roads and without effort squeezed our way into the river of metal and rubber.

The horn symphony of bikes, autos, cars, buses and trucks once again grabbed my attention and this morning I was deeply aware of the conversations happening. I was hearing the song. The melody. The individual notes. The conversations both random and intentional. Everyone’s voices in perfect harmony.

These individual points of consciousness moving within the mass. Every single person with a whole life running around inside their own particular moment in this, my particular moment, was connected whether consciously or not!! Suddenly something in my awareness shifted.   A lightness of being descended upon me. A tingle. A thread of light pulling upwards. A moment of grace. I glanced across at the clock on the dashboard.

10:08*

I laughed out loud. The driver was unmoved. He was in the zone. Flowing with the river. I watched as cars and bikes criss-crossed in front of us, beside us and all around us in a dance of pure synchronicity. It could not be choreographed any better. A scooter slipped into a Rizzla like gap that did not exist and the manifest world suddenly became a vortex of pure energy. Everything was in it’s place. Nothing was actually solid anymore. This was perfection.

In my head the score was Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture. I was alive. Fully present. Buzzing. This was an experience of deep flow. No one needed to be aware. No one needed to be anything other than exactly who they were and where they were.

It just works.

Even the broken down auto was in the dance along with the cow eating from a rubbish pile in the middle of the traffic. This Cow was an island around which the river of traffic just moved effortlessly. I could see the matrix. I was in the matrix. I was the matrix.

As we pulled out to navigate a roundabout I looked to my left and saw another car hurtling towards my door. I was unmoved. Time had stopped. So did he. I just smiled. He did too as if to say, ‘Nice dancing with you.’

On we went. Moving, stopping, braking, swerving. All just part of the dance. The symphony continued outside and Elgar was harmonising within. I had forgotten where we were going, so caught up was I in the where we were right now.

Out of the right hand corner of my sight-line a man stepped into the traffic. He was not thinking about stepping. He just stepped. His hands were both held out, palms facing the oncoming waves of humans and their chosen mode of transport, like King Canute in front of the wide and endless ocean. This man underwent a transfiguration in front of my eyes, from Canute to Moses as the sea parted around him, moment by moment, step by step, creating an ever changing delta in the flow. He kept his hands out, eyes wide, as if evoking a deep spell from somewhere far beyond. This was a tiny miracle. Somehow he just walked across the road, whilst it, flowed around him, maybe even through him. I watched as he disappeared into the crowded market street to my left. The sense of merging was sublime. There was no longer an us and them, a me and you but at the same time there was! All one. All individual and unique and all one. Simultaneously. This wee cab had become my Holy place. My temple. I laughed again.

In front of us a small truck carried a living Banana tree. It was dancing too.

Just as quickly as we had entered the river we were out of it. Small back roads, Shoppers. Dogs and cows. Tranquillity and then we stopped. We were there. Today though, we had been there, all along. I paid the driver, thanked him and wished him a good day. He just smiled.

What a ride!!! It reminded me of this.

**Might not mean anything to you but the number 108, 1008 does have some significance.