Greetings everyone!

The post below was written yesterday, but technical difficulties couldn't send it. So, 'today' is really yesterday.

The skies are grey again today in wintry Toronto. But the more important event is that I am leaving for London and then India for three and a half months. This trip has the potential to be completely life altering in a radically different way from anything I have ever experienced in my fifty-nine years of living on this planet. Part of that significance is communicating with everyone in this new mode. Doing a blog raises the accountability level in challenging and stimulating ways.

While in London I will get together with a few women I haven't seen in a long time. Like me, they are all former students of American spiritual teacher, Andrew Cohen. We have all left that community and have moved on with our lives, and I'm excited about seeing them, catching up, and renewing bonds.

I'm also going to connect with someone I've never met in person, but who has instilled trust and compassion because of his dedication to a cause. Mike has been instrumental in creating and maintaining a website called tvindalert.com (see link on 'About Me' page). This site helped me enormously to process a rather horrendous experience with the corrupt NGO (nongovernmental organization) Humana People to People (HPP). Tvindalert also assisted others in making an informed decision about joining HPP, and everyone who contacted me from there was grateful that I could steer them away. So when I learned that Mike was ill and recovering, I wanted very much to visit him in London, and to meet him and his family at last.

In India my plan is to visit NGOs and to study the elusive (to me) language, Hindi. The first objective results partly from my past NGO experience; my idea is that I could serve as a kind of clearinghouse for others who would like to do some good work in India—a kind of match-maker for individual and reputable NGO. I have met some wonderful people who are doing great work in India, and my hope is to be able to see some top quality projects.

What this trip and the aftermath will ultimately look like remains to be seen. Now, however, is the groundwork, the research, the connecting with others, and is not separate from the outcome. And here, in this blog, I will write and respond, accountable to you, and to the possibility that we can create a better world, learn to understand each other despite radically different cultures, and truly become part of the solution.

Short note about this website: apparently the server goes down from time to time, so if you happen to log on at a time when it's down, please don't give up.

With warm regards,

Ellen