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2023 - The Year That Was

Places impact you for a variety of reasons. And the same place impacts different people in different ways. This is especially true when it comes to spiritual experiences, where every single person’s experience is unique. And personally, every spiritual experience is unique, the same person can have different deeply spiritual experiences at different places, at different times. This thought has emerged because of my own experiences over the years, but especially so this year, with different and unique experiences at various places I have visited recently. I began this year with a visit to Baroda (Vadodara) with friends. It was meant to be a relaxed trip, a touristy trip, with our sons. We enjoyed ourselves to the hilt, but the highlight of that trip was a visit to the Lakulisha temple at Pavagadh. It was the iconography of the temple that I connected with, and I spent a few hours simply lost in the details of the figures carved around the temple. There was an indefinable connect with
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Sky Watch Friday - Changing Landscapes

The mountains near the Ambaji Temple in Gujarat are well known for their marble mines. In fact, the local name for the mountains and the forest there -  Arasur - comes from the word for marble. No wonder every temple in the area is made of marble! Here is one view of the hills.........





Here is another... from right among these hills....



Take a closer look.....



The marble mines have eaten up the heart of the mountain, and not much is left. With the kind of demand for marble today, I wonder how much of these hills will be left in a few more years!

This has been quite a depressing post, but for some really good images from around the world, go to Sky Watch Friday.
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