love is all you need (and some time in the subcontinent)

although i did not take the name bhakti until after i moved to california in late 1989, i became myself largely during my time as an undergraduate at UF in gainesville, florida. there, i majored in religion, went to dozens of grateful dead shows, and cultivated various states of consciousness. i used whatever technique struck my fancy, and did not exclude any method categorically, though i did lean in several distinct directions. and so, through various meditation traditions, as well as certain ever-lovin' chemical and botanical psychoactive agents, and much study and introspection, i began to chart the inner landscape like armstrong on the moon. and while it's easy to forget from moment to moment, i glimpsed, like a flash in the corner of my eye, something about creating your own reality (as the aquarian crowd liked to call it), or how to consciously collapse a state vector (in the language of quantum physics), or extracting the actual from the possible (as i like to say).
And so, in 2006 or -7, just when i was thinking what's next, just when i was realizing i really do want to find a life partner already, who should walk into my life but ms heather insley. we met at the running of the bulls, or online, i can't remember which, and although it seemed like our courtship was sweetly slow and gradual, before too long it was love sweet love, and we were inseparable, in our hearts if not geographically.
I love my job at OHDS, but i was ready for something else, and in particular i wanted to go back to India, and spend some serious time there. Heather loved what she was doing but was also ready for a change, and also wanted to live abroad for a while. I have been to India twice, both time traveling alone and preferring it that way, but this time i didn't want to go alone. and so, as if i wrote the script myself, heather and bhakti came into each other's lives, and proceeded to shake them up irrevocably, blissfully, blessfully, finally. the plans were made: we are going to India.