A delicious morning

 

When the morning sun suddenly peeks over the corner to set a blizzard of light in the sleeping vale. It triggers a shimmering lightwork in the dewy beads clinging to drooping leaves. The morning mists pleasantly launch vapory fireworks, carrying the fragrant message of love, life and living. It's like the first pure smile of a baby after opening eyes in the morning! I stand mesmerized in this little bowl of peace and harmony, completely soaked in solitude, the sunbeams going deep inside to sooth my soul, the fragrant vapors percolating deep into the pores of my heart to assuage guilt, fear, anger and of course bruises and wounds it suffered and poured the same on others during the journey, and the dewy shivering glade embracing me wholeheartedly... It gives a clue and key to life! blissful! We feel the best when in a state of expansion, as a set of a larger totality. Expand your knots of ego in such solitary corners guys! Melt in larger panorama nurtured by mother earth. One feels uncaged from a narrow, suffocating feeling that we have cemented around. Come on, let's claim our freedom that is long due! Let's pledge ourselves long draughts of freedom on this Christmas! Merry Christmas to all you out there looking to pry open the cage of miseries, suffering and restlessness! Let the coming days see you smile more and be at ease with yourself!

Rebirth

 

Lord let me be joyful to see my own death. Let my old self meet a peaceful death right here in front of me. Let a new me take birth before I shed this body. Dying of the old self and the birth of the new!

Let the hand that would have hit on impulse die and take birth to go up for a blessing on the same provocation. Let the tongue that would have spewed out poisoned words die and take birth as the one that gently rolls out delicate words of kindness, sympathy and solace in the same situation. Let the face that would have snorted with anger and hate die and take birth as a smiling face of empathy under similar circumstances. Let the eyes that saw fault in others die and get reborn as the one which see the inherent beauty in the same people. Let the heart that carries anger, hate, jealousy take its last breath and rise as a kind and compassionate chamber of my soul in its new birth.

This is a beautiful dying that all of us have to welcome in our lives. The old self dies slowly, gently over a period of time and by the time we reach the stage of physical death we are already reborn as a new person. In that case the physical death loses its meaning. We come to know that we have been reborn and there is more that awaits blissfully in changed dimensions and reshaped consciousness. Maybe then there is no fear of the physical death of this body. Maybe this is what they mean by getting liberated.

A worldly sage

 

I don’t want to be too good or too great to be finally get burdened under the weight of my own goodness. Conceptual sense of goodness and purity turns an obligation in the long run and one has to put up masks to keep it. I don’t want that divinity that would uproot me from the pains and pleasures of earthly humanity. I don’t aspire to attain too lofty a character to finally become someone who has to take up falsehoods as customs and rituals to maintain my persona. I don’t want to be completely detached, perfectly moral, neutral and aloof so as not to even hear the panicked notes of a little bird being pursued by an eagle and watch the game of ‘the stronger eating the weaker’ unfold with a saintly muse. I want to retain enough humanity to allow my kindness to respond and throw a clod at the hunting bird. Even if it hits the bird of prey I would take the chance. I don’t want enlightenment or liberation that takes me away from the sweet, common scent of humanity with its mundane pains and pleasures.

Even Buddha kept quiet when his wife questioned him about the necessity of renouncing everything to get supreme joy for himself. He had abandoned a wife and a little son; severed his ties right in the middle of the night. That to me is causing pain to others for individual salvation. When he returned as a revered spiritual king, his wife requested to be granted a meeting with the great teacher. ‘It’s my right to be allowed a meeting with him in privacy as his wife,’ she said. And the great master agreed. ‘O great spiritual master and dear husband, you abandoned me and your child and the entire family for individual salvation. Tell me whether what you have attained could not have been attained without abandoning us?’ she asked. She spoke as an aggrieved wife with feminine authority and worldly conviction. The great master kept quiet. For the first time he had no answer to this. He knew all this could have been attained even without causing pain to his family. But it would have been a bigger challenge to attain all this, which he had availed as a sanyasi, while staying in worldliness.

So isn’t renunciation the easier way? Isn’t running away—even if it means to attain the salvation of humanity later—an easier path? It’s very easy to shut out disturbing mental situations from going rampant while sitting in a cave. The real challenge is to be a yogi within while moving on the worldly stage with all the earthly bearings of duties, roles, relationships, karma, dharma, everything. Like Krishna did. Like Rama did. They forged their saintliness ‘within’ right there on the stage of this drama.

I would prefer to run into situations instead of running away. To try to be stable on a shaking platform is the real challenge. It’s so easy to get poise and balance on a stable platform. The entire essence of being a spiritual person to me is just to remind myself of my core truths even while I’m walking across the illustrious, blinding bazaars of fakery and falsehood surrounding me; to be stable within even while walking in a noisy bazaar; to do my duties on the worldly stage with a perfect detachment and understanding that I’m playing this role in this drama and I have to perform it really well.

The saints are as much part of this existence as the common people like you and me are. If the God had been too partial towards the saints, they would have outnumbered the commoners by now. The real saints are joyful with the minimum that supports their life. The common people suppose that the drama on the stage will get them happiness. Not much difference, I think. To some super-galactic consciousness, taking itself to be a separate super-entity, all this would be just the same—the saints and the commoners. So don’t harbor vanity for being a saint; and don’t feel the guilt of being common. Mother existence stands equally distant or close to both the categories. Further, God certainly must be in love with his common children because He has so many of them.

If my sympathetic tears alleviate the pain of a fellow human being, I’m ready to cry. If my smile lights up someone’s life, I’m there to offer it. I don’t want to be an idol that turns liberated, impassive, heavenly and mute to all the fluctuations of fate and fortunes around me. I love being just like anyone around.

Manifesting life out of your existence

 

There is a saying that the boats which lay anchored in the harbor are safe; but this is not what they were made for. They were built to be launched into the open sea to chart their journey. In the same way, the boat of our life isn’t meant to be kept tethered in the comfort zone and safe waters of the harbor of our fears, insecurities and inhibitions. The open sea awaits to receive the boat of your life so that you can journey, experience and learn all that for which this life has been given to you.

So take out your boat out there into the sea of life. Get tossed, get stormed, get lost, sway along the waves, and keep rowing even if it happens to be the wrong direction because sometimes these take us to the right destination. And Don’t Mind. Even if you mind, it doesn’t matter because that’s how it’s going to unfold in any case.

The workshop within

 

How will you even touch someone softly if you haven’t felt the gentility of your own fingers on your skin? How will you even offer a smile to someone if you haven’t showered your own smiles at the representative of divinity, you true self, within you? How will you embrace someone if you haven’t given a warming bear hug to your soul like a beloved? How will you even touch someone’s life in a healing way unless you haven’t healed your own invisible scars? How will you make someone joyful if you haven’t enjoyed its treasures first? How will you understand someone’s pain unless you have understood the value of your own tears? Charity begins at home. All this has to start from one’s own dear self. Till then whatever we do in the name of all the gifts mentioned above is nothing but a lip service, a theory without experiential reality, a mere pretense to fulfill a duty, or even facelift measures to beat our own weakness, fear, insecurities. Others are just an extension of this very own self. So it’s better to start with the self, the nearest source to experiment all these truths and then build upon the larger scale.