Small Acts, Great Journey: Finding the Sacred in Everyday Life

 When you come across a small insect drowning in a little puddle of water, or in a bucket or some vessel, either offer it your finger or the tip of a small twig, take it out and put it there on some leaf, among the branches of a tree, or on the petal of a flower.

If you find an injured butterfly, that winged beauty struggling on the ground with its wing damaged, pick it up with care and put it there among flowers, plants or bushes nearby, so that it can complete its journey in a dignified way.

If you see marks of injury on the trunk of a tree, caused by us humans, by our chainsaws or our axes, put your palm on the wounded bark.

If you see an old beggar helplessly standing there in the crowd, so lonely and left out from all the progress and development that is taking place, cast away by destiny, go and offer him a chai or ten rupees. But do that with a smile, because that is what he needs more than your ten rupees—your smile and your acknowledgement of his presence, that you consider him to be a human being.

Go and enjoy the little, small foothills in your neighborhood, and climb those gentle slopes with the pride of an expert mountaineer. Why should you wait for the time when you will be climbing Mount Everest? This is your Mount Everest—your little neighborhood hill. Enjoy the slope. Enjoy your walk.

There is a temple, shrine, mosque, church or gurudwara in your neighborhood or locality. Go there with full faith. Enter as if you are entering the portals of divinity. That depends on how much faith you carry, not on the name of the place.

So why wait for visiting Kailash Mansarovar, Mecca-Medina, the Buddhist places of enlightenment, or other lofty places related to the great saintly figures of different religions? Go there and enjoy your being in your neighborhood place that has been set up in the name of God. It is as good as being there at the topmost place of your own system of faith or religion.

Enjoy your walk in the small scrub forest still left out by encroaching humans and urbanization, that small strip of green, even if it is famished and not luxuriant. Go there and enjoy your walk. Why wait to enjoy a walk in pristine forests like the Amazon? This is as good as being there in the lap of Mother Nature.

When you lose sight of the purpose in life, when you feel unprotected and lonely, just look into the vast sky. Look into its maternal depth. It is your home, your protecting roof. All you have to do is look into its depth.

During the day, it is pristine blue. During the night, there are the stars twinkling mischievously, giving you hope.

The moment you learn to enjoy these small, small things, and become sensitive to little, little things—an injury to an insect, a wounded butterfly, or the injured bark of a tree—you become a healer.

Mother Nature, Mother Existence, is there acknowledging and watching you closely, seeing how you are sensitive enough to put your healing hand at a point where something has gone wrong. You are trying to mend the entanglement at a particular point.

You are a creator.

You become a healer.

You work like a little saint.

It is not necessary to go into hard tapasya and become an enlightened saint. Take care of these small things, and you are a saint.

You are a pilgrim. If you go to the small religious places in your neighborhood with full faith, you are as good as a tired pilgrim walking long distances to reach the lofty places of his faith.

You are a great, knowledgeable and wise environmentalist, fully aware of the role of Mother Nature. If you are walking with full presence even in a little scrub forest in your neighborhood, acknowledging the role played by those still-left-out trees, plants and grasses in your life, functioning as your lungs by giving you oxygen, then you are a great scientist and environmentalist just by doing that.

You are the richest person on Earth the moment you acknowledge the misery of a poor old man who is begging, standing left out in a corner of a crowded bazaar while people are having a heyday in all the growth and development around him. The moment you hand out ten rupees with a smile, you are the richest person on Earth.

The moment you put a caring hand on stray cattle carrying an injury, you are the kindest soul on Earth at that moment.

So, on a daily basis, you have countless opportunities to be a healer, to be a saint, to be a mountaineer, to be a pilgrim, to be the richest person, to be the wisest person—just through the small things that come your way.

And life becomes very fulfilling wherever you are situated, whatever your locality, whatever your profession, or whatever type of personal life you are living.

Mother Nature always has so many points where you can plug in with your role, with your awareness as a mender of things, as a healer, as an enlightened person.

Enlightenment is no mystical concept. It is just being aware of the missing parts at small, small points, in terms of sentient life as well as insentient life.

So just be aware and walk, and continue doing what you are doing, because these little things never stop you from taking care of your responsibilities and fulfilling your commitments, the personal and professional roles that you are playing. That will just go on as usual.

But you will be entering that stage where you are required to play your role as a more substantial person—a person full of wisdom, awareness, knowledge and understanding. You will be a better soldier to cope with the challenges.

It gives such a holistic and fulfilling aspect and perspective to your life.

Then you are just there as an open entity, responding to some positive change in the cosmos, in this beautiful play of energies. If you remember that you are here to bring about some positive change in this beautiful game or play of manifestation, the cosmos is acknowledging you, watching you. It is storing each and every point of your progress on the path of these realizations as you evolve through your journey.

And it responds.

You are sowing the seeds of the same positives to come into your life through other situations, through other persons who are on the same frequency. You will come across systems, institutions and people who will be providing a positive push in your own journey.

So when you take care of these small things, it is just as simple as sowing the seeds of your own greatness in multifarious ways.

You are just walking consciously and dropping small seeds. These will germinate, and at the end of it, you will have your own rich harvest, which you have been sowing without putting in any particular effort, without taking time out of your busy schedule, without sidelining your main priorities.

Here you will have a rich harvest—a small forest, a little garden of your own deeds. Small, small deeds which you have been doing without even taking extra time out especially for them.

So that is the win-win situation for you.

And if you bring that type of depth and substance to your presence, it will just dispel the dust of ego covering your real soul. Once the dust is gone, your inherent self, the real self, will shine more brightly.

And it will be for people to feel it.

They will feel it naturally.

They will feel your presence.

They will feel the beauty and fragrance of your presence.

You will be inspiring. You will become a beautiful medium of evolving energies in this beautiful, pleasant, ecstatic cascade of energy trying to manifest itself in newer and newer ways. You will become a platform for something more in the direction in which this evolution is taking us collectively.

And then you will have a beautiful meaning of life.

The more your inner self shines brightly for others, the more it will spontaneously start bringing about positive changes in many people's lives, in situations and in surroundings.

You will have a very efficient role to play, whether you want it or not. It will happen on its own.

And once that starts happening, you will have a very satisfying, specific meaning of life. Life will become joyful because the moment there is an inner assurance—now I am playing a role; now it is worth it; now I am at least giving back to Mother Existence in return for what I have been taking—the moment you feel it and realize it, it gives you spontaneous, unconditional, automatic joy.

And that is as good as being enlightened.

And then, at the end of the journey, when you call off this journey in this lifetime, you will drop this body without too many grudges, because then there will be this ultimate realization:

It has really been worth it.

I used my full potential.

Mother Existence had given me potential, and I tried my level best to manifest it, to actualize it to the maximum limit.

Please continue your journey with awareness, with sensitivity, with a feeling for the small, small things around you.

And through these small steps, you are taking big strides towards greatness.

Great be your journey.

Blessings.