Life lessons by a little angel

 

Playing with my two-and-half years old niece Maira is great fun. Coming down from the levels of burdensome intellect and going down to meet her innocent joyful being is elevating and uplifting in many ways. It seems going down but it’s going up in a substantial way. The joy up-shoots like anything. One tastes ‘the lightness of being’.

A child will help you in breaking many barriers that one has built around himself. As a clown with lisping tongue, acting funny and speaking even funnier, you slay stress like a shiny knight in armor.

We are playing on the sunbathed terrace on this balmy winter noon. A flock of asian pied starlings floats lazily in the sky. They chatter and twirl, taking gentle, unhurried turns and loops in their flight. It’s a playful flight, not the one for survival and sustenance. Little Maira goes ecstatic at the joyous sight. And here I’m habitually trying to put more knowledge in her little brain. I point out that these are asian pied starlings. I repeat it many times so that she remembers the name. Then I ask her what is their name, pointing to the flying flock. She is worried for a moment. ‘Birds!’ she shouts and jumps with joy.

Yes, birds they are. The simpler, the better. Why get bothered about sophisticated nomenclature that our intellect-obsessed mind craves so much for? Enjoy the creatures that fly as birds only. Or, in Krishnamurti’s lingo, see them just as ‘life’. Nothing more, just plain life.

Furthermore, Maira knows how to go suddenly invisible right in front of your eyes. It’s a child’s magic. All she needs to do is to put her little hands on her eyes and disappear from the world around. It’s her beautiful truth that she too is invisible to others when she cannot see anything around with closed eyes.

How I wish that we too had the belief and conviction of a child in closing our eyes to all that is unbecoming and painful! We can at least try to close our eyes to the painful past and go out of its sight.

Blossoming

 इसको कहते हैं खिलना। इतना खिलना की बिखरना सिर्फ खिलने का अगला, सुखद चरण मात्र बनके रह जाए। पूरा खिलने के बाद बिखरना अर्थहीन हो जाता है। होने और ना होने के द्वंद के परे है संपूर्णता से होना। जियो जीवन भर के, पूरा खिलो। पीड़ारहित बिखरना तभी संभव है जब आपने खिलने में सब कुछ अर्पित कर दिया हो।

और ज्यादा खिला। It happens when you welcome life with the widest bear hug! This is expansion! Then a playful tug of the gentle air will aid in further expansion! A drizzle of ecstasy will occur! The petals will fly away to be a bigger part of a larger dimension! The smile doesn't die. It acquires a broader plain.

The self-sustaining orbit of life

 

In the infinite womb of the cosmos, the interplay of matter and energy churns out newer and newer formations, births and deaths of supermassive bodies. The cosmic churn goes on and on. Stars burst, black holes swallow supermassive bodies, and galaxies heave massive pulses across the space. It’s basically a super-storm going around. Cosmic bodies pulling, repelling, orbiting, colliding, sucking and maybe many more phenomenon beyond our perception range. But there are little points of peace, balance and poise where there is equanimity and balance in this cosmic storm. These are Lagrange points or Libration points, the points of ‘equilibrium for small-mass objects under the gravitational influence of two massive orbiting bodies’.

Usually, two gigantic bodies put an unbalanced gravitational force at a specific point, thus changing the orbit of any small-bodied object present at that point. However, at the Lagrange points, the gravitational forces of the two massive bodies balance the centrifugal force exerted by each other. It results in little Lagrange points that can be used for space docking for satellites, because here they can float almost unchallenged by any force in one particular direction and hence decreasing the fuel requirements. The manmade space objects can be placed at these Lagrange points for observing the marvelous chaos unfolding around. The satellite is very stable at this point and like a meditative saint can marvel, observe and make a meaning of all this meaningless unfoldment going around.

Human life is also a tiny replica of the cosmic upheavals, shifts, transformations, collisions going at a bigger scale in the cosmos. There are forces that pull us down and curtail our flights just like the forces of gravity tend to crash the objects back onto the ground. These are the forces of discontentment, fear and insecurities that pull us back to the base level, cutting our wings. There are repelling forces as well that keep our real self away from the essential core of our pure being. These centrifugal forces are anger, hate, jealousy and judgments. And being either pulled or repelled by one or the other, we have to spend a lot of fuel in cutting through the rough atmospherics and vicissitudes of life. We feel the wear and tear of this struggle against the opposing forces. We carry the scars, the discontentment and lots of dis-ease in our being. Life feels a burden as a result.

Luckily, in this rough journey we too have our Lagrange points just like the satellites. Every individual has his/her own Lagrange points, where the soul-ship can be docked in the balanced zone; where it requires minimum dissipation of life-force. Here we don’t feel the struggle of it. We feel the light of just ‘being’. We can feel the ease of just being. In this zone of equanimity and balance, we can set up ourselves with least conflicts and dissipation of energies. The contrasting forces here neutralize each other. A conflict-free existence naturally provides a lot of comfort to the soul.

Now the all-important question arises: How to find one’s very own Lagrange point? All of us have varying situations, circumstances, advantages, disadvantages, insecurities, fears, skills. All of us know the things that pull us down like the force of gravity. We also are aware of the repelling forces that keep our real self from coming face to face with the egoistic one. In my opinion the Lagrange points for a common person are the intersecting zones between materiality and spirituality—the zone between the desires of flesh and the dreams of the soul. One can set up a specific Lagrange point for one’s being and dock the soul-ship there to see, observe, witness all the drama going around, just like observatory satellites placed at Lagrange points do their job. This is the zone where the forces of materiality and immateriality are balanced by each other, allowing us to just be a celebrator of life, a witness of all this seemingly meaningless unfoldment around. Maybe we observe a meaning of life then. Wish you all a happy, cozy and safe Lagrange point in your life!

The will to exist

 

Energy’s manifestation as matter is bound by the laws defining our survival instincts. And survival has the tools of attack and defense as the primary modus operandi. So ‘being’ is like walking on the tightrope, holding the pole with one end as ‘attack’ and the other as ‘defense’, sometimes tilting to this way to defend, the other times to the opposite end to attack.

Each eatable grain on the earth wants to survive. It has the multiple layers of defense and attack mechanisms to help it carry its journey forward. And we break through their defense portals by cooking them and make a pulp of their starch and protein by breaking these down. The grain accumulates lots of starch to lengthen its life, but we are smarter enough to break it down for our consumption. Primarily, a grain collects its starch for its own consumption. Getting eaten by the humans or animals is the least of its priorities. So to reach this rich source of starch and protein, we have to first defeat its first line of defense, the structural line of resistance. Grains have physical obstructions in the form of thorns, bark, husk and other protective armor. We go through it with our superior weapons by peeling and milling.

At the second tier of defense, the grain still tries to survive and here it engages the gluttony humans with its chemical warfare. The grains have certain pathogenic properties that don’t go along the digestive capabilities of the human stomachs. They also possess certain enzyme inhibitors that make the grains harder to be broken by the digestive system. It makes them very tough to be eaten raw. To break this line of defense we use the weapons of boiling, fermenting and germination. We even dupe them by soaking. Soaking actually dupes the grain into believing that it’s the first stage for the birth of a baby plant. As it gets ready for giving birth to a baby sprout, it withdraws the defense portals and immediately certain enzymes are born to support the baby sprout. And something eatable for the baby plant is eatable for us also.

So it’s primarily about attack and defense at all the hierarchies of life. What we see in the world at the tangible level of we humans is simply a representative of all that is going at the tiniest levels. So keep your defense walls strong and the attack portals (skills and efficiency) well oiled. The bubble will anyway burst but to maintain that bubble and enjoy the pleasure and joy of being, we have to give our best just like a tiny grain does. Learn from a grain. If not for this tough fight, how will a tiny seed grow into a majestic tree some day? A tree is the optimum actualization of a seed’s potential. Similarly, we too have the task of maximizing the potential that we carry within. Fight well!  

Sharper AI wit and duller human brains

 

In an automated and mechanized world it’s not about good and bad; it’s primarily about good, better and best—strictly in terms of numbers. The entire moral façade crumbles and the vast potential of our fabulous brain is as much within the reach of the evil as it’s available for the good. With the equation of good and bad sidelined, the human race enters a hazardous zone. The quest for betterment, for more efficiency bypasses the check-dams of morality and ethics. It’s a blind race for achieving more and more material gains at any cost. When there is no consideration for the costs that we have to pay, we naturally cross the balance sheet. We then beat even the nature in hatching disasters and hazards.

We fly too high in the eternal quest for more and more conveniences and better and better products. In the unrelenting quest we burn our wings and fall down. The unreined and unchecked impulse to go for betterment in every sphere of life churns out such models of production and social norms that come with open-ended potential. These seem to facilitate a process but carry an equal amount of potential for multiple adverse effects that require solutions. For example, artificial intelligence will of course churn out interesting and more and more media content, but it will put challenges in the form of manipulated synthetic media content and deepfakes. For the latter we need more and more technologies to manage the fallouts. After a time, it becomes very difficult to tell whether we are creating more problems or solutions. The confusion results in a melee. Just mere exhaustion and tiredness born of the relentless march makes us believe that we are progressing. While in reality we are simply throwing arms in darkness, caught in the web of our creation, like an over-smart spider spinning a castle of web and then forgetting the way out.

Honoring the dynamics of life in others

 

There is an age-old proverb in the villages. Making a child laugh and playful might not earn you a good name, but if she cries while under your care, it will surely earn you a bad name. Negative experiences leave a far bigger impact on us than the positive ones. One sour word very easily undoes the sweetness of hundreds of beautiful words. This proclivity to lock the ‘negative’ in our mind while filtering out hundreds of ‘positives’ is the cause of strife, tension, anxiety and discomfort within. It also very easily sours relationships.

We simply judge people for the ‘exceptions’ in their behavior, ignoring the common ‘mundanities’ of their demeanor. We simply catch the black dot on the otherwise white board. It even seems that we are operating as watchdogs looking and sniffing for the chinks in the walls. I sometimes wonder whether we are actually companions while walking with someone or are we spies going with a mission to catch the other person on the wrong foot. No wonder we feel so vulnerable and insecure most of the time. A spy on a secretive mission will of course be on his toes and full of tension.

It becomes so easy to blame others for all the problems in our lives. But why would we always go searching for the tiny black dot on a white canvas? Why would we simply forget the rest of the white sheet? We are always looking, peeking, searching for those chinks in the armor. It just shows how insecure we are. What breeds this insecurity? It’s caused by the conflicts squirming inside us: the friction caused by our quest for the eternal ease of ‘being’ and the poor ‘becoming’ that we are molded into by conditioning, roles, stereotypes, expectations.

Most of the time we are self-charged on the grand mission of aggravating our own miseries. We are suitably helped all along by our ability to hold onto the master illusion that others are responsible for all the shit flying around in our lives.

We are always pulled in two directions. Then we get scared. We are a scared species. We put the blame on others in order to somehow clear our guilt for not being what we are supposed to be. To have that conflict-free ease of being, we have to learn to retain our vision spread out to still see the surrounding white even though the black dots appear here and there. We have to accept and view situations and people in totality. We have to accept this law that an all-white scenario is impossible to sustain as per the laws of nature. It’s a dynamic canvas. Things and people change and shift in shape, size and color. They aren’t stones that they will retain the same appearance. They aren’t dead. They too are evolving and growing, shifting and changing as much as we are doing the same.

It’s very easy to theoretically discuss, write and understand this fact. But it’s very difficult to bring it into practice. Anything that requires rewiring the habitual network needs a regular exercise. So we can remind ourselves regularly that people aren’t stone idols cast in the mold of our expectations. They are an evolving life. They will grow and change and come out of the mold we have created for them to fit our needs and desires. Accept this fluidity and sanctity of change in a living form and most of the judgments will drop of their own. We then accept the black dots on a white canvas.

 

The flow of life

 

Making love, a mere repetition; falling in love, a mere repetition; falling out of love, a mere repetition; doing this, a mere repetition; doing that, a mere repetition. I think we are creatures of repetition. And repetition is primarily born of habits. So most of the things we do are the results of habits. Why do we form habits? Possibly because we feel safe. And why do we crave to be safe? Maybe because we have fears. Well, then even fear might be a habit of the mind.

The moment we allow ourselves to be driven by the habits, we limit ourselves to a customized social unit, for our own safety. The society too feels safe when it sees fine creatures of habit swarming around. Habits define a safe zone around us. They breed convenience and that’s why we hanker after them. They define and limit us and give us a false promise that we will be happy in that little zone. But very soon we find that the happiness born of mere conveniences hardly brings juice and joy to life. It’s dry. We still feel something is missing even though we adopt more and more habits to erect sounder structures of safety around us.

The human spirit wants to fly and habits are the chains. It wants to be free. But habits hold it back. When we set out to chart out our own path, we have to break the mold of habits. Habits clip our wings. They condition us, limit our potential. We have to do everything in a way that it doesn’t turn a habit. Then whatever we do is an ode to the present. It’s open ended and creative in nature. We create and move on. The past doesn’t drag us. The future doesn’t make false promises. We flow. We fly. We live.

God's child playing

 What happened in the past was relevant, if not altogether apparently good...it involved some learning...some evolution that needed some closed setup within challenging situations... And as you came out and took tentative steps toward healing was also good...a flow after the stay and stagnation...all was well..all is well...all that will happen will also be good...the tough episodes are Mother Nature's indirect means to give us a gentle shove to nudge us to step out of the situational and psychological constraints and see more of life and living in this beautiful, exotic chaos of cosmos where we have to fix a few random pieces to make a meaningful life, to feel relevant, to be loved, to love, to live..go and pick your pieces of your sovereign choice...make anything you want... that's your making, your independent free will...the random pieces lying around have infinite permutations and combinations and hence you have the limitless potential to create. As a maker of something lovely and specific and beautiful you serve as an arm of God even though you are His children. Run on the beach of creation and play in the sands and give shape to all your imaginations: a castle, house, animals, birds, machines, vehicle, anything. It will be there as you play with childlike joy. Of course Father sea will surge His waves to wipe it clean for all the future children to play on a clean sandy beach. But till the high tide washes you and your creations into the bosom of the sea, play you have to with full enthusiasm.

The dance of life

 Fullest expansion is painless dissolution. Fullest being is non-being itself. A life harnessed to the full is griefless death. Isn't a tree just mother earth expanding and this air merely further expansion of the tree? Live and blossom so fully that you explode with ecstasy instead of burning to painful oblivion. And what are the fuels of this painful burning? These are the things that hold us back, preventing our fullest expansion. Fear is the primary roadblock. It breeds many other offshoots like anger, hate, jealousy, greed, judgements. Smile, laugh and explode with ecstasy like she does!

Imperfection: a stepping stone to perfection

 

I think we can avoid abusing the things that keep us alive, that give us this day, that shape our life (in whatever shape it might be). Whatever the texture, shape and structure, it still is our life. It’s still a flower (even if it’s badly mauled and ruffled by the circumstances) and it still belongs to the genre called ‘life’. And the manifestation as a ‘life’ is an incentive by default. We are manifested and still get a chance to evolve and manifest more. A blade of grass manifesting its life in famished desert sands is as important as a luxurious devdar in rich, salubrious, rain-fed hills.

This body, parents, siblings, friends, partners, deities, everything in fact has been responsible for this life that we see defining us at the moment. Irrespective of what we think of them presently, didn’t they touch our lives positively and meaningfully when we needed them or crossed path with them? Please recall that spark and excitement when we initially met them!

We meet people on the way and move on and meet new people further on the way. That doesn’t mean that the ones left behind were bad and the new ones arriving in life are better. They are equally good or bad. Everyone is equally imperfect, but even with their imperfections they have something to offer to us and we to them, which shapes one phase of the journey. They are the ones who get us to a point of being positively touched by the newer people.

If I judge those who were left behind, it would be like condemning the lower steps on a ladder after getting to the higher ones. Would we have reached the top step—for example, reaching a stage of finding an ideal soul mate—if not for those nice lower steps, those lovely people with whom we broke up in the past? The relationships are like a ladder. It’s a journey basically. Different people that we meet are beautiful, strong steps on the ladder that bear the weight of our feet and help us take the next step. And we are just the same to them. We too were low at the time when we met them and that’s why we stepped on that rung and found it helpful. So did they.

All steps, lower and higher, are equally important. All the people we connect with, all relationships, all situations and experiences are various steps on the ladder. The problem is that we judge them vertically like a ladder standing upright, in terms of high and low, good and bad. Life isn’t a vertical ladder. It’s multidimensional in nature. It unfolds in layers. All the people that we meet are equally high and low at various points. So honor the people that came along the way. They have given us this life as we see it now. We can avoid abusing these various steps on the ladder of life.

Acceptance of the uncontrollables in life and gratitude for what is done (ignoring what wasn’t done) save us from abusing the things, situations and people who have helped us live one way or the other. Respecting them is as good as respecting life.

Solitary trail

 A solitary trail...all of us have a solitary trail, our very own...where we are face to face with ourselves. Where the small worldly self walks with the larger Self...where each step is a quantum jump in evolution...where the destination doesn't hark you, you become your own destination. You inhale wellness, you spread your wings, you float...where you get a causeless smile...this trail is available wherever you are situated, even in densely populated cities. You just need to feel it and then follow its alluring call.. seek your solitary trail, own it, stamp your love on it...

A tiny natural design

 A little piece of flawless design in a tiny pool somewhere in the cozy lap of a little valley surrounded by small hills. Nature has its own mystical symmetries. We just imitate poorly. Salutes mother nature. The more I read you, the more I go deeper into your mystical pools.

Melting after full blossoming

Picture 1: It clings and stinks. It doesn't want to give. It dies a painful elongated death. It doesn't surrender to change and holds its youth's bloom in a fist, a constriction, a knot, a stagnation. It will be there till it turns ugly. The glory of its past will be overshadowed by the piteous whine of its present. A painful event stuck up in the loop of time.

Picture 2: It opens up fully. It gives all it has to open up and scatter its still fragrant petals as a homage to gentle winds, balmy afternoon winters and keenly awaiting mother earth. It showers beauty. It's a drizzle of joy. It's not death. This is ecstatic disintegration for the larger integration. A process! A fluidity beyond the constraints of space and time.

Timeless peace

Well, not sunny actually! But I see the freshness and verve of the new rays of a new day! Hope and its bright Angels are lurking from behind the greyish veil. Behind the screen there is the sun of love, life and living. The yesterday's wind howled itself to death. Again verifying that peace and calmness are the norms, not storms!

Redemption

 

The following lines were written 10 years back during a kind of the darkest hour before the dawn:

It has been months since 

I last lit my faith's lamp,

So many days have passed since

prayers chimed in my dark den's air damp, 

My meditating self,

Now gives atheistic yelp.

Lost my faith!

Lost my prayer!

Lost my rituals!

Lost my meditative trance!

And now it's a bright sunny, soothing dawn. The divine fluidity of this hill stream whispers her prayers and love in the wordless language of truth. I feel redeemed, salvaged and blissful! Good day everyone! Lots of love and blessings!

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.