It has been a decade since I last wrote here and the practice has brought me back. In the meantime, I have got married, had a kid, changed careers, jobs, houses and states of mind, many times over. Almost seems a different lifetime. But such is the circle of life, it tends to find its way back.
A note of clarification, between my last post and this, there were a few others. But they were lost in the digital format during a backup and transition of this blog. I still have them in print, but no need to post them. The tone in a lot of them was not very likeable.
Anyways, coming back, I have earnestly picked up the meditation practice for a few months now. This time around, I have been a bit careful to not tie in the practice with some external goals. This was a problem with a few attempts in the past decade, where I was trying to use the gains from the practice to achieve some external goals, sometimes driven by my ego. No wonder those attempts generally ended with delusions and disappointment.
Speaking of opening hearts, Love, that feeling that all of us experience, sometimes subtly and other times intensely. I have been contemplating this, meditating on it, it has hit my consciousness through various sources. There is of course the love for my family – wife, daughter, parents, friends – but there is also Love, the Universal kind. Exploring that in the current times of fear, uncertainty and gloom has been an interesting journey.
My mother asked me few weeks back whether I had started writing again and my response was I haven’t reached that depth. Its interesting on why today, what lessons have been learnt that has lead to this moment now. It could be a chat I had with a friend yesterday, where she was bickering about another friend posting “motivational videos” on social media. I tried my best to gently, but firmly express my positive sentiment and guidance towards our mutual friend finally saying – “Failure is the best teacher, success breeds contempt”. Maybe our friend is onto something, we just need to open our hearts and minds to him.
Sach kahun sun luo sabhe, jin prem kiyo tin hi prabh payo
Listen everyone, for I tell you the absolute truth – Only those who have loved, shall be one with, The Universe
Guru Gobind Singh, Tav Prasad Sawaiye
These words first hit me like a arrow straight to my heart some time back, it was an intense emotional experience. It also had a physical manifestation, I felt intense heat at my heart chakra. And that has stayed as a general feeling of loving bliss, which I have consciously tried sharing with those around.
The other interesting experience has been reading the book Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. The protagonist goes through various stages of life – exploration, escapism, asceticism, indulgence, disgust, discovery, love and then loses it all.
Ultimately, the “goal” they had only earlier intellectualized, was attained through an intense experience of Universal Love. And this was enabled by a Guru, a dispeller of darkness who was right in front of them the whole time, but was absorbed in their own bliss. Siddhartha finally saw that Love in each and everything, living or otherwise. Such is the nature of that Energy Flow. It resonates in its own love for itself.
In another interesting discovery, I’m currently reading “Man’s search for meaning” by Viktor Frankl. It is a dark treatise on his experiences of surviving the Nazi Concentration Camps as their prisoner. Through all that torture, death, suffering and pain, he writes –
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how man who has nothing left in this world still may now bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way – an honorable way – in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he caries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory”
Viktor Frankl
There is nothing more I could add to above, it is one of the most beautiful prose I have read in my life. I know that is hard for us to contemplate this, I would like to avoid going into any pedantic explanations. But these narratives have brought a level of humility in oneself, an appreciation of our blessed existence. The least this soul can do is to truly express Love for that Energy Flow, for it resides in every quantum.
इन्हीं पागल कलियो मै घनी खुशियों के गुच्छे है।
हमे पागल ही रहने दो हम पागल ही अच्छे हैं।
Let us be in Our own Bliss
sailing with masters 
So beautiful! It’s an echo of my own thoughts you know!
Stay inspired and keep us inspired too! 🙏😁
So insightful!Keep writing want to read more from you 🙂
Love you brij!
I love you to Christian! 😀