Silence

Sometimes I sit and watch people talking, saying words that mean nothing and I wonder "Why do people talk so much, is it to fill the empty spaces in the hours, is it to fill the empty spaces in their hearts". Reams and reams of speech laced with loneliness, covertly seeking approval, seeking love. Words that create a patina of comfort that if withdrawn will leave them cold and disconsolate. And my silence, is it conceit, is it arrogance, or is it the silent pool in which I can see reflected my own fears and doubts?

Karma Yoga

What is Karma Yoga? A yoga attained through selfless service, renouncing the fruits of one’s action, and performing actions with pure intention, devoid of selfish motive. To uplift the lives of others!

But how many of us walk on the path of Karma Yoga with no thought of reward? Some people crave recognition, some hope that the people they are helping will help them back. Some have some other motive. I feel that karma yoga can be practiced in every thing you do, every little action, every small deed. Even if it washing the dishes or mowing the lawn or writing a letter. If all these actions are done with love, so the simple pleasure of doing for doing sake or with the thought that God is in everything and the doing is a kind of worship towards God, then you will be walking the path of Karma Yoga all the time. Take the simple act of smiling at someone. Many times we smile by just moving our lips, how often does the smile reach our eyes? How often does our smile come out of our hearts and touch the other person’s heart? How often does our smile carry blessing?

If we are in touch with the wellspring of love within us all the time then everything we do will be an act of love, we will be touch with the Divine all the time, we will be Karma Yogis always.

The light within

This morning while I was meditating I felt I was being surrounded by so much love, wave upon wave of love. This love slowly reached into me until I felt a radiance within me and I suddenly realised that there was this beauty shining within me. Simple and breathtaking. And I was thinking all those people who said that they can see inner beauty within me were not wrong after all. Breakthrough moment.

Intimations of Immortality

Excerpts from 'Intimations of Immortality' by William Wordsworth

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us, our life's star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forget fullness,
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky and the mind of Man
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts
And rolls through all things.

The special cracker

Written after the Delhi bomb blast in a marketplace last Diwali.
 
I got a special cracker
this Festival of Lights.
It was such fun when
my mother and I went shopping,
we bought clothes, sweets, diyas
and of course crackers.
I finally managed to persuade her to buy
the special cracker that
she has been saying I was too small for.
I could imagine myself setting off the rocket
and standing back and watching
as it took off and exploded with a loud pop
and then blossomed into
tiny pinpricks of light.
And sure enough, just then
there was a loud explosion
and a blaze of light.
My mother was thrown against me,
I hit the ground
and then nothing but blackness.

I am in hospital now,
there are tubes in my arms, nose and mouth.
My father fusses over me
with a sad expression.
Sometimes when I wake up from a doze,
I see him softly sobbing into his hands.
I want to reach up and stroke his head
like he used to when i cried,
but it hurts too much to move.
Maybe mother would do it if she was here,
but why isn't she coming?

Wherefore dreams ?

Why do we see total strangers in our dreams? Are they people who crossed our lives and evoked in us strong feelings of affection or fear or disdain? And then we somehow forgot about them.

Why do we dream of strange situations? Are they our secret desires surfacing, our suppressed fears, our hidden fantasies?

What messages are they trying to tell us? Or are we just housecleaning? Are dreams messengers from our subconscious mind or a subconscious vacuum cleaner?

Being

Today I had the realisation that there is no me only the Divine which wishes to express itself through this body, mind, emotions and the soul which is the means of experiencing the Divine. There is not ego, no success nor failure, no pain nor pleasure, just infiniteness, lightness, oneness. There is just bliss.

I realized the meaning of the Biblical words “In Him I live and move and have my Being”

I dreamt of you

I dreamt of you last night -
we met in a public place,
you looked younger,
like when i saw you last,
you looked straight into my eyes
and spoke with such simplicity.
We must have spoken for a long time,
then with some urgency you said,
"I have to go now"
and then you left.
It felt as if someone
had turned off the sun.
I then walked through the streets
looking for your face
among the faces of strangers.
I woke up soon after
with a sweet anticipation.
But the birdsong seemed sad somehow.