A violet vision in a dying day

As I go on my walk I see many flowering bushes, pink roses, spotted tiger lilies, delicately pretty pohutukawas, but today I see a vision that takes my breath away. A bush full of violet flowers, large velvet-petaled and stamens that bend into forks at right angles. The flowers hover like a violet cloud over the bush and even the ground underneath is made beautiful by the fallen violet petals among the autumn leaves.

The autumnal leaves look lovely everywhere, yellow-orange and crinkled, sprinkling the green grass in a violent contrast, on footpaths and huddling on the edges of gutters where the water gleams pink from the clouds above. I walk to the river where the heavy rain has transformed it into a rushing current. The blue waters speckled pink rush merrily along, rippled and foaming, carrying logs and leaves. But for the sound of the river everything else is still as the day dies.

The sun has set in the distant sea but its rays still linger in the sky in a reluctant farewell. The pink in the sky turns deeper into peach and then into a vivid rose as the interspersed clouds turn a deep shade of grey. The trees silhouetted on the horizon turn a dark shade of green. I wonder if we can be like a sunlit day, spread light and warmth while alive and be so gloriously alive in our dying moments that even they sparkle with joy and beauty.

As I walk alongside the stream the song of the flow mingles with the muted music of the birds in the trees. Dusk approaches rapidly and lights come on on the hills among the tiled roofs and the treetops. This is my favourite part of the day. It is as if the day is parting but with the promise that it will be back soon. Somehow there is always hope in the departing light.

As I near the house, night has fallen and the trees appear mysterious among the shadows. If the clouds clear away, soon the stars will be out and hopefully a laughing crescent moon. Everything is so perfect in nature, so effortless, so simple and so beautiful. If only we could learn to live like that.

The silence of night

I was standing outside on the balcony yesterday, in the dark of the night and it occurred to me that the night has a different kind of silence. It is the silence of the stars and the horizon lit up with pale moonlight and the quiet stillness of trees ruffled by the faintest of breezes, and into this silence falls the faint sound of an insect buzzing, and the soft occasional tinkle of the wind chime like a gentle pluck on a sitar string and this dark silence accentuated by the coolness of the night laden with the promise of rain. How can I help but lose myself ?

Before I go to bed I go and stand in the balcony once more. This time the breeze wasn't blowing, so the trees were still and the wind chime was quiet. So the silence was deeper. But there was another beautiful sound. A lone owl was calling in the hills. 'Koo-koo' it called lustily. I read somewhere that the owl calls for a mate, therefore the sound was at once melancholy and hopeful. Hope must spring eternal in the owl's breast for sometimes I do hear an answering owl call. When two owls call in unison, the sound is so beautiful I stop still and listen. 'Koo-koo' one calls and 'koo-koo' another answers in a slightly different pitch. I wonder then that owls must pack a lot of meaning into those two syllables, they must be saying all that they have to say in varying pitches and tones. Who knows, maybe they even make themselves understood. And look at us humans, so many syllables in so many languages and so little understanding of each other, so little understanding even of ourselves. The moon is high in the sky now and so the starlight is a bit dimmed. I stand in the moonlight and bask in it and feel blessed.

Later on in the dead of night, I wake up. The silence is deepest now, even though the darkness is not. There is a tiny sliver of moonlight that escapes through a parting in the curtain and gives the room a tiny glow. And in the deep silence only a humming is heard, which could be the journey of blood in my ears. I feel tempted to remain awake and listen to the silence, but sleep overtakes me.

Zzzzzzz...............

The cycle of life

One moment an insect is sitting on a branch and the next instant a bird eats it up. The insect’s life force is dramatically and instantly transformed into the bird’s. An earthworm crawls on the footpath and is trodden by a foot. This time the transformation is slower and subtler, as it turns into dust and seeps into the earth to be transformed into grass, trees, and fruits. In nature, every instant is one of transformation, of creation-destruction-creation. Only the form changes, but the essence remains the same. Watching this we accept it calmly and tranquilly as the cycle of life.

Yet when it is the turn of someone loved and close to us to die, we put up the greatest resistance to this fundamental truth, we react dramatically with grief, we withdraw into denial, so strongly do we hold on to the illusion of life. The same also happens with relationships to people, places, and jobs. Even if we know that it is time to move on, that the purpose of a relationship is over, even if it brings more pain than comfort, so attached are we to the familiar, so unwilling are we of getting out of our comfort zone, so afraid are we of facing the unknown that we cling on. Letting go is the hardest thing to do and yet it is the one thing that can truly liberate us, free us to be ourselves, help us find out true selves.

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

It's Good Friday everyday

Today is Good Friday and instead of going to church I am sitting at home blogging. If someone asks me now why I am not in church mourning the death of Christ, I would say that Christ died once 2000 years ago and that was enough, I don't have any plans to finish him off every year, year after year. Besides, I feel him alive within me, so what is there to mourn? Shouldn't I be jubilant and celebrate?

Come to think of it, I haven't even understood why his death is being remembered. It is said that Christ died to save us from damnation. Really? What damnation? At whose hands? Surely not at the hands of an all-loving, benevolent Divine Being who has nothing but love for us. Would any parent send their child to eternal damnation? If we as humans can be accomodating of our children's misdeeds, would not God be too?

It is also said that Christ took all our sins on Himself. But how? How is it possible that we sin and he gets punished? Does that mean then we can merrily go on sinning since he has already paid the price in a one-time horrifying instalment? Somehow this sin-transference theory does not hold much water with me.

Then it is said that he died and was resurrected on the third day. Cool. I don't have any problems with that. But if that's the case, he is still alive, right? Having conquered death. Then why are we putting him up on the Cross in elaborate ceremonies and mummifying him in black robes and burying him in vaults? Hmmm....

Jesus was a human being just like any one of us, but what took him out of the ordinary into the realm of the sublime was that he was able to realise his divine nature. For me the purpose of Jesus' life was to show to us that we too are capable of that. He walked on Earth to show us that we are all Christs-in-the-making. Every instant in which I am aware of my divine nature and connected to the divine being, I am being Christ. But all those moments where I lose that connection and wallow in darkness, I am being merely human, that is my sin. And so in my life Jesus dies and is born again every day. Every day is a Good Friday and Christ is resurrected and Easter comes as soon as I realise that I have forgotten my soul and it has gone into mourning. The only evil is to be in that state of darkness, disconnected from the divine source and the only good is getting back into Christ-consciousness. We do not honour Christ by remembering Him on Good Friday or Easter or during Sunday services, we honour Him by being Him.

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dancing stars and lunchtime ramblings

Last night on TV on 'Dancing with the Stars' I watched Cory the boxer dancing the fox-trot with Nerida the dancer after being coached by her for a week. After the dance one of the judges made a comment that made me think. She said 'Cory, you need to bring out your feminine side especially in a dance like the foxtrot. There can never be any doubt in our mind that you are a man, so don't hold on to that image so firmly, give expression to your feminine side as well, your soft, elegant side'. Hmmmm… that made me think. How true! How we all struggle so valiantly to put on a brave masculine front, including us women. 'Be brave, be a man', growing, little boys are told as tears well up in their eyes, as if giving vent to their feelings is some crime. And look at us modern women, staunchly and stoically we march, mistakenly thinking that by doing so we are being as strong as men and will somehow be considered equal. Why is giving expression to one's feminine side considered weak? How can softness, gentleness, compassion, giving, expressing one's feelings be a flaw?

While I was going to get lunch today, I happened to run into John, an old friend. When he saw me his face lit up, and I suspect mine lit up too. Some spark was lit, a smile came to my face and if he wasn't rushing to a meeting I would probably have got a hug. And walking down the road under the drab, dreary autumn sky feeling lit up from within, I cannot help thinking how we touch people's lives. Even in the smallest most inconsequential meetings, lives are touched and we are transformed in an instant, if only by a fraction, but transformed we most definitely are.

As I continue walking, I see glimpses of beauty in the commonplace -

Slanting hazel eyes, soft with love.

Naughty, laughing youngsters with not a care in the world, the world at their feet.

Trees happily waving their green-turning-to-yellow branches at the autumn sky.

The sun surprising us with a split-second visit.

Liquid elegance in a Swarovski shop window, crystal tamed into the most astonishingly beautiful shapes.

Elegant curlicues on the facades of old buildings.

And under it all the heart of the city, softly beating, beneath the apparent chaos, in understated harmony.

The black, sequinned veil

One night I was sitting in my backyard looking up at the night sky which had obligingly decked herself up very liberally with stars. The Milky Way cut a hazy swathe through these bright glittering jewels and it seemed as though the night was a black, sequined veil spread across the sky.

But as I kept looking up at this fabulous fabric, a shift started taking place in my mind. The tapestry on the sky started to get hazy and dissolve and each star stood out in solitary splendour as I realised that even though stars appear next to each other, they might be millions of light years away in actual space, and so the sky which seemed two-dimensional until then now seemed to stretch out to infinity, and all of a sudden in a flash of insight and a rush of joy, I realised that I was looking up at the universe.

The whole universe was out there, swirling galaxies and twirling supernovas, stars dying and collapsing and new ones being born, hurtling meteors and slow-moving planets. Suddenly the placid, calm night sky became a crackling cauldron of movement, creation and destruction. And then all thoughts dissolved in my mind and I was left gaping in a state of awe and wonder. After that the sky was no longer the limit because there is no sky and no limit, just the limitless Universe.

Who am I?

The other day it occurred to me that whatever the circumstances of my life, poor / rich, healthy / sick, full social life / solitary, happy / sad, the only and greatest treasure in my life is myself. All these other circumstances are external, they pass away or change but I, I remain. Then I began to wonder what that 'I' is. Who am I? I realised that this self-conception changes from day to day or even from hour to hour. Then who is the real I?

Then a flash of insight told me that I am pure potential. What I see of myself is the manifested form. That which I choose to express of my potentiality. In unmanifested form I can be anything and everything, but what I have become is the result of my choices from moment to moment. At any given moment I chose to be sad, joyous, envious, forgiving, fearful and that is what I become. Some of our choices become habit. In the past, unknowingly some kind of situation must have triggered fear in our minds and slowly over time we become habituated to choosing fear in similar situations. What is also unknown to us is that we have a choice every time. Out of our pure potential we have the ability to chose courage, we have the strength to confront our fears.

I have also realised that if I remain aware of my potentiality it gives me power, because now I know that I have choices and I have the power to choose, instead of succumbing powerlessly and choicelessly. Now when I am beginning to feel fear, I can choose courage instead, instead of pain I can choose joy, instead of hate I can choose love. All of them exist in me as what I potentially am , but what I become is the result of my choices.

The light of insight does dispel darkness :)

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Musings on a rain drenched walk

It is late evening and I am taking a walk when it starts to rain suddenly. First in a light smitter-smatter and then in a heavy drizzle. I have no raincoat or umbrella so I let myself get drenched. The raindrops caress my face in gentle strokes and slither down my nose and chin in large drops. And when I look up, in the bowl of the valley among the backdrop of the hills, there it is, a rainbow, a perfect arc, stretching from base of hill to base of another hill. Stark in the vividness of its colour and radiant in its beauty. As I walk, it fades slowly and disappears altogether. Then just as suddenly the rain stops, as if its only purpose had been to paint a rainbow in the sky.

Then it strikes me how effortlessly Nature does things. Without seeming to put in any effort it conjures up a rainbow from thin air. No stress, no striving, no deadlines, no bottomlines, just effortless ease. Just the intention and then the manifestation.

After the rain, the asphalt road has turned a shiny shade of black and the foliage, ah! they have turned a cleaner, crisper shade of green. Moisture hangs in the air like a secret and as I pass by trees, they give off a woody fragrance that mingles with the smell of the damp earth as shadows gather among the leaves and the sun bids a smiling farewell.