Emergence...

It took me three decades to finally realise that the purpose of my life is NOT to bear children or raise a family. To realise that I don’t have to be a mother to feel complete. That I don’t even need a home and hearth to be at home. It took me this long to find out that the only reason why I was born is to find myself. And what a perilous thing that seems, so fraught with adventure, danger, fear and failure. And yet when I look back, I see that I have come a long way from being a lost, confused, misguided youth to being a woman who is finally beginning to see glimpses of her true worth, to see that her womanliness is intact even without kids, her soul is divine under all circumstances, even when she is down in the dust. I have come to realise that I don’t need a man, a career, relationships, looks, wealth, roots, country or even the identity of a name to feel complete. I am finally beginning to see the wisdom of the words that ‘all treasures lie within’. So now I have finally dropped my search for them without.

At first it seemed strange because when you take away all external things there is nothing left. Our mind is so occupied with the externals, with the superficial things that we seek our happiness in. The lack of which causes pain, the presence of which gives happiness, but which is so temporary that it is foolish to base one’s happiness on something so inconstant. But when you drop your dependence on the mind, drop the mind itself, then a vast silence comes into being which instead of being desolate, is alive and pulsating. In which dwells peace that passes understanding, bliss that is out of the world and whose very nature is love.

I have realised that all the experiences I’ve gone through in life have been there for my learning, even the horrible ones. The ones I have railed against and shaken my fist at God against. That at that time felt like I was being made to swallow the bitterest, foulest medicine ever made. They were His form of tough love. It was as if He was saying to me, ‘Why are you all curled up and sitting in a bud? Bloom, my child, bloom to be the magnificent blossom you were meant to be.’ When someone trusts you so much you cannot let them down, can you? I guess the ugly chrysalis has to emerge to be a beautiful butterfly one day.

We are like waves in the huge ocean of existence, we rise briefly and fall back again into the source. The mistake we make is to think ourselves separate from the ocean, to lose our sense of connection with the whole. The knowledge of oneness is our only anchor, without it we toss anchorless, drifting aimlessly, buffeted by the storms of circumstance, bruised and broken on the rocks of misfortune.

So now I’m in a state of peace, a state of grace and this grace is hard-won. It did not come easily. It came after defeating persistent demons, crossing tumultuous rivers and braving devastating storms. It’s like the well-earned peace that comes after a particularly destructive storm, when all is swept away and the only thing standing is yourself. And you realise that that’s all you need to build again.

I have come to realise that my magnum opus is the book of my life. The masterpiece that is me is not in the making, it has already been created, already written. Harmonious, complete, joyful, in tune with the universe. After all, God writes only bestsellers :) I only have to read it and savour it, everyday, every moment.