Dear Jasjit

An insightful and hopeful piece. God knows after reading stories like bug chasers and gift givers you need to be able to see a positive picture too just to remain sane and optimistic.

I guess for T her new found fiance and her ability to get a good job is the greatest proof that her hard work at healing herself has paid off for her.

A very inspiring story. But I do have one question. How does one draw the line between taking responsibility for ones life by understanding that everything is coming from oneself and not falling into a victim psyche with that realisation???? Surely women cant be responsible for awful occurences like rape and violence?

Hi Shagufta

We all live with mind patterns and what comes to us as experiences are triggered by those very mind patterns. The most common mind pattern is always to think something outside us is the cause for our pain/happiness. So the focus is always external and so is the search and the goal external.

To begin to see yourself as the centre of your existence first requires a complete change of your mind pattern. Systematically you learn to access your wisdom, drop negative thoughts, choose courage over compromise etc etc. The victim psyche is naturally antithetical to this process so you learn not to feel guilty but instead take resposnibility for your joys and sorrows.

As for your question on rape. In short all forms of violence, aggression also come to us a triggers of our own energy field. while this will be difficult to explain here it is enough to understand that once we begin to look at EVERY experience of life as a guide for change we begin to see all events in a completely different light.

jasjit, refering your last paragraph...how true yet how difficult to explain...

as i often say...banane wale ne jindagi di khed bari soch samajh ke uljhai hai...

cheers shagufta, dont think of/worry about somthing which has not come in your way...that is not for you...

Thanks Jasjit. I guess you're right. It's just that every experience offers potential for change.

Hello Harb!

Good Morning Harb

Often impossible to explain, for it only brings up mistrust and irritation when you tell people the truth of 'jo brahmandey soyee pinde'. And truly this is an expirential road 'goongey di mithai' is so true. And yet what has been preoccupying me for some time is the question that those who pass through the barrier of illusion, have found the wonder of silence, find nothing imperfect in the world and know the limitations of words how/why do they then embrace the karma of trying to share with all.

Its a strange, painstaking road of reaching out and searching the middle ground. The days when compassion flows strong and the days when all seems plain meaningless.

Just some ramblings. :-)

Good Morning to everyone!

Kudos to both T and D for their determination and achievement. I wish T (and D) a wonderful future ahead.

'The path of healing is transformed perspective'. So true Jasjit. Going on in life with the 'I am a victim' perspective is not going to take us anywhere. Instead trying to deal with the anger by working on oneself, by working towards finding that which is causing in us the anger can relieve us of the burden of fear, stress and anxiety.

But what is most important in this search is being TRUE to yourself.

Harb I totally totalyy agree with you- Why worry about that which has not yet happened. Lets take life as it comes to us... one at a time.

I agree with Chaitali that when you look at things differently then you see yourself as different too. Once when I was small I was crying about not having cycle like my neighbour. My mother said to me if you compare yourself with other then you should also compare yourself with beggar, poor man, sick man.

Made a big impression on me.

jasjit, it could be due to the body/mind's momentum...soul has tasted the silence, is anchored there, but the body/mind will take their time to metamorphose fully accordingly. as of now we fall into the fallacy again and again that perhaps we are the doers, that we are doing this and that for others...while the truth of silence says it is your world, you do whatever you do for yourself, that even compassion will need to be trancended...just whatever flows out of you at the spur of the moment that will the best...

or, it could be because we find ourselves in a situation of "mein tan chhadadan kambhal nahin chhadada. "

anyway, often times your ramblings reach me unsaid.

chaitali you made me laugh with the use of the word "yet" lol.

Kalam, wise words indeed. Comparisons are against us because they deny our unique individuality. If this trait were to exist in nature then nature would probably not flourish like it does. Man is the only one inflicted with this disease.

Jasjit, a wonderful story of hope and the power of the self. I know from my own experience, that in seeing yourself as the center of everything that manifests itself as your life, is really what inner truth, abundance and creativity are all about.

Hello Harb:-)

Wonderful story Jasjit. I got breast cancer when I was 34 and the doctors told me that I would have to have a masectomy. I just decided there and then that there had to be another way, there was no way that I was willing to go through the operation.

As luck or destiny would have it, that very evening I came across a reiki practitioner. I started going for reiki everyday, completely changed my diet (threw out all caffeine, coke, junk food etc.), started breathing, yoga and decided that I was not going to let anything or anyone upset me or come in my way.

6 months later I returned for my check up and the doctors were absolutely shocked. There was no trace of the cancer.

So I believe immensely in the power of healing the self because it is my own experience. You just have to want to change your life and then everything is as you want it to be.

Thanks for this piece.

Hi Ray

Thank You for sharing your wonderful story of hope and courage. I'm sure the experience totally changed you as a being and has brought a renewed sense of inner power and wisdom.

It is fascinating how many people have turned their lives around because a terminal illness or near fatal experience was the trigger to seek the larger power of self-healing.

Dear Harb

Ab dekhana hai dam kitna bazooey kambal mein hai.
Good to know my ramblings reach your knowing ear silently. :-)

love

lol jasjit, it is a forgone conclusion...kambal will sooner or later have to chhod...what all needed was the flash of our existence free from not only the kambal but any kambal...

and as regards ramblings...i think what i really catch is some sort of...to write or not to write on your part...as if you force yourself to write at least on some threads...as if 'oh what the hell i have bound myself into." of course i could be wrong...

hello anusheh, indeed i and my universe are one...each one of us has our unique universe yet those all overlap into an overall one universe as well.

Happy Biasakhi to you Harb

Just made and ate some deeelicious kada prasad then read your comment and laughed out loud. Hmmm...true the days of silence and the days of speech. And of course the perambulating kambal in it all lol.

love and warm wishes to you and your family for a special year.

thank you jasjit. i was at Talwandi Sabo yesterday..where my dr saandu-saali live and run their hospital... we all went to the gurdawara there as baisakhi mela is most prominently celebrated at Talwandi Sabo (also called Guru Ki Kashi) and received karah parshad. lacs of devotees had come there from far flung areas...we went there just by chance...not really to celebrate baisakhi...it seems the guru called us...thank you, must be the special year as you have wished...

how interesting on your part to prepare karah parsad to celebrate baisakhi...it used to be done in the old days at my village chohla sahib (taran taran) when my mother was alive...now most people do not bother, at the most they bring some sweets from the bazar lol.

now i am at bathinda, where my saala lives...lol mein tuhanu punjab darshan karai ja rihan...

Happy Baisakhi Harb ji....mein vi punjab darshan naalo naal kar rahi aan:-)

Thanks Jasjit

Have had some time to read through some of the archives. You're doing a great job here.

Harb
Thank You for the Punjab darshan, it brings up nostalgia. Have visited Chola Sahib as a child, should have known to look up Sant Harb Ji there then lol. We have a tradition at home of making prasad every Baisakhi (mum has a prayer room with the Granth sahib) so now that she's frail I make the prasad for her. Have also been to Anandpur Sahib on Baisakhi many years ago. I remember it as quite an awesome experience.

anusheh, welcome on the train to punjab lol.

jasjit, for a long time in my childhood baisakhi was the only mela i knew because it was celebrated with great enthusiasm at chohla sahib where my father was manager of the gurdawara and it was he who was mainly responsible for making all the bandobast.

if you visited chohla sahib in childhood, you and your father must have met my father as you must have gone to the gurdawara. most probably i was then grappling with god in the form of reading gutka and panj granthi day in and day out because my mother had told me on my asking that god can give darshan to me if i will read them times enough to please Him. i then thought god was perhaps some huge human being who will alight from the sky before me lol.

and yes, anandpur sahib is especially attractive when seen in the background of mountains...i have gone there many times as my son was posted at ganguwal for a few years.

Harb

I'm sure Dad met your father then and also chatted with him. He had this epacial quality of bonding and enquiring wherever he went and his warmth made his friends all over the world. We used to visit Punjab at least once a year a children and were always driven there and taken to all the major/minor gurudwaras, fed all the speciality foods from the famous places and regaled with many stories on Punjabiyat.

HAd some great times.

yes jasjit, more so as my father showed utmost respect for the persons you have described your father was like. my father was a great respecter of learned persons.

in fact my father's thirst for knowledge/learning is a story in itself. his own father died in his childhood, the family was very poor, so circumstances forced him to spend the whole days of his childhood shepharding their own and other relatives buffaloes and other cattle. yet he would take the urdu 'kaida' alongwith him to the fields. people will laugh at him, more so as hardly anybody had studied from our backward village of mand area till then. then when he was just five or six he ran from home to guru ki kashi (Talwandi Sabo again)some 300 kms away, where he had heard people were given free education in the gurdawara. though after some months he came back because he was yet too small and so felt overwhelming homesickness.

but then after due time he joined the army and there he was able to pick up urdu, punjabi, math and even english up to about 10th standard with his own efforts. he left the army after about a decade because of some undiagnosable illness in his stomach, after which he joined the gurdawara of a nearby town as a manager, where he spent the whole of his life of 85 years.

interestingly his thirst for knowledge was yet insatiated. he will go to amritsar every year around diwali because a vedant sammelan would be organised there every year and he would go to listen to the learned rishi/munis who will come there. though yet a child, i also accompanied him a couple of times. i can still remember how i enjoyed the food on the green leafs there for the first time. and i can also still remember many ramakrishana parmahansa look alikes among the speakers. in fact to me all looked like him then lol. i am telling all this just to show how the river of knowledge was in fact meandering its way around us/me since long. perhaps it was not only one sant ji but quite a fauz in the shadows to possess me lol.

lagda hai hun menu sare bakhash gae han...par hun karan/likhan nun kujh nahin labda...it seems all this knowledge woledge is alien to me now. which is in fact one of the reasons i do not comment directly on the thread, i feel i have nothing to say, or perhaps know nothing, while at the same time i am also becoming conscious of the fact that perhaps i am leading the thread away from its subject-matter. dont be surprised if you dont find me here for days together...the above would be the real reason and none else...mein tan hun nikian nikian simple simple jihian galan kar sakdan lol.

lol, just went up and saw the title of the thread and thought perhaps i am rather really reflecting in my own looking glass...

HArb

How fascinating the way the continum is set up. Your father's thirst for knowledge was in effect the field which was meant to trigger that part of your consciousness from chldhood. So he was drawn to such 'sabhas' and you were taken to make available to you th energy field which would set off those clusters within your consciousness, which spelt your destiny even when the environment was not directly avaible to you. Of course the 'sat sangh' hugely influenced and set off those clusters within you and acted as critical catalysts.

It is only when the eye of oneness begins to reassess the world around that you see the maginificent order, assistance and munificence of the creative order. Just like you my father came as the singular emotional/spiritual/intellectual/material patron in my life who provided me everything and set me off to the journey I was to make, created oppurtunitites not in my immedaite environment etc. Larger than life, astonishnigly feminine in his affection, compassion and gentleness, awesome masculine of courage and fearlessness, largely a loner at heart and a dreamer of great dreams. The love between us was so powerful that he just transferred each and every attribute to me quite seamlessly, taught me to seek truth, decode scriptures, walk outside the pen of religions and always use my humanity as a test for how rooted I was. Imagine how powerful and complete that gurudom was for me, condensed into the years of growing up.

Eh khed badi hi suhane hai Harb, par us to peyley ked samjhan di jaach chaidi hai bus. Of course you have no use of all that knowledge now. 'Mun tun jyot swaroop hain jaan' once that jyot is known and seen within then all wisdom that is needed burns from that one source. Baaki tey saara ik khed hai, jad ji karey bolo jad ji kareu chup betho. Having pierced the simplest yet highest 'knowing' I know how participating here or anywhere can be difficult for you. So write and be here when you feel like it and for me your silence is also your presence.
Though of course the title of this post is exactly what you are doing. :-)

love

Hello all,

I was away for three weeks, hence the silence. Just got back yesterday. I see some changes on the site. Looking good :)

Jasjit, the story you wrote above is quite inspiring. And if it wasn’t on a website like this, I wouldn’t have believed it :)))

You mentioned that one should see herself as the center of her existence. This is something I hear quite often. Does it always have to be this way? Doesn’t it depend on individuals? For some people the center of their existence would be compassion, for some it could be generosity or for some it could be forgiveness or for some it could just plainly being good at heart…... And let it be as diverse as that. At the end of the day what makes others and us happy is that the understanding that we will be there for them even if they can’t be here for us. And jasjit, I do fear when we keep the self as the center of one’s existence one would start giving oneself too much importance. I know it’s an age-old argument, but then I have always feared I’m old fashioned-:) Nobody wants to be selfish, but who can draw lines.....??

love to you all

Hi Ramlath! Good to have you back.

I just thought of sharing my views on what you have written above.

The happiness that comes from understanding that we will be there for others even when they will not be there for us can only come when we don't see our existence as solely based on others. The trick I guess is to let go of the ego and the self-importance attached to it. The whole process of self reflection is actually the process of doing away with the stubborn ego.

I don't really understand the ego part Chaitali.... What I meant was, if we don't set conditions while giving, we make everyone happy and that's something we all know. It is difficult, still some people try their best not to expect anything in return.

Hi Ramlath

Missed you! Glad you like the look, hopefully we'll be able to add some more interesting/attractive changes soon. Yes indeed it is wonderful for us when such inspiring changes occur, makes all the effort worthwhile. I am thinking of asking T to share her thoughts on this blog one day, maybe she will have more insights into her journey.

Chaitali has articulated the crux of what the centre is all about quite well. All I would like to add is that what you speak of are attributes- compassion, generosity, forgiveness- what I speak of is you at the centre of the flow. When we focus on the attributes our focus is still 'external' i.e how we wish to engage with the world and what we wish to express. Not surprisngly the 'external' begins to govern, is often uncertain and places therefore a huge burden on our 'dedication'. When you invert the mirror and begin to discover the true SELF it emerges as a gigantic hologram if you will, inclusive of all that you perceive as the world. Now no 'attribute' need be coveted, all flows within naturally and in doing so flows without. The effort disappears and all that is left is a joyful naturalness and spontaneity.
:-)

Dear Ramlath,

What I meant is that to make the self the centre of our existence does not mean giving it too much importance. Infact the process should be the opposite. That is letting go of the ego and realizing as Jasjit has put it the TRUE self.