An Old Folk Tale

A poor woman in a village looses her husband. She weeps inconsolably over his body. Those in the village tell her “don’t cry. You still have a little son. He will take care of you when he grows up”. She stops crying.

Soon after, she looses her young son who is her only child. She weeps even more inconsolably over her son’s dead body.

As she cries someone from the village says “don’t cry. A very evolved and wise man is visiting the village today with all his followers. We are told he can cure illnesses and bring back people from the dead. Take your son’s body to him. He will surly bring your son back. He will certainly have mercy for you since you have no other children and you are a widow”.

She agrees. She walks through the village, crying and carrying her son’s body in her arms, looking for the wise man.

Finally, she finds him, tells him her story and lays the body of her son at his feet. She says “bring him back…please”.

The wise man says “of course I will bring him back for you. But first you must do something for me. Find me a handful of grain from a house in this village that has not had a death in it”.

She agrees. She is calmed and says to the wise man “thank you so much. I will be right back”.

She knocks on the door of every house in the village asking for a handful of grain.

In every house she was told “we would be happy to give you as much grain as you'd like, but we had a death…”

After many hours of searching she returned to the wise man and the body of her son.

She looked at the wise man with acceptance and buried her son. She dedicated her life to the pursuit of spirituality with  with the wise man.

She was never alone.

Tranquility

Peace does not come ‘then’. It comes now.

Some people don’t have to clear any or too much debris before tapping into and utilizing the peace within them. Some people have to do this before realizing that they can be at peace, that peace is in them and that they can allow peace to grow from within them.

Upon undertaking either of these journeys, one tends to realize that a peaceful state is not one where everything is peaceful outside. Rather, it is one where the self is peaceful and unmoved no matter what, especially when there is turbulence outside.

Furthermore, peace does not always have to arise in or as a result of conflict. To be at peace means to maintain tranquility in times of internal and external calm as well. This is harder to do sometimes than in the case of maintaining peace when there is turbulence outside. This is because, in times of peace, the only entity responsible for maintaining the order is the self. It is in these states that internal corrosions rise to bite us. One can hardly see the starting or end point of these corrosions in the present. But we know that they come from within us and prove to be more corrosive than most sources of external turmoil.

These internal complexities could have been caused by the outside and in the past, recently or otherwise. However, they exist in our present because choose to carry them into this moment. We have chosen to hold on to their denigration to the extent that they corrode us from within even when there is peace outside.

How then are others ruining our peace? We are ruining our own peace.

Bad things happen. However, it is up to us to release them as they occur. Not because it’s a great thing to do. But because releasing negativities allows us to eliminate our own internal strife and be at total peace, silence and joy in that moment where nothing is actually going wrong right now, inside or outside.

For this to occur, the suffering has to be released with love. The release has to be vested in the firm and humble understanding that ‘although great harm was caused to me, I did not harm anyone, in the process of getting better. I forgave. I got better. The rest does not matter’.

What next, when this peace is reached?

The key then is to start getting comfortable in it and allow it to grow and expand boundlessly within you. There is no end to this expansion. And so, neither is there an end to peace.

I realize now that this state of being is called tranquility. Everything occurs and grows abundantly in the joyousness and stillness of this state.

Sadness

I feel sadness is an underrated emotion. We are taught that the moment we feel sadness we must do something about it to convert it to happiness. Why do we always expect to be happy? Why don’t we stay with sadness till it passes naturally from our being? I feel that sadness gets converted to depression, anxiety, fear and stress, when we try to aggressively convert it to happiness.

I am not saying that sadness must not be managed. Of course it should. Happiness is the preferred state of being. But like the pain of any physical wound, sadness too has its natural passing time. Usually, sadness passes in a few moments or hours. It may come back later, but it passes. I feel that it is important to stay with sadness and allow it to pass naturally from our being. Then as its weaning convert it to happier state.

Sadness must be respected because something is making us sad. Sadness, like love, lets us know that we are alive. It can be as moving an emotion as love and can be used for positive purposes.

But there is no need to prolong sadness either. Many of us stay with sadness much longer than we are supposed to. Poets and artists of historic times romanticized sadness. Many of our contemporary musicians base their songs on (romantic) sadness. If feel that these cultural aspects often encourage us to stay with sadness, for longer periods. This also converts sadness to depression, anxiety etc. It as this point that many use substances to reduce the pain. This phenomenon also occurs when we try to run away from the fact that is making us sad rather than embrace and accept it just as it is. The source is then buried and we become the pivot of our own sadness for many years to come.

Why do we fear embracing that which is making us sad? It is one thing to not know what is making us sad. But to know it and run away from it is a concept I don’t understand. I ask the question again – what is the agenda – is it to heal or persist in sadness?

If something is not going my way, won’t it be wise for me to just accept that it is not going my way. Having accepted this, I may try to change the outcome, constructively or just let it be. But at least I won’t grapple with actions that are prompted by ego, pride and other unresolved emotions, which provoke me to fester in the whirlpool of hatred and self-destruction.

This brings me to the question – why are we all so scared of things falling apart? I refer specifically to emotional matters. Through our lives we construct emotionally, based on our families, romantic choices, friends etc. We develop a set of values, principles and relationships that are important to us. We try to preserve as many of these as possible and hope to live our entire lives on their bases. So, these become very important to us.

Of course these systems are important. But what if some of them or all of them fall apart? Isn’t it okay?

This happened to me. Everything I knew fell apart. Most importantly I had to change the way I thought. Some powerful force in the universe destroyed everything I knew. This may seem scary to some. But I wasn’t scared and I didn't try to hold things together either. I knew that all that which was breaking had to go. I knew that eventually, I would be better off without it. As everything was falling apart, I was also aware that I would have the freedom to co-create new things. I was overwhelmed about the amount of things that I knew I had to learn before I could co-create afresh. I wondered if I had the strength to do this and survive the destruction. But I was never scared.

Of course there was sadness which was natural and expected. You feel sad when things leave your life, even those that were not positive. But the sadness passes, the wisdom reigns and strength emerges. Together these give us the ability to fearless create healthy and new apsects in our lives.

But some things have to disintegrate in order for this to happen. Space has to be created for the new.

It’s okay for things to break. It’s okay to let go. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to want to move on.

We have much more strength than we give ourselves credit for.

Non Violence

People often think of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi when they hear the phrase ‘non-violence’. They think of movements, politics and nations. But they don’t think of themselves.

People often feel that non-violence is a selfless act waged to help those that harmed them or others. In this understanding, people fail to be non-violent because they don’t want to exonerate the wrong. But is wrong ever exonerated? What is wrong is wrong and will always remain wrong.

How will us carrying the weight of that load affect the intensity of that wrong in the most fundamental way? Why do we become a part of the wrong by filling ourselves with hatred? The destruction caused by these factors can be phenomenal, to ourselves and others that love us.

Non violence can reverse the anger and pain suffered after a traumatic event.

Non-violence is not a selfless phenomenon. It is a selfish act carried out to better our own state of being which then extends itself to those that we love.

A hurt person may feel that by harming the one that hurt them, they are equating the harm done in some way. But really, is the harm every equated?

We have to ask ourselves a very important question – what is the agenda? Is it to keep hating or is to FEEL again?

If it is to feel again, then - Forgiveness is fearlessness. Fearlessness is feeling.

Most of all, we have to forgive ourselves.

I have a mother who not only never loved me but also traumatized me. I was sexually abused. I lived in the throws of brutal domestic violence for years. I tragically lost dear young ones. I was also my own abuser for many years. I am still very young! My whole life has been a tragedy.

Yet, I can’t tell you how much love there is in my heart and how unafraid I am to feel and share it. I can’t tell you how alive I really am today.

The worst years of my life though, were when I was looking for external love, reparation and acceptance. At times, I got an abundance of all these. But they didn’t calm my pain. They worsened it. Consequently, I started feeling that people will never give me what I desire. But how could they, when I had lost the ability to feel? The pain ate at me slowly from the inside.

But the renaissance came. I allowed it to come by never getting comfortable in my discomfort, even though discomfort was all I knew.

The renaissance does not come from the outside. It comes from the inside. It comes from a deep knowing that love exists inside us. We just have to find it. It also comes from the awarness that violence towards the self or the other will not get us closer to the love, warmth and comfort that love brings.

Healing is possible and it is easier to heal than it is to suffer in pain. Healing comes when we say ‘I won’t fight myself anymore. I want peace’. Once we say this, color comes back in and around us.

Love is our innate nature. Let’s feel it and allow it to rise from within us, despite it all.

Love

Everyone is looking for love. Everyone wants to find love and that special person who will complete them, romantic or otherwise.

Finding love today has become a business. People feel that the more applications they put in, the sooner their quest will bear result. The individual and social pressures on the need to find love are overwhelming. They compel many people to undertake rigorous, tiring, intellectual and calculated process to find love.

In this rush, most people tend to forget that love, like peace, is a subtle feeling that emerges internally. It is in us. It is unconditional. But it can be lost in chaos. Love is silent and certain. But it is an instinct that can’t be sought after and won’t emerge in weakness. Love can’t complete you. You have to be complete to find and feel love.

Unfortunately many people today are trying to find love to feel better about themselves. Looking outwardly to resolve something internal is weakness. Those that find love as a part of this process may not be finding love after all.

What they find is a logical source that will placate certain requirements in them. Eventually, they will grow tired of this substitute. This dissatisfaction and the 'lack of love' will begin to bread negativities in relationships such as, physical violence, hatred, substance abuse, extra-marital affairs, child abuse, depression, sleeplessness, etc.

Even then people don't walk away from these relationships. They stay in them because they are afraid to be alone, to be loveless, or have been taught to ‘stick on for the purpose of love’. This ‘sticking on’ will lead people to believe that they fallen deeper in love or are high human beings for putting up with trauma, torture and self-defecation.

All this is not love. They are all choices made to fill needs. Needs that actually should have been filled by the SELF.

Why in our societies are self-love and self-satisfaction considered to be selfish? Why is the role of self-love undermined to such a high degree? Why is self-love considered to be so meaningless?

As a result, for those embarking on this journey, the quest for self-love seems difficult and confusing. Taking the time out to discover self-love seems irrelevant, trivial and dissatisfying, especially when compared to the prospect of having a spouse, children, dogs and that white house with picket fences.

But who creates that warmth in that picturesque image. And what happens to that image when there is no warmth in it? What happens to the children when their mother thrashes them, their parents beat each other or the children get abused?

Where does that warmth come from? It does not come from children, the spouse or the house. It comes from the self. It has to be there before the marriage occurs, the house is bought and the children are born. And if self-love came before all of these things, then finding love today would never be a business.

Yes, many children like me, have had loveless childhoods. But does that give us the right to carry forth the cycle of violence or, does it vest us with the responsibility of discovering love within us and spreading it, nonetheless?