Puneet Sodhi
Spiritual Musings - Part 1
My First Date with the Divine
Well, it was the fag end of the year 2009; another New Year was showing up. So far, I had seen more than forty new year’s; had entered into each new one with the usual dance parties, dinners or social gatherings. I obviously was supposed to be enjoying all these festivities and believed that I actually did. However, I started becoming painfully aware that despite my considerably successful social life, extremely blissful married life-complete with a loving son and a doting husband, something was still seriously missing! There was a kind of lacuna in my life that was threatening to engulf me into its 'Nothingness'. I had travelled across the world with my family, was enjoying a perfect physical health and yet, started experiencing disturbing episodes of depression. There was no reason, which I could assign to my low moods.
My husband, who is a doctor by profession, had always an inclination towards knowing the 'Self' stuff. He would read different Holy Scriptures and try to look for people, who could show him the way to Spirituality. He would start endless discussions about religion and religious practices of the world with almost anyone, who seemed to ‘know’. All this was simply putting me off. I divulged deeper and deeper into the darkness of depression.
As I said earlier, it was the end of December. That New Year, we were in Queenstown in New Zealand, one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen during my globetrotting. It was a pleasantly warm morning as I remember it vividly. We were driving along the gorgeous mountain roads circling the crystalline Lake Wakatipu, the glacial lake, about 80 kilometers in length. The peaks far off were covered with snow; the lower mountains were luxuriously overgrown with green grass all strewn with pale yellow flowers. The sky was deep blue, as bright as a sparkling mirror. We stopped for picture shots and started to capture this wondrous beauty for future memories.
Enamoured by this overwhelming magnanimity of Nature, I requested my family that I just wanted to be on my own for a while. Never before that, I had felt so serene inside, so peaceful and so unperturbed ( as of date I had actually been used to living a depressed life and had perhaps been deriving a sadistic pleasure when offered sympathy by my near and dear ones for being sick and unwell !). I would call it a Divine intervention only that I felt like closing my eyes in appreciation of this heavenly peace that embalmed my mind at that particular time. I stretched myself on the verdant green and closed my eyes to consciously enjoy that blessed state of mind. Time must have slipped by. My son jolted me after half an hour as he told me afterwards that I was just lying down with closed eyes, unmoving and perfectly still! I was unaware that tears had been rolling down my cheeks for the past about thirty minutes. When I gathered myself up, I was a transformed person.
I told my family that I experienced something which was totally amazing. When I had closed my eyes, I was in the state of perfect peace of mind. Though not aware of what was happening to me, the immense Beauty of Nature had perhaps sent me into the mode of total thankfulness, gratitude and oneness with the Supreme. I was in that part of Queenstown for the first time in my life, but to my utter surprise, during my trance like state in the last half an hour or so, I had this vivid, definite feeling that I had seen all this before. Not only that felt that the whole Universe was actually inside me or I was the Universe myself!
This was my first 'Date' with the Divine. I knew for certain that there was more to this world than it offers to the bare eyes. I had found the reason of my vague sense of incompleteness in such a 'complete' life. I was leading a fulfilled life in the worldly sense with no Spiritual dimension to it, which was causing a feeling of incompleteness. It was the inward journey, the journey towards my real 'Self' that was beckoning me. Yes, the New Year was approaching and so was a new Spiritual journey coming my way.
............(to be continued)
(In the next article, I'll share how I came across an Enlightened Master, who gradually became my guide for the beautiful, yet, bewildering journey on an untrodden path of Spirituality. I must confess that it is turning out to be far more picturesque than the most wonderful places I have visited so far in this wide world !)
Next - Part 2 ====> Knowing Yourself Before Knowing the God
© 2014 Puneet Sodhi