Written by Allan Beveridge |

Puneet Sodhi

Spiritual Musings - Part 5

Living In Acceptance Mode (Tera Bhaana Meetha Laage)

One fine evening, I had a chance to take a stroll in the calming company of my Holy Master, Saint Sukh Sagar Ji . He exclaimed how amazing our Universe in its entirety is! It is absolutely bewitching. There is no end to the variegated forms it offers. Consider some of the sights …the vast plains covered with verdant greens, the sky- touching mountains, the deep ravines, the gorges, the valleys, the wavy sands of the immense deserts which seem to be merging with the melting Skies, the deep oceans and the not so deep dancing rivulets….the playful waterfalls, the snow, the rain, the drizzle and the hails, the clouds of different shapes and shades…the insects, the birds, the animals, the vegetation, the flowers….When he was describing all this, my imagination was stimulated and I was filled with a sense of gratitude and awe while trying to fit all these bounties in a list!!!

And then he touched the Sounds …the chirping of birds, the bleating of lambs, the roar of lions, the trumpet of elephants, the thundering of clouds, the monotonous music of the drip-drop falling rain, the whistling wind crossing dense forests, the chaotic growl of the Earthquakes, the death song sung by the Tsunamis...the wailing of the humanity over its loss and contrasted to this, the tinkling mirth of the innocent childhood growing into boisterous laughter of the carefree youth age….

The Smells….the fragrance of rain-kissed Earth, the blossoms, the sweet heady scent of the mellow fruit, the pungent scent of the herbs growing in the moist womb of the Mother Earth and the smell of perspiration of a worker toiling hard in the fields or mines to bring out the hidden treasures…the stench of the all-powerful Death lurking alongside the more luring fragrances of the life….

His point of view behind all this vivid description was to induce the idea to me that all these sensuous details have two aspects to them…the very attractive to the highly repulsive ones….Life is complete with both these aspects. There is the Light and the Darkness, the Height and the Depth, the Ebb and the Flow, the Order and the Chaos, the Fragrance and the Odor, the Life and the all-pervading Death…. The Creation expresses itself in contraries and is complete in juxtaposing entities….

So this is the Law of the Divine…every positive has its negative (if we choose to call the “other” aspect as negative, though there is nothing which can be termed as positive or negative…these are just two titles presented by the language to understand certain concepts). Every human must accept Life in its TOTALITY in order to taste it, chew it and to assimilate its very essence….

Reverend Saint Sukh Sagar Ji dwelled on the life in its dual Nature in the above mentioned discussion before he dealt with the next problem brought forward by me. I picked up my problem from the aforesaid discourse by my Spiritual Teacher.

The holy Saint had said that if there is Birth, there has to be Death. This Truth is the most evident one. There is not a single sane human who is unaware of this reality. And yet, this is the reality which was the biggest reason of my unhappiness and I am sure, it is the cause of chagrin to most of my fellow mortals.

I confessed to him that my biggest fear was to lose my nearest and dearest ones. The death of my close family members and friends was like an unhealed wound always oozing blood. It was a pain which even time did not seem to be healing. This cause of my unhappiness was uncompromising, unfathomable and unassailable for my human capacity….

Saint Sukh Sagar ji consoled me by saying that it was indeed the hardest of all the other human pains to accept the verdict of Death. The blow of Death could be faced only by becoming internally strong and by adopting the complete surrender mode. Being human, we naturally have attachments, without which, this “human journey” is not possible. A mother rears up her offspring because of the instinctive love she has for them. There is the institution of family, which thrives only because of the “bond” between the individuals. When, Death snatches away one unit of the family, pain is inevitable.

However, acceptance is the only key, which can be acquired only after deep contemplation, reasoning and meditation.

The first point to ponder, according to him was, that at the time of somebody’s death, a person must gather oneself up, reminding oneself that one thing is certain that he/she himself or herself is going to follow the suit sooner or later.

Secondly, it is pertinent to know and experience that it is the BODY which dies and WE ARE NOT BODIES. In fact, in order to move further on Spiritual path, one of the foremost obstacles to cross is the obstacle of this ignorance that “we are bodies”.

It was my turn now to come up with the question,” All our Holy Books clearly mention that we are not bodies…I “know” this but it is only bookish knowledge…this knowledge does not diminish my anguish of loss of a dear one”.

His reply got silhouetted in my psyche, as he said,” There is a huge difference in “knowing” and “experiencing”. In order to actually experience that you are not “body”, you will have to work on your awareness level. Once you are convinced that you are not “body”, you will move a step higher to experience that you are not “mind” either. In fact on this journey, you will experience that, the REAL YOU has the touch of IMMORTALITY. You never die…nor does anybody else die…it is just the changing of forms. The outer forms need to change and make place for the newer forms, failing which, there would be a bedlam in the whole world. Just imagine, if nobody ever “died”, what will the face of the world be? There would not be even an inch of space left…we will be forced to exist like millions and billions of worms entangled helplessly together!”

“In order to “experience” for sure that you are not “body”, you can undertake and practice certain exercises”, he mentioned.

Later on I learnt various techniques from him to know for certain that the “body” may have a limited life-span but the soul is immortal which withstands the cycles of Life and Deaths. The simplest of these techniques was to constantly live in awareness by watching your body movements, with an aim that you should not move even your finger without “your permission”. If you are eating, do it with total mindfulness, if dancing, dance with your heart and soul…watching every step with an awakened consciousness. If taking shower, know that the water is touching your skin and not YOU. Lift your hand and know that it is “your hand” and NOT YOU. By following this practice religiously, you will learn to detach your REAL SELF from your BODY. You will know gradually that just as you do not die when your finger is cut off or your leg is amputated…similarly you do not die when your whole body stops functioning.

For awakening this kind of super consciousness, he also suggested the importance of practicing “BUDDHA WALK”- a mindful walk, initially undertaken with some awakened guide and later on learnt on your own, with heightened experience.

This mindfulness, which I learnt slowly but surely, definitely helped me in establishing that I was not a BODY. There was a CONSCIOUSNESS in me and consequently in all beings, which superseded the immortal frame!

There was still a question that kept bothering me. “Why do the humans have so much suffering and pangs of separation assigned to them?”

To this query, he answered,” At this stage, you must accept the fact that we must go through different experiences in this lifetime, as are considered to be essential for our Spiritual growth by the Super Consciousness. Later on the purpose of Creation will unfold itself to you when you are ready. Till you attain that state, you will have to surrender to the Divine Will putting your questions aside. Just remember that presently, your state is like a pitcher made of mud and the Divine Consciousness wants you to float across a river. Unless the mud of the pitcher is baked, you will not be able to cross the river without breaking…and the Super Power does not want you to split in between! For this, it designs ways and means that you are hardened appropriately by facing all kinds of ups and downs in the human journey, so that you emerge strong enough to reach your destination without breaking…in single piece….”

I felt warm tears of gratitude rolling down my cheeks at this explanation and my head bowed down in respect for his wisdom….

I knew now that I will have to make a choice-either to drown my life in the ocean of sorrow to keep on brooding fruitlessly over my sorrows or to acquire the wisdom of the Universe to go with its flow. My choice was to go with the flow and to adopt the ACCEPTANCE MODE.

(To be continued…)

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Next - Part 6 ====> Be Fair In Your Dealings