Christine Hassler once wrote...

“Instead of asking yourself why this is happening to you, ask why this is happening for you.”

Things keep happening to us. In my meditation this morning I read about how we can allow things that happen to us to become either chariots on which we can ride over them or become juggernauts that crush us....If we allow them to become chariots, we will be able to see the hidden lesson...and if we take heed of this lesson, it will go on to becoming enriching.

The thing is that when we are being assailed by something or the other all the time, our physical tiredness may make us cave in to the tiredness of our mind and body, or we may be in a vulnerable place and allow the hurt to add to all the other remembered hurts and feel a terrible sense of loneliness....all inner strength depleted, all sense of self-worth and self-esteem vanished....

What we, therefore, need to do is to exercise putting things on hold. No matter what, or how urgent, or how demanding, when we feel we are physically tired, or mentally not strong enough, or when we feel that we just don't want to deal with this right at this moment, we just HAVE to put the matter on hold. This way we would be according respect to our minds and bodies - something we often don't do, or we don't care about or we force to stretch to their outermost limit - and we would be giving ourselves the time and space to look at things with a steadier and calmer heart and mind.

Since this is an exercise, we can handle it. Just say no to immediate action/decision....Remember, good and bad, both are happening for us - in our best interests - so we need to learn to pause, deliberately so....

There is absolutely no excuse...

for glibness. Everyone is not the same, and everyone reacts to the same stimulus - of happiness or sadness, of okay-ness or not okay-ness, of anything at all, actually - differently.

When one is not going through an easy time, I know it's easier to glibly use one of these phrases: You think too much...Be happy...Don't be so pessimistic...Let it flow...Take it easy... than really face up to the fact that one is not up to facing the other person's dilemma. It would be infinitely better if one would shut up rather than offer these phrases, because the person who is in a bad place can absolutely do without these words.

The best, in fact the only thing one can offer is total acceptance of how the other person is feeling by one's silent presence or an understanding hug. If words are to be used, then not words of commiseration, but words to show that one is not alone. You don't need to show the other person what to do, you need to walk a while with the other person down the painful road...

Another thought that I've been wrestling with...

When there is a tragedy, how can we participate in an event that is happy and light and cheerful...

I've finally come to accept the realization that these are two separate things and as such the response to each is in accordance with the event and appropriate to it. You cannot mix the two. Our lives are constantly dealing with tragedies - some big, some small, some devastating, some manageable, but tragedies nevertheless. There are also good, happy things happening around us. If we mix these up, or feel guilty about not feeling bad, and resentful that we cannot enjoy the good, then it totally nullifies the importance of both - the sad and the happy, the good and the bad. Send out your deepest feelings and energies to the event that is tragic. Do all that is in your power to help, and then leave it. Just as you wouldn't want to appear happy in a tragic situation, so too, you would not want to color a happy situation with shades of black. So in the happy milieu, laugh with the best of them and spread the energies of happiness.

Just let go vs Accept, understand and put it in its rightful place...

is the exercise for today.

'Just let go' doesn't really solve the main problem. We may be able to tell ourselves, over and over again, that those bad things happened in the past and we have to move on, leave the past behind, not look back etc. However, in reality, this does not make the feelings of insecurity, worthlessness, lack of self-respect and other negative taking-away-from-ourselves feelings associated with the sad/bad past incidents in the past, go away. These just have a way of hanging on to our souls and surfacing when we least want them to.

More and more as I find myself being forced to look at the past, I realize that this is the best way, actually. It's horribly, horribly, painfully hard to do....but it really is the only way. Take out each thing and look at it with all the honesty that you can muster up and are capable of. And then deal with it.....one has made serious errors of judgment, read situations wrong and hence reacted in a way that actually turned back on us further complicating things, taken wrong decisions thinking this would be the best way forward, had mistaken notions of friendship, made a million...zillion mistakes.

Caution: Never palm the blame on to anyone, or any situation, or any set of circumstances. Maybe we had a choice, maybe we didn't.....either way......we just fell off the grid. And another word of caution - remember, these incidents do not define us. It happened to us, and we reacted, and we suffered, but they were actions and reactions...they do not define us.

We are more than all of these.......And so, what we have to know is that it's okay.....it may have seemed the end of the world, but it wasn't...and it isn't anymore. Bruised and black and blue and yellow and purple we may be, but we are still here.....we have survived and this itself is cause for cheer....not only have we survived, but we have learnt some invaluable lessons about ourselves........so, maybe we have to change course, maybe we have to set new goals, maybe we have to become 'real'...whichever way we look at this, it is a win for us.....many, many cheers for us!!!


I am trying this and I'd like to share the experience with anyone who is going through the same thing.....

Busy...

This is a word that can cause a lot of heartache, terrible loneliness and an awful feeling of having left important things undone or unsaid.

How so?

Just think about it....take a cup of coffee to your personal space, put everything away, and think about this word.

How many times do we use this word? What are the various contexts and situations in which we have used this word? Why have we used this word? and then....How do we feel when someone uses this word in a conversation with us?

Why I want to write about this word is because something happened the other day - for a long time, a very good friend had not been in contact - oh, contact as in sending forwards on the mail or What'sapp was happening regularly but there was no real heart-contact. I have been going through a not-very-easy time, and a chat with a good friend would have eased  my mind. However, the friend msgd saying that for some reason I had been on her mind but she hadn't been able to call since she had been very busy. How glibly she used the word to explain away a long silence....so then would it really matter to this person what I had been going through, or how I had been suffering?

It was then that I realized that using the word busy may cover up a lot for the person using the word, but it can cause hurt in the person hearing it, for the only thing that comes through is that you were not important enough for even a one-minute call....

What are you doing that is so important that you cannot spare a moment for a person you call friend....
Do you have so much work that you cannot take out a brief bit of time to connect with someone whom you have not heard from for a long time...
Are you so occupied that you have no time to reassure a person reaching out to you silently over the miles, of your love and friendship...
Is there so much happening in your life that you cannot share the comfort of your voice to someone who you know is in a rough place...

Never, ever, ever use the word busy.......for you can never ever really, in all honesty and truthfulness be thaaaaat busy....

A challenge...

I came across in my daily meditation - To see the tiny spark of beauty in everything...even the bleakest and most depressing of situations.

Here's the thing - Our minds have a way of focussing on negative things: things that are not aligned with the picture we have in our mind, things that shouldn't/needn't be there and things that should/could be there, things that need to be done or can be done and are not being done, people who are not cast in the mould our minds have made....and so on....there are a thousand million things that we find fault with. It is the same with sadness...we often see the sad part of the whole picture instead of the rest of the picture.

Mind you, we are able to find these faults with no real effort...they just kind of flow through our mind. However, what they do as they flow through our mind is that they pollute the general atmosphere of our mind, which then goes on to pollute the rest of the body. Likewise with sadness....it seeps into our very consciousness changing the colors of the landscape of our heart and mind to grey and black.

Now the challenge is to stop and really SEE what we are LOOKING at.

And we WILL see that teey-weeny bit of something good and pure and lovable and beautiful in that whole picture we are looking at and labelling as wretched or painfully sad.

Try it. In a bleak landscape, you will hear the sound of a bird, or see a beetle scurrying across....In a terribly sad situation such as having lost a loved one, or having had to give up a job, or being in a state of deep depression, see the person who smiles at you and brings up a happy memory, or paints a pretty picture of something that means something to you or let that memory that is tugging at your heart surface....and you will see that the whole picture changes. The hue changes, the tone changes, and the timbre changes....and that is all we need to take the next step forward.

'Even in winter when the branches are covered by snow the plum blossoms are still fragrant.' ~ Shadows and Blossoms by Lian Hearn.

A very dear friend passes on...

Mrs Sunita Salvi

A beautiful person - a truly, truly beautiful person.

I first met Mrs Salvi when she and her husband, a beautiful person too, brought their darling daughter, Saloni, for music lessons with me. Saloni was all of 5 or 6 years old and through the years till she became a teen, and we left Oman, she came to my home every Wednesday evening for her music lesson. Mrs Salvi would often come to pick her up and many, many a Wednesday did we chat while Saloni went down to her Dad waiting in the parking lot. Mrs Salvi left us a few days back. I cannot seem to assimilate this in my heart. It just seems not true and I would not have believed it if Saloni had not sent me a note on FB.

The Salvis are a very loving family and Mrs Salvi was the center of the family. Beautifully turned out always, she was extremely poised and graceful. Soft-spoken and gentle, Mrs Salvi was a tower of strength to her family and to those who knew her. She was deeply appreciative of those around her and in those long talks after Saloni's lesson, we covered a range of topics....Often, after she would go down to join her family, I wouldn't be able to remember what we talked about, but I would always recall the gentleness of her presence.

My DD was very much a part of their lives because Mrs Salvi would hold her up as a role model for Saloni. They were the first people who got my DD's school-leaving examination result and sent it to us. When my son-in-law was transferred to Muscat, the Salvis welcomed him into their home and family.

The three of them have always had a part of my heart...and always will.

I shall miss Mrs Salvi unbelievably.

Days begin and end
Light waxes and wanes
Relationships can go from warm to cold
Life has untold ups and downs

Only death is a constant...