As my father turned 81 this summer, I looked at the man he had become. His stance belied his age. But his feeble gait quietly giving way to the little secret. His hurried breath, while he took one step too many, his need to spend time alone in the space he called home, all pointed to the fact that he was in the August of his life.
A man who had wonderfully lived his life weaving his ambitions, his personality, his relationships into a quilt, multi-hued, large and accommodating. I watched, as he sat smoking his pipe, deep in thought. I wondered how he had matched his needs, his wants, his responsibilities and the loves of his life. A man from a different generation!
I wondered- about his loneliness, having being lately widowed, living from hour to hour, days flowing into each other, months stretching into years. I know that we all deal with days when we feel lonely, our ideas of loneliness stemming from the false notions that we are separate and isolated parts in a world filled with other separate, isolated parts.
In truth we can no more be separated from our world, than a fish that can be separated from the water in which it swims. Very clearly we realize that, we are not really sure where our skin ends and where the air begins, just proving that boundaries are at most times porous. So saying proves that when the air is dry so is our skin, and when humid, our skin turns moist and supple. He was merely the victim of his circumstance. He was not really lonely!
People like us find it so difficult to distinguish between boundaries. We simply do not decipher that our very actions tie each one of us together. Every move we make invariable has an effect that touches people all around us.
We often share space with another person, picking up on their energies, attuning to their moods, almost involuntarily. Feelings (like a mere yawn) are contagious most times. We take from another’s energetic force, and this force unifies all life. This explains why all the great Thinkers/philosophers and Gurus encourage us to move towards the light, so that we can dissolve into it, moving away from our individual egos.
Shifting easily from one thought to another I am amazed at how much pleasure walking gives me personally. So many of us take the benefits of walking for granted. We usually limit the steps we take by driving or just sitting for longish periods of time. Walking for me has proved to be a meditation of sorts, a simple way of connecting with my spirit and grounding myself.
It helps my body to remember simpler times, uncomplicating my life. It enables me to slow down the speed of my everyday life. So much so that instead of the constant run in my head, I allow myself to exist in the moment.
Taking time to simply notice my breath, while walking, is moving towards mindfulness. It is very important to remember that we have a connection with Mother Earth and we can gain a sense of calm and tranquility by just staying in the now!
We all do know that the power of the mind is a curious thing, so difficult to control most times. For example, many people have the experience of getting sick at the same time every year, or maybe, even every time they step on a plane. Definitely here it means that their beliefs impact their experiences. Most times illness happens because we don’t make the effort to incite the power of our minds.
Our minds can communicate beautifully with our bodies, yet we treat them as two different entities. We should use this power to link both our mental health to our physical health. All we need to do is to tend the fields of our minds like master gardeners, culling out the weeds so that the blossoms may bloom.
If we look closely at our everyday lives we realize that we are surrounded by a variety of people, who sometimes are a joy to be with, their loving presence Nurturing and encouraging us. And then there are those that have the exact opposite influence, draining us of our energies and exhausting our very beings. So it is understood that our well-being is definitely influenced by the people in our periphery.
One has to remember to keep this in mind. We have to decide to be around people who help us cultivate healthy and positive relationships. We have to decide to be in control of whom we are with. The power to stay away from toxic relationships lies within us. Personal transformations can be formed if we take drastic steps in our social life as well. Staying away from negativity helps us nurture our energy levels.
To guide us in our lives, we spend time looking for appropriate role models like mentors, teachers, Gurus to guide us. Not a bad thing but what we forget in this search is that, we forget that if this person were ever absent, would we be able to rely on ourselves? Sure we could, since we carry everything within ourselves. The outer world serves merely as a mirror. Very clearly this means that we have to let go of the belief that we need to seek in order to find.
The fable, about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, promising a happy ending is deceptive to the point that, we all know that getting what we want makes us momentarily happy, short-lived until another object of desire comes along. We do not have to travel far to find joy in our lives, simply because the precious elixir is already within us.
The way to achieve success in this is, that when we look for our answers, we have to simply let go and wait patiently; the answers come in million different ways to us. Practicing this diligently and trusting the process, and keeping ourselves free of outside influences helps us to come into our own.
Another thought that comes to mind when I realize that we continually live our lives with a safety net, thus creating barriers to our freedom. A better explanation would be this, as we reach the crossroads, where our choices seem to involve the risk of facing the unknown against the comfort of all that we trust, we feel that some backup that we have will give us the courage to take the initial steps.
But what we need to know is that when we live our lives from a place of trust in the Universe, we automatically know that the support is there. Being dictated by the fear of the unknown, we need that net, but in trusting we grow wings that help us fly. When we believe that there is an inherent reason for everything, we learn to step out of the safety net.
You are searching the world for treasure,
But the real treasure is yourself. ~ Rumi ♥
Previously published in the Sindhian
