There are times in your life you don’t realize what is happening to you. Its just like a slap on the back of your head but which happens mentally, at a split second, at the touch of a wave, or a breezy wind. You suddenly start being introspective and questioning yourself. The questions arise on its own, demanding answers from you. Questions which you never thought of. You feel you have gone mad or you need a drink, and try to forget it. But it lies there, waiting to be answered, and initiating you unknowingly on the path to truth. Forcing you to gradually change habits or get wiser by gaining knowledge, affecting you emotionally and gnawing at your mind slowly to understand and sort out the emotions you feel. A point at which you cannot turn back and you have to face it.
Recently, some of the discussions overheard at a meet, rekindled the thoughts in me, which I was always fond of. There were talks on spirituality and self help books. It reminded me of a time, when I started the same search. As I think back, I had never heard of “spirituality” concept in my childhood. The religious figures to which we prayed were the spirit and soul and I blindly followed them. There were customs to be followed blindly without having logic. I noticed that some people were following them religiously while some were not. And then the questioning phase started in me. Why do we pray? Why should we follow the religious restrictions which I do not feel like following.? Why was I not supposed to go in church instead of temple? Who is God?
I am not sure, how the answers came to me, but I did collect some of my thoughts regarding religion and faith long before. And then with the help of internet, I came to know that I have company. I am not the only one who questions others. And that, its a phase which is quite okay and normal. The word agnostic was entirely new to me, but the concept was not.
The concept of universal spirit came much later to me, when I attended a Reiki class. We have heard it before obviously as part of the religious teachings to which I was subjected to. At that time, those were just words which did not had any meaning, like many other flying words we were forced to hear at the rebellious age. Hence I found it difficult to accept initially, but I found that if I believed them, it becomes easy to find answers to many other tormenting questions. Still it doesn’t mean I have accepted it. But I am not rebellious any more towards such concepts. Just like the presence of God, they can be either the truth or false.
Then there was the phase of living life. Finding out whether God or spirit is there in real or not, does not teach us to earn and make money. Though the big keywords like karma, dharma and other principles have been used in many books, its quite a task to carve out your own path of principles which you would choose to follow, which finally makes you, the real you. So then there is another aspect of spirituality which can drive you to live. Questions like what are you living for and what is the ultimate aim in life, what should you do, etc start surfacing. You think of your habits and deeds in the past, and the ones you want to do in future. The goals of career, money, family and relationships. You start to define the term happiness and peace for you. And then you work towards achieving it.
If we could easily find the answers, wouldn’t life be simple. Where in lies the catch then? Does that mean we never could find proper answers as to how to live our life too? Maybe yes. The decisions we take could either be right or wrong and is very subjective, and charts out the mould which distinguishes the different human beings,. Even if we found a satisfactory answer, just like the tides of ocean, over time, the tumbler of life gets a massive shake overnight, and we keep trying to settle down the next day, until the water dries up.
If life has to go on like this, what other questions remain? Would the inanimate objects like ocean and land too think like these? What about other living organisms? They are assumed not to have intelligence, but we consider them as souls too. Won’t they be thinking all these too?
