HOME is where the HEART is !

What does the word 'HOME' evoke in you ? To me HOME is:

That place where you are ACCEPTED

Flaws, warts and all

That place, when you might fumble or fall

Help is always at hand, to help you move on.

Where when you succeed, at things big or small,

You are greeted with pride and toasted with awe!

Where when at the end of a long, hard day,

There's someone waiting at the door-step

With a love-filled demeanour !

Where when you return, worn-out, battle-scarred,

Bruised, hurt, misunderstood, stripped of your all

Your mind numbed, your heart stunned

By a cruel world's strange paradox

(no matter what your age or caste, creed, sex, sect no bar)

Anxious loving arms and warm loving eyes

Encircle you, in their PROTECTIVE embrace

and you realise, 

LOVE's WATCHFULNESS across time and space PERVADES

Sometimes you might even run away,

Seeking adventure, change or prize

But soon you hasten back

To LOVE's silent summons and

silent admonishment at going 'nearly astray'!

When reprimands delivered

For actions ignorant

Underlie the intense concern
Of a Father's tough love

And then seeing the tears that invariably flow,

The Mother hastens forth

(With a twinkle in Her eye!)

To comfort and console.

"Home is where the HEART is", read a poster long ago;

Houses are built of bricks, homes are built of HEARTS", another said so

LOVE that soothes and gives without an 'agenda'

 LOVE that heals and comforts in an incessant flow

Love that encompasses ALL

Regardless of regard or 'dividend'

  

Such is the love of this Master we adore!

I am grateful, O Lord - the Dweller of my heart

To have savoured this love, so unique and apart!

That Thy Grace bestowed, oblivious to deservance

That flows in myriad ways, till date, always

And that has made my HEART, the HOME I'm seeking for!

6. LOVE's Wait, The Two Selves and the Game of Life

Many a time during Darshan, we have heard Swami's sweet voice, saying "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT ! " To devotees anxious for answers to urgent questions, those awaiting permission to begin or to go ahead with different endeavours, those waiting to travel, lucky ones expecting the coveted 'interview',  and in response to various 'human' emergencies and other such 'life-death' situations, Bhagawan would emphatically, authoritatively and compassionately murmur, "WAIT".  The devotee would subside, disappointed, to realise much later the import of that loving and exasperating word, "WAIT" !!

But then, He too waits for us, across centuries, across life-times, waits for us to yearn and grow towards Him . . .

LOVE's Wait

Love waited at my heart’s door

My door that was bolted and barred

Love stood in the sun without a murmur

Without a knock or a protest  . . . .

Waiting for me to open up and

Let Him into my inner self.

Yet, what was I busy with,

That I seemed so heartless?

I was ENGROSSED in seeking, this very LOVE;

Mired in sorrow and distress, I was hopelessly searching for Love.

One day, when it seemed

The death of all hope

And effort painful, came to its end

I sat down, resigned to emptiness,

I sat with a broken mind.

Suddenly, a whiff of fragrance, wafted into my heart

And I saw the hem of His robe

And the halo that was His hair.

“How?” I wondered

“Through that crevice”, He whispered

And indeed where the mind had stopped

A tiny crack had birthed itself,

And through that opening in my heart’s door

My Lord entered, unbidden !

The Two Selves

My fragmented outer self,

The one that I think is me

Sways and totters with every storm

Crumbles and weeps when hit by passing avalanches

Mourning this loss of its 'identity'

In the deluge of existence . . . . . . .

For, isn't life

The overwhelming impact of multiple imprints

That we encounter in daily living?

Then, after the winds and the hails have stopped

And the lightning and the thunder have abated,

This soggy, sodden self,

Peeps out of the wreckage, engulfed in self-pity

Resentful of even the slightest breeze

That might brush its cheek !

My true SELF  . . .
 The One that resides deep within

And is really me;

Smiles at all this devastation 

And watches the antics of the outer self

With a gentle irony ! 

The SELF assumes a form 

To reside in this world

And then spends a life-time 

Learning how not to identify 

With every passing spectacle that is life.

Why all this fuss then, one might ask,

Why learn to unlearn, all this mess ?

Why be made and unmade and then remade again ?!

 
The SELF smiles again, for,

Life is but a 'cosmic game' . . .

Enjoy the process

Play the game

Till the time comes, to quit altogether. 

NOTE: Explanation for the 'two birds' :
"Like two birds
of golden plumage,
inseparable companions,the individual self and the immortal Self
are perched on the branches of the selfsame tree. 
The former tastes 
of the sweet and bitter fruits of the tree;
the latter, tasting of neither,
................calmly observes."
[The Mundaka Upanishad]

Source:    http://path-to-home.blogspot.in/2008/04/two-birds.html

5. RESURRECTION: Some INSPIRED Thoughts

Resurrection is revival after death. Though the most famous 'resurrection' is that of Christ after He was crucified on the cross, resurrection does not always mean that which follows a physical death. It can also refer to a spiritual revival, an awakening to true spiritual life after a worldly way of living. Our spirit gets resurrected and we are saved from  a spiritual 'death' when we meet a spiritual Master who shows the way forward out of this mundane existence. Such a moment is one that can happen anytime and is remembered by the soul, for it is a soul-moment ! It can happen in the physical world and also in a dream or a vision. Sometimes, the moment happens but you realise only after a long, long time that it was your true SOULMATE you met that day!

That AGELESS Day

I met You on an ageless day, walking by my side

I felt an aching kinship, without knowing why !

YOU in leisure, me in haste; 

Strange companions we made. 

Then, wistfully, You bade me go

For, I didn't like your pace !

I strode ahead confident

YOU quietly watched me go

When all the time, You knew, dear lord,

It was YOU, I was looking for !

Once the spiritual journey begins, and you start to 'Follow the Master', it is merely a beginning ! There are many 'devils' waiting to be faced, external and internal. Sometimes, the struggle seems uphill all the way. Doubts, fears, apprehensions, uncertainty, worry and so on . . . . . there are many trials waiting for the pilgrim. Through all this pain of  breaking, the breaking of many false identities that we have carried around through many life-times, the Lord sends RAIN, His showers of GRACE ! 

The WHISPER of GRACE

Subtly, sweetly, You whispered to me

In accents clear and compassionate

When on the brink of life I stood,

Beyond even a despair,

The message of RESURRECTION

Like the hope-filled fragrance that heralds rain

To an earth parched and racked by drought

Your whisper entered my dying heart

And soothed my mind

Racked by doubt.

Like dawn that trembles away the night

Dissolving its phantoms with Truth and Light

Your whisper buried and laid to rest,

The annals of a million crucifixions.

 THE POWER OF LOVE   

I forgot I was a poet

For my pen did not move for long,

Unmoved as my heart remained,

By any sight or song.

TODAY, 

You gazed at me

Love-filled eyes that questioned

My very questions of doubt.

And what were my doubts ?

'Would I make it?  Will I reach you? Is there purpose?'

It doesn't matter now, for . . .

LOVE reached out and gazed into my eyes

Filling them with the promise of sight

And unknowingly, my fingers

Reached for a PEN ! 

The word 'resurrection' implies that 'crucifixion' or 'death' has preceded it. To be 'reborn' one has to die. We 'die' many deaths in this game of life. At such moments, when one feels bereft, it is the Lord, the Master of the soul, who revives us. We gaze at Him, the Lovely One and we begin to live again !

BEFORE 'Re-birth'

 

Must this awareness of Your Loveliness

This sheer beauty that is LOVE's essence

 This flowing compassion that are Your eyes

Must all this come

Only after a tryst with 'death' ?

Those days and nights of meaningless stupor

Of mechanical living out the charades of life 

When one forgets tha 'life' is 'joy'

And only 'JOY' merits the name 'LIFE'

O Lord, can only 'death' lead us to LIFE ?  

 

AND now . . . when the Form that gave us succour in distress and  held us aloft when troubled by sorrow, has faded away from our physical vision, there is nothing left to do but to pray that HE REVEAL HIMSELF AGAIN.

Let us all pray for a 'resurrection' but let us not DEFINE HOW. For, true 'resurrection' is not merely the physical coming of the Avatar, it is also the AWAKENING of our own spiritual selves. 'Awakening' happens through 'pain'. 
As Kahlil Gibran has said, "Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." This pain that we collectively go through today, will one day reveal the mystery of life.

A PRAYER for REVIVAL

The scent of summer warms the air,

dries the earth, 
curls the leaves on drooping trees;
But awakens my tired mind, with tremulous hope . . . 
once again.

For,

In the feel of rising dust

Of fading leaves, and the thirsty grass,

In the blue of cloudless skies,

Stirs the memory of 

A 'RESURRECTION'.  

 Eons ago, at the 'threshold of life,'

When my heart was young 

And strife but a harbinger of joy

I remember . . .

Days and nights of wakeful pain,

Of exhaustion that sleep couldn't fill

And happiness that pain couldn't still,

That thrill of waking from a slumber steep,

Of intellect befuddled by centuries' sleep.

The tremor of plunging in abandonment,

Into a blue abyss !

The deafening roar of breaking worlds,

The storm and strife those fragments raised,

And in the centre of that storm

The passionate strength of a heart's calm

Secure in the arms of a LOVE

That held and comforted;

That healed and soothed the wounds of a world

Which could not understand.  

 

 Then too it was a summer mild,

Now too, they come back. those memories wild!

In hearts that pine and yearn.

So much promise that summer held,

The promise of LIFE, of LOVE infinite,

Of a VISION that would transform this decaying world,

Of a MIRACLE that would correct a  wronged earth.

Today again, it's a summer mild,

Two decades have since gone by

With hearts that once throbbed and pulsed

With memories at once sweet and intense,

We WAIT :

For a SECOND COMING !