Reflecting on Our Relationship with Waheguru

I’ve been mulling over some things in my head the last few days so it has taken me a while to write! I’ve been thinking about the false sense of urgency sometimes we create on ourselves. It serves as a source of stress to try to make life happen faster than it needs to, when actually each piece of the puzzle will only fit exactly when the time is right. Overall, there seems to be a balance between waiting and action in life. Sometimes we are required to wait and we get so tired of not being able to do anything about it. Sometimes we are required to make many efforts, and we get tired of trying. If you wait, you might lose the opportunity, but if you jump in too fast, things might not be good either. Altogether, there’s a kind of skill or wisdom to knowing what is required of you at this time, and it relates to connecting to your soul and figuring out your direction.

Lately there have been some days when I’ve said in my Ardas “Waheguru, I know there’s a reason for everything and I just don’t understand!” My Hukamnamas have been very direct, but it’s still taken me a while to understand what turned out to be a big “light bulb” moment for me. In particular I got this hukamnama three times.

Bairaaree, Fourth Mehl:

The Lord's humble servant sings the Glorious Praises of the Lord's Name.

Even if someone slanders the Lord's humble servant, he does not give up his own goodness. ||1||Pause||

Whatever the Lord and Master does, He does by Himself; the Lord Himself does the deeds.

The Lord and Master Himself imparts understanding; the Lord Himself inspires us to speak. 

The Lord Himself directs the evolution of the world of the five elements; He Himself infuses the five senses into it.

O servant Nanak, the Lord Himself unites us with the True Guru; He Himself resolves the conflicts.

Firstly, on a worldly level I’ve really found the importance of letting go of assumptions and clearing up misunderstandings by discussing things and listening. After all, God is Sach (Truth) and we can really resolve a lot of conflicts that way. Even thinking (which also falls under maya) is very powerful. I have a childhood friend who moved away to go to law school and I hadn’t talked to her in maybe 8 months. I then was thinking about her quite a bit and had a dream about her. All of a sudden she phoned me the next day saying she’d been thinking of me a lot lately and felt she should call. It’s interesting how powerful thinking can be. 

Now going back to my realization. I realized that on a deeper and more spiritual level that what plays out in all our relationships in this world is a reflection of our relationship with God. The more we connect to God, the more we connect with other people’s souls because God is in all. The more we struggle with our relationship with God the more conflict we will have because we will be stuck in maya. You know that moment when you meet someone and you already feel like you’ve known them forever? It’s that soul connection, the deeper connection formed by all the simran and prayers you’ve done together in past lives. When we connect through Ardas and simran, it’s a lot more powerful than using our words. From books I’ve I read I know that through simran, we are able to go to Sunn and meet other souls. As we spiritually progress then, Gurmukhs are actually able to live that understanding that God is in all and see God in everyone. I’m still far from being able to do that, but I got a glimpse of understanding of our interconnectedness. My sense of urgency has decreased. I can see that everything so far in life contributed to my path in Sikhi, and that if we have any conflict in life, we should work on our relationship with God because that improves our relationship to self and all others at the same time. 

"The Lord and Master acts, and causes us to act; union is in His Hands. O my mind, no one appears to be mistaken, to one who has dispelled his own doubts; he realizes that everyone is God."