Guru Ji taught us that with their guidance people can certainly deeply and profoundly change themselves like Kauda Rakshas and Sajjan Thag. By Guru Ji’s grace I have seen some amazing transformations in people’s lives. Last year during covid, and even early into this year I found myself changing in ways that I didn’t want to. I felt like I lost a lot of my independent flare and edge, even not being able to wear my personal style of clothes to work. I lost a lot of autonomy as we weren’t even allowed to travel outside our regions nonetheless the province. I found myself feeling generally just lost due to a number of reasons. Even Bhai Sahib who came from the states at the recent camp mentioned the vast difference in how covid affected the American and Canadian sangat, and mentioned the sangat was coping much worse here as we had been literally just trapped in our homes or going to workplaces where we faced massive amounts of community-wide grief and trauma. For me, when I got to see sangat in person again, to feel the full experience of connection, it was hugely healing in itself. It restored an immediate sense of direction. It also created a new bliss that I hadn’t experienced before, a new and deeply impactful inner fulfilment. Like Gurbani states over and over, my mind was hungry for Naam. When we meet people who have no ego, who have no desire to have power over us, who treat us with equality, who communicate well, are loyal, and accountable to their actions, who are authentic on the inside and out, we re-ignite our faith in humanity. Instead of conflict, we see people doing simran together, problem-solving, sticking together with determination, we see loyalty, we see compassion for each other, we see patience, and we see communication of what works and what doesn’t, to see shades of understanding rather than an all-or-none response. This is what healthy interactions look like amongst our sangat. There is a recognition that the five are coming inside of us to cause conflicts and we won’t let them, to control our own minds from letting the five win over us. It is just amazing how a plant grows in the right environment- the right amount of moisture, soil, and sunshine. I’ve always known about my ability to change, especially to grow rapidly in environments that feed me, and to starve in environments that are arid deserts of compassion, love, honesty, humility, and patience. When we persist for long periods of time in the arid deserts, it becomes very hard to remember that all we need to do is to change where we are and the rest will follow. It isn’t something fundamentally wrong with us, it is simply that we need something that we aren’t getting from the place we are. Some people, even in the most difficult surroundings, have been able to change with just the support of one member of sangat.
No comments:
Post a Comment