Finding My Way Back to God

Sorry it’s taken so long to post. I’m going to talk about how I ended up going to camps at the gurdwara in Ontario and how this trip really changed things for me. I hope other people can learn from my experiences!

I had spent the last several months struggling in my connection to Sikhi. I felt distant from God, even though I knew that He is around us and loves me. I just couldn’t feel it and it frustrated me a lot. June was a tough month for me. I had sacrificed, worked hard, prayed, begged, wished and hoped, but I didn't get what I wanted in my life. In my sadness, I wanted to turn to God but I felt distant, and angry at myself for allowing this distance, for not being able to find my way. I needed help regaining my connection. It was at that point I suddenly remembered about Sarab Rog Ka Aukhad Naam (thank you God for reminding me!) and that maybe there would be camps happening in the summer. I had heard of SRKAN a yr and a half ago through relatives and sure enough there were camps running. I booked my flight and left a couple of days later before I had too much time to rethink my decision.

I attended the Rog Niwaran Camp at Gurdwara Sikh Sangat in Brampton. I was nervous to be all alone at a new gurdwara. I didn’t know the camp schedule or what would happen, I had just booked the flight with full faith in God that this was what I needed to do and I showed up! The first day I sat down and there was someone on stage reading shabads and the sangat was repeating them after him. I thought “I have no idea how I’m going to survive 6 hours of this. Plus two more days. My mind is wandering, my back is going to hurt and I can’t do it.” But the morning passed and as more and more sangat joined in, my mind stopped racing and started to focus. The camp leaders (including a medical doctor) talked about how the camps have helped people around the world. He explained that people of many different types of diseases have experienced relief, even cures and they have medical evidence from their doctors. People of all religions were welcome at the SRKAN camps. (Note they do advise people to continue to see medical treatment as prescribed by their doctors!) Gurbani healing is free and available to everyone. The shabads read at the camp are just a starting point to help people learn gurbani because the whole Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji has the healing power for physical, mental and social ailments. We read translations of the shabads during the camp. This one was mentioned many times in the kathas that I attended later on in my trip: “Immense pain, murders and sins numerous, povery and misery since birth, troubles and disputes of major girth, All that is destroyed by Divine Name contemplation, Nanak says as a flame of fire can burn piles of wood.” (p.1355 Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, translated on gurbanihealing.com). The power of having everyone speak in unison in the sangat was amazing. I feel really blessed to have had the opportunity to attend and watch as people came to the stage to talk about how their symptoms were gone. The camp increased my thirst for the Naam.

For the rest of my trip, I visited as many gurdwaras as possible and I attended the gurdwara every day. I’ll admit I’m one of those people who used to dread listening to katha. 5 minutes into katha I usually lose interest because I don’t understand or its the same katha I have heard before. This time it was different. It was an akath katha, a different type of katha where the Gyani talks about the story of creation. He explained that we do simran to meet God. We meet God through shabads (naam) which is the voice of God and from which everything is created. Therefore Naam is inside of us all the time but our minds our sleeping therefore, we cannot hear the shabads. He described Maya as our adoptive parents, which makes us forget our real parent, God, and we need to remind our minds again who our real parent is. To wake up our mind, we do simran. He said “Simr Simr Simr Gur aapana soiya man jagae” – “Remembering, remembering, remembering my Guru in meditation, my sleeping mind is awakened “ (pg 758 translated from Srigranth.org). I was amazed at the fact that I had understood most of the katha and that I had learned so much. I heard a few other kathas in different gurdwaras on my trip that added to my knowledge base.

The sangat at all the gurdwaras was extremely welcoming. I met a lot of people with knowledge of gurbani who inspired me and were role models for my path. We even got the chance to meet with one of the Gyanis in the kirtan jatha from Mukhtsar who had stayed in Prince George a few years back. My uncle taught me a lot. He changed his life completely using simran. He talked about how he used to meet a lot of sants. He explained that just like its easier to find a place with a map, we can learn the shortcuts from the sants who have been there already and experienced God. He attended the Prabh Mile Ka Chao camp in Moga and in just one day (the day before he was supposed to fly back to Canada) his life changed and he started on this path to meet God. He is an inspiration to me so I am going to pass on some of the knowledge he shared with me. He told me that being able to focus on simran comes with practice, and to not give up. Over time it gets easier and the simran happens automatically 24/7 in your mind, even during sleep. Do as much as you can. When you are waiting for example at the dr. or in a line-uup, taking a shower, eating, etc. I told him there is so much to do: read hukamnamas, nitnem, other paaths, kathas, kirtan, sikh history, reading the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, simran, and I didn’t know where to start. Everyone was telling me different things and I couldn’t do them all so I started to do nothing because I was discouraged. (I had tried to do them all actually then I would get discouraged and gave up). Everything has a place and teaches us something different but I needed a good starting point. He told me simran is the place to start and is the path to all else. Everything else becomes easy after that. Even those that are illiterate and unable to read gurbani can achieve mukhti through simran. When you do ardaas, do ardaas for the Naam instead of asking for things that feed maya. We often ask others to do ardaas for us, but we can do ardaas ourselves to God. He said Naam is like coins in a bank and we can spend it on someone else but why not teach them to be self-sufficient instead? So we should teach other people how to get the Naam too. I felt clearer about this path and more confident I was going in the right direction everytime I talked to him. Whereas I had felt extremely nervous about this walking in because I was unsure of whether I could do it, I felt now that at least I had to try.

During my trip I started learning more about simran from mysimran.info because the kathas were similar to the ones I heard in Punjabi but these were in English. (I really recommend the videos they post on youtube!). I learned that pavan (breath) is what we measure our life in. Our purpose in life is to meet God, and we can only do that by doing simran, to control our pavan, in order to stop our thoughts because thoughts are maya. I learned that there are three qualities of maya: rajo gun (hopes, anxieties, wishes, desire and worries), tamo gun (anger, greed, attachment, pride, lust), and satogun (compassion, contentment, humility, tolerance, moral control). We have to make simran a priority because we should be motivated by our love for God who has given us everything, including this breath so use it to remember Him.

Here are pictures from the gurdwaras.

Baba Budha Ji Gurdwara Hamilton

Dook Nivaaran Gurdwara Sahib Brampton

Sri Guru Singh Sabha Gurdwara Malton

Gurdwara Nanaksar Sahib Brampton

Gurdwara Sikh Sangat Brampton

Gurdwara Dashmesh Darbar Brampton

Sri Guru Nanak Sikh Center Brampton

Ontario Khalsa Darbar Mississauga. We went into the museum here as well. It was really amazing (sorry they don’t allow pictures!).

I also went to a hindu temple (mandar) which was an amazing experience. The inside of the mandar had intricate wood and marble carvings (sorry no pics allowed inside the mandar!) and we got to see the Indo-Canadian museum inside as well as attend the aarti.

So going back to the reason I ended up at this camp. Before this trip I was feeling like wow no matter how much you care or what you give, sometimes its not enough. But now having the perspective of the last few weeks, I accept it as God’s will. I have refocused my mind on my purpose. My faith is stronger and my love for God is stronger. Letting go of my attachments and the people I care about is going to take me time. It's painful and it's hard, but I know I have to give up my desires on this path to God. I trust God. He is in every direction and every person I meet. We are all playing this game of love with God. Some of us just don’t realize the rules of the game yet.  

“Why wander around, and why go searching, when the Guru's Shabad reveals Him to us?” (p. 419)

Sarab Rog Ka Aukhad Naam

Alright so i had hoped to post a picture of camp schedules for the gurbani healing camps but my phone wont let me! So here are the dates (if you facebook gurbanihealing it comes up too)

Gurdwara sikh sangat july 5-7
Millwood gurdwara edmonton july 11-13
Gurdwara Darbar Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji calgary july 14-17
Gurdwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib surrey july 18-21
Contact: info@gurbanihealing.com

Will post more about these camps soon but I thought I would just share camp dates in case anyone wants to plan a trip to one of these. Gurbani has an amazing power to heal including physical, mental and social illnesses. These camps arent just for Sikhs but those of all religions and they have been shown to heal all kinds of longstanding illnesses in just a short period. Please visit the website for more information including medically documented cases and examples.www.gurbanihealing.com
I will post about my camp experience when I get a chance and have my laptop!

Painting

I painted this picture of two Kaurs doing gatka at the Vaisakhi Nagar Kirtan. I compiled it using a combination of 4 different pictures. Definitely learned a lot about proportions considering some of the people in the background are abnormally big and small in comparison to each other (haha) but let's just assume the small ones are children :) 

Reminder about the gurmat camp for kids the week of the 11th at the gurdwara and the rainsbhai kirtan on the 16th.

Happiness

I had a friend who asked me last week “What is happiness?” Interesting question. I remember there was a doctor I worked with last year and each time I would ask a question he would come back to the basic definition first. I thought this was a brilliant way to discuss things, because in order to discuss more complicated topics you have to bring it back to the definition. So let me answer: happiness is an emotion. We all know what it feels like because we’ve all experienced it. Unfortunately the media tends to put us on an endless hunt to happiness, with millions of articles, millions of suggestions, ways to find this elusive, limited-supply happiness that we are all hungry for. But it’s not limited, its in endless supply because its inside you, it’s a feeling, and I’m going to talk about some of the beliefs that we have about this feeling.

“I don’t deserve happiness.”

People usually feel undeserving off happiness when they’ve done something that they feel is bad or wrong and in order to punish themselves they believe that they don’t deserve happiness anymore. I think the article “Do I Deserve to Be Happy?” (1) explains really well why this belief is not true and so I’m going to quote it here because if we can start to believe that even criminals and other people deserve it, then its easier to look at ourselves and say “obviously I deserve to be happy too.” In this article, the author says “No matter what you have done in the world, or think you have done, you deserve happiness…Happiness isn’t a reward for being nice – it’s a birthright” (1). He goes on to describe a scenario for us to understand why criminals deserve happiness: “Let’s say two twins commit a crime and are sentenced to jail. One goes to a standard jail and becomes unhappy. The other twin goes to a magical jail which helps her feel valued and connected, and happy. Which twin do you think is more likely to feel remorse, and upon leaving jail be less likely to commit another offence?...I suspect that a victim would feel far better about being a victim if the perpetrator emerged from jail happier, well adjusted and rehabilitated. At least then the crime would have some meaning” (1).  

“I need something be happy.”

It could be money, it could be other things. I think most people have explored this topic growing up, but I thought I’d mention it anyways. Money does help us- being in poverty puts us in a lot of situations that will create feelings of unhappiness, but as we all know money can only bring us so much. Plus, people can be happy despite not having money because happiness is a feeling.

“I am responsible for you being/not being happy.”

I’ll admit I have a really hard time with this one, but somewhere inside I know it’s not true that we are responsible for other people’s feelings. I do believe we are responsible for treating others with love, respect, compassion and kindness, and if we do not treat them in that way, then we are hurting other people and its up to us to do something about that. The article “Feelings and Responsibility” by Marina Michaels (2) describes it better than I could, so I’m going to quote here: “…we don’t have control over how another person thinks or over their emotions…If I choose to yell, it is indeed a choice. I know I have another choice. I know I am not doing the best I can. I know that I am responsible for the yelling. And if my friend bursts into tears, then I am equally responsible, not for the tears, but for making amends for my poor choice of action” (2). Taking responsibility for your own words and actions is the key here.

“I simply choose to be happy or not.”

Wow alright! This one is put out there all the time, and its really hurtful to a lot of people even though its meant to be motivational most of the time. But basically it’s the idea that you need to be opitimistic, see the positives, and if you aren’t happy you just aren’t trying hard enough.

Firstly, situations, words, actions, do affect our feelings, and happiness is a feeling. I think we ultimately can get to a state of being where we are no longer affected or are affected less by situations, however. There were many Sikhs before us that were able to achieve this state and make great sacrifices, by not being constantly dependent on situations. Their state of peace and contentment was based on their constant connection to God. I think for those of us who aren’t there yet though its dangerous for us to just pretend like situations don’t affect us if they do. Say someone says something really hurtful. I could just pretend that I’m unaffected, but be feeling a lot of pain inside and that pain stays there until I deal with it. That’s different than not feeling the pain at all, being in a constant peace and contentment. In my opinion it’s better to work through and experience your emotions, and then move your way towards happiness, than to suppress your negative emotions and continue to live in a constant state of internal anger or sadness.  

Second, I read this really great article “I’m Sorry But You Can’t Just ‘Choose Happiness’ All the Time” by Jamie Varon (3), that explains why it isn’t just a choice to be happy and why telling people that just hurts them: “Many people are imbued with fear, toxic beliefs, past pain, and, while I believe there is a moment that you must choose to make your life better, you can’t just wake up every day and choose to be happy. You will be ignoring the fundamental growth that is necessary for a true happy existence” (3). Jamie Varon reminds us that rather than focusing on our emotions, we should work on our beliefs instead: “The choice is in choosing to change the BELIEF, not outright choosing the EMOTION. This is a seemingly small distinction, but an important one. Every day, you can choose to know yourself better and to untangle beliefs that are preventing you from peace, joy, happiness, and pure love… You cannot be expected to wake up every day and eschew away your very real beliefs, your very real emotional responses to those beliefs, and your very real resistances to examining those emotional responses to those beliefs and just… BE HAPPY. It’s delusional. It takes too much denial, the kind of denial that will surface one day in the future and wreck your life in a way that is not worth it for a fake sense of happiness” (3). 

So now that we have explored some beliefs around happiness I think I’ll summarize. Happiness is a feeling and therefore: we all deserve it, we aren’t responsible for other people’s happiness, and its better to focus on your belief systems than just choosing the emotion of happiness and denying your problems. I’ve definitely learned a lot simply exploring my belief systems about happiness itself, so I think it’s a useful thing to do. Good luck!

References:

1 https://mrbashful.com/faqs-page-2/do-i-deserve-to-be-happy/

2 http://www.thelighthouseonline.com/articles/feelings.html

3 http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2015/03/im-sorry-but-you-cant-just-choose-happiness-all-the-time/

Who Am I? (Again)

Who Am I? I’ve spent a long time asking myself this question. Searching for an answer, and sometimes I would find one and then a while later I would keep searching. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. My core values, beliefs and goals have been well-defined through years of volunteer work and self-reflection. I know my strengths and weaknesses. I think that people are usually looking for all of those when they are finding who they are. But I knew all of those and I still asked. When things weren’t going well, I would say “I’m not sure who I am.” But the same core-values were still there. Goals change sometimes, but most goals I think don’t really define us, they guide us.

In the end, I think I have been asking myself the wrong question. I am not looking for who I am. I know who I am. I am a Sikh, a woman, God’s child. Those things don’t change. When we go through things in life, there are two groups of people. One group tells you “don’t worry, despite this, you are the same person underneath. It hasn’t changed you or hurt you so deeply that you are damaged.” The other says “wow you’ve really changed as a result of this, you’ve worked hard and now you are way stronger than before this event happened.” And yet both sets of people are looking at you at the same time. How is it possible that one set says you are the same, and one says you are different? And both are trying to make you feel better? I ask myself if, given that I am continually reflecting and changing myself, I can be the same person day to day. Am I still the same person, is the answer to who am I still the same? I think it doesn’t matter. Both groups are right. There are things about ourselves that are set. We are born in certain circumstances, we have a soul, we have a body, this is us. Our core values, are us (because usually we don’t change those) and so when people say you are still the same underneath, they are saying you are the same beautiful soul you were before, and you still have the same underlying values. But when people are saying we’re different, we’re stronger, more resilient, we’ve grown and learned out of hardships, they are talking about the more outer layers of ourselves. We managed to maybe change some of our values and beliefs that are holding us back from being happier or more fulfilled, these are still more outer layers and they help us and make a tremendous difference in our lives. So I don’t know if I can say I’m the same person as yesterday or last year, or whatever- whether I’m continually changing, which I am, or whether I am the exact same person that I was growing up because I still have the same great qualities I did then. But it doesn’t matter, because ultimately I know I’m on a journey where I am continuing to grow while maintaining the values of Sikhi that I grew up with. I'm going to stop asking myself who I am constantly, and instead my questions are going to be what did I learn? what beliefs are helping me and what's holding me back and what can I do to make tomorrow better? Because i finally am satisfied with my answer to who I am. 

Emotional Pain- What Am I Supposed To Do About It?

No I'm not talking about the kind of emotional pain when someone tells you you have a long giraffe neck, you swing your hips too much when you walk, and your spoon-shaped nails look ugly (yes i've been told all these things and actually i think they're kind of hilarious and i laugh at them often!). I'm talking the type of deep emotional pain when you're really hurting from something someone did to you and you just can't get over it. We learn a lot about physical struggles in our life, but very little do people touch the topic of emotions, as if to say that we should naturally know the medicines to our emotional ailments, or they shouldn’t exist at all. Rather than explore the depths of our emotions and the thoughts behind them, a lot of us just cover them up and don’t deal with them. Boys are particular susceptible to this as society teaches men that to have emotions is weakness. Girls get taught they are overly-emotional because of their hormones and to have emotions is crazy. So here we are with all these ideas about emotions which don’t really help us because we are human and we all have feelings, which doesn’t say anything about our strength or mental status.

I dealt with some really big stuff in my life last year and for the first time I realized that I don’t really have emotional skills so I’m going to share what I have learned since then. Sometimes we get upset at someone for not being able to tell us what they need. But really there are several steps before that: they need to be able to accept their feelings, understand what emotion it is, and why they are feeling that. If they simply cannot figure out what they are feeling, they cannot be expected to communicate that! A lot of us don’t practice identifying feelings- “I’m hurt, I’m sad, I’m scared”, etc. We simply have learned to skip over these emotions and avoid them as long as possible. Then to figure out why, its like peeling back the layers of an onion. Usually its not what someone said or did that bothers us, but the way our brain interprets that as a message about ourselves. “He ignored me when he walked by, therefore he hates me and I must have done something wrong.” These automatic negative thoughts come from our past experiences and beliefs about ourselves. In order to understand why someone’s behavior or action bothers us, we really need to look deep inside ourselves. It can take a long time to get to it, but the more you practice, the faster it gets.

Going back to my story. I hit rock bottom, and I was an emotional disaster in anyone’s eyes. Not only could I not figure out underlying reasons why, I wasn’t even able to figure out what it was that I was feeling. So when someone would ask me to communicate that I had no idea how. My communication was non-functional because I couldn’t figure out what I was feeling. It was chaos. Worse, my body was slowly deteriorating as punishment, which is what happens in many situations with severe emotional pain- grief, depression, anxiety, heartache, etc. Anyone who has been through grief knows what its like for our bodies- as soon as you wake up, the pain hits you like a wave. Our body responds by disrupting sleep patterns, appetite, pain, concentration, energy, etc. So not only is your mind in chaos, but now maybe you can’t sleep at all and as a result you can’t think, and your stomach hurts from the hunger but you can’t manage to eat, and you are exhausted. This is when I learned that managing emotional pain starts with taking care of your body. Emotional pain can create physical pain like muscle pains, headaches, etc. and it can help to address that pain (baths, heating pad, medicines). Think about your very basic needs. Am I thirsty right now? Am I hungry right now? All other things may be too hard, but just focus on those.

Just being an emotional person doesn’t give you skills. This was a big realization for me. Just because I am able to express my feelings freely, doesn’t mean that I have the skills to deal with them. So here I was in this chaos, and I had to learn. I spent a long time just fighting my feelings. Fighting the feelings of sadness. Fighting the anxiety. Fighting the fact that something wasn’t right. My brain kept telling me- you don’t have time to feel, to fall apart, life is moving forward so you better just ignore it and keep going. Keep going until one day it crumbles apart and you can’t hold it together. The best thing you can do is allow yourself to feel. Allow your children to feel. Allow them to be sad when they are sad and be there for them. Same goes for friends. When we don’t allow ourselves to go through the feelings, we avoid them, and then it gets worse. You, man or woman, are allowed to feel because feeling is a reaction, and no one gets to say your feelings are wrong. The chaos phase can last a while but you can’t rush it. 

This is where I talk about relaxation and stress coping techniques. Unfortunately I didn’t learn these before I started dealing with real issues! The only stress techniques I ever really learned growing up were “take a deep breath”. There are a few categories of relaxation techniques in my mind. External techniques are useful for when you really need to just do something else for a while to get your mind off your pain. I know I just talked about accepting your pain, but sometimes its also important to take a break away from it and just be okay for a while. Being in constant chaos is hard on us, and I found some activities to be particularly helpful for me to just focus on something else for a while. This list is usually your list of hobbies. For me it was things like puzzles, crochet, coloring, painting, drawing, baking, dance, watching movies, etc. Don’t fill up all your time with these, but do use them as needed to take a break. Exercise is its own category. It is amazing and helps to elevate the mood.

Internal techniques are ones that you need some level of concentration or even just an ability to relax for: breathing techniques, 5,4,3,2,1 (5 things you hear, see and feel, then 4 things you hear, see and feel, etc.), meditation, 5 finger exercise (think of a time something funny happened to you, something happy, when you accomplished something, when you felt connected), progressive muscle relaxation, chunk the day (you decide a period of time you think you can handle. You do an activity for that and then reassess, which makes the day more manageable and less overwhelming), listening to music or a guided meditation, etc. Breathing techniques vary but I’ve found breathe in 4 (push your belly out), out 7 (pull your belly IN!) to be a good one for myself. Be creative and think of your own activities- personally I have found writing in washable marker on my arm the people and things that are important to me, or simply “Waheguru”, when I am having a tough time reminds me to keep going. Many people have books of positive things people have said to them, or a list of positive affirmations like “I am a warrior, I am a champion, I am resilient, etc.”

I was in chaos for a long time, but when I moved past that I was in a space to start to think about what the issues are that are leading to your feelings. There’s a few different ways to do this. Talking to a friend, (or professional), or someone you are close to and trust. Isolation hurts us, because no one shares the burden of our pains, no one is there to make you remember that the thoughts swirling inside your head may not be accurate, no one knows we are in trouble so we sink further as we try to pretend to be fine in our homes, at our work, etc. Of course, when we are in emotional pain, we are vulnerable, and you have to be careful who you share with. Some of my issues I realized were best shared with friends that were not in my peer group, but rather those much older than me who had some life experience and perspective. Talking helps us normalize our experiences and realize we aren’t alone, and it can help us reframe our experiences with an outside perspective. Of course you can just think about it. I’ve found that my brain doesn’t think very linearly so I can’t manage my thoughts if I don’t write, so I journal. Writing letters to people (that you don’t send), art, poetry, etc. are great ways to express your feelings in a different form as you process them and dig deep to figure out where they come from.

Lastly, you can work to communicate those thoughts and feelings (and make apologies as necessary) and working towards a solution (if relevant). This is a skill and takes some practice. I used to avoid those words "i need to talk to you", "i have something important to tell you." Now, i can say them a little easier (although i still have a lump in my throat and i get anxious), but it gets easier. Silence speaks louder than words. Sadly, if you don't communicate what you feel, it leaves the other person ultimately guessing and assuming (usually bad things about themselves). So it's important that you do take out the time to share how you are feeling. We can't take away the pain from what we said or did. But if we are willing to have honest conversations about what's going on, we are able to make repairs and move on. 

In the end, I learned a ton of skills that allowed me to keep moving forward. As the skills grow, you become faster at processing. You don’t lose those skills! Worse things have happened to me in the time since, and I have retained my skills for managing my emotions, so I’m never going to be in that same place I was again, never going to be at square one with no emotional skills. Rather now, I am continuing to build my skills. Good luck to everyone on their journey to building skills to manage emotions. It can be really hard but its never too late to start.