Quest

I struggled within, kept oscillating between whether I should write this or not. The fear of feeling the same pain again kept holding me back. Then again, this has been a part of my life and I can't be oblivion to it, I can't shut my eyes to it, just because I am scared. Point is, good, bad or weird, if I don't embrace my life's journey, I will keep cheating on myself. So here's trying to describe a phase of my life that I had decided not to revisit. 

In my quest to find myself, I had been to literal hell. I had seen and felt things that didn’t make sense. A decade ago, when I was in shock, I searched desperately for answers. I was guided and misguided by people. The churn I had gone through even took a toll on my body. It was like a free-fall, I didn’t know how to control anything. At times, I had learnt lessons / truth that take people decades to learn. Everything was accelerated. Let me share as much as I can coherently about this journey. This is also the very first time I am revisiting this phase of my life, something that had been very painful, but I think it needs to be seen with a fresh perspective. And, yes, I am grateful for it too. Without this path, I wouldn’t have become the person that I am today. 

Pain. The first and foremost thing that I felt was enormous pain. It threatened to tear me apart. At times, I just wished to die and end it all. Everything that was within, was reflected outside. I could see my follies, issues, demons, weaknesses, everything. Nothing was hidden. I could even see my evil self, the negative devil that we all have inside of us. There was too much darkness. And I didn’t make matter any better. I didn’t want to face myself. The more I hid, the more pain I felt. Realised later, the quicker I would have dealt with my demons, the quicker I would have been at peace. If you know your demons, don’t delay in slaying them. Also, find out their source, and close that loop too.

Search. I searched and wandered for answers. I spoke to so many people. I read anything and everything that could have given me answers. I walked the spiritual path, tried to find my answers in Buddhism, Bhagavad Gita, Kabbalah, Wicca, and what not. I visited so many spiritual centers – the temples, darghas, gurudwaras. Nothing could satiate my thirst. Each answer that I found led me to another question.

I journeyed through the entire country - Pondicherry, Amritsar, Badrinath, Puri, Haridwar, and where not. While these places gave me momentary relief, I was just wandering. Years later realised, unless I am calm in my inner self I will keep seeking peace in the outside world. It was all me. I still seek, still get curious, but have stopped wandering.

But this journey was not in vain, for I learnt something or the other from everything that I tried. Buddhism taught me about impermanence of life – how as much as suffering is not permanent, so is happiness. It taught me to analyze and control my emotions and find a Middle Path to my problems. Every time I felt despair, I turned to Bhagavad Gita. I used to simply think of my issue and open a random page, and every time I had found an answer to my problem. However, what had disoriented me the most were vivid visuals, colors and dimensions that I felt. There was a time when my body vibrated with energy and I could feel excessive heat. So much so that almost all my electronic gadgets went kaput. Thankfully, I had help at hand. Usha aunty was a blessing for me. A pranic healer, she taught me how to control the energy, how we are all connected and how we can tab onto this source. She taught me to ground myself whenever I felt excessive energy. I knew I had natural healing capabilities, which my research on Wicca confirmed. Usha aunty helped me with certain techniques too. She warned me against using it without proper knowledge. And I heed her advice. That helped me to balance myself. There had been many things that I went through which I didn’t understand much, about which I will talk at the end.

At times I volunteered, worked at the grassroots level, with some amazing people. The compassion that I felt was overwhelming, Dr Kshama Metre was exceptional. It showed me my aukad. I knew I was cribbing for no reason. While it calmed me, it was still a distraction. I learnt that there is nothing selfless. Even when you work for the society, you do crave for inner satisfaction and peace. And that's not something bad to crave for, just don't be a hypocrite about it. Calling a spade a spade does take courage, doesn't it?

Change. And I mean literal change as well. Not only my thought process and perspective were changing, but I felt the impact on my body too. With the onset of so much energy, I felt my chakras opening, starting with the root chakra. My entire spine and neck were on fire. I kept grounding myself as one after another the chakras opened. The most difficult one was the heart chakra. I had literally felt as if was going to die, as my heart raced in an insane manner. There is a warning in this, if you are not ready for this, this energy could be devastating. I wasn’t ready. I was being misguided by some people who dabbled in occult. It was scary, but somehow there were greater number of good people who were looking after me too. They guided me out of it. Spiritual powers without proper guidance can lead to a downward spiral. That’s what happened to me too. I was completely numb and in depression for a couple of years. And I was living alone. Not a great combination. My body gave up. My health suffered, but at least I was back home. That’s when I discovered Sadhguru. Not that I agree about everything that he says, but through him I learnt to protect myself and my chakras. I knew I needed more grounding, so I turned to Baba Ramdev for yoga. By now, I had realised one thing, I wasn’t going to find any one ideal person who could be my guru. I stopped my search for a mentor. Instead, I started imbibing the things that resonated with me from everyone that I met or got inspired by. Realised everyone has something or the other to teach you, we just need to remain non-judgmental about them. Tough, but that's the only way to learn.

Healing. To begin my next stage of journey, I had to heal. This realisation took time. Kindness can also be a folly, especially if you neglect yourself and only think of others. That will not do you any good. I realised this very late, actually only a couple of years ago. However, once the realisation hit, the journey began automatically. I wanted my happiness, and for that I had to be kind towards myself as well. I made myself a priority and things fell into place. It is beautiful to look at the mirror and see someone you truly love reflected each time. Realised if I don't love the person that I am, good, bad or ugly, I will remain a broken person forever. Embracing yourself the way you are isn't easy but the moment I did it, it was magical. There wasn't a need for validation. I was enough in myself. And that's when I started learning the meaning of love. No, I didn’t become less kind towards others. In fact, by being kind towards myself, I could learn how to be more compassionate towards others without being emotionally drained.

Love. That’s the bottomline. Somehow, everything just pointed towards love. Nothing is impossible if you believe in the power of love. I had so many people who through their compassion and love for me held my hand and helped me along my journey. Yes, I had to walk it, but they were there for me at the right time, at the right place. All I had to do was ask. There is such great power in intending for something, especially something positive that the universe actually conspires to make it happen. And nothing motivates more than love. Being open to the abilities and possibilities of love is hard, but that is where the magic happens. I am grateful for it. Realised as much cliched it may sound, it is true that love never binds. It is an open-source. It's not a transaction either. It's simple and that's all. 

However, what has worked for me may or may not work for you. Everyone has a different journey, though the destination seems to be the same. We have our own path. I digressed a lot, but I guess I had greater lessons to learn. I had too much broken inside me, and I had to fix them.

I love the person that I have become today and I am loving this journey. I could have never imagined what love could do to me. It’s awesome.

Strangely, I feel nice sharing these. As much pain or hurt this phase had caused, it had been a part of me too and revisiting it helped me get over my fear of going through the same pain again. Instead, I am grateful I was able to do it.

And now to the unknown. These are scraps that I had seen and felt which made no sense to me. Question is, why did I go through them, if they were not meant for me? I never asked that question, but today as I look back at my journey so far, I can make some correlation. While this wasn’t for me, maybe it will provide you with a path that start with logic, to ease your journey by helping you charter through a familiar territory.

Unknown. I had to consult my old blog for this. I remember when I was writing all that nonsense and had told one of my ‘misguides’ about it, he had said, “Maybe you need to and revisit it years later to find the meaning.” While I still can’t, maybe you will. The unknown started with symbols, signs, numbers, equations, which made no sense. Being Mathematically challenged, I wasn’t really inclined towards this subject, I didn’t know why I was seeing all that. Was there any life’s code hidden in it? I decided to ask that to Usha aunty, who confirmed that people who dabbled in Maths and spirituality together often found answers to many of life’s questions and secrets of the universe. She talked about one such Mathematician she knew who had been focusing on finding some hidden numbers in our current counting system. As per him, the current counting system from 0 to infinite is not correct, there is something in between 0 and 1, and so on. What is that, he only knows, and maybe we are not yet ready to know or understand.

Then there was Kabbalah, which talked about ‘Tree of Life’, ‘Flower of Life’ and ‘Sacred Geometry’. This entire search led me to Fibonacci Sequence and the Golden Ratio. Interestingly, these motifs are everywhere, even in our religious places. I found many when I visited Golden Temple too, especially the Flower of Life.

However, most of this just went over my head, except for the basic understanding.

Everything in this universe is precise. Life on Earth is precise. To the last of the decimal point. How is this possible? What makes it possible? How does that correlate to us, our identity? Can Maths give you an answer? Ask.