Home

The moment I hear this word a wide 90 mm screen displays lots of lost and found memories. But my friends when I see myself, I see me as a child.

At that time our needs are very limited not like nowadays blessed kids and hence home meant everything. I used to love being home with family members and that's all the happiness I needed to feel content. Grandparents HOME at native were cherries on the cake.

                    

Then came a stage when I felt my home is a cage as there are lots of restrictions and limitations for everything I did and wanted to do on my own. The meaning of home replaced to the word "Apna Adda" where I used to meet my then best buddies and used to feel relaxed and at home.

Later got married and as told and heard since childhood in every Indian Family the famous dialogue says "Aaj se tumhara sasural hi tumhara ghar (home) hai" Got busy with a new family, getting accustomed to their habits, likes, dislikes, rules and trying to adapt them and also fit me in the family as such to impress everyone without hurting them. This includes getting familiar to things which I'm not used to and agreeing to what my heart disagrees. Trying hard to make myself feel happy while keeping others happy.

                       

Now, whenever I get the chance to visit parents and my cousin's it's never said home. It's always addressed as parents home, cousins home or meeting relatives at their place.

                      

Throughout the journey of life the definition of " Home " changed from time to time according to our change in age and requirements. But now when I look back and think of the same journey the gist is "Home is where you are your own and happy. The place and the people around us don't make a home. It's people around you who make you feel happy, special and give you peace who make you feel home.

                      

Whenever I have a tough day and have been drained out of thoughts and feel lost I miss my brother who was very close to me for a tight hug n his shoulder to rest my head and just say  I'm done for today. That perhaps is my home. The warmth, peace, happiness, support, the depth you feel connected to maybe a place or a person makes you feel "HOME"

                        

May God Bless everyone in this earth with a beautiful "HOME."

By

Sarala Bhagat

Diva, Mumbai

Live as one

I have been listening to the talks of Mr. Eckhart Tolle a lot over YouTube. I find his way of speaking as also the content mesmerizing, very appealing, and best of all, calming. I used to find a similar peace in listening to BK Shivani as well. 

Tolle's idea of oneness of spirit is ever so relaxing. It puts to rest all the complaints and egocentric thoughts of anger, jealousy, like and dislike towards other human beings to rest in a jiffy. Think about it, if you and the others, if you and the people whom you are surrounded by are just different manifestations of the same energy, at different levels of consciousness- there is really no ‘You”, ‘me, ‘him', ‘he’d, etc. We are all in energies in various states, forms, however, one may like to perceive it, manifested in the now. Once these thoughts sink in, the mind calms down, anxiety dissipates and people seem a lot closer to us, each one feels like the self. Loving becomes easier because loving or liking oneself is never hard, the tendency to compare oneself with others and thereby to feel less or more than them automatically wanes – the understanding that they are just you in another form. Whether we may realize it or not, we as humans tend to forgive ourselves and ignore our own weaknesses in an oblivious absent-minded way and highlight in our minds the same about others. Most of it a by-product of learned behavior and an overactive mind. 

The experience of now as Tolle talks at length about and of “pain body" are such beautiful ideas. When I identified my self-defeating thoughts, ideas and the “poor me" as my pain body ( perhaps Tolle's word for Sanskar ), as my “pain body" taking over and stand and watch it consuming me, my self reveling in it, it gives a deep sense of relief, a release from guilt, a burden lifted off one's shoulder. Combined with it the fleeting experience of Now and of being in the moment and life seems simple, not a tangle of problems which it’s not meant to be. The mind needs to learn to be in a state of empty space as against being in a state of constant thought, the plague of the human mind, source of all disease and conflict. Seeing the now for what it is, stripped of thoughts – those emerging from the ‘pain body’, those stemming from one’s ego, those from events associated with the past and those which relate to the future. Rid of all these thoughts, of constant evaluation of the content of the moment, the now is probably very light in nature and probably worth living it. A life made-up of only such “nows" would indeed be a life full of happiness and lightness. 

Not sure how far my understanding is from the actual concept propounded by the Gurus but these theories are already helping me live lighter and more content. 

By

Anuradha Govil Kulkarni

Karlsruhe, Germany