Sky Whispers

and the Sky said to me:
"Go where you must;
do what you want to do;
wander, get lost,
disappear, then appear,
get battered and bruised,
change your ways
or your form,
like the wayward clouds
who never seem to rest
on their heels
or their hearts,
and yet they do;
and then,
come back to me
if you please -
empty-handed
or full
of yourself or me,
and know
that I will be there
waiting for you -
always, always there."

This Morning

and she rose again
this morning,
forgiving herself
and her kin
for all trespasses
that brought
her and them
to life.

Forgiveness

~ A Conversation with Myself ~

My Beloved,

Today I long to talk to you....to explore the deepest recesses of my being with you.....to bare it all....for I know that with you I can be naked and vulnerable and you will not judge me for who I have been or who I am now in this moment....for you are and have been the intimate friend that I never had....I know that you will listen to me in that silent well of togetherness that we share, that goes back to our sacred womb....when we took seed like triplets waiting to be birthed - mind, body and spirit, in a strange and perhaps necessary splitting......which I am still trying to make sense of....

Who are you - the one I talk to? Which of the three? I don't seem to know the difference sometimes, like now, when my heart is wide open....and yet there are times when I can see three distinct forms, trying so hard to join hands and cohabit the space that reminds them of that moment when the cosmic egg split. So then is this life of suffering and grace, the path to forgiveness and feeling gratitude for that divine birthing?

What is this forgiveness? Is it a cutting off of ties, in a bid to move on quickly, for there is no time to 'waste' in our manic pursuit of happiness and self-obsession? Is it the band-aid that we quickly stick over our gash to save ourselves from being hurt in the same place and in the same way again? Or is it that safe space of a mother's womb, where we feel whole, where we can love and be loved for who we truly are? Vulnerability allows us to be hurt and also to be loved! Is this forgiveness then an expression of our vulnerability?

'Forgiveness' - how many times I have heard this word.....and tried to make sense of what it means to me...and so many times it has eluded me like that distant horizon that looks reachable, but yet never arrives, however much I go after it....I know in my cells that I can get there where my heart meets my eyes, but I am unable to....a heart that yearns to reach that place where there is no difference between a sunset and a sunrise, or water and sky, where light and dark merge and mate into a sweet union where one cannot tell the difference between the two....where do I go to find that point, that place where I can finally rest into myself in a blissful self-forgetting? How do I get there through all these buttresses that I have lavishly created and built, only to inflict myself with the misery of separation from what I think is 'whole'? Will I ever get there? I wonder....

Is forgiveness a reminder of sorts?....like that one thing on a 'things to do' list that never gets ticked off, and simply and quietly slips into the next list and the next? Is it like that stain on my favourite dress that doesn't go away, but rather keeps reminding me of that someone, that place, those words that were uttered, the words that I so longed to hear trickle into my whole being, and that hole which never seems to get filled? When I think of forgiveness, I always think of wounds. I feel a deep pain in the deepest parts of my being, radiating outwards from my gut. I feel a self-feeding hole, an emptiness, that tries so hard to feed itself and fill itself, like an insatiable black hole that sucks everything into it, and is born again and again.

Forgiveness reminds me of my brokenness and the others'. It is the song that my heart sings - "I was broken and so were you.....now let us mend our brokenness, not by hiding away the cracks and wounds that we inflicted each other with, but rather by pouring gold (love) into those cracks, so that they are celebrated for adding value to the broken whole. Forgiveness then is the unconditional love that gilds our broken beings.
And this life, this path into myself is my journey into forgiveness, into that elusive place where both a sunset and sunrise are born. Is that it?

But what a struggle it is to get there! Sometimes, it is so easy to move to forgiveness.....because the wound is not that deep. The most difficult ones to forgive are the ones that reflect my deepest fears. I know that. I know and feel it in my guts. I know it when I get that sinking feeling of dropping down into that blackhole of nothingness. And that is when I stop. Because I am terrified....terrified of that hole and the threat to my whole existence. And yet, I long to get in there. I long to know how it feels. I long to go in and find out whether I will really disappear or die. But I cannot jump in. I will wait it out. I will wait for anger and rejection to sting me and scathe me with their acrid fumes. I will wait to let the poison fill up my whole being, so I know what it is to hate and to scorn. And then, from that venom that threatens the opening of my heart, maybe some day the heart will rupture and I will drink a sip of that nectar that everyone yearns to taste. Or maybe not. But I want to wait without a hopeful melancholy. I want to dream of that sinking....that free fall....where I hurtle down into a black void, not knowing where I came from or where I am going.....but knowing that I will be held through it all with love and that I will fly...for Life loves me. She is my mother, my father. She will give me the wings to take me into that wondrous white space of forgiveness someday.

But for now all I have are questions.....to myself.
Why am I unable to forgive?
Why do I get stuck in the place from where I actually want to get 'unstuck'?
What is it that stops me from reaching a space of forgiveness? Can I actually forgive everyone for everything, which to me means this: 'Can I forgive myself for everything that I feel I should not have done or done differently?'
I am not sure yet. Should I have to forgive at all? Why yearn for something that is not there now?

When I remember an old wound sometimes, it is anger that comes up first, and then a sharp prick of pain, and sometimes the thought of gratitude. A voice inside tells me softly and firmly :"You must be grateful. Think of what he / she did for you." And then I feel stuck. Stuck because that thought does not allow me to move into a new space. It holds me down like a wall, shutting off avenues to explore....Gratitude and anger in a tug of war!

Yes, I would love to feel gratitude in my being.....watch it buoy up like that upturned container in a tub of water, that keeps bobbing up, but never goes down however much you try to push it down.Yes, I have been in that space before so many times, but not when there is a wound that's smarting, almost like new. I have noticed that I don't get stuck with gratitude when I feel it in the moment and let it go....like when I see a beautiful rainbow at the end of a blue day, or a gorgeous sun that peeps from behind dark clouds after a challenging day or a precious flower blossoming. But with people, I get stuck. I get stuck with the thought and feeling of gratitude that I feel for them, for something that they have done for me in the past. Why can't I let it go like a dandelion blown into the wind? Why do I want to hold on to this feeling of gratitude? Is that what actually stops me from experiencing forgiveness and moving on? Perhaps.

The people I need to forgive or want to forgive are the parts of me that I want to hug and love. Is that it? But I am unable to do that fully yet. When I remember my mother telling me this in a moment of brokenness and helplessness - that I was killing my father, by what I was choosing to do (i.e. wanting to marry the person of my choice), when he was sick in the hospital, I still breakdown choked with emotions. There is a lot of sadness inside. I want to tell her how much I love my father. I want to tell her that I understand how helpless she felt, how worried and terrified she was perhaps, but something stops me. And I think it is this thought of gratitude. I feel that I owe her something for giving me my happiness and guilt for taking away hers. I start owning that thought and that leads to the stuck-ness that I feel. I wonder if I can call it gratitude then....maybe it is indebtedness.....a wanting to give back, which is stuck in feelings of guilt.

On my wedding day, when my in-laws insisted that I had to leave to get to their house by a particular time, blind to the anxiety and heartbreak I was experiencing as my father collapsed in front of me when I hugged him and bid him goodbye (he had suffered a heart attack), I can still feel the rage inside. The rage for not being able to stand up for myself, for not being able to break out of tradition and do what my heart told me to do, for not being able to make myself understood. I have not been able to forgive them for that. Or is it myself? This stands like a wall between us, which I am still not quite ready to break. And yet the very same voice tells me of all those times when they (my in-laws) took care of me when my mother was not around. Again, I get stuck with this 'karmic indebtedness' that I am so conditioned to feel and embody. That cannot be gratitude, because it does not set me free. It does not make me feel light and joyous. It makes me feel weighed down, bound by thick iron chains. It still binds me to those parts of me that I have not been able to love.

So then my beloved, shouldn't gratitude and forgiveness emerge on their own?.... shouldn't they rise and fall into the space between interactions and in the moment?.....For it is when I want to 'hold on' to gratitude that I am unable to forgive and let go....then that very gratitude becomes a wall too difficult to climb over......if only I can let everything happen or emerge and then fall back into the space, and not think that it is because of the other or me, and not want to hold on to it.....life would be much easier....I will then be free every moment...

Today, I want to tell myself that it is okay that I did what I did, that I could not have done any better then, that I genuinely wanted to care for them. I want to tell myself that it is okay to forgive....that by doing that, I am not going to lose myself and my freedom again or be unable to stand up for myself. I want to hug myself today for enduring that pain and separation from my father. I want to love myself for perhaps not being brave enough to speak up and say what I was feeling, but for being courageous enough to stay with all that pain and go through life with grace and trust. Perhaps this will be my first baby step towards forgiveness? I don't know.

But will I ever reach that magical space where all boundaries are blurred, where the drains that have been choked for eons will be unclogged and the vibrant, trans-formative energy of love will be released? Will I forgive myself for all my trespassing? Will I be able to love myself enough to see that I am not responsible for the way someone else feels but only for the way I feel? Will I be able to love myself enough to see and hold my beloved when he cannot fulfill all my desires, not because he doesn't want to, but because he is as broken and as helpless as I am? Will I be able to become that waterfall, that cloudburst, that seed burst, that are just waiting for that perfect moment to pour forth their incredibly powerful energy of vitality and unconditional love? Will I become the waves and the shore that forgive each other over and over again for their life and death? Will I?

Wounds

some wounds
they bleed
like pearly sap
from tender wood,
drying out,
hardened
over time;
leaving scars
that blend into
the knotted bark
of a nubile tree,
looking out
to the blue sun.

some wounds
are not
stick-it notes
ready
to be peeled off
at will;
some wounds
they stick
like leeches
to warm skin,
drawing out
dark gold
from within;

some wounds
are holes
that thread us
with a remembrance
of a shared moment
of being fragile
and
utterly human.

some wounds
still smart,
sanded by time
or an earnest
forgetting,
for they
are branded
not on an
unforgiving soul,
but etched
on the soul
of our shared
humanity.

Revisiting old energies in a new way...

Two days ago, on my birthday, my husband got a call from the person who used to drive our car some years ago. It was a pleasant surprise as we have not been in touch at all ever since he quit about three years ago. He wanted to come and meet us with his family and kind of invited himself for our Golu :) There was no other intention other than that, and I was touched that he still remembered us, called and inquired after us.

He came with his family in the evening and we sat down with them to chat about old times and catch up on each others' lives. Their kids had grown so much and were fascinated with Raghav's creations.
"Are you still angry with us?", his wife asked me hesitatingly.
I smiled and said: " Why should I be angry?"
"No...is sir angry with us still?", she added.
"No....he was perhaps angry then. But with him the anger is only in the moment....he does not hold on to it after that....he forgets about it after the moment....so, he is not angry with you'll...we are not angry at all," I replied.
She looked relieved. As if a big burden was off her.

She then went on to share that they were very happy as a family now....that her husband had a good job, which was not very tiring and stressful, and he was doing well enough.....they were contented and in peace, in spite of their troubles. Yes, they looked happy. I could feel it. I could feel them flowing with their lives. I felt so happy.

"We think of you every night when we sit down to eat," she said.
"Why? I don't understand..." I added.
"The way you both are....sir and you....we have learned a lot from both of you...about how to be with each other....yes, we fight and argue and get really angry and sometimes don't even talk to each other for some time.....but we now know that we have to let each other be....we just go away and be by ourselves for a while until it all settles down....we know that we have only each other and that we like each other beyond all that....life is so much more peaceful than it was then," she softly said, fighting the tears that were welling up.
My heart skipped a beat too. I felt a lump in my throat.....grateful to life for having showed them the way.....and making us an instrument towards that.

I mentioned to him while we were talking that after he had quit, we had stopped doing puja for the vehicles on Ayudha Puja day. He immediately offered to come and do it for us this time. That spontaneous gesture touched me. And we agreed to wait for him this time. Today he came and happily did the puja for our cars with devotion and sincerity. For nothing but the affection and regard he has for us. That moved me to tears. I love these simple acts of love, for no other reason but love.

And then I remembered the old times - how her husband came to drive our car because Srinath (my husband) suddenly developed double vision one day, and just couldn't drive anymore. He came then to help us tide over those challenging times, when I was getting burnt out doing everything including driving, as my husband could not get out of the house and even walk on the road because of his severe double vision. Those were trying times for us. I had just come back from Bangalore after my mother's tryst with cancer, and a few weeks later I was down with chickenpox.  My husband had to travel every week to Madurai for his work and needed a driver desperately. He came as a saviour to us.

I remembered how he and his wife had a strange relationship with both of us. They had a lot of misunderstandings between themselves and with their extended family, and would reach out only to us. He would talk only to me and she would talk only to my husband! I recalled how I had shared with him on our many trips in the car, snippets from our life and how we dealt with our problems, with vulnerability and how he opened up too with his problems. He would ask for suggestions and I would share my thoughts. His wife would do the same with my husband on the phone :) It was funny....those conversations we had about life!

We treated him as a part of the family. He used to live very far away and would come at unearthly hours to drive for my husband. Often he would not have eaten anything. I would offer him food and ask him to sit down and eat with my husband. He hesitated in the beginning as I presumed he was not used to being treated that way, but soon felt at home. I would send stuff that I had cooked sometimes home with him for his wife and kid, and he would take it happily. He would bring his family home on special occasions and would not hesitate to do anything for us. I was being myself - open and kind, as I usually am with most people.

But soon the stress of driving back and forth every week got to him I guess and he started slipping up in his work. He would take off without informing us or call in sick very often. My husband would go off on his own and he would show up a day later for work. Both of us were angry with him and he would lie to us out of fear. We were getting tired of this.

Around the same time, I suddenly had a gut feeling that he was attracted towards me too....the way he spoke and looked at me....and I felt very uncomfortable and scared to go alone with him in the car. I also felt sad that he was misusing and perhaps misunderstanding my openness and kindness. I finally expressed how I was feeling to my husband and what I thought. Strangely, soon after I did that and we both decided that we should ask him to go, he himself came up to my husband one day in the office and told him that he wanted to quit. That made it easier for us. And that was the last we saw of him, until two days ago.

So then why did these old energies revisit me or all of us two days ago, after so many years? What was the message in it for me and for us? These are the questions I have been asking myself over the last two days. It is clear to me that this was not a chance incident. There was something in it for me. Maybe for all of us.

I feel now that we were all revisiting our old energies in a new way. Life was telling each of us how much we had grown and changed....what we had let go of....what we had forgiven ourselves for....what we had learned to face in ourselves through what had happened....and where each of us was in our journeys with ourselves now. It was clear that we had all found peace within....we were all at peace with ourselves and our lives....and the way it was unfolding now for each of us. We had moved on from fear, anger, distrust, discontentment and self-doubt into another space of peace and forgiveness which comes I think from being in the flow.

How much more beautiful can life get than this?... seamlessly merging four lives in one stitch in one instant! How much more interconnected can our lives be than this?

I am forever grateful to life for showing up at my door every moment, every day....for never giving up on me, even when I sometimes feel like giving up on it .....for showing me time and again how efficient it is in the way it works - achieving the maximum with minimum effort....yes, it is time to salute life and its never-say-die attitude! :)

Forgiveness

Let the wind
of forgiveness
take me
into its loving arms...
Let it hold me
in its humbling space -
like a mother embraces
her straying child...
let me drift along,
with grace,
into the open, infinite,
loving space...
a colourful kite -
now a blur of colours,
that has severed
the thread of memories
that held it back for long...
let me now flow
like the wind
that takes me
to places that I've
never been before,
let me forgive, forget
and flow on...
I am set free,
I have everywhere to go...