The following is actually not something written by me, but I was so moved by the words on so many levels I wanted to share them with others. Deepak Chopra writes in his book The Path to Love about a particular conversation he had with a friend of his named Lakshman. His friend is telling him how he grew up surrounded by the Hindi saints, but had no interest in the spiritual path. Because of this lack of faith, fear kept him from seeing the truth about the many impoverished people in India, thinking them as mere 'scoundrals'.One afternoon, something would happen that would change his mind. It started when he made the decision to walk to work. He found the sidewalk to be so crowded he could barely move. He began to become impatient and very angry. This is what he said next:
"You can’t imagine how it felt. Of course you can, having been there yourself. But there I was, on the verge of screaming, when I suddenly felt everything in my mind stop. My anger and frenzy, my preoccupations, the constant flow of associations-the whole baggage simply disappeared; leaving behind an empty mind. I’m no fool; I had read scriptures and knew all that stuff about an empty mind being the silence of God. But on the streets of Bangalore! Somehow I managed to push my way forward. There in the middle of the pack was a small woman in a white sari, sitting with her eyes closed. She must have been about thirty. I suppose, and something about her told me she was from a country village.
To this day I have no idea why she had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk like that. She sat completely still; not minding the crush around her. Actually, the crowd was acting quite respectful on the whole. She was surrounded by a ring of people on their knees. I got a little nearer, and the most remarkable thing happened. My empty mind began to have something in it, not a thought but a sensation. Mother. That’s the only way I can describe it. It was as if all the mothering feelings that women give to their families were inside me, but with much greater purity and clarity.
I wasn’t thinking of my own mother. There was just this feeling. It grew stronger, and I saw, like a revealed truth, that this woman on the sidewalk was emanating the energy of ‘mother’ from its very source. I also saw with complete clarity that my own mother had been trying to express this same energy. However imperfectly, she was connected to a reality that doesn’t depend on this mother or that mother. It is just ‘mother’, the endless love of the feminine toward everything in creation.
The next second I was on my knees; only a few feet from this saint on the sidewalk. She had her eyes open now and was smiling at all of us. Her smile somehow made my experience far more intense. I had a flashing glimpse of thousands upon thousands of souls wanting to be here on Earth to experience the preciousness of being a mother.
What came to me then was forgiveness: I realized that all the people who can’t love, even the most evil and criminal ones, are trying to express this divine energy. We are all on the path; and despite our differences; being on the path makes us much more similar than we realize."
We are all on this path to learn and find our way back to Spirit. Sometimes it's a slow process. Sometimes a particular event triggers a rapid succession to remembering our True Nature. This man became aware of who he really was by witnessing a poor country woman praying on a street. He felt the nurturing Love from the Divine Feminine and revived what he had temporarily forgotten: that he was part of the Cosmic Playground too.
Thank you for reading an Namaste! (The Light in me recognizes the Light in you.)
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