My Spiritual Journey - Getting Closer to Him
Today began well with me being appreciated for the fact that my daughter was very much grounded. I don't know if you can call a person, who jumps up and down and squeals if she gets the right shade of pink for nail color, as grounded. Well in other more ordinary matters she is pretty grounded. Pink nail color is not something you take lightly. It is quite a serious matter. Anyway, I am writing this blog neither to discuss the values of nail colors nor to express how proud I am to be her father. Thinking deeper into the matter I realized that she was much pretty cool about most things and took both successes and failures in her stride without making much ado about them. It got me thinking about how she, and we became so.
My guru, Sri Velukkudy Krishnan Swamigal, says that, when Bhagavan Sriman Narayanan wants to bring somebody closer to Him, He takes away their material wealth first. Okay, that shouldn't make people worry about praying to Him anymore. What he means is that when there is all material pleasures available to us, we will be more attracted to them and won't move towards the Lord. This, He does, only when He thinks we are ready for that higher pleasure of His closeness. The more the material wealth the more our ego. And ego is the biggest obstacle in reaching Him. The principles of Sri Vaishnavam says that the only qualification one needs to surrender fully to Him, is to possess nothing and admit that we possess nothing - no Karma, Gnana or Bhakthi yoga. We will admit that only when we get rid of our egos. And the best way to make someone lose their ego is to deprive him of all his wealth.
We started the millennium with a bang. Both my wife and me were employed in good companies and earning well. We were young, enjoyed life and we lived in Bangalore where there is every opportunity to enjoy life to the full. Our daughter was eight and she too was having a good life. We didn't miss any opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of life. Money, age and physical ability were to our advantage. If and when there was any lack of paper money there was always plastic.
We were God believers at that time. I won't say God loving - but believers, yes. In fact it was in those years that we increased our visits to temples. We did what all God believers do. Regular visits to temples was a must. Daily prayers in the morning. Ensuring to keep flowers in front of the idol of God in the car. A brief visit to the temple every day on the way to office was done. The Ganesha at Jayanagar 4th Block was more than attractive to ensure that I didn't miss that daily visit. Life was good. And we believed we were doing everything to keep Him pleased. We will realize later those were the last of things to make Him happy.We didn't even think that we had to make Him happy, not for anything but just as a gratitude for all that He was done for us.
The downfall was quick and sudden. Like they advertise for tyres - 100 to zero in seconds. A couple of bad decisions and both of us were jobless with a daughter studying in school. Locations changed. Life was difficult. But for the immense amount of support that our friends and family provided, we don't know how we could have passed those years. Four years of struggle. A sudden change of place from Bangalore to Kerala. It would be an understatement to say it was a culture shock for my daughter. Different school, different friends, different culture - all made it difficult for her. That was when she matured into the person that she is now. She understood the meaning of compromise in life. That was probably when she became the person who began to accept and be happy with what she got. But the point of this article is not to describe her change.
It was not just my daughter who changed, but we too. We realized that life could be lived happily even without all those material pleasures that we enjoyed. We were probably one of the first households of those times to have had a computer at home. I used a mobile phone when it costed much even to just answer a call. From all that to being without any of those pleasures. Our life turned into spending more time at internet cafes sending applications for job. Small jobs came and went. Four years of life changed us a lot. Even after that it was an upward struggle for another two years for life to come back to normal. Those years were the time when we realized that being together was more fun than having all those gadgets around us. We realized that life will never be always the same. It was the time we all truly stopped worrying about whether we had all those material pleasures or not.
Probably by now you are all wondering what this has to do with my spiritual journey. It was after a few years that we started listening to discourses by Sri Velukkudi Swamigal that changed us from God believing to God loving. It is only now that we realize that those years of struggle was one way of taking us away from our dependency on those material pleasures. When we are made to stay away from those pleasures we also lose our need for them. He made us realize that life can be wonderful even without all that.
This is what I had mentioned in the earlier part of this article that when He decides to make us get closer to Him, He takes away all those distractions. In this age of Kali all of us are more attracted to those distractions. Only when we are forced away from them will we ever look at something that is even more attractive - the pleasure of hearing about Him and talking about Him.
The qualities of Bhagavan Narayana are so many and so high that we will never tire of talking about them or listening to them. Once we get into the habit of enjoying that higher pleasure we will never want to have these material pleasures again. It is not that we don't enjoy the pleasure of watching a movie or playing a game. But those become less important and less enjoyable. A visit to the temple or listening to a discourse gives more pleasure.
Looking back now, we realize that those few years were really not worth lamenting about, but were years that prepared us to enjoy higher pleasures. If anyone has a low period in life, they should realize God is giving them an opportunity to turn to Him and get closer to Him. He is giving them an opportunity to be indifferent to other pleasures. He is preparing them for something much much higher.
The intention of writing this about my life is to assure people that if God gives them a bad time in life it is with good intentions. They can be rest assured that He is doing it so that we can enjoy the pleasure of being close to Him and serving Him. Once we start to enjoy that pleasure nothing else really matters.
I end this essay by dedicating it to Sriman Narayana through my guru Sri Velukkudi Swamigal and Sri Mahalakshmi. I cannot conclude without expressing my gratitude to Sri Andal whose Thiruppavai was and will always be my guide in my journey towards reaching Him.
