Creative Expression: Personal Narrative
When I was 12 years old, I developed a chronic and painful physical condition.
Three years later at the age of 15, I Googled symptoms. I saw that there was a high chance that my condition was cancer. (Note to self: never Google symptoms.)
Six months to a year to live.
My mind went numb. At fifteen, I had planned to travel to literally every single country in the world, establish schools, produce albums, write books, etc. etc. But when I read this potential death sentence, all of those plans imploded in my brain.
I walked around in a daze for weeks. Food tasted like sawdust. I didn't talk to anyone - I didn't want the pity of friends, the worry of my parents, the skepticism or interrogation or healing suggestions from adults.
What I wanted was solace. I wanted peace. I wanted to know my purpose in this short life, where I would go when I died, and if I would even go anywhere.
Who was I?
On our bookshelf at home sat this large book, which had been given as a gift:
Regardless of this being a "children's book," all the illuminations are taken directly from The Bhagavad-gita As It Is, translations by Bhaktivedanta Swami. One would think scripture is reserved only for scholars or adults, but this book defied that notion.
One day, I read this illumination:
These words rung within my being as the truest words I had ever heard in my entire life. My body filled with the solace and peace I had been yearning for. I remember sitting there and gazing at this illumination, gazing at Krishna's beautiful face, the ornate lettering, the drawings. I felt illuminated from within.
At the time of my greatest need, I felt as though someone had reached out to hold me in warm, gentle hands.
My physical condition lasted for many painful years, and even with many doctors and tests, we never figured out what it was. One day, the symptoms began to fade and they never returned.
What has remained with me until this day, 18 years later, is the unshakeable faith that I am an eternal spirit soul. Whether I die tomorrow in a car accident, ten years from now from cancer, or fifty years from now from an old and broken body, my soul will go on. The souls of my loved ones will always go on. Our souls shall exist forever.
Now, there are 700 verses in this ancient scripture, and maybe I don't understand or have faith in them all.
But I have faith in this one. No one and nothing can take away my faith in this verse, not even death.
Like the sun that is rising over the horizon of the ocean that starts out just as a little dot of bright orange, as time goes on that dot becomes a slice, and the slice becomes a semicircle, and on and on until the sun is rising in brilliant rays that light up the world.
This is how I feel about my faith in only one verse of the Bhagavad-gita.
The light of faith from one verse has been lighting up the other verses in this text, lighting up other texts in the bhakti tradition, lighting up the words and teachings of spiritual teachers in my own tradition, lighting up the teachers and scriptures and traditions of other spiritual paths of the world, and ultimately
lighting up my own heart and mind to love and serve God and God's devotees.
Just one verse.
So I am grateful to my painful condition for coming into my life at such a young age. I am grateful for Google's morbid (and inaccurate!) diagnosis.
I am grateful for the book, Illuminations from the Bhagavad-gita, by Kim and Chris Murray, for granting me the most priceless diamond of my existence: faith in my eternal soul.
That's a fantastic realisation to have, I think. I wish I could remember all the realisations I've had that have only temporarily helped me to be detached enough from my material circumstances to feel peace. I remember many of them intellectually, but not the feeling of being in a peaceful state of mind.
ReplyDeleteI'm a very external person, I do not naturally hold onto my thoughts and emotions, I tend to talk about them.
You know, Nila, I feel you on this. Even our spiritual realizations tend to feel so temporary! At least the *feeling* is temporary, the feeling of peace and understanding and acceptance. I'm in this question, how to sustain the feeling.
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