During this last weekend, I spent time reading through my diary from 2013. It has become an annual ritual for me. At the end of December, I pick up my diary for the last twelve months and read through all the entries. What happened. How I felt about it. What lessons my soul is learning. Diaries are private, and sometimes I think that mine should be burnt when I die, so that no one else will ever read them. Conversations we compose with ourselves may not necessarily be understood by anyone else.
But as I thought about writing an end of year column, it occurred to me there is one little passage from my 2013 diary that I could share. It comes from one of the dreams this year that I recorded. The Divine has blessed me with a very rich dream life. On occasion, I have dreams that offer some kind of insight. Something that helps me in my life, or helps me understand Gurbani better. Something from the Guru's teachings will crystallize in my dreams, but as a very visual, creative metaphor. It is as if my subconscious is developing its own language and images to integrate what the Guru teaches.
I have been working on a translation of Sukhmani Sahib for many years. One that I actually hope to finish in 2014. From this process of translation, my experience is that Sukhmani Sahib practically communicates the nondualistic vision of reality. Going past the perception of ego to see the One Hand guiding everything that happens.
In this particular dream, there is a moment when I am flying in a helicopter with another person. We are journeying from a more etheric realm to the earth together. Here is the passage that I want to share.
"We (me and this woman I am traveling with) are talking as we are flying, and I am trying to understand where she needs to be taken to. While in the helicopter, I look down at the crowded, busy streets, beaming with life. I get a glimpse, just for a second or two, of how everyone is exactly where they are supposed to be, being guided by their own magnetic field into exactly the situation they are supposed to have. In that sight, nothing is wrong. It is a cosmic dance of synchronicity with purpose, although the people in it are very unaware of it. It is true for the people on the street. It is true for the woman and I in the helicopter."
This little moment from my dream illustrates my life journey in 2013. Getting these glimpses of what Sukhmani Sahib means, on a practical level. How we each have a forehead, where the hand of the Divine writes what will come to us. That record encodes all the debts we have to pay, all the blessings, all the difficulties, everything. Because life is about this amazing journey where the soul gets to learn. And time and space is just the University for the soul's expansion.
From the forehead, from the arcline, we beam what is written like a magnet. And we move according to that record, without consciously knowing it. What comes to us. What leaves us. Where we go. What we experience. Mostly, we are not aware that this is how life works. But at a certain height, we can see it. Gurbani can take us to that height. It can give us the equanimity to understand what this experience of consciousness is really all about. For a second or two, in the dream, I beheld that cosmic dance and it crystallized a lot of what I had been studying in Sukhmani Sahib.
The problem, of course, is that it is easy to appreciate the dance when things happen that "I" like. It is much harder to understand that dance when things happen that "I" do not like. Or worse, that hurt me. The trick that I have discovered is to feel all of it, positive and negative. Let the feelings come, because they have their own messages and lessons, but keep bringing the mind to that nondualistic vision, and try to stay grounded there. No matter what happens, to truly see every moment, and every movement, as perfect and purposeful. To trust that, from the Divine perspective, each soul is exactly where it is supposed to be, experiencing and learning the lessons that it took form to learn.
To have seen this at all has brought a grace and blessing in my life, and I am thankful to Guru Arjan for what he wrote. And for how he set the example of it, by sitting on the hot plate for five days and five nights. He saw the perfect purposeful play, and he smiled the whole time. It is a test of consciousness. Because ultimately what Sukhmani Sahib teaches in that nondualistic vision is that no one is a victim. Ever. We each call into our lives what was written for us. It a challenge, because, emotionally, I want to blame someone or something for my pain, for my disappointment, for the feelings of betrayal. God knows, whatever little trials I may face in my life, they are nothing compared to that hot plate Guru Arjan sat upon. But the cosmic dance means that we are never victims. Just like Guru Arjan was not a victim. He left behind a record of how to live life from that perspective. A teaching that he embodied and shared in a practical way with all of us. And it is right there in Sukhmani Sahib.
These are my reflections of 2013, and a bit of my diary that I am grateful to share with all of you. May you be blessed with your own insightful dreams, and continue the journey of your soul's learning in 2014.
With Divine Light,
Ek Ong Kaar Kaur
