My relationship with God

"Does God exist?". Someone recently started a discussion this 'Times Of India' site called www.speakingree.in

Just reading the question angered me and amused me. In this quest of God and his existence, a common man became Buddha, years of hunger and meditation, people became mystics and took upto the Himalayas never to come back again. Someone out there hopes to find God/ ascertain his existence by an internet discussion!!!!! It is a silly question and deserves not to be talked about. It is like asking me, does your mother exist? How could I have possibly come into this world without my mother giving birth to me. How can mankind/all beings on this earth take birth and come into existence without our supreme mother/father-God.

More important than discussing "Does god exist?", it is important to introspect and ask yourself. "What does god mean to me?". And the answer lies in that. Each of our experience of god varies. It is as unique as a finger print. Just as no 2 human beings carry the same design of a finger print, so is the case with our belief of god. If I believe in God truly and devoutly, than it just does not matter to me whether rest of the world does or not. From my belief perspective this discussion is not worth of an involvement. Now coming to the question of his existence, if someone (who does not believe in God/or a divine power beyond human comprehension) can answer my few simple questions, I too will agree and start believing that god does not exist.

1) How and when was the universe created?
2) What is the dimension of this universe? You know the length, depth etc.
3) How many celestial bodies are there in the universe?
4) How do these celestial bodies (which are actually huge and weigh many many trillions of tons) remain freely suspended in the universal vacuum or space as we call it?

If someone can answer all these questions for me, I salute his/belief and agree there is no god and all this is just plain western science.

But if no one on this earth can answer my questions, than kindly retract the question. GOD IS THE SUPREME POWER/AUTHORITY/Beyond our limited human acquired knowledge. You man choose to call this authority by any name/gender/ alpha/beta.It does not matter! Don't debate his existence and ruin your chances of finding true divine happiness. Believe and let him guide you towards him.

God is my silent friend and well wisher. I speak to him about everything that is there inside me, I seek his guidance when I am at crossroads in life, I ask him for his for help when everything else fails, I ask him for his love and solace when unhappy and sad and so much more. My relationship with God is very special and unique. It defines me the person.

Further, people often engage God and his existence in trivia. My sorrow, my karma, my happiness or sadness, my plight or success...and as a result start thinking of/ about God in a human context, at a human scale and in the known human dimensions.

Only a soul in the dark, unawakened can ask this question, "Does God exist?". For the light of God has not yet touched his soul. In a dark room, when we light a candle, initially nothing is visible. But as the light increases all the objects become clearer. The light is self knowledge and awareness is required for God to be visible.

God, Life and Death

God

Each one of us has a very personal impression/feeling/understanding and connect with God. No two people have the same image of God. Based on our life and learning, we customize our impression of God giving him qualities, shape and form. Each one of us has our own personal God. When it comes to talking about God and his existence, we human beings are like the Seven blind men, touching and feeling an Elephant. Nothing is reality, everything is almost a perception. This is quite contradictory. If God is present everywhere, how can one capture his impression and store him in our memory? This is because human being experience life through our sense organs. And everything has to be captured through the sense organs in stored in our brain/memory. And it is a common fact that different people store images differently in their brain. Hence my idea of a personalized God.
 
Excuse me saying so, but there are many who have no connect with God and would care less about his existence. God bless them too!!

For me God is very important and integral part of my existence and what I am. Like I have stated about, God is one side of the Triangle of my life. How do I relate with God? Does God have a Shape, a Form, a Colour, a Dimension? May be. May be not. I don't know. And care less about. The most important aspect of my relationship with God is that God is someone I talk to very often and share all my thoughts with. Challenges and issues of my life which I might not want to share with anyone else. In a way I talk to God and discuss with him what is happening in my life and seek solutions from him. I often talk to God. And yes, the beauty of this relationship is such that God talks back to me. God listens to me patiently and answers all my queries and concerns.  So in a way God is my Friend/Brother and confider.

During turbulent times when things are not going right and I am low, worried and have given up, I seek motivation, wisdom and support from God. Till date he has never failed me. God guides me and ensures I get all the required resources and support. So In a way God is like my Parents (Father/Mother). Always there for me and encouraging me. Looking at me but not interfering until I seek help. His hand is always there on me. To hold me anytime that I may fall. Like my Parents.

There are times when I feel alienated, unloved and lonely. This mainly happens due to my own attitude and negativity. When I hurt those around me and they turn against me, I feel lonely and unhappy. These are the times when I love God the most and he in turn loves me and forgives me. So I share a loving relationship with God. I love God and he in turn loves me. Just the way I love my Husband and my Son.

There are times when I want to connect with my inner self. Such as this time when I am penning my blog. He glides me through and helps me find my higher self. My inner self. He guides me to himself. To God. God helps me find the God within myself. So in a way God is my Teacher/Guru. He helps me find the purpose of my existence. He helps me tune in with nature. God helps me find God! God helps me find God in others.

For me, God is all around me and his reflection I see in all my relationships. This way there is no special occasion when I look for God. There is no special ritual required to be performed to meet him and see him and feel him. There is no special place I have to visit to feel God and sense his presence. My relationship with God/ Experiencing God is Free of/Independent of Festivals/Rituals/Offerings/Days/Months.

All through my life and various stages of life, my relationship with God keeps changing. In turn God too keeps changing his shapes and forms. I see him as my Parents when I am sick and down, I see him as my Husband/Son when I seek love, I see him as a Friend when I seek caring and advice, I see him as a Teacher/Guru when I want to find myself.

God is within me/us, So God is like me/us as he created me/us in his image. But we are his image only when we shed our negative attributes which harm other beings and think about the good of the World and all the beings in the World. Of which we are capable. 

My learning through my faith in God has been and I am sharing it here....don't wait to be told when to reach out to God, where to reach out to God and how to reach out to God. Where anger and hatred ends, where selfishness and materialism ends, where lies and dishonesty ends, where human knowledge ends...God is that starting point. From there on till infinity. 
 
Like I had read somewhere and strongly believe in it, " At the end of life and in death, it is between me and God."

Man invented the Clock and became a slave to Time!!!!

Time......I have this big grudge against Man made 'Time' or lets say 'Clock' or 'Watch'. It reduces the vast expanse of Universe (which is time less and end less....Anant or eternal as refereed to in Hindu Mythology) into mere Seconds.

God too is Timeless and endless....

Early 19th Century or lets say prior to Industrialization life was so different. People did not have to rush to factories and offices to work. There was leisure...

Past couple of decades there is no escaping. And today we live from Minute to Minute and in some cases even the precision of seconds!

Time has become a knot that gets tighter around us.......strangling us ........We are slaves to Time...

Too much to do and to little Time....so make the most of every second....be as productive as you can.......is the pressure that is building on all of us.......

The more we run our life as per the 'Watch'/'Clock', further we are moving from nature. Sunrise....Sunset....Seasons....everything is a blur......it all passes too quickly. Farmers are the only once who might still be tuned into nature. More so since their life revolves around nature. Sowing, Watering and harvesting, everything is in sync with nature.

In Meditation too I loose my sense of Time......it frees me from the 'Clock'...

Slow down.......give more and more free time to Children.....create some free time for self....Sunrise.....Sunshine.....Seasons.....Lets all get closer to nature. Synchronize ourselves with nature and not with the Man-made 'Clock'....Stop looking at the 'Clock'.....stop penalizing those who don't want to live as per the 'Clock'....

I am practicing freedom from 'Time'/Clock.....

Aha! It is raining in Mumbai

Rains.....it brings back lovely memories from childhood. Rains also meant a new semester at the school. Rains in Mumbai are called the Monsoon. It lasts for about 3 months. A new semester meant a new raincoat, a new uniform and a new school bag. It also meant new friends, new teachers.....and great fun ahead. Childhood memories of rains are very sweet. Hot milk to drink, warm blankets and moist smell in the clothes.

And then I grew up. Started working. The sweet rains from childhood gradually became a torture. The magic disappeared. To get up in the morning while it was still raining and leave for work was hateful. It still is.

My beautiful Mumbai collapses under the rains now. Monsoon means disruptions, tension, muck all over the city....harassed auto rickshaw drivers, honking, pollution...the saga goes on for 3 months.

Despite all this, the optimist in me finds rains an amazing miracle! How else can you explain this tons of water falling from heavens, defying gravity....breaking into tiny droplets. Have you ever tried pouring a few metric tons of water from a height of about 40-50 thousand feet? Everything under it will get crushed by the shear weight of water. But check out the rain drops...they feel so light on our body. Isn't it a miracle? It falls so effortlessly, so gently, so chill and pure. No harm, no damage to human beings, animals or trees. My husband tells me there is a scientific explanation to it all....well there it..but it still does not answer my question....

Have you ever thought about the thousands of liters of water which evaporates into thin air and becomes rain clouds. How do these clouds hold the water? why doesn't the water leak from the clouds and spill over. Imagine a shapeless, container less cloud holding tons of water!! Try holding a few liters without a container! You can't.

Imagine life without water. Imagine life without rains. And we say where is god? God is in this miracle called rains. Year after year; season after seasons; centuries after centuries....it has been raining.

So I tell myself....forget the muck, forget the traffic jam, forget the over flowing drains....forget everything and enjoy this miracle called ....."the rains".

Living an unconventional life

Thanks to God, each one of us is born with unlimited opportunity. He brings us into the world as cute little babies and then like a proud mother waits for us to grow up and succeed in life. To prevent boredom and to make the earth and interesting place, he made each of us different. Unlike the Brinjals (Aubergines) and the Potatoes!!! God was of the view that in creating us the way he did (different from each other) he was gifting mankind with an immense potential for greatness. Each life is a unique life with infinite possibilities. How exciting!

But it is a very disappointing job being God! Because no body wants to lead a different life. There are no takers for his potential.Generations after generations, we want to live life the same. Spend precious minutes of god gifted life on meaningless chores - playing, studying, eating , sleeping, fighting, falling in love, falling out of love, making money, loosing money, being happy, being unhappy, marrying, divorcing, having children, not having children and then death.

Not that there weren't those who dared to differ. They too were children of God. Of whom he is immensely proud. Jesus Christ, Lord Buddha, Mother Teresa...... a life of compassion........yes, they choose a different path. The unconventional path.....so they were shunned and hurt and insulted...but they continued...because it was the path of God. It was the path of his glory.

Do not condemn and ridicule those who want to live an unconventional life. They are only fulfilling god's wish. Using some of his gift- the potential to be unique.

My interpretation of God

Somewhere in a church/Temple/Mosque stood a man praying to god...."God....I hate him....I want to kill him.....forgive me for killing him for he is a sinner...I hate him....I will kill him"
Somwhere in a Church/Temple/Mosque stands a man praying to god...."God....save me...save my life...he wants to kill me...he will kill me....god I don't want to die...save me...."
God is the supreme conscience which grants them both their wish. For.....the killed and the killer are no different. Is God just or is he unjust? I don't know.

God and his true nature is beyond my interpretation.

Happy Birthday To Me!!!

It is my birthday today. One more year gone past. Does one look forward or back ward? Certainly forward. But there are learning's from the past, and events and associations and feelings and so many moments of life which one wants to cherish. So birthday is a mixed bag of feelings. Of the days gone past which will never come back and the future...the unknown, what lies ahead in life.

For me it is a day to enjoy myself with the family-parents, brother and husband. I owe my being alive, and whatevere I am to my family. For the constant love and caring they have shown. For their courage and support. God has given me life for which I am very greatful to him, but family has given me an identity.

I don't beleive in making resolutions. One does not have to wait for a birthday or a newyear to change what is not correct in one's life.

I owe it to myself to constantly improve my self, my life and keep myself happy. My happiness is my responsibility. If anyone else adds to it I am greatful to him/her. If anyone subtracts from happiness/makes me unhappy I forgive the person. This attitude helps me keep a balanced outlook to life. On my birthday I am filled with a deep sense of gratitide to the Universe for my existence.

An attitude of gratitude is what I ask of God. My birthday present from God....Pleaseee bring peace to the world and tons of happiess and health to all.