It’s been a whole year since I received the Gyan. A lot has happened in that year, a lot of very awful terrible things and conversely some very wonderful life changing amazing things.
A year ago I was sat in this room listening to the speakers and feeling ready for the next chapter life was to bring me. After the Building Bridges oneness gathering, I received the Gyan. For me it was a very energy based experience, and thankfully that positive energy that has stayed with me ever since.
One of the things that the Gyan, the God knowledge, has bought me is some inner serenity and calmness that was lacking before. It’s what I feel every human is striving for, knowingly or not. We are living in a time of unprecedented advancement and technological development and the price paid for this is a deeper attachment to ego and materialism, and for many a step away from their spiritual selves. The world is filled with war, violence, exploitation and abuse, but the world is also filled with love, compassion, empathy and kindness. What we focus on will determine whether we live a life filled with love and happiness or fear and anxieties. If we choose to focus on love we are inviting more of the same into our lives, because what we put out into the world we are inviting back to us in abundance.
This is where keeping the company of saints is important. If you regularly come to Satsang, listen to the positive messages given here, it becomes so much easier to make that way of thinking part of your everyday life.
I say easier because we all know this physical life is not easy. I mentioned earlier that it had been a difficult year and truthfully that description doesn’t come near to how bad it was. Throughout the events of last year, the one thing that kept me going was knowing I was one with Nirankar. I had wobbles and low points and when someone is screaming at you that they will smash your face in with a hammer and set your house on fire, all in front of your child, it would have been easy to have fallen back into old habits and let the ego take back control. To succumb to the feelings of hopelessness and despair. But, my faith in Nirankar and my love for Mata Ji would not allow that. No matter what ups and downs appear in life, this Satsang is the line that anchors me to Nirankar. As long as I have saints in my life, it’s easier to pull myself along that tie and secure myself to the anchor of Nirankar.
For me the ego is one of the biggest battles to fight. Not so much as in feeling boastful or conceited, but more the mind trickery ego can bring. I think of ego as any of the “I” emotions – I feel sad, I feel unworthy, I feel a failure and so on. What last year has shown me is I am LOVE. I am one with the biggest force of love that could exist, and once I acknowledge that I am one with Nirankar, I have to realise I am none of the negative things that my ego wants me to believe I am. How could I be when my soul is carved from Nirankar.
What we all need to do is to calm and quiet our ego and find the inner peace with ourselves. This will allow us to radiate peace to the world. If we are at war with our own minds, how can we bring peace to the world? We have to live our lives by the teachings of the Satguru so we can find and maintain that inner peace. No one has ever found inner peace and harmony just by being told to look for it – we have to live it. We cannot preach inner peace to people, but we can live our lives as an example and show people in a very practical way how to find inner peace and happiness. By coming to Satsang we keep our faith and our hearts topped up with love. By practising Seva we show people how to live kindly and demonstrate love and compassion to all in humanity. It’s great to do Seva within Satsang and I do not take away from that act of kindness one bit, but it is equally important to practice Seva out in the wider world. This is how we spread Satguru Mata Ji’s message.
How often do we all hear that we are one no matter what colour, creed, religion or caste we are? And isn’t that easy to do within the peaceful walls of the Satsang gathering? But, what we also need to do is take Satguru Mata Ji’s message in our heart and change people’s lives with it. Kindness has become something which is not normal between humans anymore. It can be seen as suspicious or strange, especially when the recipient of the kindness is a stranger. I remember last year when I was doing homeless outreach I was talking to a Russian man who called himself John. He was quite bewildered by what we were doing. He asked if I was employed by the council, I explained that we did the outreach to provide food, clothes and blankets voluntarily and he still could not understand why we would give up our time to help dirty, smelly, drunk people like them, in his words. My reply was simple, because you are human, just like me. That’s all it ever boils down to.
So, let’s all try to bring the teachings of our beloved Satguru into our everyday life. Let’s change the world by first changing ourselves and then radiating the love of Nirankar to all those we come into contact with.
-Lucy Hayreh
