Could it be that simple?

Having struggled with my instinctive bipolar view of right and wrong; I tend to get into this explosive anger when I see uncivil things or things that are patently wrong.

Only my family and really close friends know of the extremes my temper flares out into during those moments.

And after it cools down, I am the one who’s left to pick up my own disintegrated body and spirit together; at times taking weeks and months to recover.

As a result, I have tried to stay away from anything that is or can be bi or multi-partisan, such as political and religious ideologies and dogmas.

This is one battle I have been waging with myself for years now to get to a level where I get to operate from a space of unconscious compassion.

And while I will soon be sharing an instance from late last year which helped me for the first time to drive sanely on the roads of Delhi after years of struggle, I want to share what I experienced yesterday morning.

Just as I was about to turn into the road that leads into our Pocket 2 in Mayur Vihar Phase 1 after seeing my children off in the school bus, an e-rickshaw zoomed by and the passenger sitting next to the driver threw the remains of an apple onto the road. It landed in a muddy pool a few feet ahead of me.

Just then I saw the guy get off and took some time paying off his fare. It was obvious that he was also going to take the same road as me.

Usually I curse and walk off, fearing a verbal fight that might quickly disintegrate into a meltdown and fisticuff.

Even though he looked the cheeky, sneaky, opportunistic type of a person with a goatee, something in me was different and I waited after walking a few paces.

As the young man came into my line of walk, I walked up to him and asked him if I could say something in case he wouldn’t get angry.

Much as he was in a tearing hurry, somehow curiosity got the better of him and he agreed.

As we matched our pace, I put my arm around him and pointing to the garbage dump outside our Pocket 2 gate, I said: “Given that you were anyway going to walk down this road, it would have been great if you could have held on and thrown that apple in that garbage dump.”

He said: “Oh I was in a hurry and I thought that the sweepers are about to start their job now and they would have swept it off.”

I told him that the sweepers were done with that part of the road for the day and that the apple will rot till the next day.

He hesitated for a moment and a half and then said in a half-hearted tone, “I will now have to pick it up from that dirty ditch and throw it in the garbage dump.”

Even before I could say anything, he went back, picked it up joined me and threw it in the garbage dump.

This time, I put my arm around him tightly and said that “My respect and admiration for you has just gone up many folds”.

He simply responded by saying: “It’s our duty to listen to elders.”

I wished him well and off he went trying to stop one rickshaw after the other so that he could get a quick drop at the Kotla bus stop.

Pretty soon I lost him in the crowd of people on the road that connects Kotla village and Trilopuri through our Pocket 2 locality.

But I wasn’t lost to the thoughts going on in my mind then.

Was my action a result of some of the work I had started doing on myself over the last few days?

One of the daily routines I have started doing is to wake up at 4.30 am and then listen to the brief Mangal Maitri prayer on the SoundCloud app as rendered by Nithya Shanti followed by his Five Minute Miracle and the Lotus of Gratitude exercise.

And then I had created a question for me to wonder about. This is a question I got from my Access Consciousness facilitator Sanjeevani Pandit who had shared the following in our Whatsapp group last Saturday –

‘Instead of coming to conclusion of anything, what if you asked a question?

Now what if you listed 10 impossible things and asked: “What are the infinite possibilities of __________ showing up in my life?”

Now what if you did that everyday?

What would you create?’

We in Access Consciousness believe that an immediate answer dis-empowers and closes options and staying in the question empowers.

So the first question I created on Sunday afternoon for myself to ask myself every morning and stay wondering was:

‘What are the infinite possibilities of financial abundance and independence showing up in my life at the earliest?’

And then as I woke up yesterday after I was done with Nithya Shanti’s Mangal Maitri prayer, I stayed with the question above and instinctively the next area of work in my life came up and I found myself creating the second question on my Notes app in the phone:

‘What are the infinite possibilities of spiritual abundance and unconditional love flowering and flowing out of me always?’

As I was nearing my home yesterday, I began wondering if my response with that young man was a result of that question?

Before I could go further, I remembered in a flash one of the most profound lessons I had learnt from one of my mentors Dilip Shankar who years ago had truly brought life into Kabir’s Doha when he sang mindfully and beautifully in his voice – ‘Aisi vaani boliye, mann ka aapa khoye; auran ko seetal kare, aap-hu seetal hoye.’

I realized that maybe the reason that young man responded the way he did was because of how I responded and its reflection in my tone of voice and body language.

And that gave me confidence to once more operate from the space that Rumi so beautifully highlights when he said:

‘Out beyond the ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I will meet you there.’

Thank you Rahul Karanpuriya for saving my soul four years ago by sharing this when I was boiling over with what I genuinely thought was righteous anger at you know who.

And then as I reached home yesterday, the question came back to my mind again: Did the new turn of events happen simply because of the question I created for myself in the morning:

‘What are the infinite possibilities of spiritual abundance and unconditional love flowering and flowing out of me always?’

Could it be so, Sanjeevani, Vasuda, Jaswinder Ma'am and Kusum Ma'am?

Could it be that simple?

If it could be that simple, then it has to be profound.

I would like to believe so and still remain with the question as I remain open to relapses, renewals and more with each passing day.

Sohum

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(Cartoon courtesy: The Wondering Two on Twitter)