What is it that we seek in life? We are all born to die, and the purpose in which we live is mostly empty. There has always been something missing that we can’t seem to find the answers to. That what we can’t understand, we fear, with prejudice; and that what we can’t see or hear, we turn a blind eye to with cold silence.
Humanity as I see it, is an ignorance race. There is hope. But that hope is like a whisper in this nosey world. How will anyone see it or hear it. I grew up hearing and seeing all that which now seems like a blanket over my eyes, and far from reality. But there were clues that I saw, which I never paid an attention to, as I found them a bit boring. It started with monks, and how they would sit in mountains for days, meditating, eating insects and trying to connect with the world. Then at the age of 25, I noticed something strange happening to me. I started to feel and see the soul of people by looking at their faces. The headaches were crazy, the more I surrounded myself around people, the stronger the feelings of emotion I felt from everyone around me. All that was way too much for me to handle. Going to a nightclub was insane, as I felt the energy of everyone around me. The headaches would be sharp, and I would find it hard to look up straight, or even keep my eyes open. As I felt forces punching down on me.
What was happening to me? I still had no idea. But over the next ten years, I went through more negative energy anyone can imagine. The energy came in forms of jealousy, family feud, and I saw myself getting beaten down over and over again. Wanting to kill myself, but couldn’t find the strength to, as I was afraid. I found myself alone, feeling the forces of this world pushing me into a corner. I would try to find my way out, only to be forced back into the corner by a thousand forces of negative energy. How I wondered am I going to get out of this? Then as I was watching the movie, ‘The Devil’s Advocate,’ something hit me. A thought came into my mind, what if it’s the devil inside of me? I thought to myself, the devil thrives on misery, pain, jealously, but what sins have I commented in my life, for me to go through such tough times. I stole a chocolate bar once from a candy story. I stole some money from my sister’s wallet when I was 12 years old.
What else could I do? Who else could I go in front of to ask for forgiveness for whatever I did wrong? I was on the opposite side of the country away from family. No friends. No familiar faces anywhere in sight. I found myself dropping to my knees, as tears found their way flowing down my cheeks, with bursts of pain coming out of my mouth. I couldn’t even cry properly, like they do in the movies. I must have looked like a retard if I was a fly on the wall looking at myself. However I was at that time, and no matter how ugly it looked. It was my pain, a start of a rebirth of my life.
I prayed to God many times in my past, only to find the prayers never getting answered. I read somewhere in my past, that if going in one direction in life is not working, change you direction and go onto another path. So I did. I thought to myself as I lay on the floor, if my normal thing is to ask God for help, like I always have in my past. I am going to do the opposite. I am going to look at the devil inside of me. The devil has always tried to take my life by putting me into a drug of darkness. I love photography, so in the beginning, the devil’s energy took my passion and turned it into an act of destruction as I found myself in a trance of doing dangerous photo shoots. Afraid, confused as to the purpose of this act. I explained to the beautiful women what I was trying to do, and they were excited and all for it. I found the women I worked with on these acts, their energy itself had a dark side as well. Strangely after dozens and dozens of attempts to kill my energy, nothing happened. I found myself looking death right in the eye, and feeling a sense of another powerful energy that would not let any harm come to me. In this process that was meant to destroy me, I found myself getting even stronger. Connecting with women at such a deeper level than any man ever did in their lives was amazing. Can anything weirder and crazy happen to me, more than what I just experienced, I thought?
Over the years, I often found myself stuck in a hole, fighting with the negative forces of life. The world saw me as successful. Inside my energy, body and spirit, I was far from it. I believe that sometimes bad spiritual people can send you evil spirits that keep your mind all confused, distracted from your goals, and a bit insane, and if you are weak at heart, you are as good as dead. When I kept getting defeated by these spirits, and years of my life kept passing on by, something had to give. I started to see some goodness come out of life. Such as the truth started shinning in my life. All of what I was blamed for in my family, for stealing, came out, as it was my sister’s own son. Things with him got out of hand, as he ended up reaching a gambling debt of over $1 million. And he told the truth in his confessions to the family on when he started and how he found money to gamble with. He told them how he stole the money of which I got blamed. The response from the family, I sensed was more bitterness towards me, rather than, “Oh we are sorry for blaming you for this.” Those reactions kept building a deeper empty hole inside of me.
The time came for me, to “Dance with the devil.” From my point of view, he had been playing with my emotions and my life for the past 10 years. Spinning negative people, negative thoughts and mental mind games at me. I found through methods of dancing with the devil; myself fearless, forgiving, understanding, and a better communicator. I started to read people better without getting headaches. I started to find solutions to people’s problems, and issues, as I started to see things so clearly. I had no fear. Nothing in my sight was un-doable.
I was looking at life in a totally different way, from what is actually was. Life to me now was energy! Energy is all around us. Energy is in the pen that you hold, the chair that you sit on, the flower that you smell. It is all around us, and we are all connected and in it. The color of our skin, the language we speak does not matter, as they are all little things to the real big picture of our life. When we die, we are either buried, or burned. If we are burned like my father was, we become nothing but mere dust and ashes, which are spread into water, land and the air. When you are buried; you become the soil of our earth for the planets, and bugs to eat. The soil over time is used to grow planets, and harvest of all kind, which in return we eat. The cycle of life continues and our fragments of who we once were are spread into billions, and billions of pieces and over time have the power to reach the entire planet. We never die; we just recycle into something else and keep living.
The fiber of life is such as it senses your energy and what it can handle at any given time in your life. Sometimes life pushes you, because it believes in you, when you don’t believe in yourself. A lot of people can’t handle that pressure. Everything around you gives off energy. It’s in your bed, bed frame, blanket, walls, clothes, etc. Even if you don’t say it, your energy will pick up on your emotions, and stop the process of your development, if it feels you can’t handle it.
The saying, “What you give in life is what you get back,” is true.
Putting the pieces back together in my life was easy, after I figured out in ten years, what people don’t in a lifetime. In a culture that I was born in, it’s important for them to have a boy. Having older sisters, myself being the youngest. It didn’t make sense as to why I was outlawed, not given the love and support. I made minor and little mistakes, as many do, at that age in life. I listened to my elders, never did drugs, never smoked. Then it hit me. What if I wasn’t their blood! That mere thought sent a chill down my spin. I didn’t get emotional quite then, and thought about it a bit more. Suppose I was a stepchild of my father’s, or adopted. Since my father passed away over 3 years ago, I am not about to get any answers from him. These thoughts were starting to paint a picture, which I didn’t like. My nephew can blow over a $1 million in gambling and the family can get him out of it, and forgive him, because he is blood. I stole $40 and a chocolate bar in my life and I get thrown to the gutters. As I thought about it, and started to think that if I am a stranger in their house, raised as an infant. And made some mistakes, the first thought they can think is, “Who knows, whose blood this boy is and what evil he can bring into this family.” I called my mother and tried to talk to her for answers to the negative energy from the family and tell her, “I feel like a…,” and she finishes off my sentence, “an orphan?”
“Yes,” I tell her.
“I know,” she says, as I hear her on the phone starting to cry. She doesn’t say anything else. She is old, weak and not in the best of health these days. I tell her:
“Rest up, I understand. It’s ok. I always have and always will love you. I will call you later.” She says, “Ok,” as I hang up. She could of corrected what I felt if I was wrong, but she didn’t. Her silence and not wanting to bear the pain of telling me the truth, was something at her age she could not handle. And what came next, as I held my cell phone in my hand, was an intense pressure of emptiness, pain, jaw locking up, as I am unable to breathe. Unable to cry, as the pressure builds up into my head, back of my neck, as I want to cry, but can’t, cause I am afraid, I won’t be able to handle myself, as I feel the need for some love around me, but all I see are empty streets. This happens as I am about to head to a house party. I sit in my car for another 40 minutes. Suck it up, I keep telling myself. I get out of my car, and start walking towards the house. Who I am, my name, are just some of the many questions I have racing in and out of my head, as I walk into the party.
I have figured out that life really hasn’t given me anything, because I really haven’t given life anything either. So I did suck it up. Every so often when I think about it, I get that crow stuck in the throat feeling, again.
I am going to change the world, I tell myself every morning when I wake up. Why you might ask? To live empty, in pain, unloved, in sadness, is not what is life is all about. I know there is more. I have never lost hope. I look back at my life and what I have learned. My life is not a mistake. There are forces at work here and I have felt even in my darkest moments, those forces being there, perhaps silently crying for me, when I couldn’t. Are those forces good, bad? It doesn’t matter to me any more, as I am ready to take on anything. Those forces have given me strength, courage, ability to spread love in people and see the beauty in everyone. I took my crazy devilish standing on the throat idea to empower women, who have been at the short end of the stick of physical and mental abuse by men. Giving these women the power to feel beautiful, in control, and to watch them unleash their bottled up pain once and for all, was priceless, as I watched them dance on the soul of a man. With confidence, they can step out of their fears and stand up for what they believe in. To give that power back to the powerless is a sacrifice I loved making, as I was still very pissed at the devil. My fight with the devil was not over, as I knew it sat in the hearts of many men and women. F*ck, I am going to die anyway one day. I thought to myself, why not just dance with life. The devil and god hand in hand. I still have a lot to live for. I still have to find the love of my life. Hope is all I always had, and always will.
In the fiber of spirituality, we are all connected. Our prayers, our past, our wishes are all within this fiber of energy. I have no desire to get anything back from anyone. I came empty handed into this world, and I am going to leave empty handed.
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Written by: Raaj Kapur Brar
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This post was published on SouthAsianLife.com on December 22nd, 2009
Link: www.southasianlife.com/editors-note/the-fiber-of-spirituality/