Who Am I? My heart has often asked me this strange yet mind boggling question and every time I have tried to pacify my heart by answering in a way that suits my personal purpose. Sometimes I told my disobedient heart that I am a daughter, sometimes when I look into the mirror and my eyes fall on that pinch of vermillion I put on my forehead , I tell my heart that I am a wife and then when my child is in my arms I say with grit that I am a mother. And when I don the hat of a professional, my vain vanity pops up from nowhere and says I am so and so, working for such organization, but again my heart unrelentingly kept on asking me WHO AM I?
I needed answers because my unsettled heart was creating havoc on my mind and I was desperate to seek that one answer. I started travelling backward in time to the year 1994 where a fourteen year old girl was shown the path of enlightenment and edification in Ramakrishna Math Belur, Howrah District. At the dawn on that day I was gifted with the divine mantra by my Guru, which I chant every day. Like a flash of lightning those profound moments became visible again in front of my eyes after 25 years and I heard my Guru explaining the importance of meditation and silence.
I knew my answer lies in meditation; my erudition will only come through silence, my awakening needs isolation from this materialistic world.
After years of those words of wisdom from Him, I started to meditate again. It was rather tough to gather my wandering mind and bring it together and then again I remembered His advice, “Imagine the visual of any deity you love of any religion, because all religions lead to HIM, the PARAM BRAHMHA.” My journey in the path of spiritual awakening to find myself started.
Gradually I started speaking less and sometimes I felt absolutely no need for words. Meditating gave me the pleasure I never knew existed. My mind and heart were being reconstructed, reconditioned. I realized I am a soul who has come to this mortal world to perform certain duties, to create certain relationships, to cater to certain responsibilities and I am just playing various roles like in a theatre actors play different parts. But “I” is so insignificant in it and so full of self-obsession that we remain shackled in this make believe cage or miasma where we only play act as puppets and claim everything as OUR, but the truth is our own soul does not belong to us, at the end it meets its creator, THE PARAM BRAHMHA.
I realized with a jolt that my role or responsibilities as a daughter, wife and mother are transitory- they will come to an end one day. My profession will not define who I really am. Only my soul will say Who Am I? I fathomed I am travelling in different compartments of a long express train, the first compartment brought me to this world and I went on to the next one when the train stopped at various junctions. These junctions are job, marriage, motherhood and I kept on leaping from compartment to compartment heading towards the last junction where I know I will see that light of divine illumination.
This whole process of breaking my identity was breaking the notion of who I am. A time came I truly felt I am above my gender, I am just a soul, who took a shape of a woman. Yes, it was difficult to kill so many layers and sub layers of my sub conscious and to think myself just as a soul, but when I did , it was liberating, it was a freedom I craved all my life, it was a joy so deep so sincere and so earnest that words actually fall short to describe that feeling. With this new found knowledge I realized one more thing that my sense of duty and responsibility towards my family has increased manifold. My spiritual wisdom did not take me away from my dear ones but reassured me that after fulfilling all my mortal duties that divine light is waiting for me in that last compartment to embrace my soul.
My journey started to search the answer of who I really am and finally the cosmos gave my soul back to me through its own strange way. I had never felt so complete, so much in control of my own emotions ever before, but now I do.
My answers came to me through days of meditation and practicing silence to delve deep inside my own heart to look into the dark corners with a flash light. Hence I can suggest my readers, who give me immense joy by reading whenever I scribble out of my random thoughts, to practice what I did and see the changes it brings to your lives.
Wishing you all a fulfilling content life. And I sign off.
