5. RESURRECTION: Some INSPIRED Thoughts

Resurrection is revival after death. Though the most famous 'resurrection' is that of Christ after He was crucified on the cross, resurrection does not always mean that which follows a physical death. It can also refer to a spiritual revival, an awakening to true spiritual life after a worldly way of living. Our spirit gets resurrected and we are saved from  a spiritual 'death' when we meet a spiritual Master who shows the way forward out of this mundane existence. Such a moment is one that can happen anytime and is remembered by the soul, for it is a soul-moment ! It can happen in the physical world and also in a dream or a vision. Sometimes, the moment happens but you realise only after a long, long time that it was your true SOULMATE you met that day!

That AGELESS Day

I met You on an ageless day, walking by my side

I felt an aching kinship, without knowing why !

YOU in leisure, me in haste; 

Strange companions we made. 

Then, wistfully, You bade me go

For, I didn't like your pace !

I strode ahead confident

YOU quietly watched me go

When all the time, You knew, dear lord,

It was YOU, I was looking for !

Once the spiritual journey begins, and you start to 'Follow the Master', it is merely a beginning ! There are many 'devils' waiting to be faced, external and internal. Sometimes, the struggle seems uphill all the way. Doubts, fears, apprehensions, uncertainty, worry and so on . . . . . there are many trials waiting for the pilgrim. Through all this pain of  breaking, the breaking of many false identities that we have carried around through many life-times, the Lord sends RAIN, His showers of GRACE ! 

The WHISPER of GRACE

Subtly, sweetly, You whispered to me

In accents clear and compassionate

When on the brink of life I stood,

Beyond even a despair,

The message of RESURRECTION

Like the hope-filled fragrance that heralds rain

To an earth parched and racked by drought

Your whisper entered my dying heart

And soothed my mind

Racked by doubt.

Like dawn that trembles away the night

Dissolving its phantoms with Truth and Light

Your whisper buried and laid to rest,

The annals of a million crucifixions.

 THE POWER OF LOVE   

I forgot I was a poet

For my pen did not move for long,

Unmoved as my heart remained,

By any sight or song.

TODAY, 

You gazed at me

Love-filled eyes that questioned

My very questions of doubt.

And what were my doubts ?

'Would I make it?  Will I reach you? Is there purpose?'

It doesn't matter now, for . . .

LOVE reached out and gazed into my eyes

Filling them with the promise of sight

And unknowingly, my fingers

Reached for a PEN ! 

The word 'resurrection' implies that 'crucifixion' or 'death' has preceded it. To be 'reborn' one has to die. We 'die' many deaths in this game of life. At such moments, when one feels bereft, it is the Lord, the Master of the soul, who revives us. We gaze at Him, the Lovely One and we begin to live again !

BEFORE 'Re-birth'

 

Must this awareness of Your Loveliness

This sheer beauty that is LOVE's essence

 This flowing compassion that are Your eyes

Must all this come

Only after a tryst with 'death' ?

Those days and nights of meaningless stupor

Of mechanical living out the charades of life 

When one forgets tha 'life' is 'joy'

And only 'JOY' merits the name 'LIFE'

O Lord, can only 'death' lead us to LIFE ?  

 

AND now . . . when the Form that gave us succour in distress and  held us aloft when troubled by sorrow, has faded away from our physical vision, there is nothing left to do but to pray that HE REVEAL HIMSELF AGAIN.

Let us all pray for a 'resurrection' but let us not DEFINE HOW. For, true 'resurrection' is not merely the physical coming of the Avatar, it is also the AWAKENING of our own spiritual selves. 'Awakening' happens through 'pain'. 
As Kahlil Gibran has said, "Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." This pain that we collectively go through today, will one day reveal the mystery of life.

A PRAYER for REVIVAL

The scent of summer warms the air,

dries the earth, 
curls the leaves on drooping trees;
But awakens my tired mind, with tremulous hope . . . 
once again.

For,

In the feel of rising dust

Of fading leaves, and the thirsty grass,

In the blue of cloudless skies,

Stirs the memory of 

A 'RESURRECTION'.  

 Eons ago, at the 'threshold of life,'

When my heart was young 

And strife but a harbinger of joy

I remember . . .

Days and nights of wakeful pain,

Of exhaustion that sleep couldn't fill

And happiness that pain couldn't still,

That thrill of waking from a slumber steep,

Of intellect befuddled by centuries' sleep.

The tremor of plunging in abandonment,

Into a blue abyss !

The deafening roar of breaking worlds,

The storm and strife those fragments raised,

And in the centre of that storm

The passionate strength of a heart's calm

Secure in the arms of a LOVE

That held and comforted;

That healed and soothed the wounds of a world

Which could not understand.  

 

 Then too it was a summer mild,

Now too, they come back. those memories wild!

In hearts that pine and yearn.

So much promise that summer held,

The promise of LIFE, of LOVE infinite,

Of a VISION that would transform this decaying world,

Of a MIRACLE that would correct a  wronged earth.

Today again, it's a summer mild,

Two decades have since gone by

With hearts that once throbbed and pulsed

With memories at once sweet and intense,

We WAIT :

For a SECOND COMING !