Today has been a weird day. I am exhausted physically and mentally. When I do, I think what happens is I tend to get Nostalgic and long for some spiritual connection. I don’t know what it is but I can only sense a longing. It’s not physical or mental but just a little flickering presence of spiritual longing. I catch myself humming bhajans which I have long forgotten and I keep wondering about the path I am on.
Our lives are defined by destinations we seek. At least at this worldly level. The spiritual world is however is defined by moments. A moment of awakening and a moment of just pure witnessing. I don’t know what it is – I can’t put my finger on it and say this is it. If I do that I will bring it to this physical realm and it loses it’s meaning. But I feel like these are moment defined by images and music. That’s the best I can do.
Last time I was visiting India, visiting my grand parents in a remote village – I came across a woman who was heating up a pot of water. It was twilight. People are back from fields and they are done with their chores, worries and anything related to physical world. That single mud pot, boiling water under a fire created with twigs etc – was etched in my memory. It was my window to the other realm. At that moment, I stopped and took all of it in. The image of what I was seeing was trivial, but what it represented to me at some deeper level was profound. I can’t express it – but when I think of that water pot, it reminds me of something big. Something beyond me. I just had a glimpse but it felt like eternity. I captured it and am carrying it with me. That moment.
This feeling of longing also reminds me of a particular song. Here it is. When I listen to it, it completely takes me over and makes me forget everything around me. It plucks the nostalgic strings that not know of.
It is indeed a rendition of a beautiful bhajan. A bhajan that captures how Radha used to feel when she used to miss Krishna. Again those things are labels, names, ephemeral – the essence of it is – longing. Which is exactly what I am feeling.
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