If spirituality can be summarized in 3 minutes, this is it. I hope it awakens something in you too
Life is full of changes and we as humans must change with it otherwise there is resistance and pain. Every day or even a single moment can require one to play a different role than they played yesterday or few minutes ago. Sometimes you have to be an introvert then extrovert, then a friend, a partner, a listener, a father, a mother, a stranger, a nobody, somebody cool, somebody famous, a doctor, a lawyer, a car driver, a cook, someone who is sick, a good looking person or chubby, white or black or brown, a guy, or woman. These roles have so many names, some are more dominant than the other, some stay for most of our life and some for only few moments. But who are you if not these roles or identities? How do you function when one overlaps with another or if you lose an identity forever?
For me realizing my true self has been everything. Because once I know who I am underneath the appearance I can be at peace with whatever other’s think of me. The easiest way to describe it is through a metaphorical story —
For years I thought I am a glass bottle, then I thought I am a jar, sometimes I felt I am a big pot, then a tray, and some days I felt like a large jug but there were days I felt like a tiny broken cup. There were few brief moments of insight when I saw, felt and lived like a majestic lake or ocean. But then I went back to the glass or cup or pots or trays.
It was such a struggle I couldn’t understand what’s happening to me. I didn’t know who I am. When I was a jar, I was afraid of becoming that small cup, when I was a jug I kept thinking about that time when I was a lake, and when will that happen again. I was never happy with who I was. My mom dad were just regular pot and kettle. I had heard stories about the ocean while growing up. My grandma who was a very kind wine bottle used to tell me that she saw the ocean in her dream, and many centuries ago the ocean came to our kitchen and all the pots and dishes were saved from the evil dishwasher.
I have spent years and years fantasizing what this ocean is, but never fully understood what everyone is talking about. Until one day my cousin, the beer mug took me to a very old rice cooker who seemed blissed out for no reason. I told him how I am suffering so much and so many memories from all those past lives are coming up torturing me and I don’t know which one is true. Am I the jug, the plate, the pot, the lake or the cup? Who am I, I said?
To that he said, “you are none of these things, you are the one who flows in them, you are the one who notices them, you are the witness of them all”.
And I broke down in tears, surrendered my quest and realized myself. I was never that pot that cup or jug, I was not even the lake or ocean, I was always the water that takes the form of its container. It looks like the outside vessel that’s holding it in, but the appearance is not the truth, it’s merely an illusion. The roles we play, the body we live in are merely appearances, but our true nature lies within. You can’t see it, but you know it’s there. Once the mental attachment to the outside roles and appearances are dropped, it becomes clear. Once you know that you are water, you can go be a cup then a jug, then a plate or pot. You can be the majestic ocean itself. Without resistance, with joy you flow from one form to another.
So, find who you are, and then be that. As Bruce Lee would say — “Be water my friend”.
