An Indian Holy Man

AN INDIAN HOLY MAN 

March 8th, 2013

     An Indian holy man once advised:

    ‘There are no short answers or panaceas in this world. But there is God. Seek not to reach him through wisdom or knowledge, but through love. Sing him in love, inebriate yourself with the love of his name, and within you you’ll realize him in love’

     It has been much longer than I had intended since last making an entry in my blog. Life has been incredibly busy and the daily work schedule involved in running my own business has demanded much time. However, the gentle workings of the inner process have continued to unfold helped by on-going counselling sessions with my experienced counsellor.

     Often it has been very hard to see the process at work and in the last year or so there have been some wilderness experiences where little personal development has been sensed but then there have been moments of sudden flourishing, like the spontaneous blossoming of myriads of flowers in a parched desert after a sudden rain fall. It is at moments like these that a sense of progress is realised and the way becomes a little clearer.

     The other evening I watched a BBC TV programme about a group of Christian fundamentalists living a tight communal life in a remote part of the North American mid-west. Their existence was very ordered, balanced and self sufficient. In their efforts to be as far removed as possible from ‘the world’, to use their terminology, and all its temptations they operated as a single unit looking out for and supporting one another in a bible focused way of life.

     On the surface some aspects of their life-style appeared very attractive but I couldn’t help thinking that their apparent security and exclusion was at the expense of the fullness of their individual identities – I couldn't help feeling that they had each sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

     Towards the end of the programme a young 19 year old man who was creative and gifted in ways suppressed by the community hierarchy made his escape in a bid to be free of the needless restrictions and sacrifices demanded of him. My eyes brimmed with tears of empathy as I watched him cycle to freedom.

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