Pub in Life positive April2010.
I have always been a harum scarum person whenever it came to organization and cleanliness. I always thought I had better things to do than clean my home and do house work. Cleaning the house and doing other chores like cooking, washing and tidying were things which would eat up into my time. I thought that the time I spent doing all these “useless things’ should be spent profitably meditating, reading and writing.
There was a time a few years back when I woke up only with one thought in my mind. Meditation. I need to meditate, I would tell myself and then would begin a frenzy of activity as I bundled up all the chores into an hour or two so that I would have the rest of the morning to do what I loved best. Commune with The ALL. Indeed one day my sister did suggest practically and sardonically ‘Talk to God by all means but clean the house too. Talk and clean.” But cooking and cleaning were things I abhorred and I toyed with the idea of hiring the services of a cook cum maid. But cooks and maids don’t come easily in a place like Bangalore so I scrubbed and cooked complaining and grumbling.
One day in frustration I asked myself “Why on earth did God invent a stomach. We wouldn’t have had to toil like this if it weren’t for the stomach that always needs to be filled. Why do I need to do these jobs?”
Well, the universe has a way of answering your heartfelt questions .Imagine my astonishment when I opened my mail later that day to have a message stare me in the face. It was a newsletter from a spiritual organization that I had subscribed to and the message that day was “You chose to come to earth, you chose this life. You could have lived in the other planes but you chose the routine jobs of the earth to learn a lesson.” It was as though I had been given a blow in my solar plexus. Obviously every word I spoke and thought was being heard by someone- call it Higher self, or Guru or Master or the universe. That presence had really given me an answer at the right time.
I would like to say this made me turn a new leaf and made me a perfect homemaker. Things aren’t so easy. I had to work at it, work at doing the chores with a positive attitude, till one day I realized that that too was part of my spirituality. The physical is not separated from the Spiritual. They are two faces of the same coin. Since there is only the One, the physical aspect of life is just another face of God- the feminine one while the spiritual aspect is the masculine aspect of God the father
Reading Aurobindo’s work also inspired me as he says all life is yoga. I realized that when I was doing insignificant jobs like cooking and cleaning I was still communing with The All, for when I do it with a good attitude I am doing gods business. The Mother spoke of how nothing in life should be treated as insignificant. And how one should do small and big things with the same energy. If you remember Mother Teresa also spoke of “ doing small things with great love” Maybe this is what Masters mean when they say that you need to give your 100% to every thing you do- not a common occurrence in this age when multi tasking has become the order of the day. I too was a multi tasker and would throw clothes in the machine while rushing to the stove to stir the curry and then run to take in the clothes from the clothes line and try to squeeze in a bit of television as well. No wonder I hated my household chores.
My life began to fall into balance once I began my relationship with the Divine Mother.
Saraswathi has always been my favorite goddess and the works of Aurobindo and The Mother made me do some thinking when they said that Saraswathi meant not only creativity but also perfection.
Where does perfection come in? We are co creators with Her. When we misqualify the energy and light that comes to us from our Source, what results is imperfection. Imperfection is a messy house, burnt food, and a tense homemaker juggling three or four jobs at one go, trying to live up to the term alpha female. Hurry, anxiety, non acceptance are not of the light nor is disorder, untidiness and indifference to the material aspect. God as the Mother is reflected in the material world and She is perfection, Sathya even though we like to call Her Maya
Small wonder that once you adore her and tune into her, She will transform you so that you cannot help but reflect those qualities. She, the greatest Lakshmi is all about Beauty and Grace and Perfection. If you can multitask without feeling anxious, that is the right thing for you to do but if like me, you find yourself torn apart, it means you are not reflecting the perfect light of the Mother. Somewhere down the line we need to step back and ask ourselves what we want in life. The Mother’s light or the Ego’s imperfections.
Now I just cannot stand the sight of an untidy house. It is funny how the things I used to overlook like newspapers on the sofa or tumblers on the table makes me go back and clean up- not with frenzy that things should be perfect but with an inborn desire for beauty.At the same time when these things are beyond my control I accept it gracefully knowing help is on the way from the Divine Mother
I still would never dream of moving to a bigger house or adding a larger car to my list of possessions but what I would love to do is add tiny artifacts of beauty to the house-for I now know my surrounding reflects who I am in the inner.
Now I don’t meditate for hours. I try to make my life a meditation. I try to give each job the importance and energy it requires but if I am pressed for time, I do try to do two or more things at the same time for I know that to be a rigid perfectionist is just going to the other extreme and I need to take life as it comes.
I have realized the need for balance in my life, balance between work, creativity, home, family and meditation so that I can move more easily into the wholeness that I am. Want to make your life work. There are two ways of going about it. Try to dio it yourself with sweat and toil- or tune in to The Cosmic Mother and have Her carry you along in Her Grace. I chose the latter and now when I do my chores I just don’t feel like complaining. Through Her grace I am slowly coming to see it as another part of the adventure of life. Maybe a time will come when I shall wake up every morning eager to take on the household chores and give them the same energy I give to my writing. Knowing the Divine mother I would not be surprised.
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