Nature’s Guidance -2

I fear a lot, especially death of my loved ones and that too in a road accident.

(I wish I had a better intro for this post, but that’s my truth.)

One such incident I did share here once.

Well this fear was definitely taking a toll on my mental health for a while, I mean for years 🙂

So when swami ji asked us few months back, as part of a task to help us evolve, to give up something, I was thinking what should I give up.

I know many people gave up sweets and I happily increased its intake.

I have no addiction, good or bad. I am okay with everything or nothing.  So giving up something was a task.

As an over enthusiastic kid, I took a sanklapa of giving up my fear of losing my family.

Though I do not fear my death much as I know I am not that important. And as swami ji says eventually nothing matters. But this teaching I was unable to implement when it comes to my family, specially my husband.

I love him a lot and depend on him for my emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual needs. Financial dependence is by default.

Even imagining losing him makes me weak and I feel a sudden flow of tears .

So now the task at hand was to give up my fear. I started to tell my mind not to think of it, and as they say the more you resist, the bigger it becomes.

Finally I decided whenever such thought will arise I will try to divert.

Nature planned a test. Yeah nature loves to test me.

Recently my husband asked us (me and my daughter) to join him for a small trip to main town where he had some work. I said yeah why not, but within I felt that the fear was trying to enter.

When I opened the main gate of the compound, for the car to be taken out, I prayed to the lord please save us as I am following a sankalpa and I am not supposed to fear.

We must have travelled 500 mts when husband got an emergency call, he parked the car on the roadside and it was taking a bit long.

Due to curfew restrictions and the time to reach the destination, I was becoming restless. So I silently offered to drive him to the destination while he can continue the talks on his phone. He was shocked but asked,”are you sure?”

“Yes”, came my prompt response.

(I have been driving for almost past 12 years and have successfully made lot of road trips to different states of the country. What shocked my husband was my willingness to drive in the mountains, a terrain which I have avoided till date behind the steering.)

I got in the driver seat and drove him all the way to the destination and back home. Trust me, not even for a single moment the fear of accident entered into my mind. All my focus was on driving. I realised what living in the moment actually means. In those moment, my mind was carefully navigating through those curvy roads and keeping me focussed.

I came back home and thanked lord.  

Nature’s guidance came next:

In the evening I opened the book I was reading and my daughter had taken out the bookmark silently. So the page that opened had these words:

“People are haunted by the fear of death, but rarely does anyone attempt to understand the dynamic of death and attain victory over it. Lack of knowledge forces people to believe that life ends at the moment of death. That causes the fear, and out of fear people cling to life.

The sages on the other hand have mastered the techniques of casting off the body without becoming helpless or even unconscious. Fear vanishes when we know where we are going after death.”

This was mind blowing.

I went to my husband and narrated that how I fear of losing him and how nature is trying to guide me. He simply asked me to check the root cause of my fear.

Damn , why did this never strike to me before or was it another right time decided by nature to teach me something.

I immediately went to my room , sat silently and started contemplating why do I have these fear.

In few minutes I got a reply. Mainly there were three reasons:

• One- my over attachment and dependence on my husband.  
• Two- I had seen my dad getting suffered badly in many small road accidents.
• Third- A major road accident, almost 15 years ago, where I and my husband survived narrowly.

These things, subconsciously, were deeply rooted and was causing me all this panic. Suddenly I was reminded of what swami ji says ,“Most of our fears never come true”.

And here I was, on few past unfortunate events I am wasting my present moment, living every moment in fear.

Now everything started to make sense- swami ji’s challenge, situation created for my drive in the mountains, Swami Rama’s book page and my husband’s advice to ask me to contemplate.

Later I travelled back to Delhi and came back again to mountains and I can proudly say not for a moment I feared and I thoroughly enjoyed my drive.

With his grace, I realised we are slave of our mind and unfortunately a negative mind is the greatest devil that resides within us.

But with Swami by my side, I can say that we can fight this devil and even can rise above many of our fears.

This was my story, what you gave up and how it helped you to evolve.