We live in a fast paced world where the only thing we ever worry about is what’s next. We wonder when the next promotion is coming, when the next chapter of our lives will start, when the next “big thing” will finally show up. We fixate on a goal and do everything in our power to reach it, no matter what it takes. And somewhere along that journey, we find ourselves giving up, or questioning everything, or putting ourselves through situations we never would have chosen if it weren’t for that one goal. At times, it becomes the only reason we even get out of bed in the morning. It could be a short term goal or a long term one. It could be plans with friends, or your first day at work or school.
But at some point in our lives, we will all have a last first day. We will all have a last hangout with our friends. Your reason for getting out of bed will shrink down to just “I need to get on with my day.” And if all we have ever done is chase the next best thing, we will run out of reasons to do anything at all. Not because the next big thing isn’t there, but because we are no longer capable of chasing the high that comes with it.
There is a saying, “It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” So what if we actually lived like that?
Think about how we act once we pick a goal. We are set on it. We will do whatever it takes to succeed despite hardships or anything that gets in our way. And in the moment, we feel like we have power over what goes right and what goes wrong. We feel like we have control of the situation at hand. So when it doesn’t turn out the way we planned, we blame the one being we believe is responsible. We blame God. We blame Maharaj, even though we chant “Maharaj ni ichha.” We blame him because WE did the work to make it go right, and all Maharaj had to do was let that work pay off. But deep down, somewhere, we know there is a bigger plan. We know it truly was his ichha. We just have a hard time sitting with the fact that we went through all that hassle for something not to turn out the way we wanted. But what if we looked at it a bit differently?
In Gadhada 1-74, Maharaj explains that true faith and understanding are measured in times of hardship. And when we look back at how we got to wherever we are, we are always reminded of what we went through and what we sacrificed. For a college student, it was sleep and time with friends. For a mother raising her kids, it was her entire life given up for her children. And when someone finally reaches the end, the one thing they always say is “This was all worth it.” But in the middle of that hardship, what is our mindset? Do we believe we can take it all on ourselves, or do we blame God for our problems?
In a katha, Priyachintan Swami mentioned that once you realize God does everything, that God is the true reason anything happens and you are a mere instrument, you become stress free, because you have taken yourself out of the equation. And that alone may just be the answer to all our hardships. We are not the ones completing the task. It is Bhagwan himself, using us to complete it.
It is the same mindset our Gurus lived by. It was the mindset Shastriji Maharaj had when he decided to build 5 shikharbaddha mandirs at a time when every odd was against us. It was the mindset Yogiji Maharaj had when he traveled across the world to spread the Akshar Purushottam Upasana despite opposition. It was the mindset Pramukh Swami Maharaj had when he visited 122 homes for padhramni despite a 103 degree fever. And it is the mindset our Guru, Mahant Swami Maharaj, lives by as he continues to achieve the impossible. Our sanstha was built on the idea that it is none other than Bhagwan who does everything, and that it is us he uses to carry out his work. What other reason is there for kids as young as 2 or 3 to memorize 315 Sanskrit shloks? Kids who don’t even know how to count are doing something most people would call impossible, yet they did it, through the power of Maharaj and Swami.
Now apply that to our worldly tasks. Our hardships become blessings. Instead of being annoyed, we would realize it is Bhagwan who put this test in front of us, and that he is the one who does everything. Our stress would be gone and we would cease to worry. A temporary struggle is always needed to get past a much longer one. We say it ourselves all the time, that Maharaj probably let something small go wrong so that we would stay safe from something worse.
And perhaps Satsang works the same way. It isn’t the destination that makes Satsang so beautiful, it’s the journey. Satsang is the one thing in life that can never be forced. We can be forced to understand or do plenty of worldly things, but nobody can be made to do Satsang. Growth looks different for everyone, and I believe that is the most beautiful part. It can take one person 5 years to reach the same understanding that took another person 15. But those 5 or 15 years will be filled with so much learning, so many failures, and so much experience that when you finally get there, you will have the Mahima and Samjan to carry you both to the same destination.
Joban Pagi wasn’t born a Bhakta. He became one after a life of theft and wrongdoing. Dada Khachar, on the other hand, became a Bhakt the second he laid eyes on Maharaj. Both are haribhakto we still talk about today, because Maharaj has his own way of making each person realize his Mahima. And it is no different now. There are prasangs of how, with a mere glance from Bapa, people have become the strongest of Satsangis after lives of addiction and deception, lives no one thought could change.
But what if we had it backwards? What if the destination never put us through the journey, and the journey was what prepared us for the destination? The end goal is only where we land. The journey is what changes us, as people and as satsangis, and it changes the way we see everything. So what if the destination was the growth all along, the change and understanding we picked up from everything we lived through? What if that is what Satsang has been about the whole time? Not the end goal we keep worrying over, but who we become while we walk toward it.
There is a difference, though, between the journey to a worldly destination and the journey in Satsang. Our worldly journey will always have another destination. The moment we reach one goal, there is another waiting right behind it. Satsang is somewhat the same, but it has one overarching goal, and that is Moksha, the very thing we all took this birth to achieve. Within that journey there are different ways of getting closer to that goal, whether it’s mukhpath, reading, or keeping up with our daily ahniks, but it is always one goal we are striving toward. And maybe that’s because this world calls for the next big thing at a pace faster than we can imagine, when all Satsang calls for is steadiness towards one thing.
Satsang will forever be the one thing in our lives that grounds us, keeps us humble, and reminds us that even in this fast paced world, we still have an outlet that asks us to just listen and take in instead of giving. It is the only thing that will give you more than you give it. Whatever you offer, it hands back 10-fold.
And yet, because of that steadiness, and because it stays even when we push it away, we turn it into a commodity we can use whenever we like. Think about it. There are millions of people in this world who have yet to attain Maharaj and Swami, and now that we have attained them in this lifetime, we have chosen the easy way out. We have chosen to follow the path of every other person in this world instead of the path we were chosen to be a part of. It took 8.64 billion births to get here. And now that we have been chosen to walk alongside Maharaj and Swami, shouldn’t they be the reason we wake up in the morning?
The next big thing will always go away, but Swami has been there the whole time with his hand out, just waiting for us to hold on. We keep forgetting his hand, yet he holds it out for us despite everything, waiting to bring us along with him. Every high we chased was tiny compared to what Maharaj and Swami give us, and we spent our lives running after something that asked for our everything and gave back not even a fraction of it.
But we only realize it when we are left with no good reason to get out of bed. One day we will have a last first day. A last hangout. No next thing to chase, and no strength left to chase the next high. And on that day, the only question that will matter is who is still standing there with us. Everything we chased will be gone, and none of it ever turned around to see if we were still behind it. But the one we kept putting off will be right where we left him, as if nothing had changed. And maybe the hardest part will be realizing he was never hard to find. We were just too busy.
Leave a Reply