Who is the Guru?
In my working with systems, I have realized that individual wishes, aspirations, or even suffering is an extension of something greater: a system. What is a system? A family is a system, a house is a system, a refrigerator is a system, the human body is a system. Everything that has parts where each part is given due recognition for its position and function. For example, we may sometimes like to sit in our bedrooms and have dinner or stand in our kitchen and talk to a friend for hours. But will that make our bedrooms real, assigned places to eat and our kitchen a lounge for phone calls? If you don’t have the answer, think about it. And if my question doesn’t make sense to you then ask yourself: what exactly happens when you eat in the same place, sleep, write angry texts to your ex’s, have sex, browse through instagram or facebook and engage in endless consuming conversations. Well, the energy of the place becomes confused. A certain kind of balance is compromised. You go through insomnia, body ache, heaviness around your shoulders and back. While it is not important to have large spaces to distribute different rooms for different tasks, many of us are perhaps already experiencing the above symptoms especially during these limiting times. But my point was not about how we can define spaces based on their positions and functions and bring harmony (maybe I’ll keep that for another day), but to simply make you aware that the energy of a system is impacted and influenced by elements known and unknown. We don’t realize that in our everyday life we are moving about, living lives as if we are the owners of our individual will. But is that the case? We are also constantly living unconsciously while being part of a larger system. We are focusing on our painful shoulders— that’s connected to the hand, the chest, the head (a system). We are focusing on how our food tastes — that’s connected to the ingredients, the utensils in which it was cooked, people who cooked. We think of our lovers and friends and how they have loved us or hurt us — they too aren’t just individuals but are connected to their parents, their siblings, their culture, nation, ancestries that go back hundreds of generations residing in their genes and DNA. We all are a part of a collective that we are ‘almost’ aware of but not quite aware.
When you say your prayers and think of God as this individual entity, when you look at the sun and think of your salutations to this all powerful star, when you see yourself in the mirror and wonder of all the things you would want to improve about yourself — who exactly are you seeing? That God is a collection of what generations have believed in and put their own energies into. Though it looks like one singular image, the idea is a result of many people’s collective belief and practice. An idea becomes strong as well as real in nature because a system operates behind it — not an individual. People’s groups are a system too. Be it race, tribe, civilizations, cultures. Similarly the sun is a part of a greater solar system and a greater galaxy of stars. It’s position determines its function and inclusion into our planetary existence. If other stars were not placed the way they are placed in the sky, and if the sun didn’t have the relative required distance from planet earth, it wouldn’t have been important to us. So for the sun to be important to our survival, all other stars must equally belong to our system. They too need your salutation. When you are looking at yourself and making a list of pointers that require improvisations — be it about your appearance, the way you speak or your skills — who are you trying to look down and improve? Do you not come from your parents (even if you may not like them)? Does your skin not resemble your father’s, your tooth-lines and lips your mother’s, your anger your grandfather’s. Do you and your siblings not swear in similar ways when you fight? Does your body not smell of the place you come from? Do you not breathe like your ancestors, walk like your tribesmen did, sing songs (and give your heart to them) that come from familiar spaces. If this is difficult for you to swallow, you must take a long deep breath and think: what would it take for me to move from this question “Who Am I” to “Who are WE?” You will slowly come to realize that no problem is ever individual in nature. Each problem is a way by which every system tries to balance itself and there-in, within that very system, lies the solution.
To all arguments about the existence or non-existence of God, I always say: I don’t know whether God exists or not, but I know ‘system does.’ My individual willingness to accept it or not will not affect its factuality. It exists and it operates through orders that will always be unknown to me at a deeper, greater level. Each time, I feel I have cracked it, something more profound will emerge and humble me. Therefore, I bow down to it and take it as my Guru. For each time, I look up, it will only dispel the darkness through whatever pain or lightness it brings unto me.
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