Creativegarh Retreats

As you grow, evolve, becoming wiser, more loving, compassionate, aware and kinder, you’ll realise that you still cry - a lot.

But somewhere over the years, the texture of your tears has changed. The tears nowadays are happier, the molecules more joyous, the atoms less stinging, and the salt tastes a lot sweeter.

These are tears of a beautiful life - very different from the tears of younger years that were more from the pain you were going through. The tears of the 20s had a sharp sting of betrayal, abandonment, rejection, humiliation, and just plain anger at life. But the tears now have the caress of healing, the embrace of wholeness and the soft kiss of gratitude. They still do hurt at times, but nothing that a self-hug can’t cure.

The tears of the wonder years were of the scars that left indelible marks on your soul. But the tears of today are how you have turned those marks into tattoos that you wear with pride - once painful but now healed.

The tear stains of the past that have left scars are evidence that you have lived, endured, and healed - not that you’re broken or limited. Those tears were the kintsugi of the soul, not to be hidden, but those that made you more wholesome, beautifully imperfect and put together with love and resilience - still with a tender heart, knowing that it can be broken if dropped, but one that also knows that love, gratitude and forgiveness are the most potent glues in the world to mend anything that’s broken in our fragile lives.

Your tears and your scars are chapters in your book. They are not the final paragraph or the blurb on the back cover.

The teardrops that soaked pillows many years ago are the ones that have created the very ocean of happiness that has become your life. Those scars were roadmaps, showing the path you walked but not the journey you have to walk from here on. Your tears and scars tell the story of where you’ve been. They don’t dictate where you’re going.

Your soul isn’t defined by the wounds and tears of your life. It is defined by how you turn that pain into light. Your scars and wounds are where the light enters, and your tears are distress flares that get the light’s attention.

You had taken a hot shower, dabbed on the finest perfume in the heavens, and were ready to be reincarnated and walk into the homes of your two mothers - Gaia - mother earth and the womb of your mother. You were singing ‘my bags are packed and I am ready to go’, while having a last minute briefing from your angels and guides? And if you go back to that moment in cyclic time, what were you really carrying in your spiritual backpack?

No clothes for sure because you were wearing the five sheaths - koshas - the five instruments of life force - earth, water, fire, air, space. But your guides did pack the other 14 elements of your astral body, the only baggage of your past lives, if you may.

In an intricately sewn inside pocket of your backpack was your pre-birth intention - a pre-birth contract that you signed with the universe - a detailed outline of your purpose, your reason for being. But you can’t read this contract because it was written in invisible ink only to be made visible word by word as you mined your beautiful talents, gifts and purpose in the world and used it in the service of others. The appendix to this contract was your mission on the planet for this lifetime.

There were the soul contracts also with those whom you would encounter in this life as gifts, lessons, and tests. All to meet here again for a group hug after your and their missions on earth would be complete.

Also in your spiritual backpack was your syllabus for the lessons in this lifetime. A syllabus that was not meant to be read and the lessons that had to be learnt by overcoming the pain and suffering, not theoretically. Only then that lesson would reveal itself to you, but still in cryptic language for then a surprise test would see if you really have learnt it.

There was also a guidebook of intuition and the signs you will receive in your temporary visit to keep guiding you to follow your path. Many times these signs would come to you with no form or substance and you would need words to clothe them.

And finally there was a little note from the divine itself.

I am in you and your mission is to find me and manifest me through everything that you do. Tat tvam asi.

The ‘in-between’ is an interesting place to be. It’s that place that is right ‘in-between’ where you were and where you want to be, but you really have no idea where you want to be or where this journey is going to take you. Right now, nothing is making sense, and the safety of where you were is as alluring as the excitement of where you will be.

You know that something is happening, but you are not sure what it is. The uncertainty is making you fearful, and the conditioning of having everything happen in an instant this moment is getting you anxious.

But in all this, something feels right, something just feels right. You can’t put your finger on it, but you can feel it in your heart. You can see the signs like Tetris blocks just falling into place, the jigsaw solving itself.

You can feel it in your breath. You are breathing slower, deeper and calmer, and the things that used to take your breath away earlier now give way to tranquillity. You know something cosmic-sized is shifting in the universe in your favour, and you can feel a galaxy move in your cells a tad too often.

The ‘in-between’ your old life and your new life is a sacred space that needs to be honoured and protected. It’s stillness and action seducing each other for some stolen moments of lustful joy. It’s the moment when the caterpillar is not a butterfly yet, and the butterfly is not a caterpillar anymore but it’s still not a butterfly. It’s that moment when the drop of water is somewhere between being a river and being a cloud.

This in-between space may feel scary, it may feel overwhelming, it may feel unbearable. But in the feelings of gloom is a ray of joy, your inner wisdom knowing that you are exactly where you are meant to be.

Accept. Surrender. Trust the uncertainty. It’s all happening for you. Allow whatever has to emerge for you to emerge at its own pace. Don’t fast-track the universe and don’t put dreams on aphrodisiacs.

Roots need space to grow. Flowers need the right environment to bloom. Words need the right moment when they become sentences, for sentences to become lines, for lines to become paragraphs, and for new stories to rewrite themselves on blank slates.

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Everyone talks about the magic of giving, of seva, of unconditional service, but no one talks about the magic of receiving.

How is the cycle of joy ever going to complete if you don’t find joy in receiving? Receiving with love is completing the circle of giving.

You are conditioned to give, give and give, but you are told that wanting to receive is a form of greed and lack, wanting itself is akin to selfishness, needing is a sign of weakness, and simply asking is what makes you vulnerable and powerless.

But what if receiving was never about greed but about divine grace? What if it was the universe’s way of thanking you for all that you have done, for all your devotion, your relentless service, your unconditional love? What if it’s an answer to your prayers, it’s a manifestation of your intents?

But when the universe sends you a gift, you shut the door in the face of the abundance that came knocking.

Giving is our natural instinct, but we need to learn how to receive, how to let abundance feel at home with us. We need to ask, what is it that stops us from receiving?

Maybe you are more comfortable giving because giving allows you to stay in control. Maybe receiving triggers the unworthiness wound saying you don’t deserve this. Maybe you have been conditioned to believe that people with hordes stacked in banks are untrustworthy. Maybe receiving triggers a guilt that now you have to give back. Maybe receiving makes you rich and you’ll now have to let go of your self-pity story that has become your identity and a safety net.

Receiving requires us to soften. To let others in. To allow love and grace into our lives. To allow the universe to flow through you. To let the original goodness of the world land in our hearts, not just pass through our hands. It is us honouring the love that we are being offered.

Giving and receiving are a full cycle. Giving is the exhale. Receiving is the inhale. And when you stop one, it’s fatal for our wellbeing.

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There are two beautiful words in the Mool Mantar that can quietly change the way you live your life.

Nirbhau. Nirvair. Without fear. Without hate or enmity.

These two words are said as the description of God. Of course God is fearless and of course God would have no enemies but Gurbani is never merely interested in describing a distant God sitting somewhere in the clouds. It is always doing something more intimate than that, almost like holding a mirror to us. Making us realise that we are the part of the whole and our true nature is also to be fearless and hateless.

But as life moves from the womb to the tomb, we acquire fear and hate as we lose the wholeness and live in a space of separation - from ourselves, from life, from others, from divinity.

Fear begins the moment we forget our vastness and reduce ourselves to something small, fragile, threatened, limited. The moment we begin to believe that we are only this body, this identity, this story, this role, this little bundle of memory and insecurity trying to survive in a dangerous world, fear becomes inevitable. But when you taste your own completeness, fear loses its grip. Because when you stop living as a mere fragment of the whole, there is nothing really left to protect. Wholeness is naturally fearless. Your deepest nature does not fear the way your wounded ego does.

And then comes Nirvair - without enmity, without hatred.

Hatred too is born of separation. Of me and you, mine and yours, us and them. But there is another deeper layer to this. Quite often, what we hate outside is what we have not made peace with inside. The judgement we throw outward usually has roots in an unhealed part within ourselves. What we reject in others often mirrors something we fear, shame, suppress, or deny in our own being.

Which is why self-love is not a side project on the spiritual path but central to it.

When you become more whole within yourself, you begin to accept yourself more deeply, love yourself more truthfully, The more complete you become, the less hate makes sense.

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