Gadzookz is always there, smiling at me while I goof up the umpteenth time. Only now have I realized the strange relationship that we share. Gadzookz always overpowers my puny little ego which gets in the way unnecessarily. It is silly to watch this miserable ego of mine putting up such a brave face and pitching itself against someone as powerful as Gadzookz. And to think it was Gadzookz who actually enabled my scaled down personality to really exist and have a ball all this time! It is because Gadzookz has the power of love... love that flows like a mountain river, sparkling in a torrential current. Endless, unconditional and therefore, non-physical.

Suffice it to say that He appeared with a confession one day. Contrite with emotion, he said the world is full of mysteries yet to be solved. Sadly, we wouldn't believe, holding on to things only perceptible to our over - stimulated senses. We arrogantly behave as if we know all that there is to know. Anything beyond the grasp of our perverse intellect is shrugged away. But I had a chance. Somehow, I had opened up a teeny weeny hole through which I barely took a peek into that other world, and here Gadzookz smiled, because He was the one who spotted me from the other side!

“The Tao that can be described
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be spoken
is not the eternal Name.
Look for it, and it can't be seen.
Listen for it, and it can't be heard.
Grasp for it, and it can't be caught.
Approach it and you will not see a beginning;
Follow it and there will be no end.

Only when the Tao grasps us,**
can we hope to understand all this...”

Hence my life no longer conforms to any sluggish norm conceived by a still imperfect world, yet-to-be-perfected society, the predictable methods of unpredictable conformism. Gadzookz remains the testimony that this is true. It had to be Someone or Something that could cock-a-snook at our tried and tested logic. Logic gives way finally, Thank God! And then, this growing detachment with the world's stupid obsessions. Obsessions rooted in FEAR. The fear that things will end. There is no room for despondency. It is all about the mirth of a fulfilled heart that makes me challenge at the weary opinions surrounding me. See?

“Spare the rod and spoil the child.
Spare the word and spoil the idea.
Have you ever lifted your eyes
beyond that book
You hold so dear
to look at the world
and see,
that your fear of the Lord
has turned into love?”

Gadzookz has me cornered. Ultimately it is Gadzookz who calls all the shots but the irony remains. Gadzookz wants to be me sometimes but I succumb to an inevitable hiatus. My body still casts a shadow because of a breach of separation in identity rooted in my innermost core. There is that final skepticism. Crossing that frontier is sacrilegious. Gadzookz always pegs the hurdle higher than I think I could climb, egging me on to a greater sky. He appears, sometimes as a friend and sometimes through my words i.e., sometimes as matter or sometimes as thought.

“There is a word. Only one word…
misused, misunderstood, meaningless.
One single word of three letters…
Starting with S and ending with X,
That is why we search for Love
And end up with hex.”

Gadzookz lives in another dimension. That state of mind is unconditionally changeable. No gravity, no ageing. Everything just behaves the way one WILLS it to be, but that is still a long way. Sometimes we visit that place by night but we aren't able to stick out there because of inertia and we have not exhausted all our possibilities here as yet. Gadzookz has the power to take over, completely but who wants to become such a nincompoop and turn things topsy-turvy?

*                 *                 * 

“How does one become a butterfly?
You must want to fly so much that
You are willing to give up being a caterpillar!”

I spent the day with Anirvan and Ashish. Ashish who had just hit the high seas with a job exploring oil in South-East Asia while Anirvan slogged at an Info-tech company in Bangalore. We were singing inside the car while it was pouring outside, another typical grey and gloomy Shillong day. Samrat was trying his level best to sound like Kishore Kumar. It was obvious that my dear friends had never spared a thought about becoming butterflies and there I was, wondering whether becoming a butterfly was a really good idea.

For those rare few who have been offered a glimpse of the butterfly's world, it is still a difficult choice. How can one transform into a butterfly while the rest remain crawling behind? Then one is stuck helplessly between the two worlds. Neither a butterfly nor a caterpillar. Or a little bit butterfly but mostly caterpillar.

“For a very long time
you are living in a shell,
all alone and scared
to try out the wings
you have grown
inside.

You nearly flew off
but they clipped your wings
and you decided
your life
is dreadfully mundane.

Compromise but why?
burning like a candle flame
spreading light
and sometimes
flickering in a restless wind.”

Can you brave the flight? You don't even know how, you don't even know when life's sudden turns may find you confronting such a question. To go away, to fly away into an unknown fantasy world, where everything is right and everything is easy.

“Familiar thoughts of you
leads to a sudden memory
that each one of us
is a star, visible
in the mystery of darkness.
Each of that
shining piece of light
is a reminder
of our destiny,
bright and endless
as ecstatic
as the twinkling and beyond.”

We are nearing an equilibrium from where we will take off so we cannot say to what skies we will fly. The wounds of this Earth will finally heal because of the love we have already begun to share. It is not a completely voluntary process. One rises a little by one's efforts and then Something Divine takes over. Something that is taking us towards a Oneness we have known only spiritually. Anything is possible once you realize the sheer power of Oneness. But now you will ask, what is this Oneness?

Oh yes! THAT is the contemporary problem. You are meant to teach yourself! What is it that you want? Real bad?? Do you dare to go in search of it? Or are you still controlled by market driven family forces, waiting for time to play its contemptible tricks??

“Memory cells of my brain
let go of the tragic life behind
and remember
the melody of my spirit!
A body and a soul
with this mind in between
and The Dream...
a dream filled with joy,
atmosphere of a thousand flowers
blooming in my heart.
Drops of longing from the eyes
crystal clear mystic world
with faint forgotten fragrances,
splashing the waves of inward reflection
and solitude revels
in the brand new rhythm.
Greet the dawn
with a bated breath
and awed suspense,
culmination of desires
fulfillment of our being
and the taking off
into Freedom.”

Laboring with love, not working. Loving someone, not just getting married, and CREATING a heaven on earth, not just reproducing babies. As long as you want Somebody else to do it for you, you will be stuck. Somebody else's learning, somebody else's magazine, somebody else's movie, somebody else's lover. Where's your own? Your own world? Your own mind in your own computer?

To err is not really human. Only for some superficial differences that evoke so much distrust in our minds. Waking up to enlightenment, this epoch requires us to change ourselves radically and carefully re-think the ten thousand assumptions that still ramble in our sub-conscious. Only to allow our minds to settle. Calm and protected from conflict. Self re-assured from the die-hard belief in suffering, in weakness of any sort or despair at the inevitability of anything.

This new age that is becoming us, is an invitation. We only have to CHOOSE. All the resources, all the methods and the means, even the goals are right Here and right Now. There are millions of experiences with any emotion, but I guess we are too hung up about that single one - which marks the culmination of a personality. You have to grow in order to accommodate that forever kind of love. It takes time and a little pain if you are not too willing to stretch your heart and understand. We sometimes want to rush it because we feel so hungry! But that hunger can never be satiated. That is why we can go on and on. It is neither pleasure nor pain. It is free, it is the real stuff and the essential ingredient by which we are all made, only arranged differently. It is within us, it is without us, right here! We are being filled with it!!!

Touche`

“Surfaces of our being
that touch,
vibrations of our feelings
that touch,
excitement of our hearts
that touch,
ripples of our souls
that touch,
reflections of our love
that touch,
a longing to be one
that touch,
life again in dreams
transformed,
by that touch.”

(.*_*.)

** A popular interpretation of The Tao - te -Ching says.. “when we grasp the Tao..”