United as Ardhanareeshwara

Sequel to WITH GRATITUDE TO ARDHANAREESVARA & SURRENDERING TO ARDHANAREESVARA

“Dear God! I can’t live my life in any other way,
For all my cells gave their best, every night and day
My time lived on earth can never be excelled
For there I was Thee – in every breath exhaled!”

– SURRENDERING TO ARDHANAREESVARA

Can we really learn to live our lives without any regrets? Is it possible to live not just every day but every millionth of a second with that kind of awareness? Can we really inhale every breath filled with supreme love? For what else but LOVE can make us so attuned to His divine LAWS? What else but LOVE can make us accept His every command? What else but LOVE can empower us to create ever-new LIFE?

So what is love – the chemistry that works when you see your mate? Or maybe the affection you shower on your parents and children? Or perhaps it is the warmth you feel for your friends and neighbors? But all these forms of love are specific – limited by space and time. This limited love is vain and can desert us at a moments notice. An unknown writer puts it so beautifully –

Love me not for comely grace,
For my pleasing eye or face,
Nor for any outward part,
No, nor for my constant heart, –
For those may fail, or turn to ill,
So thou and I shall sever:
Keep therefore a true woman’s eye,
And love me still, but know not why –
So hast thou the same reason still
To doat upon me ever!

The only way to love is to love without limiting our reasons. The only emotion that really rules our life is Love – either in its positive aspect or in its negative aspect as hatred (for even to hate somebody you need to be involved with that individual!) The only way to lead your life into light is by loving without looking for reasons.

Just imagine, if our child were to ask us for our blood what would our answer be? Can we choose between acceptance and creativity at this juncture – accepting to die by giving away our blood will give life for our child that is begging for blood? So would that be the right solution. If so what about us – do we as one of God’s creations need to die unnecessarily? Shouldn’t we protect ourselves? So can we refuse to give blood and allow the new creation to die?

But the divine creator has already answered our question! And how! The answer appears every time a child is born! The mother doesn’t have to die in order to give life to her baby. Why? Because the baby is a part of her! Every mother would passionately proclaim to her child – YOU ARE A PART OF ME! There is no way she would identify you as separate from her. So, it isn’t even our child but a part of our own self that needs our lifeblood! We are capable of perceiving ourselves both in the receiving end as well as in the giving end of life!

So the problem this world is now facing is a problem of limiting its identity! Do I see myself as a Hindu or a Christian? Am I an Indian or a Pakistani? Does the river belong to the people of Karnataka or Tamil Nadu? Even in our daily lives we face this identity crisis. Every newly wed bride thinks – Do I identify myself with my parents or my in-laws? Is my involvement to be with just my husband or his family too? The groom too feels this crisis – Do I identify myself with my mother or my wife?

In this process of trying to identify ourselves, we begin to limit ourselves, compartmentalizing ourselves in the name of freedom and independence. We don’t realize that Love is an expanding circle that is capable of engulfing this entire universe! You don’t have to take away the love from your mother in order to love your mother-in-law nor does loving your daughter-in-law negate your love for your daughter. In that aspect what the world needs today are not engineers, doctors or computer professionals but human beings who can identify themselves with this whole world!

If our left hand were bleeding would our right hand wait for the left hand to ask for assistance? Does our body part need to ask for something before it is given? Yet why do we insist on waiting for people to beg us for forgiveness before granting them pardon? Wouldn’t the quality of our forgiveness greatly be enhanced if it were given without the asking? Won’t our love surely be purer by the mere fact that it was given without expecting anything in return? After all whom are we forgiving? Whom are we loving? Our Own selves! We are doing this for ourselves and not for anybody else. I forgive you because it is my nature to forgive. I love you because it is my nature to love. So I’m the giver because I’m giving you my love, but I am also the receiver for loving is my nature and leading my life according to my nature will make me content!

A prayer by St.Francis of Assisi reads –

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, let me sow pardon;
Where there is doubt, let me sow faith;
Where there is despair, let me sow hope;
Where there is discord, let me sow unity;
Where there is darkness, let me sow light and
Where there is sadness, let me sow joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not seek so much
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying to the little self
That we are born to eternal life.

By perceiving myself as both the giver and the receiver, I see that every time I console I am being consoled; every time I understand I am being understood; and every cell I love, loves me in return! By allowing this divine love to flow through me, both aspects of creativity and acceptance merge to be one divine energy and unite within me as the one divine inseparable form – Ardhanareesvara! There I remain United as Ardhanareesvara.

Written by Gita Krishna Raj  |  Published in infinithoughts in February 2003

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