Finding your way

The unstoppable growth of a baby amazes us

It seems to me that a life has a particular purpose for each person and the purpose is to get back home! A bit like a game of rounders or ludo or snakes and ladders, there is an end goal although we often don't see what it is but we are propelled forward by the tempo of the game.  That once teeny tiny  baby who started life in a space ship is propelled forwards by some unstoppable force to become the next stage.  And we are all complicit in the growth game, we hold her up to let her get the feel of her legs, we sing and chat to her, making noises which she begins to replicate.  We, the old grandparents are seen clapping our hands and blowing bubbles, Grandpa wiggles his eyebrows and can't resist just a little tickle.  Communication is life and she responds by smiling and chatting in her own way back at us.  We all feel good and if for any reason one of us doesn't feel so great, we all work hard to get back to good as quick as can be.  She has a sprouting of hair now and several teeth, can sit up on her own, stand and turn and wave spoons about.  Her first birthday is just over a month away and we are astounded at how the time has flown.

 www.brahmakumaris.org/uk/live

So, what do we want for her?  A good life, that is for sure but we also want to equip her with all that she needs to find her way over and round the pitfalls which are bound to come.  She, at the moment is like a little brook rising at the top of a mountain which will find a course down to the sea.  We are probably in sight of the sea and with our friends of the same age are beginning to wave goodbye to pride in our figures, pride in our small talents, pride in our achievements.  We are beginning to get the scent of the sea and funnily enough there is an excitement rather like the excitement you get as you round the last corner on the way to your seaside holiday, a sense that what lies ahead is going to be wonderful.   But just as going on holiday needs you to be equipped with your bathing things, your bucket and spade and maybe nowadays your wetsuit, you need to be equipped with knowledge from those who have taken our sort of journey before, to help you step fearlessly into that forgotten home.  So, we look to the wise who can explain what is needed and have already dipped their toe into that universal ocean.  It is the greatest of all luck to find someone who can shine a light on our questioning and answer our concerns.  

If you have questions too about leaving the limits of your life for something bigger, then come and hear from some marvellous people this Saturday, come to Global Cooperation House (which will surprise you by its hugeness and hospitality) or click on the link for the webcast.  It will be worth your while.  I hope that what I hear will be something I can pass on to our now not so small granddaughter.  Hope to see you there or hope that you will see us via the internet

What we do when you go home!

Even the egg tries a hat on!

Waiting for your return

Do you wonder what we do when you go home?  Of course we are sad to see you go or sad not to see you because you are so far away BUT there are a few things which cheer us up.  First we meditate madly to remind ourselves that we aren't just sad old grandparents.  Then we might go to the cinema to fill the other quieter evenings but apart from that we have a few other jolly ways of sort of reminding ourselves that you were here even though you are now there.  we pick up all the leftover bits, the hats and odd socks and put the hats in places where they can remind us of YOU or you or you or even those who haven't been here for a while.  And of course we talk about you and how well you are and how brilliant of course!  We do a sort of round of the family, a little worry here, a little smile here, a getting out of the diaries and deciding what we will do until you come again.  The one allowable bit of bliss for a pair of grandparents whose children and grandchildren have gone home is to find the odd socks and get them in pairs.  There are still a few odd ones hanging around but if nobody claims them, they will be tossed into the rubbish!

Taliban pumpkin 

                                 

GETTING FREE!

Do you think you are free?  I thought I was free, after all I'm not a client of  HM Prison Service.  I seem to be free to get up when I like, to choose what I will eat, what I will watch, what I will wear and who I will see and what I will say.  Isn't that meant to be freedom?    

Father Laurence Freeman

 But is it real freedom?  After all, mostly what you do and eat and watch and wear and who you see are all part of the identity of YOU the chooser and being the chooser you stamp your own sentence on almost everything.  Of course there is a freedom of sorts in this ability to choose what you do but it is worth watching what happens in your own heart and mind when things cross your chosen identity.  That is when you begin to see if and how you might be trapped in the web of your own creation.  

Sister Jayanti

Take your sense of being right about something, how do you feel when a person disagrees with you?

Take  having completed a task to your own satisfaction or performed what you thought was a good and kind action and nobody notices!  Are you a bit miffed? 

Take someone doing you what you consider to be a wrong, do you understand their point of view?

Take the feeling you get when you have been rejected or rebuffed?  

Are you ever jealous? 

All these things and other feelings knock on the door of our identity and quite often we just shut the door more tightly and shut these things out.  

Do we like these feelings?        NO      But nor do we like to feel threatened in our sense of ourselves.

Jeremy Sinclair

So, how do we start to dissolve the barriers to real freedom?  I am as interested as you because although I am not stuck in a physical prison, I know when I am imprisoned by my idea of me.  

I do know some remarkable people who have the key to freedom and here is an invitation to you to come and hear them and discover more about getting free.  They  will be sharing the sense of freedom which comes from discovering your identity as a universal being.  Come and join me and others on November 18th at Global Cooperation House in Willesden and you may find your own key to freedom is only a little way away, in fact it may just be in your inside pocket!

If you can't actually be with us, you can listen to them on the Brahma Kumaris website 

Register for this event 

BK Mina Karawadra