Feelings are all that we have to convey love.
Love cannot be seen nor touched physically, but it can certainly be felt.
Words are powerful, they can retain feelings forever and transmit them to the reader if and when both (the writer and the reader) are at the same wavelength. When we read something that has been written from one’s own anubhav (personal experience, lived life) it has the power to affect us and aspire us repeatedly. This is the magical power of the words (Gurbani – words of our Gurus) contained in Guru Granth Sahib. When we gather together in sangat and sing these words of love, praise or separation our souls feel a similar longing. When we sing or read about words that heed us to lead self-reflective lives, words that urge us to live in this world but not to be of the world we too feel the need to follow such a path. When we read words of praise about our gurus and holy saints and their lives and how they can help us on our path we too begin to thirst for the company of such enlightened souls.

Love messages.

Words have the power to transmit these.
We are blessed to have such messages whether they are in the form of gurbani, lekhs or just simple heartfelt messages from aspiring souls.
Following are three such messages.
Messages from those ‘children’ who have been coming to sangat for over twenty years now. I guess they are not ‘children’ any more, but they have grown up in the divine aura of sangat and convey their heartfelt messages to the younger children or to those who are new.

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ    

Message 1

To all my brothers and sisters,

A very warm and loving Fateh to all. I hope everyone is in high spirits.
A few months ago, one of my dear Sangat sisters shared a passage from a series she had read entitled “God and Guru are Identical” by J.P. Vaswani, which talked about the importance of having a spiritual guide, a master, a teacher, an enlightened soul to guide us to God. The following paragraph touched me and got me thinking:
“until the longing for God wakes up within our hearts, we are not truly awake. We are asleep. We walk, we talk, we work, we eat, we wake, we sleep in a sleep which is a deeper sleep. How may we awake from the deep slumber of the senses and the mind? Awakening hath come to different men in different ways. We, most of us, need someone to awaken us, an evolved soul, an awakened one, an enlightened one. Such a one is the Guru (Saint). The Guru is the great Awakener. “The Guru”, Sadhu Vaswani says, “is the lift to raise us to the heights, the lift which may take little ones to the Kingdom of God.”
Whether we are aware of it or not, we all have the blessing of having ‘an enlightened one’ to guide us and awaken us. In fact, we have not only one, but TWO: Bauji and Mataji. This is truly rare and something to think about. They may not be here on Earth in a physical form for us to meet with, but they are eternally by our side watching over us, attending every samagam, and showering us with their love and blessings.
Some people travel to far and remote places or spend their entire lives in search of an enlightened one and in search of Sadh Sangat, but we didn’t have to do that. All I had to do was sit in a car while my parents drove us to Sangat. Truly, there was almost no effort required on my part…I just had to show up! I imagine this would be the case for many of you as well. We all know that we’re privileged to have had Sadh Sangat from a young age, but how much do we REALLY know it? And how much do we actually appreciate the time we spend in Sangat?
I can’t deny that when I was younger the highlight of going to samagams was knowing that I was going to be spending the next 72 hours with my friends. I should have been excited about spending 72 hrs in a divine environment, but that was more of a secondary thought at the time. In reality though, every moment we spend in Sangat is precious. There is no guarantee that the next samagam won’t be our last so we have to make every moment matter. We may have earned a spot in Sangat through our previous karma, but we are not ‘entitled’ to it and still have to work to maintain it. Our time in Sangat is a gift because it is time we spend feeding our soul. Without it, we’re about as good as a dead man walking.
You might be thinking ‘ya ya, we already know all of this…why are you telling us this stuff again?’ so let me set the scene and explain why I have shared these thoughts with you: A young man in his early twenties immigrates from India to Canada with his parents. After completing his university education in Canada, the young man moves to another city to look for work for a few months until he is able to enroll in the police force. Overall, he is described as a very happy, easy-going and fun-loving person who stayed out of trouble. One evening though, he goes out with a friend of his who was probably not the best kind of Sangat to keep, never to return home again. He is found days later, murdered and stuffed in the trunk of a car. Shock and sadness fill his family as they search for answers to this tragedy.
The irony (if there is any), is that only a few weeks after this young man’s murder, his parents happened to walk into a community centre where his mom volunteered with new immigrants, and where we were setting up for our samagam. It was a ‘chance’ encounter since we have been holding samagams there for many many years and since Auntieji volunteered there at least once a week, yet it was their first time ever meeting any of us and definitely their first times attending a samagam. That weekend, Auntie and Uncle attended the full samagam and were blown away by the love and support they received and the strength of the vibrations they felt. That weekend was pivotal in Auntie’s reconciliation with her grief and the loss of her son. In Auntieji’s own words that weekend, she said, “you know, yes, I have lost one son…but now I feel like I’ve gained dozens of kids. This is the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me”. This weekend, we will be holding Sangat at his parents’ house in memory of this young man’s death 2 years ago.
We’ve been given everything – a divine path to the Kingdom of God, TWO enlightened Mahapurakhs to guide us along and keep us awakened, Sadh Sangat to keep us in good company while we make this journey, Samagams which rejuvenate us and keep our ‘tankees’ full, and enough Love and Simran to feed our souls. We have no excuses not to partake in this divine journey. Make the most of it.

Dhan Guru Nanak. Dhan Guru Nanak. Dhan Guru Nanak.
CB

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ    

Words are certainly powerful, however they are also very slippery. It is not easy to get down on paper what you are feeling. We have to be extremely careful of what we say and how we say them,if we are to convey the message we feel. Take a minute to see the following 2 minute clip on the Power Of Words before you read the second message.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Hzgzim5m7oU
The second message begins with this struggle but then manages beautifully to give us a glimpse of the love and admiration this soul feels for sadh sangat.

Message 2

I sat down to begin to write something, but felt that what was being written or said was not quite good enough to share with such innocent souls, so I diligently kept erasing my words and began starting over, and over again. Somehow through this constant repetition, the following few phrases managed to emerge, but, it is made up of such limited choice of words that I am not sure it was able to grasp the intent behind it. I sincerely doubt it will ever be good enough or conveyed in the manner that it should have been expressed. I ask you to please forgive me in advance for any inadequacies, in thought or in writing, on my part;

Young souls are extremely blessed to have been privileged with the Love-Gift of Sadh-Sangat, in whatever shape or form It has Manifested in their life. They are very, very fortunate. Their desire, no matter how small or large, to understand and to begin to swim in this deep, priceless Ocean of spiritual Love has come to fruition because of Divine Grace and Love. May this Divinity remain with them throughout their existence, life after life. May they be relentless in exploring the inner depths of their Souls, and fall deeply in Love with, and be Wondrously fascinated over and over and over again with Waheguru and His Beloved. I pray that they also share their beautiful mystifying spiritual Affluence, silently and with utmost humility, with anyone that passes along in their path.

Anonymous

The last message is one of self-reflection, one that questions and answers the necessity for each and every one of us to put in the required sustained effort to make sure that we take full advantage of the blessings showered upon us by the gurus. While it is their grace that we humbly pray for, our efforts too are monumental in our spiritual journey. This urges us to aspire to reach the ‘next level.

Karo yatan jeh hoe mehrvaana

Message 3

Potential. Destination.
What is it with these words? We hear them in sports, in education, in careers. We hear them in dreams, in aspirations, in ambitions.
I want to “maximize my potential”. I want to travel to a “tropical destination”. But just as we – or at least I do this – so just as I quickly skim over very meaningful words in Gurbani, assuming I know what they’re saying, often we do the same with very meaningful English words, because we’re so used to hearing them in clichés, and contexts that cheapen what these words really mean.
Let’s start with the word Potential. (We`ll save destiny for another blog post)
Potential has a dictionary definition, but let’s ignore that for now. Let’s think of the word, and think about what we know about it. I don’t know about you, but to me, I think of “doing the best I can do, being the best I can be.” It’s the word we use to describe the “distance” that exists between who we are today and who we could possibly be.
This is all well and good. But we’re missing something VERY CRUCIAL in this bare bones definition. We can go much deeper. So let’s try to do that with this word “Potential”.
The first part of the word is “potent”, and adjective. For something to be potent, it means that when it’s exposed to a certain environment, a reaction takes place. If it is sensitive to a catalyst, and is exposed to a catalyst, then a transformation occurs, and the “thing” in question is now different than it was before the reaction. It’s like making your cheese pizza with a spicy sauce. 😉 It’s kin of the same, but somehow it’s just been made better.
Without harping on words too much, I think we all know where I’m going with this. Bauji’s written 6 english lekhs and 132 punjabi lekhs, all of which either talk about the sangat we keep, the simran and seva we do, and how to avoid doubt, delusions, and bad thoughts and company. We’ve heard about experiments on what happens to the molecular makeup of water when exposed to positive music, negative music, and everything in between. Depending on our environments and our company, changes can — and as far as I’m concerned, they DO – take place.
So what’s this all got to do with “potential”? Oftentimes, whether it’s pressure from our parents or our teachers, or our bosses, we’re told that we should be maximizing our potential in school, at work, and in sports. We know what that ends up meaning. Study for longer hours. Practice your three-point shot more. Show up early, and network with your coworkers and bosses. Put in overtime. All these things can cause a positive change in your abilities, and can “take you to the next level”
So how can we “maximize our potential” in sangat? In spirituality? We need to expose our spiritual selves to environments that foster these TRANSFORMATIONAL changes. We need to study more hours, practice more spiritual three-pointers, so that we, too, can reach “the next level”.
And we’re already so close! First of all, we have our Sadh Sangat. We have not one, but TWO spiritual teachers in Mataji and Bauji. And then, biggest of ALL, the King of All Kings, the Master of the Universe, the Eternal Message, Dhan Guru Granth Sahib Ji, our beloved Gurbani, the love letters of 6 Gurus and 31 of the greatest saints and bhagats this world has ever seen!!! Our Beloved Guru!!! How LUCKY can someone get???
It’s like we’ve been told there’s billions and billions of dollars of gold somewhere. Then we’ve been given thousands of motivated friends who want to help us find that gold. Then we’ve been given 2 Sherpas (2 guides) who know precisely where that gold is, and can take us there.. THEN we’ve even been given the map with all of the warnings, motivations, and secrets we need to find it. We have it ALLL in our hands!
We just need to be dedicated to the route. We need to be dedicated to the map and to our guides. We need to study the map. We need to know what to watch out for, and how to protect ourselves against the things that will inevitably try to hurt us. We need to develop a relationship with our journey. We must take support in Sadh Sangat, listen to the instructions of our Mahapurakhs… our Beloved Mahapurkhs who gave us sooooo much love and inspiration; who led us to the feet of our Guru, our Enlightener, our Remover of Darkness, Guru Granth Sahib Ji. We need to read and try to understand and implement the lessons of Gurbani in our lives… We need to pray for the strength to undertake all of these blessed blessed activities; pray for the protection against our own egos and the other evils that may bring us down.

Then – and only then – will we BEGIN to maximize our spiritual potential.

Dhan Guru Nanak
Dhan Guru Nanak
Dhan Guru Nanak

The Divine Guru is the Image of peace, truth and wisdom. The Divine Guru is the Philosopher’s Stone – touching it, one is TRANSFORMED.
Touching the philosopher’s stone, they become the philosopher’s stone, which TRANSFORMS lead into gold; O Lord, they become pleasing to your mind.
The Guru is the Philosopher’s Stone; by His touch, iron is TRANSFORMED into gold.
Philosopher’s stone produces another philosopher’s stone i.e. from Guru emerges disciple and the same disciple eventually becomes a virtuous guru.
I am sacrifice unto such Holy Congregation (which brings about such transformation)
JB

My sincere thanks to all the offerings of these loving messages. Hopefully more of you will also share some loving thoughts that aspire us to continue on the road less travelled. It is easy to get distracted – often we learn to fly again on the wings of others until we can soar again?
Guru ang sang
Warmest Nanak Love

ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ   ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ  ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ