Finding Sangat

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