Mother Earth is my first guru. She taught me to hold lovingly in my heart all those who trample me, scratch me, and hurt me, just as she does. She taught me to give them my best, remembering that their acts are normal and natural from their standpoint.

Lord Dattātreya

I was once standing in the Mansā Devī temple, surrounded by the clash of gongs, conches, bells, chanting, and drumbeats during the aarti, when I suddenly blanked out and heard in my mind in Hindi, “Jo ma bhed bhav kare, vo ma nahi hai.” (“The one who discriminates between her children is no true mother.”)

In that moment I couldn’t understand what was being said. Years later, while studying in Scotland, I found myself isolated and withdrawn as I’ve always been, seldom leaving my dorm. On the rare days when I ventured out, I would sit in a meadow under one particular tree. One afternoon, as I sat there watching the leaves rustle in the wind as my hair on my cheeks, children playing, elders walking with their canes, the endless green spread all around, I zoned out again. That peace can never be put to words. And in that stillness, I heard the same words and it suddenly occurred to me, the only mother who truly makes no distinction is Mother Earth. Even the goddesses, bound by cosmic law, give according to karma, but Earth does not withhold. She feeds, holds, and shelters without a condition or question. Her motherhood is unconditional.

She is the same for all of us. Sinner, saint, able-bodied, disabled, capable, incapable, successful, unsuccessful, and all the other mind-made differences you can think of. She doesn’t differentiate. When it rains, it falls on everyone. Everyone can relish the fruits and vegetables she so bountifully gives. Everyone can sit under the shade of trees. Everyone can drink from rivers, walk on her soil, breathe the air that rises from her forests. And equally, everyone can be washed away by landslides and floods when she is angry. This is what true samata is, equanimity, sakshi bhav, witness-consciousness. Everything is unfolding as it is meant to. Nothing in nature is in a hurry to do something; we are. Nothing in nature wants to prove or accomplish something; we do. Nothing in nature compares.

We often use that idiom, “oranges to apples can’t be compared.” Of course, and yet it is only us, the conditioned mind-bound perceivers, who see something and immediately measure it in a certain way, because of million-year-old programming. If an alien came to earth, it would not see “rose” or “dahlia.” It might not even know it was looking at a flower. That would be true seeing I believe, perception without labels, without the burden of categories, without wanting to see something as this or that. Very often in fact, almost always, our problems arise from conditioning and programming. They do not come from life as it is, but from the mind’s way of naming, comparing, and measuring.

This programming dictates our fears, our reactions, our beliefs, our thoughts, which then spiral into worst-case imaginings, always downward. We do not see people and things as they are, but as we want or fear them to be. We behave in ways shaped by these distortions because everyone is walking around with invisible wounds on their skin as Don Miguel Ruiz said in his book, Mastery of Love. If someone comes too close, there is always the risk those wounds may be torn open. But that is the point, isn’t it? When we go to Baba, or to anyone we truly believe in, we must be completely vulnerable and lay our souls bare. Our defences work only in this lowly realm of appearances, not in the higher realms, where what is apparent (body, mind, status, wealth, success, failure) does not matter.

What matters there is the soul, its intent and purity. Even karma is only a river running its own course of cause and effect. I shared this in a video on my channel. Judgment belongs to that current, not to us. The Ramavijaya series I am working on shows this again and again how everything unfolds exactly as per the plan of God. So who is to be blamed? And who is really the doer? It is a human folly, I feel, to think we are in control. Of course, we are always free to make choices, but the truth is, even if you choose not to act, and someone else makes a choice against you, it is still only a seed they are sowing for themselves and maybe, the choice that was made for you was a seed you had sown in the past. Because, in this case, they are becoming an instrument of God’s will, just as you are. That is how karma works. I heard a teacher say, “every cause is an effect concealed, and every effect is a cause revealed.” Nothing happens without reason. At all.

All these emotions we chase and suffer, love and hate, pain and pleasure, gain and loss, joy and disgust, malice and hate, pride and shame are products of a dualistic mind that does not yet know its true nature. But once the mind begins to glimpse that true nature, it sees that everything occurring is dependent on something else, on some external condition, on the unfolding of one’s own past karma. Consciousness itself has no birth and no death. When that is understood, you can only laugh at your past reactions to things. I have wasted so many years of my life, so much time brooding over people and situations, until I realised that all of it was necessary. Each sorrow, each obsession, each despair, to wake me up from the cosmic slumber.

It reminded me that there is much more to life than what is immediately visible. It is important to witness how, when someone says or does something to us, feelings arise within, and then we add more thoughts, more emotions, until the mind spirals. Meanwhile, the other person may be roaming around happy, carefree, unapologetic. In truth, we do more harm to ourselves than anyone else ever could. Of course, negative karma is also generated by constant complaining, hatred, or condemnation. I cannot speak for others, but in the lives of Baba’s devotees, no emotion, no thought, no feeling can even reach us unless He allows it, given how deeply He is involved in the smallest details of our existence. He often said, “People don’t ask Me for what I truly want to give them.” And what He meant was not worldly gain, but spiritual progress.

Which is not possible without grace, and to some extent, suffering. I feel it is only suffering that cracks open one’s heart. If everything keeps going well, no sorrow, no sadness, no grief, no “tower moments,” so to speak, then one who is meant for the spiritual path may never truly realise the nature of mind and life. Baba used to say, “people keep asking for material things. God has immense treasure, and they could take truckloads of it.” The real treasure is brahma-jñāna, the cosmic wisdom that comes only after dispassion arises for the ordinary world, and one begins to seek something higher than spouse, career, or children. All that will happen as it is destined to but He wanted us to be so focused on our spiritual growth that we learn to see every event in our life, every moment, every happening, as His will. We inculcate patience.

That includes both the good and the bad. And if this truth dawns on us, that Baba alone is the doer, then resistance to anything ceases. It is like releasing the rope that had been burning and bruising our hands. We observe people, thoughts, places, situations as instruments and nothing else. All the ill emotions cease. They behave according to their conditioning, upbringing, nature, perspective and we behave according to ours. We cannot expect someone at level 1 of awareness to understand one at level 10. In life, our soul, irrespective of how old our body is behaves as it must. Often, I strongly believe, less evolved souls are chosen to sow seeds with “wrong” actions so they may later reap the karma and evolve. The same happens to all of us. I know it sounds unfair, but as the line goes in one of my favourite songs ” Bhed tera koi kya pehchaane, jo tujhsa ho, wo tujhe jaane, tere kie ko ham kya deven, bhale-bure ka naam.” Who can truly know Your mystery? Only one who is like You can understand You. And whatever You do, how can we, small as we are, call it good or bad?

Now when you realise this and observe the Earth, your perspective becomes more enlightened. You begin to see how nature abides always in is-ness. It simply is always witnessing. Not loving those who plant trees, not cursing those who spit on it. (Well, if the spirits of trees do something, I can’t say anything about that, lol.) It can take years, and I am only on the path myself, but I have seen that this unceasing compassion, non-judgment, unconditional love arises only when you first accept yourself fully, including all the parts of you, you dislike or hate. Then you start to feel close to your real nature, which is spotless, not bound by memory, experience, or the conditioned reactions that spring from them. Slowly, that circle of care begins to extend outward. You’ll find yourself offering compassion to everyone, even to those who once hurt you. In fact, you may feel an immense gratitude toward them, bowing to them inwardly, for it was they who brought you face to face with your true nature.

But the most important truth is to remember that Baba knows it all. He knows who is doing what, including you. He talks, walks, speaks, and thinks through us. Our task is only to see Him, even in those we don’t “like,” and to keep moving toward equanimity with them. I believe the task should never be to force love. The realisation that we are All often comes pretty late, and worst we can do to ourselves is intellectualise it and bypass our feelings. I have done that in the past, but never again. If that is not possible yet, we should at least reach a place of indifference, not coldness, but an acceptance that the other person is simply not ripe as a soul, and that they have their own journey to walk. The same holds for experiences beyond our control. We fear them so much, especially death of self or someone we love, that before the actual moment arrives, we keep imagining it, rehearsing it, and in doing so we live life almost dead, which means never fully alive. To me, that feels like a kind of disrespect toward our own soul and body.

I have lived inside grief that turned into depression, then into a long season of melancholia. And now, even when joy is expected of me, it doesn’t come naturally, except in rare moments. That is what I am cultivating these days, to be joyous, and to stop pitying myself or my life. Because everything has happened as per His will. And what is worth integrating now is the underlying joy, the quiet radiance of spirit, will arise only when the remnants of victimhood, defences, blame, and condemnation are gone. When the labels of right and wrong, good and bad, fall away. It is easy to say this for the outer world, but when the same comes close to us, we become sensitive, even hard. Yet this is exactly what Mother Earth teaches, let it pass. What you resist, persists. It is not worth it. Everyone did what they had to, and we too must do what is right for us with full faith in Baba, with acceptance of His will.

But this does not mean allowing ourselves to be treated as doormats or being afraid. When you have faith, first thing to dissipate is fear. It just means asking Baba for His unconditional love and deliverance, and then walking with dignity in His presence. I have seen some people say they want to watch their wrongdoers suffer but that, too, is only another karmic chain being forged. It too is not worth it. For God, all are equal. When one says tat tvam asi, “Thou art That”, the focus should not be on “I” alone, but on That. Which means That is not just “I,” but also you, he, she, dog, cat, river, mountain. If He pervades everything, then truly there is no one to hate.

Have patience. Witness. Let it pass. As one of my favourite poets Rilke wrote, “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”

Love,

Priyanka

SAVE MOTHER EARTH!

Note: This essay is part of “The Twenty-Four Mirrors”, a contemplative series on the Gurus of Lord Dattātreya. All Rights Reserved.

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