Wisdom Out of the Mouths…

I love embracing the wisdom that comes to me from the usual channels, but I love even more when it comes from an unexpected source. For it is asking me to pay attention on a deeper level to receive it. Have you ever wondered how many of these you have missed by not being receptive to the less-than-obvious? I wanted to share this one with you because it is so innocent and so profound, at least to me, and I hope, also to you.

I was clearing brush with my son, Amrit, and Keith and had finally wangled Gobind, my six-year-old grandson, to help. He had wanted to do anything with me to avoid being part of this work party. He quickly figured how to make it play. He found a secret hideout that he was claiming. This gave me a chance to crawl through very dense brush to share this space with him as he called to me and called to me. I came. It turned out to be very secret and cool. Only one drawback-it was the previous owners’ dump-at least one of them… this one, complete with old paint cans and kerosene cans and worst of all, barbwire and old fence wire… all too easy for a small foot to get caught in. Gobind saw them as great traps and was figuring out how he could trap his sister, whom he adores, but whom he would like to… yes, trap. I saw it as potential serious injuries. So in the spirit of having a super-cool hideout, I convinced him to help me clean out his “secret hideout.”

On our third load of hand carrying out metal trash, he said, “Nanna Ji, my hand is tired.” I very nonchalantly said, “Why don’t you use the other hand.” It seemed very simple to me. Here is what he shared, “Because this hand (his right hand) is my work hand. It carries heavy things, it gardens, it does work. My other hand, (left one) is my lazy hand. It likes to stay in bed, play video games, and watch movies. It both cracked me up-at his innocence and, yes, awareness about his female and male aspects of his being (not that women are lazy, but receptive. It is the feminine aspect of each of us). It woke me up once again to the vastness of innocence – the simplicity of looking into things with a beginner’s mind, the mind that has no preconceptions.

Looking at things with the mind of a child, one who is interested in seeing, not proving that the way we see it is the right way. I want to juxtapose this with a friend. When I came home, he said to me, “I had a bad fight with my girlfriend but I was totally in the right.” This position that maybe you might have assumed, a time or two, stops all flow, breaks connection, and most of all takes the wonder out of the situation. When you are able to add that majic potion of wonder back into a situation… that is when the real truth gets revealed. Another friend, when presented with a totally insane situation of someone getting checks they never should have gotten and wanted to split them (with her getting a very small portion of the checks) asks this question first before listening, “Tell me why you think it should be that way?” She allowed the other person to talk themselves into realizing that this was not the correct division of funds. She got to work on her beautiful neutral mind with a person that most challenged that neutrality in her life. Step back, take a breath, and ask a question that has wonder encoded in it.

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Thank you. Love you. Wahe Guru.

Gurutej Khalsa