Discrete Trust

For a child, 'Trust' itself is an elusive concept... and in today's lifestyle, I guess, he learns it in a very fuzzy way, often.. through its absence, or lack of it, .. what we call it...so diplomatically as... 'trust deficit'...

Quite often we contribute to it, so unwittingly too!

To try a magnified example....

Diwali day... A kids excitement is only around the fire crackers, especially the ones which he is prohibited from handling 'all by himself'...

A bath is a must, before touching any of those 'fire-element' gadgets we call as crackers... But he can hardly wait, and hurries faster-than-usual... The buttons of that new dress are a 'deliberate' attempt in slowing down his speed to somehow get inside those stupid 'new' ones, buttoned already!... (He is so familiar with old ones... his fingers do not need reference to his memory, as to how to tuck-in that flap which 'once upon a time' had also worn the crown called a 'button' or a 'hook'... It is the new one that tears him away ....

from his love...

the once-in-a-year ..

his 'affair' with the 'burst-of-fire'!

The mom is holding the agar-bathi (the thick incense stick, without fragrance, to make it cost-effective... smoking with the required bit of burning at its tip, to light the wick of that cracker)... in one hand with its red amber tip, menacingly close to the tip of the wick that would set that cracker bit exploding/bursting ... invariably with that element of surprise, however alert we are...

and when the kid can 'see' the threat at her hands, ...

and yet her words are so deceptive,

she says: 'Do not break those buttons of the new dress, in your needless hurry, I will not light it up till you are ready to watch!'...

He 'looks'...

and his mind races, to decide-indecisively...

which one to trust...

her words,

or

her hands so close to setting-off that fire-cracker?

The gap of trust widens, even before he knows, what that 'trust' is....!!!

She does the same, when she pours out refills of dishes, on to his plate, while asking him to eat-slowly... (His worry is, ... 'what if I ask her to wait till the 'traffic on this plate' thins out... and in the meanwhile the dish manages to land on somebody else's plate?'... and he ends up to 'hurry-up-slowly'!!!)

During that manual churning out of butter, I, barely a kid of 4 then, used to perch on the lap of my grandmother, eager, not-to-miss the excitement of the 'miracle-formation' of that hard-yet-soft tangible butter snowballing out of nowhere, when..... all that is done is.... merely the stirring of the thick curds with that wooden stick with a round head and its vertical ridges in a regular pattern... The noise it makes, does sound 'musical'... and yet,... it seems to divert my attention each time I try to focus on the whirlpool turbulence-like, like some cyclonic storm right within that porcelain and its thick walled container...! Another source of interruption is 'the alternating twin arms of hers' which pulls-taut, the well spun thick rope, wound a 'little-entwined' around that stick ... but that is a trouble I invited on myself, willingly, in a bargain to be right inside the experiment!... What stupefied me was, she invariably complains that it is taking a longer-time, (what ever that means, without the component of a comparison, the reference of which,... is let off to escape out of my imagination and hers!)..... though it is only summer and winter that 'matters' really, about time-factor.... while, I always find it happening all too suddenly,.... and I miss everytime.... the actual 'event' when the butter takes 'birth'...!!! Now when I look back, I am tempted to draw a comparison... that... we all carry that trust as a potential, but like the concepts of 'discrete' maths... we need a formula to bring it all together, and give it a shape and tangible form which... we can now call it as .... 'a trust'!!!

The spiritual teacher churns the subtle ingredients within us, at physical levels through spiritual practices, like pranayam, asanas, and other practices, .. at subtler levels (call it 'our-mind', our being.. or whatever...) with careful supervision while the prescribed meditative practices does the turbulent churning... and if we only manage a little patience, .. allow that freedom for the churning to happen... the butter bits lying here and there right 'within'... the curds,... as non-entities, would team up together due to hectic and innumerable number of 'hi...how-are-you/s?' between them... and then they suddenly find no point in just greeting themselves mutually, and before they know what is hitting them, the mutual love inherent, binds them into a soft-shining-butter like huge ball of pure trust! Put it on fire to test it... and it only yields to 'clarification'.. we call in English as 'clarified butter'!

In the meanwhile, is it not worth looking at our simple, innocent looking actions, gestures etc.. and redefining the way we 'present' them to those 'others' who are in fact our own dear 'butter-cups in waiting'...? We are not obliging them in any way, when we fine tune our own inner churning, when we seek to consciously polarise those bits of trust in us, a bit cohesively... we are only being into a deep 'refinement-process', and ... just not trying to miss ... even those simple-looking actions of ours in our 'repetitive-routine stuff'... towards our own evolvement.. If nothing else, we engage ourselves into educating our kids into 'trust' all our waking hours... leaving it to them to find an 'appropriate' name for these churning gestures of ours... Now he is confused, initially.. to call it 'trust' or to call it 'love'... Let him flip the coin, heads or tails... it is a win-win-result always!

Discretely yours,

psn (4th february, 2014)