images
There are many ways to find a spiritual connect with life. You can find it in a concert, in a cinema hall, at a bus stop, at an animal shelter, in a book, in rain falling down on parched earth, in your mother’s cooking, in a phrase painted behind an auto, in a dream, in serendipity, in a child’s laughter, a kitten’s purr, in forgiving someone, in being forgiven.

Religion is often misinterpreted as the only way to God, provided you believe in one. But every bit of our experience of life, of the world, of relationships, of silence and music and dance and creative upsurges is a path to a higher self. Towards a moment when you recognise yourself as your best self, as the person at home in the universe and at peace with life. A moment when you are the bigger person than the one who would have reacted to a slight, to a traffic jam, to a nasty message, to the absence of something you were expecting to get at work or in life.

The work of spirit does not begin and end with rituals and prayer. It never ends. Every thought,word and action either adds to our spiritual richness or takes away from it. How we work, talk, cook, manage little and big irritants makes us who we are and reveals if we are in touch with the best or the worst aspect of ourselves.

The witness is not out there but within us and this witness tell us if we have been good, bad or indifferent towards the business of living.

Some writers, film makers, architects and painters and musicians are sometimes more in touch with the divine than hectoring preachers. You can see divinity in Jackson Pollock’s scintillating explosions of colours mirroring the cosmos. In Antoni Gaudi ‘s Sagrada Família. In Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic home Fallingwater (Constructed over a 30-foot waterfall and considered to be the best all-time work in American architecture). In Corbusier’s Monument to Peace at the waterfront park at Sukhna Lake in Chandigarh which proclaims,”Let’s strive for: community harmony, cultural diversity, rejection of violence, resolution of conflict, reconciliation of differences, freedom of expression.”

Spirituality rings clear and true across Concert For George (YouTube) that was organised on the first anniversary (2002)of  George Harrison’s death. In 1985, USA for Africa (United Support of Artists for Africa) brought together 47 musicians led by Michael Jackson  and Lionel Ritchie  and the combined revenues of their hit single “We Are the World“  raised  almost $100 million for the relief of famine in Africa.

These are the real spiritual miracles that religion can never bring about. And the miracles that the world really needs.

images (4) with The New Indian Express  Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of  Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and  where she can write more books, paint, listen to music and  just be.