Four Holi Lessons For The Seeker

When sacredness is attached to a celebration, it becomes total, complete. It's not just the body and mind but the spirit also celebrates. Then celebration dawns spontaneously and life becomes a vibrant fountain of colors. The sacred festival of Holi is not just about outward celebration but also inner wisdom that we must pay attention to. When you are in knowledge, then all the colors in your life coexist peacefully. Harmony in diversity makes life vibrant, joyful and more colorful.

Make friends with enemies

One of the messages of Holi is: Make friends even with the enemy. Let there be no enemy. Why is an enemy born? When we have animosity within us, then an enemy is born. If we have no animosity left in us, then we would have no enemies either. We shouldn't mind if someone else considers us as an enemy but we shouldn't perceive any animosity from our side.

All colors co-exist

Life should be full of colors! And each color is meant to be seen and enjoyed separately. All colors emanate from white, and when mixed again, they become black. Similarly, in life, different roles played by us should exist peacefully and distinctly inside us. For example, when a father continues to play his role of a 'father' in office, things are bound to go for a toss. When your mind is white and consciousness - pure, peaceful, happy and meditative, different colors and roles emerge. We get the strength to play various roles with full sincerity against the background. All we need to do is: dip into our consciousness time and again. Between all the roles, we have to take deep rests, in order to play each role sincerely.

Be Aware of Your Desires

The only way out is to focus attention on the desire and surrender it. This act of focusing awareness or sight on desire or Kama is called 'kamakshi'. With awareness, desire loses its grip on our mind and surrender happens and then nectar flows out from within. If you look at the picture of the goddess, Kamakshi, holds a sugarcane stem in one hand and a flower in the other. The sugar-cane stem is so hard and has to be squeezed in order to obtain sweetness, while the flower is soft and collecting nectar from it is so easy. This truly represents life, which indeed has a little of both! It is far easier to obtain this bliss from the inside than it is to try to extract pleasure from the outside world - which needs a lot more effort.

Become a witness

Nature has all colors and so does your mind. You feel happy, unhappy, angry, jealous, compassionate, generous…all these colors of emotions come up in you. The mind is not the same all the time. But when you know you are not that, you are not these colors, moods then you can truly enjoy these colors. You become a witness to all the mind games that go on inside of you. What troubles you most in life is not someone else but your own mind. When you identify yourself with those emotions, you think that is you, then you are in trouble. Meditation is the way to move into this witness state.

This itself is the message of Holi- Go hug and color everyone, bow down with respect and radiate love. On this occasion of Holi. Spread the colors of love everywhere. Make life buoyant and colorful.