4th March 2017

I was about fifteen when I started to question the religion I was born in. I would ask my dad about God. Our family was not very religious. We did our prayers probably once a year on Diwali and then there were the occasional visits to the Gurudwara.  We ate meat, we cut our hair and so there was really no kind of pressure on us kids about religion or God. And maybe that's why, with all this freedom and liberty to question and ask about religion from a very objective perspective, made me think. I don't exactly remember what all I asked about but we discussed Sikh history for sure. One thing I remember very clearly though was that one night frustrated with a lot religions' data (that I was collecting through my dad) I looked at the sky at night, closed my eyes and asked, so who is God and why do have so many religions? The answer that came to me was that we all need a path or a way to live our lives as humanity, be a part of a social group in the best way possible and we want to be happy. These three things give rise to religion, a doctrine we could follow. Then I asked but where is God and how do we know what is right and what is wrong? And the answer in a very obvious innocent way came to me that it was inside us. If we closed our eyes and truly asked ourselves, our conscience knows the answer. We deep inside always know what's good and bad. 'Just like I'm answering my questions myself right now. People are silly to look outside. Or wait is it just me who thinks like this?'
Now I look back and realise how the young mind found it so obvious that God was within us. Unbiased by religion or politics or knowledge even, this conversation with myself was truly amazing. Now I know about spirituality and different sadhus and Gurus and their teachings. But really, what do they all say? In a gist they say, silence the mind, search within and in that present moment you will meet God or your true self or the universe soul. Call it meditation, call it spiritual, make it complicated or just simply put, deep inside we all know! We are all connected and the collective evolved soul can be accessed if we learn how to quiet the mind.