Ignite a match stick before it can glow...

Don't you sometimes feel the urge to grab the spotlight? To be 'the one'? To be the disseminator of gyan (knowledge)?

Well, I do. Looking back, I realize I do have strong pangs of this urge.

And as it appears, I am not alone in thinking that way, in craving to be someone I am not, or am not as yet. Being famous is one of the top fantasies of mankind. It is an insight that inspired the marketers of Filmfare magazine to create that memorable ad campaign where a common man or woman in a moment of solitude suddenly picks up energy and acts as if the person is receiving the famous Filmfare award under spotlights.

While I couldn't bring myself to do that, thinking it to be a bit too superficial, I have hogged my own bit of imaginary importance. I have picked up spiritual nuggets from here and there, and theorized in less profound ways to make myself believe I know something about what mankind is all about, what the spirit soul and the super soul are all about. What, as Dr Kiran Seth - founder of Spic Macay says, 'paraa' and 'aparaa' vidya (material and spiritual knowledge) is all about. And I always thought it was beautiful, it was a well woven fabric.

But somewhere I couldn't conceal from myself a feeling of lack of depth, an inability to see and experience truth as it is. Lack of an internal glow that makes you feel satisfied from within.

And then I read Swami Vivekananda last week and realized, you can't make a match-stick glow unless you have enough substance that makes it ready, and until you have made it hit the rugged patch and created a spark. Once it has begun to glow, it would attract attention even in a dark, large forest. It would have enough flies flocking around it to share the warmth. Sri Ram Krishna Paramhans imparted this knowledge to him and Swami Vivekananda says in his book ‘My Master’, “I often tend to lose sight of this advice, how important it is to make one seek, acquire, and test the truth for oneself before beginning to disseminate the information to others”.

The challenge for all of us is to find that one idea, that original thought that would define our being in this world. As Vivekananda says, “even if a man locks himself up in a cave, comes up with a brilliant thought and dies, that thought would never die there. It would break through the stone walls of the cave and spread out. It would move on its own till it has reached the humanity and disseminated itself among men and women of substance”.

A thought never thought of, an idea never dreamt of, an original probe for the one within us. How often do we stop in our tracks to even wonder about it? Those who merely see that Asia stayed backward for hundreds of years while the West progressed, overlook the fact that the Orient had the courage and the determination to pursue an original thought that connected it to the one within. A determination that defied the basic instinct to hoard, to amass wealth, and to enjoy life as is apparent to human senses.
That courage to give up everything in the search of eternal truth was what defined human existence for the Orient. Little else, in many ways, mattered.

I am not sure about the ability to find the truth within, but this thought alone gives me the courage to hold on to my steps, to drill deeper, to find something before I progress to the next step... before I run on with life as I have been living it for the last 20-30 years. Is there anything else to be shared otherwise?

Let the world pass by, let the steps running past me sound distant… this is my life and possibly the only lifetime I know I have. Let me spend more time on the steps, the goals may be more inside me than in the world beyond. I need to ignite the spark that would make me glow from within… a glow that seldom arises, but ones awaken, that never dies.