How spirituality helps you to be emotionally resilient
Let’s Begin
It was in the year 2016 when I got my first panic attack, I was in a state of complete disappointment. At that time, I was in class 7. So what happened is, I lost my moha ( my auntie i.e. borma’s elder sister’s husband) due to acute renal failure. They were a resident of Kolkata. Moha was a very loving soul. He was a jolly kind of person. He was aged around 72 years. But his demise left me completely devastated.
Because just 8 years prior to this incident, i.e. in 2008,30 th October, I lost my beloved father, in a bomb blast. At that time I was only 5 years and 1 month old. My papa was an extraordinary father. Here I will give only an instance of my father’s extraordinary nature. That is, whenever I used to go to school and do my classes, he used to constantly stand for hours in front of my classroom, from the beginning of the class to the end, just to look after me, because I used to remain sick. So after his demise my borta, i e.my father’s elder brother took all my responsibility and brought me up and he never made me feel the absence of my father. So almost 8 years there was no death in my family, so when Moha died, it left me in a state of complete shock. Then we headed towards Kolkata after a week to attend the farewell ceremony.
BEGINNING OF THE ACCIDENTAL SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
I m calling it an accidental spiritual journey because I was a person who was not so much interested in spirituality but this trip to Kolkata made me a spiritual person. This trip changed the course of my life. We had an afternoon flight from Guwahati and reached Kolkata at around 1:30 P.M. After that we booked a cab and directly headed towards Tarapith, a village in the Birbhum District of Kolkata. Tarapith is a place where Maa Tara another form of Maa Kali is worshipped. We stayed there for around three days. We use to attend the aartis every day and go for morning darshan at the temple.
On the fourth day when we are heading towards Kolkata to attend the funeral ceremony, which was on the next day, we made a visit to Mayapur, in the Nadia District on our way to Kolkata. Mayapur is famous for its ISKON and GAUDIYA MATH. After reaching there and visiting the ISKON, I was so mesmerized by looking at the lives of the people and the saints there. I was so moved. The environment there was so mesmerizing and full of simplicity. In the afternoon around 3 P.M. after doing lunch I came across a saint who was delivering spiritual discourses to the devotees of ISKON. I was so moved by the divine talks of that saint that I decided to give life a new start, where the main ideals will be spirituality.
I felt a sense of calmness inside me. My disappointment started to fade away, so after that, we reached Kolkata and attended the ceremony. The next day when we headed towards Guwahati, on the flight I was thinking about joining spiritual classes at my school which itself was a global spiritual organisation. Back in Guwahati, I started to get involved in all the spiritual matters of my school and yes I am also thankful to my Brahmacharis and Brahmacharyas who have supported me a lot and taught me the most valuable lessons. I started to develop a sense of maturity. Started understanding things from a broad perspective. And learnt that death and life are natural phenomena. It made me emotionally strong.
RESILIENCE- HOW SPIRITUALITY HELPED ME
Then came the next incident which took place in the year 2017 in the month of June, we lost our pet dog Robert, who was a German Shepherd. He stayed with us for 12 long years. This news again came like a shock to our family, but this time I was able to extend emotional support to my family. Then after seven days after this incident, another traumatic event took place, I lost another moha of mine due to renal failure and pneumonia, which left the whole family devastated, this moha was also very loving, generous and jolly, above all he had a heart of Gold, and this time I again I became the strongest emotional support system of my family.
Writer: Basundhara Dutta, Guwahati, Assam
