Pick up your Soul

These days the word soul is used to glamorise curries, soups and other rich delicacies. The word ‘soulful’ can easily be transfixed as an adjective to handful, mouthful and other pocketful packages. The serenity, sanctity and sincerity of the word however gets ‘dropped’ somewhere and so does its purpose. 

On the other hand, stringent pursuits and predispositions are attached to this soulful quest in spiritual texts and scriptures. Going overboard and making spirituality an objective achievement also doesn’t somewhere fit into the basic idea.

Making a mountain out of a mole only distances us from being Soulful and then we decide to leave spirituality as something that simply needs to be discovered in the Heights of Himalayas or isolation of some caves. Some of our experiences in life, though ordinary to look at, convey extraordinary meaning. Essence of our true ‘Self’ is what we could "pick" up in the process.

I vividly remember organizing a drawing competition in a small neighboring village for high school students in an attempt to bring the talent out of them and make them socially aware. The topic given was ‘Service’. I saw a small boy of 5-6years of age sitting in a corner much to our surprise. Just out of curiosity we gathered around him. He was engrossed in his painting and what started appearing on the white paper was small hand. “It is the hand of God,” said one of our friends. “It should be the hand of a farmer; remember this is a village,” observed a typically urbanized learned friend of ours. Another one remarked that it could just be a child’s hand. The child looked at us with a smile that could beat a million words. When he had finished his painting, he submitted it to us. The Heading read: ‘A Hand Ready to Serve’.

Breaking ourselves into various role and goals in Life, get us into details and discussions that take us away from the sense of fulfilment that they can offer. Small experiences like these reinstate the awareness that is required to keep the flame of Spirituality glowing within us, “picking up our Soul” to connect it back with ourselves and with our lives.