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August 9 - August 15, 2023
The more we bring it into our lives, the stronger it becomes.
chardi kala was not just for enlightened people. It’s for all of us.
It’s easy to remember that negativity is a self-perpetuating cycle—it’s even easier to forget that positivity is a self-perpetuating cycle, too.
Sikhi teaches us to see every human being as equally divine and to reject the good-evil binary.
Falling can be important and instructive.
Falling can remind us of our imperfections and instill humility in us. Falling can show us what we need to do to lift ourselves up.
Loga bharam na bhoolo bhai khaalak khalak khalak mai khaalak pur rahio sabh thaai. Hey, people! Hey, siblings! Don’t be deluded. The Creator is in the Creation and the Creation in the Creator—completely permeating all spaces. This wisdom comes from Bhagat Kabir,
view divinity as light. Light is something we can see all around us. Light is illuminating, ever present, and connective. It brings clarity in moments of obscurity and uncertainty.
The sun is always shining; our ability to see it depends on our position and perspective.
Bhagat Kabir has something to say about that too: Aval allah nur upaaiaa kudrat ke sabh bande. Ek nur te sabh jag upajaia kaun bhalay ko mande. First, the Divine created the light and then all the people of the world. If the entire world ...
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While dehumanizing someone we dislike is an easy perspective to hold, it’s a heavy and useless burden to carry.
oankar, is a vision of radical connectedness in which everything and everyone is bound together by a singular force.
Ik refers to the oneness of the world, the connectedness of reality, the intermingling of creator and creation, the integration of all we know, the wholeness of our being. The second component, oankar, refers to a dynamic, divine force that permeates every aspect of our world.
There’s no escaping this force because it’s infused into everything we encounter and experience.
when we accept that these behaviors are learned, we also accept that they can be unlearned. This outlook comes with the promise of possibility.
By acknowledging that racist ideas exist inside me, it became possible to empathize with other people who harbor and act on racist feelings.
this self-awareness is the difference between asking, “What’s wrong with you?” and asking the more empathetic and generative question, “What happened to you?” Radical introspection enables me to see myself in them—and that simple connection can help us go from a place of intense resentment and anger to a place of sincere connection, inner peace, and in some cases perhaps the ability to change how people feel about us.
We each know from personal experience, too, that feeling animosity for others never does us any good.
Dr. Martin Luther King speaks to this in his sermon “Loving Your Enemies.” To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded
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We unlock the power of our ideals when we put them into action.
When you see everyone as being connected, you stop seeing enemies entirely. Everyone is equally divine, an extension of your own divine self.
What is my goal in this moment? And what is my first step toward that goal?
Audre Lorde, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”
Diversity is to be honored and celebrated, not ignored and denigrated. Everything and everyone is divine. The world is created in the image of God because the world is God.
“There are countless seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months. There is one sun, yet many seasons. O Nanak, the Creator has countless forms!” Guru Nanak
It’s not just that we all come from and share a single divine light. It’s also that our differences are expressions of that one light.
When tolerance is our goal, we prevent ourselves from releasing something far more powerful—a model of pluralism that sees our differences as beautiful and does not feel threatened by them.
When experienced through the lens of ik oankar, the expansive diversity all around us can remind us how small we are and, at the same time, how we are part of something greater.
We create boundaries between ourselves and others, positioning ourselves as superior and others as inferior. This is the same practice that contributes to the formation of supremacies and the same logic that fuels and sustains colonialism.
Oppression. Repression. Depression. Repeat.
Guru Arjan: “I see no strangers. I see no enemies. Wherever I look, I see my people.”
When we can witness our diversity as unique forms of divinity, and when we see ourselves and others as equally divine, we will transform how we treat one another.
tying our happiness to other people’s behaviors and outlooks will only leave us disappointed and dissatisfied. Instead, we must search for the common ground between us, the space where we are both one.
In the words of Guru Amardas, the third Sikh guru: “O my heart-mind, you are an embodiment of divine light (joti). Recognize your origin!”
The light already exists in us. It is us. Which means we are it. We just have to learn to see the light we carry and the light we give.
Guru Nanak tells us that when we conquer our minds, we conquer the world.
Humans create language to help signify reality; but language is not reality itself.
Words like “loss” and “grief”—and “love”—can be useful for communicating our shared emotions, but our experiences of them are not universal truths.
We all have capacity for more than we think.
“Nanak says: O my mind, recognize that a truly liberated person is someone who isn’t affected by pleasure or pain and looks upon friends and foes as the same.”
Love is unconditional, not contingent.
Love is selfless, not self-centered.
Love is ever giving, not tra...
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In 2013, researchers at Harvard completed a seventy-five-year study on happiness, one of the longest and most comprehensive studies of human development. The study found overwhelmingly that loving relationships were the largest single determinant for health and happiness later in life. George Vaillant, the lead director of the study, offered a concise summary of his research findings: “Happiness is love. Full stop.”
Guru Arjan writes: “I don’t care about salvation, and I don’t even care about power. All I really want is to be in love with the Divine.”
No person in history has chased power for its own sake and found lasting joy within it. They may have been successful in gaining influence, and they may have felt momentary gladness. But none have come out fulfilled.
Joy comes from living in the moment.
Julianne Holt-Lunstad of Brigham Young University
“Being connected to others socially is widely considered a fundamental human need. It is crucial to well-being and survival. Extreme examples show infants in custodial care who lack human contact fail to thrive and often die, and indeed, social isolation or solitary confinement has been used as a form of punishment.”
Connection is life. Disconnection is death.
