The Colouring Book

In the 60s my three sisters and I were children growing up in a small New Zealand town by the sea.

Sand CastleMy father liked the simple ways and always walked or bicycled to work, shunning the enchantments promised by an emerging new age of television and motorcars. Our home became a fortress sand-castle, defiant against the rising tide of technology – eventually the ramparts crumbled and my father capitulated to the incoming tides of change. Years later though, he would remind us with great pride that we had been the last house in our suburb to get TV.

In this new world, evening scrabble, cards and colouring books were replaced with television and the old bicycle eventually surrendered to a gleaming Ford Prefect motorcar. Scrabble was a huge loss to me – I excelled at concealing essential letters in my clothing, at outrageous inventions with the English language and endless intrigue. And our picture books – with pursed lips, brows furrowed with a child’s concentration, how devotedly we would colour in the black and white sketches with our crayons and pens. Later I came to see how much of a metaphor this pastime was – how much the distinct, theme qualities of our nature would colour in and determine the flavours and experiences of our lives.

Child ColouringI was last to leave our happy childhood home. The bus that would take me out of my parents' lives finally pulled out of the station, and I was peering out of the window, the first sorrows of adulthood filling my eyes. There they were, weeping inconsolably at the departure of their last child, holding each other helplessly by the arms. And years later we children would come together again, silent and weeping before the solemn and sad mystery of their deaths.

So began a long 13 year odyssey, the journey of discovery that we all make in one form or another as we colour in the storybooks of our lives. And discovering as we all sooner or later do that there is absolutely nothing out there, no place, no person, no possession, that can make us lastingly happy. In my own wanderings – that long fruitless detour across the parched deserts of worldliness that would lead to this understanding – I would often hear, whispering in my mind, the words of the Greek poet Cavafy, "No ship exists to take you from yourself..." and T. S. Elliot's sombre words would echo in refrain: "We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time..."

Yes, the longing to see everything clearly as it is, without ego, mind, thought or the colouring book crayons of a consciousness unillumined yet by spirit and true understanding.

Sri Chinmoy meditating during a boat tripThen in 1980, standing in a busy street in South Australia, I saw for the first time a face that would become dear to my life and a guiding beacon in my journey. It was a framed smiling face of Sri Chinmoy, there in a café window, and in that one random moment my life would change forever.

Nudged by a grace-filled universe, I shortly after became a student of Sri Chinmoy – what that meant I hardly knew or cared – and thus began a new and marvelous re-colouring of my life.

Very gradually, meditation ushered in a new calm and purpose to a willful, restless mind; and out of the deepening stillness of my practice there emerged a new sense of Self, deeper and greater than any of the selves I had been and known. Exercise, especially during the early, intense years of athletics and running when Sri Chinmoy himself would often accompany us, made the body strong and filled with aspiration. And how I devoured, hour upon hour, the many books of insight, wisdom and inspiration that flowed out of this teacher's remarkably creative life.

Yet it was Sri Chinmoy's own presence and those wonderful moments in his company that were the highpoints in this new adventure. How hard it would have been to experience those wonderful breakthroughs and heights of consciousness on our own, how difficult to believe in the possibility of enlightenment without seeing it first in another, how unlikely an enduring belief in God without seeing, there in human form before you, this great yogi clearly and unmistakably immersed in the divine.

Garden GateThe brush strokes of this new life were filled with the colours and fragrances of the inner world – the soul's delight, felt in the silence of meditation; the heart's expanding love and it's growing concern for others; a new sense of purpose as every part of the being, magnetised by the energies of spirit, swung towards the pole of liberation. A sense too of gratitude, both for this great journey of awakening and to the guide who was leading our footsteps safely along the path. "My Lord," Sri Chinmoy wrote in one of his poems, "You have given me two things absolutely unparalleled. A map of the eternal journey and the courage for the immortal traveling."

Years later, I would come across an old box of childhood things, mementoes and treasures from a distant past – an old shawl, some favourite poems of my mother, a silver broach, the sepia brown photos of unknown grandparents – and there among the heirlooms and memories, one of our old colouring books, still with its' bright colours and poignant innocence. Feeling now the beautiful and hidden perfection of life and marveling at the long journey of the soul with its' many selves and guises; peering intently at the colours I had used, trying to understand how far I might have come; how far I might have to go to reach journey's end. Here, back at my own starting point I remembered once again the words from Elliot's poem, and how the end of all our exploring will be "to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time... Through the unknown, remembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning..."

How grateful I am to all the teachers of my life whose knowledge has encouraged me along my way. How grateful I am to my own teacher, Sri Chinmoy, the brightest polestar in my life sky, who colours in my journey with the bright things of the soul and leads me through that doorway of spirit – the 'unknown, remembered gate' – on the great quest for God.

    – Jogyata.

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