We, like many other Indians, take out malai (cream) after boiling and cooling the milk. These days we take cow milk which comes from Binsar Farms, a dairy near Sonepat where cows are kept on organic feed and without chemicals or hormonal injections. At home we collect malai for about a week or ten days then boil it to take out ghee (clarified butter).
Today morning I happened to assist Ritu, my wife, in the process of making ghee. An interesting analogy of spirituality cropped up in my mind.
Initially the malai (cream) is all sticky in the pan. If you keep heating and stirring it, after some time ghee appears and the sticky mass leaves the sides. The lustre of ghee replaces the sticky whiteness at the surface of the malai with small pockets of ghee coming up at many places.
I observed that if you don’t keep stirring (even though it doesn’t stick to the sides on its own), it starts sticking at the bottom of the pan which is not visible. It can only be felt with the help of the spatula.
How similar is it to spiritual sadhana! We are all stuck in the world of our own created notions, ambitions, attachments, fears and opinions. Once spiritual journey begins with the help of Grace, slowly we start becoming free of these. The lustre of spirituality starts appearing on our face and around us in the form of our vibrations the same way the ghee appears in the mass of malai. Then we normally don’t remain stuck with those worldly notions and phenomena, but still the spiritual practice remains essential for not getting stuck at the invisible core which by now is made of very subtle ego; same as the malai at the bottom of the pan.
Another observation: there comes a sound from the pan as ghee appears. It is the proof that everything is hunky-dory with the malai heating process. While on the spiritual path, it also becomes essential to share the learnings with people. That further refines us and our techniques.
I bow before the magic and magnificence of various physical processes and phenomena of the world which, if observed carefully, open up the meta-physical dimensions before us.
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