Barfi n Mithai

The first step is enlightening yourself with knowledge on how humans condition themselves and to understand false and true conditioning. The second step is to be conscious of both conscious and unconscious conditioning. We all have developed false conditioning behaviours in our lives without realising - start thinking about your thoughts and actions and why you have those ideas. The third is to move from 'thinking' to 'practicing' true conditioning, to live it, to form good habits and to be an example i.e. 'be the change, you wish to see in the world'. The final step is to teach and educate others. All true conditioning is for sarbat da bhalla i.e. for the goodness of the whole of the human race. So you must make others aware too, engage in conversation, dialogue. Most people haven't entered the first step of enlightening themselves with the knowledge or accepting or understanding that knowledge so that is your start. I would like to add that it is a long journey spanning all of life. It is a life time commitment where that knowledge is practised, refined and further deeper knowledge and understanding is developed through life experiences. But it is worth it for personal development and for creating a system that benefits all. If you seriously want to 'uncondition' or what I would rather call it is - living a life of true conditioning then start off by understanding yourself as a human, how you fit in the system, how the system fits in you. Then take small steps to change old habits and slowly do that to every aspect of your life and you will see the change. You cannot pick and choose when you want to condition yourself to false and when you want to condition yourself to true. You have to work at conditioning everything to the truth to benefit both yourself and others. Its like in japji sahib when it says we use soap to wash the dirt off our bodies - similarly we use naam or true conditioning to clean our thoughts i.e. we automatically get 'polluted' by the world and sometimes we don't realise or see the truth due to unconscious effects but by being aware and alert to these we can change ourselves for the better. Good luck.

There are plenty of amritdhari girls in panjab - have you asked them all?

We do have a rule book - the rehat maryada. It says hair is 'ang. It is not nonsense - what you are saying is nonsense that females should not keep their kesh. Why would the Sikh religion only ask its men to keep their hair. What kind of hypocritical religion would do that. You are clearly brainwashed and conditioned by society because you want women to remove hair. However your opinion does not count - Sikhi has made it clear that all sikhs - males and females must keep all kesh as this is the true human form i.e. saroop of all men and women. This is the most absurd statement I am yet to read. Firstly hair is natural. The definition of natural is existing in or derived from nature; not made or caused by humankind. Our body with our hair is what is the human saroop. Secondly waheguru doesn't cause instant death or punishment if you loose a part of yourself. I am a surgeon and I can cut off your leg and you won't die. Are you trying to say if you loose a part of your body and you do not die that that part of your body was not natural? What about people in car crashes who lose limbs, fingers etc and carrying on living? Also it is so silly to say - well waheguru should have made it so that when our hair is removed that we die - only then would I accept hair is natural. You don't need to have death or pain to see what is natural. Please speak to the hippy movement as they accepted hair as natural - in fact all of society would say our natural human state is with our hair. Your argument is pure nonsense and it would be so impractical for the human species to die every time their hair fell off accidentally e.g. friction from a fall. Please speak some logic because this is such a tangent point. By the way if you want to experience pain on hair removal – please go and get a bikini wax. In the Sikh culture hair is not removed. You are ignorant of the Sikh teachings. Hair was also not widely removed in all cultures until companies like Gillette came around for men facial beard removal. The OP is correct and has mentioned waxing, threading etc. All these practices however are forbidden in Sikhi. Quite frankly we as Sikhs don't care if other cultures remove it - we as Sikhs are taught not to remove it. If you want to copy other cultures then why are you calling yourself a Sikh? By definition a Sikh is someone who follows the teachings of the Sikh faith and quite clearly you don’t or you are a 50/50 person who picks and chooses what they want. You are conditioned and brainwashed and therefore will never be able to see the truth - just like how the chinese society forced their girls to have small deformed feet for the sake of beauty. Let me help you and give you an example. In the future men will be expected to remove their chest, arm and leg hair and if I came around and said that it was ok to have chest, arm and leg hair and that this was the natural state of a man - Then people like you in the future would say no - that you cannot accept a man with chest, arm and leg hair as it is not beauty. The current issue with female body hair is the same. I can tell you as much as I want that you are conditioned and that society has made you think something that is not true, however your not going to listen to me. This is because the nonsense that you have been exposed to since birth has become your truth - just like those chinese people who believe that small feet were beautiful. If I had a time machine and went back in time to tell them to stop – then they would not believe me. I believe there is no way that we can get you back - you are now trapped into false conditioning and it is only with Guru's kirpa that one day you might be able to uncondition yourself. I have written a lengthy piece on conditioning and how we have true conditioning and false conditioning. I also made comments on how conditioning can be unconscious and conscious. There are some things that are true conditioning and then there are others that are false conditioning. In relation to female hair phobia - this is false conditioning where you have been taught to believe something as being true when it is false. Your current belief is that females do not have facial hair and those that keep facial hair are looking like men. This is false conditioning because all females have hair and those keeping hair are actually looking like what all women should look like. I don’t expect you to understand because you are now trapped like the chinese people wanting small feet. However Sikhi is very clear - Sikhi accepts the human saroop with hair of both a female and male and states that this is the best and most beautiful saroop. When you get married your life partner will have hair and will also have a ‘bad day’ where she does not remove her hair. When that day comes please tell me whether she suddenly became ugly to you. If she did, then what does that say about your character? There was a lot of sexism in your thoughts especially about women not being able to carry a sword or how you want women to look. Sikhi doesn't say women should look like this or men should look like this. Instead it accepts both female and male saroop with its hair. Currently you have an issue recognising that females have hair on their body including their faces. If you are a singh with a beard then you should stand in front of the mirror and reflect on what a hypocrite you are – why should you want women to accept you in your male human bodily form with all your hair when you cannot accept a woman with all her hair. Singhs like you are hypocrites.

Your statement has so much sexism in it that I don't even know where to start. Women can not wield swords? Women cannot fight in battle? So who was Mai Bhago then?? Also you’re the one who is seeing difference between the two genders. The Guru never said there was ever a difference between the 2 genders. In Sikhi we are described as having a soul in the body of a man or woman and that we must not discriminate or be sexist to that vessel that carries our soul. You are a complete shame of a singh if you think only men carry 5Ks. Sorry but your the one who is thinking in a single dimension. Also there is no 'grey' area on kesh that we need to sit and work out what was actually meant. The Guru was very clear that all his Sikh (males and females) would keep kesh. In the rehat maryada it is clearly written that all bodilyhair must be kept and at every amrit sanchaar people will say the same. In fact just turn up to your gurdwara and ask them and they will say the same. There is no need to call us dogmatic just because you don't want to accept the sikh teachings. Who in their right mind would say that only men can be Sikhs or only men can be in the panj pyare or that only men can wield swords. only men should keep hair. You are the most sexist, discriminating human being I have ever met. I am not sure if it registered with you but as Sikhs we don't have a grey area on kesh - we don't need to sit and think about what did the Guru really mean. Our rehat, amrit sanchaar and history has made it very clear and obvious that hair is accepted on both females and males. It would be such a hypocritical religion if it only accepted hair on men and not on women. You just want to find a way of justifying that only men can keep hair so that you can ask women to remove their hair- however even if I followed your logic and said ok it was only for men - then it begs the question why not women. You say because women are not supposed to have facial hair - well clearly that is not true because all women grow it. Women are supposed to have facial hair. The problem is people like you do not accept that this is the female saroop. In sikhi however we are fully accepting of both the male and female saroop.

This is because all Sikhs have been asked to keep kesh. It is not gender specific and that is why you cannot find it in reference to either females or males. Have you even read the rehat maryada - seems like you haven't and are simply going by your own opinion. In the rehat maryada it says all sikhs must not remove any hair on their body as hair is considered 'ang'. I did explain this above but it seems like you have not understood it. The Guru said women and men should keep their hair. He did not say women must look like men. It is your opinion that women who keep hair are trying to be like men and will be 'butch' but that is YOUR opinion, women who keep hair are actually being women i.e. themselves. In sikhi the natural women saroop is accepted and celebrated just like men with beards are accepted and celebrated as being khalsa roop. Currently in our society women are expected to look like preadolescent teenagers with no facial hair, no pubic hair etc. Let me ask you this - how is this image accurate or the truth of what women actually look like? Real woman have hair. When you get married your wife will have hair too but you will ask her to remove it because you cannot love her otherwise. That is because you have been conditioned from birth due to your exposure to never realise the truth. In fact in current society there are some women who don't like men with beards - they have been conditioned from birth to not like it - so why don't you just cut your beard because men are not supposed to look like gorillas. Do you see how what your saying doesn't make sense. Women and men in Sikhi are told to keep all kesh as this is the natural saroop or form of human beings. This is not the sikh teachings. Your completely lost - the requirement is not about keeping beard and turban. In your life Sikhi is simplified to a set of dogmatic views that Sikhs are men with beard and turbans. That is completely inaccurate and a lay persons approach. Sikhs are a distinct set of humans where neither the male nor female removes kesh. This is because as Sikhs we are taught that our soul is in the body of a man or a woman. We must look after that body as it is a vessel carrying our genderless souls. Looking after our body according to sikh rehat is keeping all our bodily kesh intact. This is another inaccurate statement. The Guru did not ask for a man to come forward - he asked for a Sikh. As sikhs we are genderless souls in the body of a man or woman. At that time the souls that came forward were all in the bodies of men. The Guru cannot decline them and say actually no, you have to be in the body of a woman or man or vice versa. The guru did not discriminate based on gender so he accepted them because of the quality of their soul. Just because they were souls in men - it doesn't mean that Sikhi is not for females or females cannot be in the panj pyare. The selection of panj pyare is not based on gender - panj pyre selection is based on the quality of your soul. That is the most beautiful thing about our religion - we do not discriminate on gender. We are the only religion to truly accept females and give them the same rights, responsibilities and opportunities as men. Why should we have a separate set of rules for a soul that is in the body of a woman? What kind of religion would say men must keep hair and women must remove hair. Sikhi is far beyond this and has accepted all men and women in their true hair keeping state. This reminds me how the Greeks and Arabs decided that they were not going to train their women in warfare or martial arts because they were 'women'. Spartans at that time were the only race that decided it was utter nonsense and gave their girls the opportunities. And actually at that time, the Spartans were made fun of for doing this and if you read history it is clear the amount of mockery the arabs did saying it was ‘harming’ the girls. I am very proud to be a Sikh as our religion is the only religion that has not confined or boxed its daughters to hair removal like the rest of the world. As daughters of the khalsa we are free completely to be at one with who we are.

I am a surgeon in the NHS and I wear my kara. As sikhs we are allowed to wear our kara - it is protected by law and you can sue the hospital for discrimination as they allow Christains to wear their wedding bands. Please be in touch with me and I can help you send a letter to infection control and if they don't listen we can take it to court. Normally when you mention that it is protected and that their policy is discriminating and how you will take it to court, they will leave you alone. About bare below the elbows - I show my elbows as I don't think we sikhs need to 'cover up' arm skin. Now, people can see the hair on my arm and they will stare because we live in a culture and society that has female bodily hair phobia. In my case my skin is snowy white and my hair is jet black. The rest of the human race seem to have arm hair that blends with skin tone eg blonde/light brown hair on white skin or black/dark hair on dark skin. However I, like most sikhs from north panjab, have white skin with jet-black hair - it is very much noticeable to everyone due to the contrast - people cannot help but to look! I have learnt that the first time you meet someone and when they look at your hair then you interrupt and tell them straight away why you have arm hair. In my experience if you do not tell them straight away, when they are staring, it can go wrong and affect working relationships because they walk away with weird thoughts that you are lazy for not removing it, unclean for having it, incompetent and weird for doing something that they don't understand etc. I use it as a way of educating them and patients on why we sikhs don't remove hair. Its not caused me any problems but I do enjoy catching them staring and telling them straight away. Some of them turn bright red. lol.

That can be reported to the UK police and will be investigated. The court will have to then argue it out as to which 'act' it falls under. Either way punishment tends to be based on the context rather than which category it falls under.

All Sikhs including 'converts' are protected. Discussions about religions are different from discrimination and racism. It depends on the context of the matter in question so without an example it will be difficult to say exactly.

Hi, I am a female :biggrin2: So yes, in the UK Sikhs have unique rights and we should exercise those rights when faced with racism.

In UK law the Sikhs are considered a race. Here is the court case for that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandla_v_Dowell-Lee I am not familiar with the USA legal system.

Racist speech is not allowed under UK law. There are many times I have set people straight. I never knew how to do it when I was growing up but as a grown professional if anyone tries it on, then they have chosen the wrong person to mess with - I will get them done for. Some of my friends cannot be bothered due to the amount of time and effort involved and so they will happily ignore it. However, it is important to stand up for yourself because it sends out a strong message. It is only by sending out messages that you will change societies attitudes. Ignoring people doesn't change anything! I see it as my seva in helping other sikhs that they might go onto targeting.

I already answered your question when I said 'I would 120% marry her'. I have not deflected. Also she is already married!!! I don't think we need to keep asking who wants to marry her when she is happily married and getting along with her life. I also know of her, so be careful. What I want to emphasise is that her hair pattern is due to disease. Most woman do not grow facial hair like that so she shouldn't be the poster girl for this is what females who keep facial hair look like. It very clearly says in the article that she has a disease contributing to an excess in hair. The article is about someone with excess who had the bravery and strength to keep it, something that is admirable considering females with less hair don't keep it. She brings everyone else to shame and I respect her immensely for that. But it is important to realise that it is not an article about 'this is what females who keep facial hair' will look like. However woman do grow visible facial hair - side hairs, chin hairs, visible upper lip hair, 'thick, messy' eyebrow hair, yet they remove it. There are non sikh people who have identified that society has an issue with female body hair. Please see these articles on how society is 'against' female hair on any part of their body that was previously never an issue due to influences from the companies selling hair removal products, media images and porn industry influencing us (males and females) on what we 'expect' to be normal - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/21/instagram-pubic-hair-censorship-sticks-and-stones_n_6515654.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/10120130/Pubic-hair-taboo-like-it-or-not-we-need-to-break-it.html http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/07/pubic-hair-has-job-stop-shaving In answer to the nails verses hair debate. Sikhs have 5 kakkars and hair is part of the kakkars and rehat. Nails are not part of the kakkars or part of the rehat. That is because nails are not considered 'ang' and in sikhism we are allowed to remove our nails for the reason of impracticality and cleanliness. In the sikh philosophy hair is not unclean and does not need to be removed. The sikh approach to life is minimalistic and functional. Having nails would not be functional and would be impractical. However having hair is not impractical and is very much considered part of your 'ang' that should not be removed. Thats why it is in the kakkars and the rehat. If I was to simplify the answer to your question in one sentence then that is that, in sikhi, all bodily hair is considered 'ang' but nails are not considered 'ang'. Your opinion on only head hair being necessary for sikhs is not backed up in rehat or sikh history. Before sikhs were given the identity 'saroop' they did not remove hair anywhere on their bodies. I am sorry to say this but if your keeping only your head hair then you are not practising sikhi properly. Sikhs are forbidden to remove all hair, on any part of their body, and you cannot claim to be following rehat just by keeping head hair. This is a fact and not a opinion. It is backed up by rehat that all hair should be kept and if you go to any amrit sanchar they will say the same. The issue here is that sikhs are not practising sikhi properly therefore there are 'few' numbers of real sikhs. This is purely a numbers issue where we don't have enough numbers of high quality rehat keeping sikhs. We as the next generation need to teach our sons and daughters the rehat properly, especially the sikh boys and sikh girls need to be more accepting of the female sikh saroop just like there is a global acceptance of the male sikh saroop.

You couldn't have said it better -I cannot believe the amount of girls/grown women in denial over the fact that they grow face hair too.

You know this reminds me of when the suffragettes wanted women to have the right to vote so that they could work, have independent finances etc. Sadly at that time there were some women who were against it because, they had the same logic as skaur888 that, they were not men and they were not supposed to do 'manly' things like running a country or having a say in economics etc. The truth however is simran8888 also grows face hair but is in denial that all woman look like this. Its so sad when other woman will claim that those with hair are being men - when infact all women have hair. This is what false conditioning has done to us. We no longer see the truth, that this is what we as woman are. Also if everyone kept hair it would cancel out this argument of 'attractiveness' because the human conditioning would be altered to a state where you would find acceptance in a female with face hair and instead you would see a face with no hair on it as being abnormal. To put this into todays context it is just like how we see people with no eyebrow hair as being abnormal or looking diseased from cancer. Slowly, mark my words, it will be normal in a couple of years for females to remove their eyebrow hair. I have already seen women removing eyebrow hair and the next thing we will say is that men don't find it attractive that women keep their eyebrow hair. skaur888 let me ask you this - where does this thing stop? If you read up on the history of human behaviour and conditioning in psychology and sociology then you will start to realise that we have caused attractiveness to be perceived as having no hair. Its like how some people see thongs as being 'sexually' attractive. Actually not a long time ago thongs were unknown and if you showed them to someone they would have no reaction. But whats happened is that we have conditioned thongs or no hair on a female to be a message in our brain. A few centuries ago when there were no hair removal products, females with facial hair were accepted and there was no issue with attractiveness. This is just like how someone conditions a female wearing make up and perfume to be attractive and 'ready for it' - if you study history you will see that these things just change depending on culture and society. The issue of female facial hair is the same - its actually just the way society has conditioned us and we live in a culture where we are anti female hair. If we lived in another type of culture it might have been different. The issue is that we are trapped by the culture surrounding us and some of us don't even realise it or those that do realise it cannot escape it. Its like how the Chineese preferred their girls to have small feet because that was seen as attractive and so all girls were put in plaster casts and had deformed feet. Those people at the time linked attractiveness to feet and if you told them feet does not equal attractiveness - they would not see it because it is how they were conditioned. It is like how currently in the western culture the size of your breasts are valued and it would be difficult to convince people otherwise. However I am sure in the amazon rainforest where woman walk around naked all the time exposing their breasts - it does not have the same meaning in their society. The issue of female facial and bodily hair is the same - we are in a culture that is anti hair female hair. Because we are in that culture we cannot see it is an issue with our minds and our perception. Also it is going to get worse. It will not only affect females but also men - men are already removing chest hair and armpit hair to appear attractive. In the future both men and women will only be attractive if they remove their hair - because the hair removal companies are in charge of your media, they want you to spend money and will tell you that you must groom yourself in this way, and if you don't then you are not attractive. You the new generation will all follow and not know any better. If in the future men start removing arm and leg hair - If at that time I came along and said its ok for them to keep it and that the 'attractiveness' is in their minds and the minds of their female partners - no one would listen to me because its about conditioning the majority to a certain behaviour. Just wait until you become grandparents and see your grandchildren removing hair from e.g. the back of their necks because they have been told that the head hair should stop at a certain level and so both your girls and boys do a clean shave line at the back of their head where there is supposed to be hair, or the boys start waxing chest and leg hair, or have laser to reduce their hair on their arms and legs. As that age, you will develop an appreciation of how societies values influence your behaviour or thinking. However we must ask ourselves is it the truth? I have often wondered if society started removing female body hair because traditionally, men used to marry young girls. Therefore girls who had grown into women i.e. who had grown 'older' would remove hair to make themselves appear younger, in order to find a partner. Either way the truth is that having hair is what all women look like. This problem with acceptance of the female saroop is societies attitude towards it and it is very much an issue in the mind about 'attractiveness' based on conditioning. That attitude exists with 'false' conditioning where we have accepted something that is false as being the truth. True conditioning is accepting that all women have hair including upper lip hair. Mistersingh in relation to your question on my conditioning then there are 2 types of conditioning. False conditioning and true conditioning. The answer is that I choose to condition myself on true conditioning and I will think before forming an opinion and developing a habit. I will only consciously do something if it is true conditioning. Accepting hair is true conditioning according to sikhi and psychology teachings. As sikhs we have to make sure we are linked to true conditioning - hair removal is false conditioning and must be avoided according to rehat. We as Sikhs need to be conscious of false and true conditioning. As humans we are thrown into a system yet we must ask ourselves does this make sense, why are we doing this etc. Please search false and true conditioning on google to read up more on false and true conditioning because once you understand this, then everything I am saying will make sense. If society accepted female hair then it would be ok for females to not spend hours and days of their lives painfully crying whilst waxing, plucking, threading, lasering, shaving etc. I guarantee if hair was not such a big issue in our culture today then women would not want to remove hair. Who in their right mind would want to cause themselves so much pain? It is only because we have given it an aesthetic value that people do this. Women and now men remove hair because of societies values and reactions towards hair. However, this amount of hair removal is not good for either male of female skin elasticity. It surprises me that woman will go out and buy the latest cream (not proven to actually work) to look after their skin when they are causing so much micro-trauma and micro-scarring from hair removal (proven to cause micro-scarring and micro-skin trauma).

OK I get you - sorry! In that case you should have reported him straight away to the police and you get staff in the store to give witness statements. You probably don't know where he lives so its too late now. l think what would be best is to get witness statements from the staff now anyways and log them all into the police with a description of the 'shopper' person. Then when he comes around the second time to do his shopping - call the police and they will take him away and question him. Its important to log this event because he can get away and say it was a one off but if you've logged it before and you log it again they have to ask him and that will be his warning. It can also go onto his police record and depending on his profession onto his professional record too. Please log it!