lostguy

Sangat ji i had a good run over the last month but once again i think im just not cut out for this. Maybe there is something within me which is causing me to fail constantly or im just not worthy of this path. Took 2 hukamnamas over the last 3 days and both were quite upsetting to read. I feel like i have been trying and progressing but then again maybe im just not cut out for this. I will list the hukamname below if you want to see but yh. I managed to wake up amritvela for a whole month and do my 5 bania, i tried to do simran often, read extra banis, listen to kirtan, take notes on katha, but maybe recovery is too far gone. I felt like i was doing well so receiving this hukamnama is heartbreaking. Sorry. First hukamnama: Sorath Mahalla 9, Ang 631 Second hukamnama: Aasaa Bhagat Kabir Ji, Ang 479

Yup. I never realised how important it was for us to know these skills but now im going to try learn. What kind of training do you do?

Just want to apologise if this seems like a therapy session or something i really value your guys opinions and want to improve. You're too right bro i will defo try to be more grateful and thank guru ji for any changes that are happening. This past month has been a huge blessing. The thing is i cant afford to fall off again, its taken so much from my mental over the last few years being in limbo and im getting older which means i gotta get married soon, more household responsibilities are gathering and im moving further in my career which means i have to develop more confidence in myself to deal with clients and colleagues, and having a whole battle going on in my mind in the midst of all this may not end well for me. My biggest enemy by far is myself and that i constantly guilt trip myself and make myself feel bad about minor things like a silly thought being rude to someone and i'll start beating myself up about it. Even my friend a while back told me im too hard on myself, but i just want to know that im improving. The hard part is having no clear knowledge as to whether i am improving spiritually through doing paath and simran because even though it feels great, my mind is still producing thoughts of hatred or spite or envy. I wish we had a karma tracker or something so we could know how much dirt we are cleaning and how much remains so we can see progress lol i guess mine is just fully jammed right now and i need to work twice as hard. So far so good bro ive been visiting the gurdwara often, keeping up with nitnem and doing ardaas to keep improving. I have also been going to some programmes which is really nice to be in sangat. I still get self conscious and feel like they may judge me so i dont talk to anyone i just go and sit for a bit but then leave before everyone else loool One HUGE change that has happened this time round of me restarting this journey is that i made a friend who is sorta into sikhi (not gursikh) but fully into shastar vidya and history. And this has had a massive effect on me because im now buying shastars and learning how to use them (just playing around right now but he says he will teach me soon), and i've learnt so much about historical wars and empires of the past. Ive started reading books on maharaja ranjit singh and researching into 1984 and reading posts on sites like 1984tribute.com Its giving me a sense of purpose which previously i may have not had. I always focused so heavily on just simran and paath (spiritual) but never paid any attention to the warrior aspect of sikhi and looking into our history is giving me that sense of purpose. Its still a work in progress and i pray one day i retake amrit and commit to this for life. I hope you guys are all in high spirits!

Thank you bro. You're 100% correct, we should all be uplifting each other since everyone in our community seems to be so judgmental. Your advice on thoughts has been super helpful. I chose a shabad a few days before the new year and have been reciting it often to give myself a reminder. Although I am still getting stupid thoughts here and there, i'm learning to just ignore them and not pay attention to them, this in turn has kinda reduced them aswell but the battle goes on. Im still focusing on doing my nitnem daily and I can tell this is having an affect on me, to a point where I am getting a blissful feeling. I cannot explain the feeling but it feels soooooooo familiar (can you guys relate?) like I know ive felt like this before but then I dont recall a time in my life where i ever felt like that before. Its weird. I think it might be that because our true form is God i am starting to remember this true form? I dont want to jump to conclusions i am definitely no where near finding God but just to sit in the gurdwara and get this feeling is such a blessing. I can only thank the Guru and the sangat here who have shared their experiences with me and I pray each one of you is blessed? One thing i have to say is that it remains in the back of my mind that at any given moment i can fall off from this path again like i have so many times before, and that is scary for me because i really want this to be the time where i finally commit forever to Sikhi and hopefully one day I can go pesh to panj pyare before retaking amrit. But my fear of falling off again is holding me back from doing this.

Honestly since opening up to sangat on here so many positive things have happened to me and its allowed me to make some lifestyle changes and i have started to do nitnem again too. I have to thank you sangat ji and Guru ji. Just reading your guys messages make me feel like im not alone and can share anything here without judgement. Hopefully i can stay strong in this battle now but i know it will be tough. Thank you so much for the replies above Singh375 and Not2Cool2Argue. I value your guys opinions and advice so much. Maybe i have been putting up resistance to what Guru ji is saying, i truly dont know, but what i do know is being able to hear your opinions makes me realise that maybe ive created thoughts that Guru ji might not like me or im not worthy. I get that these thoughts may be nonsense but i cant help it. I get judgemental or spiteful thoughts towards other people/gursikhs for many years (maybe because of my own feeling of being less than them) which I cannot control and it makes me feel sad that my mind could even come up with such gandh. What kind of advice could you give me to deal with these unwanted thoughts? Jaaps of certain banis? Or more simran? Its all a guessing game for me, hopefully you guys can shed some light. Thank you!

Really appreciate your message bhaji. Means so much that you even thought to check up on me? I've been trying to keep active going to the gym and have also starting going to the gurdwara more often which is helping me stay strong. The replies that I got on this post from yourself and others have changed my outlook greatly and gave me a huge boost in my faith for sikhi and sangat. Everytime i feel a slight bit anxious or upset i just think back to all the wonderful things you guys shared with me and i remember that sangat here is so forgiving and loving so i dont need to feel depressed. Its a work in progress but you're right, life is a bunch of ups and downs and as long as i have sangat like you guys to turn to the downs will feel much less painful❤ If you dont mind I wanted to ask a question related to Gurbani im not sure if I should ask here or in another topic but will post here for now. When I read Gurbani, Guru ji talks sometimes about manmukhs and the bad qualities they have. When i read these it makes me feel like they are talking directly to me and this makes me feel depressed too. Could it be that I am not worthy to be gurmukh or am I feeling guilt because of my past conditioning? I sometimes take hukamnana on the sikhnet app and Guru ji will give a hukamnama that is very stern, and when i see this it makes me sad because i feel like i have failed and Guru ji is not happy with me. Am i interpreting the message of the Guru in the wrong way? I spoke with a Gursikh the other day and he was talking about the shabad: main janiya vadhans hai ta main kiya sang, je jana bugh bapura ta janam na dei ang (apologies for bad spelling), and i have always felt like Guru ji is talking about me in the latter part of that shabad, but he told me that Guru ji is only talking about people who are big paapis that are murderers and stuff but pretend not to be. So my question is am i interpreting Gurbani in the wrong way? Thank You for any replies!

Just want to thank all you guys that replied here, it means a lot to me. I read all these replies a few days ago and instantly felt a boost in morale and hope for Sikhi. Although I haven't won this battle, you guys have given me strength to get up and fight again and for that im forever grateful. I've copied all your replies and saved them so I can look back whenever I feel down and i'm sure they'll get me back on my feet like they did this time. God bless you guys?

This is quite long so I really appreciate you for spending your time reading. Maybe this is just me getting things off my chest but then again its probably a cry for help i dont even know. Grew up keshdari but never knew anything about Sikhi till like feb2016, up until that point it was just about drinking, drugs, girls etc, and in Jan2016 i cut my kesh for the first time. I liked it because for once i felt no restriction, like i could now live a life thaf id only seen my friends living. But then I found out about sikhi in Feb2016 a month after i cut my hair and it absolutely changed my view on life because i had an experience doin simran and found a new way to get high off the bliss of knowing that there was something greater than everything i ever knew. I learnt gurmukhi, found sangat, learnt the 5 bania, re-enrolled in uni after getting kicked out the year before, went on my last party( drinkin) holiday with my mates in June2016 and in Aug2016 I took amrit (maybe this was rushed but it felt right). For the next year or so I done sangat of some serious nitnemy gursikhs, we would do amritvela together, go to programmes and do loads of paath and I quite enjoyed it. I would do sangat of sants and mahapursh and it was a completely new experience to the life i used to live, but the main thing is that inside i became someone filled with love and now i look back i would say quite humble and soft spoken. After that year or so of good times everything seemed to crumble for me. I felt like people became judgemental towards me and looked at me weird, sangat that i used to hang around with would just seem really awkward and i still to this day dont know why it felt like that. I was going through a lot at home aswell as my parents separated and there was loads of arguments and fights. The chardikala that i used to feel seemed like it was becoming a distant reality but i still tried to go to programmes and do my nitnem. On re-entering uni I made new friends and slowly stopped hanging around with the gursikhs i used to however i still stayed in touch with a couple of them that i didnt feel were judgemental towards me. This period of my life everything seemed to just spiral out of control tho. I started smoking weed again since i thought nihangs do weed lol and then that continued to spiral into an addiction with drugs, watchin porn, drinking again. And this has pretty much been the state of my life for the last 3 to 4 years. I've still held my faith in God and I know that God is always with me. Ive had countless periods in these years where ive quit everything and started doing my 5 bania again, but then i'll relapse, and then i'll cut down the nitnem to keep it consistent but then i'll relapse again, then i'll try doing loads of simran instead but then i'll relapse again and its just become an endless cycle of me trying to latch onto sikhi but then again i cant stop falling back into maya. Everytime i stop the drugs and get into a good nitnem cycle, i tell myself this is the last time but its not. I contemplated suicide quite a few times but then i realise that its stupid and will probably land me in narak quicker than i already am gona get there lol. Now im at a point where ive got a first class degree and finishing my masters in january, i work a good job, have tons of other projects that im working on to make me money and i would say in terms of a worldly perspective ive got a lot going for me. Sadly however, im spirtually corrupt and im ashamed to even go to the gurdwara, i meet with some sikh friends here and there but they think im just like them but really im a fraud whos doing all the stuff they could never imagine me doing. Today was the first time in a while i contemplated suicide so i thought it would be best to share a post here. Dont know what ill get from it but i just need to say this stuff. I try do simran still but the amount of bad karma ive probably built up by now i dont know what it will do for me, and even if i did try set up a schedule to consistently do my nitnem again, im almost certain i'll relapse because that seems to be the running trend of my life. Thank you to anyone who does comment and share their views on what ive wrote.

Thanks a lot for ur replies, I will defo try and implement them into my day!

Hi, I go through loads of mood swings throughout my daily life and this is really unproductive. For the past few weeks I've managed to stick to 15 minutes of simran a day, and usually after I get up I just feel so much more blissful, calm and composed (also it saves me from 5 chore a lot). What I want to ask is if anyone can recommend ways that I can remain in this state of mind all the time, if not forever haha? Please do tell me about any personal experience as well I'd love to read about them! Thanks!