How I Became A Sikh

[Mehtab Singh]

http://www.lighttravel.org/mem/LtrS01.htm

In January 1996, at the age of 35 1/2, I was lying on a beach in the central area of Chile, enjoying my vacation, recovering from the last colon attacks I had had during the past couple months, from working in the stressful atmosphere of a lawyer, dealing daily with all sorts of problems...

As usual, I had taken several books with me to read during those 10 days of complete relaxation. Two of the books spoke about the benefits of meditation in your health (Deepak Chopra and Louise Hay) and how quick you recover from illness and surgery if you have been a meditator. That was the moment I decided I was going to find out more about it as soon as I would get home. Also, I prayed with all my being to God to take me out of the stressful work I was dealing with because I couldn't find fulfillment in it and was just getting sicker and sicker.

Home again, immediately I started to look for a teacher who would guide me to learn to meditate. I asked my daughter's Karate teacher if he knew somebody. It did not take long! A couple weeks later, he introduced to Nam Nidhan Kaur saying to me: "here is the teacher you were asking me for.". I almost suffered a heart attack when I was told that this woman, all dressed in white and with a turban on her head - something I had never seen or even heard about - should be my teacher. I was in shock, but already on my way to my office I reprimanded myself for my prejudice reaction. A week later on March 15, I was sitting in my first Kundalini Yoga class! I felt that something in me had found what I had been longing for, for ever. From then on I never failed a class.

Not much later, in May during that same year, I took my first Sat Nam Rasayan class with Hari Kirn Kaur from Houston, who had come all the way to Chile, to teach her second SNR course there. The coming years we would become friends and I would translate her courses. What a blessing! It had been my prayer the first day I met her!

But God wanted me to catch up with lost and wasted years of pain and suffering.... The same year still, I decided to come to Summer Solstice. I had no idea where I was coming to, what it really was all about. So, June I was sitting here at Ram Das Puri. It was an amazing Solstice, with many, many blessings: I had a face reading with Narayan Singh, a numerology reading with Agia Akal Singh, I received the most beautiful spiritual name for my daughter that I could think of, Ram Rattan Kaur (she had asked me to get it for her as the only gift she wanted me to bring for her from the United States), and last but not least, I had an appointment together with all the Chileans, with the Siri Singh Sahib. I must confess that I did not have any special idea or opinion about him. To me, at that moment, he was just a wise man. But when it was my turn in the group and he started to talk directly to me during that meeting, I realized that there was much more.... He was telling me things of my life that only I knew and said so many beautiful things about me that I never had heard before. I felt recognized for whom I felt deep in my innermost being, that I really was. It was the most elevating experience I ever had. I could hardly remember the words he said when we went out of the room but my friends repeated them to me later, but the feeling, the sensations I would never forget again.

Still I was rebelling against turban, bana, spiritual name and all that. It was like hokus pokus to me and not very trustworthy.... The last thing I wanted to do was to follow the crowd, the herd. I didn't even use a turban during Tantric.... ending up fighting with a chuni which would fly with the wind into any direction and slide down the head over and over ....

After Solstice, back in Chile, I had to live one of the most painful experiences in my life. The dearest friend I had had in my life turned her back on me. She moved and left me a letter where she told me she didn't want to contact me ever again. After many years of very close friendship, this was a tremendous shock. I did not understand her reasons and the fact she had never told me before a word about her real feelings and thoughts. This happened in August 1996. This was the minute I started to make meditation my daily companion.

I have not skipped a day since then until today and I know now from experience, that no matter what goes on in my life, medi-tation is what carries me across! March 1997 I began with Sodarshan Chakra Kriya and to me this is the meditation that

has changed my whole life and still is transforming me.

I have not stopped doing it for even a day since then!

Well, from then on things started to continue moving: I decided to spend the New Year of 1996-97 surrounded by Yoga Students and some Sikhs instead of participating at the traditional family or friend gathering, also finally I was ready to receive my spiritual name and I decided to become a Kundalini Yoga teacher and began around March 1997 the Teachers Training course in Santiago with Hari Nam Kaur, traveling every month 10 hours one way, by bus from Valdivia, down in the South of Chile, where I used to live, to the capital of my country. It was hard. I didn't really think of teaching yoga, since at that point and time I still had my lawyers office and was practicing actively, but I wanted to find out more about this amazing technique which was changing my existence. Not much later I began to teach very actively and was able to take Kundalini Yoga into the most remote and lost villages of this planet, down there in the South tip of America. People who would never have had a chance to get to know a Sikh or KY, if I would not have started to travel all over, had the chance to experience the depth and elevation of this wonderful technique. In a way it was a miracle. For them and for me.

The same year, 1997, I came back to Solstice again. This time willing to tie a turban, to avoid the hassle with the chuni. That's what I thought, but God had something else in mind! During I believe the very first day of Tantric, I had the experience which would change my life for ever:

We had been chanting one of those many meditations and during the next break several people came to me to thank me for my singing and telling me, how healing it had been for them to hear me. I have a Soprano voice I love to sing and had participated in choirs all my life and also love Opera, so, also I have not had a formal singing training, I have an educated voice. BUT, before we got ready to start again the next meditation, a man, a Sikh from Espanola - as I found out years later - came to me and told me to adjust my singing to the group because many people had complained. This man was Guru's instrument! I told him I would meditate about it. We started chanting and I started processing his words and past experiences related to the same subject: people having me shut up. Suddenly a HUGE understanding hit me: "God gives us the talents to use them, not to hide them under a carpet. My voice was healing people. There is no reason to stop using it." The same moment I decided I would never again hide any of my talents, virtues and my real me. I became fully conscious of the spiritual being I am and that I was going to be a Sikh and not take of my turban no matter what the cost would be. That is what I have done since then. I had to close my office as a lawyer because I lost all my clients, I went through all the rejection and judgement of my friends, family and society, but I was ready to give it all up and stand for what I believe in.

This spiritual path has taken away from me everything that would keep me attached to Maya. I lost everything on the material and emotional level, but it feels now, like all the junk that was hanging on me, all the karma that was making my life lonely and empty, was taken with it. (Some things came back in a purified form! ...)

Living as a Sikh and as a Yogi, having had the unique chance and blessing of meeting my Spiritual Teacher who has guided me to see who I am and to trust myself, is worth every sacrifice that it took and it takes to be here, to be alive, to be a Sikh, to be a Yogi. It is a chance in a lifetime to elevate and move on. I decided not to miss it!!!

Many blessings to all. May this lifestyle of purity and consciousness inspire many generations to follow. So far it has worked for me and I would love to suggest all those who do not want to waste a lot of energy searching around and prefer the shortcut to happiness, health and holiness, to try this option. If your soul is ready, you won't be disappointed!

Sat Nam,

S.S.DHARMA KAUR KHALSA

(originally from Chile..., now in Espanola)