Wedding Gowns

Even though I'm not engaged, I LOVE weddings (Hey, I'm a girly girl, what can I say?) I read www.apracticalwedding.com every day and today I saw a post that made me think of you guys.

This is the story of a western woman who converted to Islam and planned to wear a Pakistani wedding outfit, but found that she fell in love with a western style white dress.

http://apracticalwedding.com/2012/07/intercultural-wedding-clothing-pakistani-american/#

This is interesting to me, as I am looking forward to wearing red to my own wedding.

When I was a little girl, that was not my plan. Despite the Hindu philosophy in my upbringing, I knew nothing about Indian culture at that time. (I don't think I was even aware that my Early Life of Krishna comic book was Indian. It was just...mine).

I thought it would be so romantic and wonderful to wear my mother's dress. At eight years old, that was the plan.

That idea has changed a lot. My mother's dress is an ivory gown with full sleeves that is very, very, very dated at this point! (Congrats to my parents on a very long marriage!)

And once I immersed myself in Indian culture and began to blend Indian clothes into my wardrobe on a regular basis, a traditionally Hindu gown became more and more appealing.

For one, I look good in red! That's the one color that every time I wear it, someone compliments me.

Unlike the woman who wrote this post, Indian clothes are a big part of my life. I wear salwar kameez frequently and sari for special occasions.

For another thing, I love bling. I love the sparkly and intricate details of wedding lenghas!

Here are some of the gowns that I've discovered and pinned onto my Pinterest account as, twenty two years after my eight year old self began wedding plotting, I continue to hope for a wedding in my future.

http://www.cbazaar.com/bridesmaid-and-family/lehenga-choli/gorgeous-net-embroidered-lehenga-choli-p-ghsfd9028.html

http://www.utsavfashion.com/store/sarees-large.aspx?icode=LSA3

http://www.cbazaar.com/brides/lehenga-choli/rich-zardosi-art-red-net-lehenga-choli-p-ghdda224.html

{I was watching a Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? show with an Indian wedding on it. I'm glad they finally represented something different than they usually do, but they were clearly out of their element. They kept talking about the things that are done at Indian weddings and I thought: you do know that there's no such thing as a typical Indian wedding, right? There's different rituals and traditions based on both religion and region.}

Reviews for my Book

I just wanted to let you all know that it would mean so much to me if you'd take a minute to leave a review for the book that is based on this blog!

Here's a link to the book on Amazon...



 I would love for the people who stumble across the book to see what a vibrant and rich community this is. Hinduism touches the lives of so many people, both Indian and non! 

Can Androids Have Souls?

This is the sort of question that has come up for me a lot as a religious person surrounded mostly by engineers. At one time I dated a roboticist.

It was his belief that if we continue to develop computers to be more and more like the human brain, we will eventually have a robot who is effectively human.

But what about consciousness?

To him, if the machine could imitate consciousness, then it was conscious. I was not so sure.

Talking about this question with my current guy, he had an interesting way to look at it. He pointed out that I believe that consciousness is one thing that permeates all of reality. His thought was that it is one consciousness everywhere, but there are certain places in which it pools. One of the places that consciousness pools is within individual human beings.

A robot in that theory could be developed to do the same thing. If so, it doesn't feel nearly as sacrilegious as the "building consciousness into a machine" did to me.

But is consciousness the same thing as a soul? 

Cover Reveal

This book really is going to get done! Someday :)

I made a cover for the book to help inspire me to move forward. I hit some difficulty with it, but I think I've figured out where to go next and my writer's group is helping a lot. They like the plot I've come up with and they're helping me to polish it!

How do you like the cover? Anything you would change? Does it look cheap or unprofessional? Would this cover make you investigate the book further?

What is the Purpose of Illness?

From a purely biological, scientific point of view, of course illness is the response of a system to other biological systems. Our bodies and viruses and bacteria all have their own motivation to live and continue.

But as a spiritual person, I wonder if there is more to it than that.

Is there a karmic connection to being sick? Do we become sick because of some lesson to learn or some consequence that we need to experience from the past?

Is illness sometimes caused by being at odds with our environment, or by negative thoughts against other people?

I am reminded of the story of the guru who had cancer and his followers urged him to cure himself. He refused because he said that this was something he was required to suffer and if he went through it, there would be no karma left and he would leave the world completely pure. If he cured it, he would have to come back in another life and suffer it later.

Do you agree? Do you think there's a difference between minor illness and major illness?

I started to think about these things because I fell ill last week. Life is sailing along absolutely wonderfully and I feel very at peace the vast majority of the time. Out of nowhere, I came down with strep throat and mono. Still don't know where I got either one from!

Was my illness just part of being a biological being in a world with viruses? Or did it have some other purpose or meaning? What do you think?

The Guru's Blessing

In February 2011, a year and a half ago, my parents and I traveled together to India to visit their guru, Sri Bharati Tirtha.

I was 28 years old and I was still single. I had never been married, though I had been engaged once. Those of you who have read here for a long time will know that I also went through the opening stages of an arranged marriage where the man ultimately chose someone else.

This was very difficult for me, and I felt particularly embarrassed about it as we headed to India. I felt the shame of being an old maid more than anyone expressed it to me, but particularly there I felt as though everyone would judge me and wonder why I didn't just settle and make do like everyone else (I've tried hard to settle in the past, btw, it never works! I think God has been protecting me from making the wrong choices).

My mother knew how unhappy being single made me. She knows me very, very well. She knows that I'm the kind of person who needs a partner to express love and caring to. I'm a family person. Seeing me struggle to find the right person, she has tried everything she can think of to help because she wants so much for me to be settled and happy. It was so hard on her that she was not able to fix it for me.

Five months earlier I had broken up with an absolutely wonderful man. A guy who was so very close to perfect for me, but just not quite. How perfect are you expecting?! I could almost hear my mother's exasperated voice when she looked at me. It wasn't quite fitting together, that relationship, something critical was just off. But relationships are work, people told me. Maybe there was nothing more perfect than that. If not, I was screwed because I couldn't hold it together. My parents worried over my choices, wondering if I would ever find happiness with a guy if I was that picky.

***

One of the traditions in visiting the guru is to ask for a blessing. Before we left, my mother asked if it would be all right if she were to ask the guru for a blessing for me to find the right man. I shrugged and said it couldn't hurt.

And so she carefully composed a prayer request asking that the guru bless me to find the man who is meant for me. She translated it into Sanskrit herself and recited it before the guru.

My face burned hot with embarrassment. I felt like a failure for being old and unmarried. But the guru smiled and raised his hand. We backed away and bowed.

We came back from India and life went on as it had been. I continued to not date. Or rather, I had a first date here and there, but nothing I got excited for, nothing I expected to go any farther. Months and months went by. I turned 29.

***

I didn't know it, but as it got to be November and December 2011, my mother began to wonder about that blessing. Why was it not coming true? It was nearly a year and she felt that a blessing ought to have some fruit within a year.

Somewhere she read that if one had any doubt, the blessing would not come true. And so she began to say to herself over and over, "I have no doubt that Ambaa will find her soul mate."

***

In January 2012 (just barely before that one-year anniversary of the trip to India) I went out on a date with a guy that my ex had started bringing to hang out at our game nights. Within weeks we were both deeply smitten.

Four and a half months later he continues to be completely perfect for me in every single way. My happiness soared when he asked me to be his girlfriend and it has done nothing but climb every day since. My life feels right, perfect, delightful, and full of joy. I have no doubt at all that I have found my soul mate.

My mother called me this morning and, as we were talking, she said, "Do you think this has to do with the guru's blessing?" And she told me how she had been erasing her doubt.

"Could be," I said, "Could be."

Non-Attachment in Action

My boyfriend and I were talking the other night about the book Tao of Pooh. My boyfriend is a Taoist and says that some object to that book being considered representative or educational about Taoism, but he and I agreed that whether the philosophy in the book was Taoist or not, it was great.

I haven't read it in years, but when I did I found it very helpful in encouraging me to relax more and stop trying to control everything.  It got us thinking about other characters like Pooh who are able to calmly and happily go about their lives while strange or incredible things happen around them.

Like "the dude" from The Big Lebowski . Or Forrest Gump .

I thought about how all these characters really have non-attachment down.

The events that happen around them are the sort of thing that the average person would get very worked up about, and try to grab hold of the events, control them, profit from them, DO something with them.

The Dude, Forrest, and Pooh don't try to make the things happening around them belong to them. They don't try to grab hold, but just pause and smile and admire, then go back to what they're doing.

It's like being able to take every moment the way a child sees a butterfly.