As seekers who experience both closeness and separation in our relationship with IkOankar, we may walk these paths and eventually get caught up in thinking that there must be a point where we ought to experience union. This is the focus of many spiritual traditions—permanent union.  In Anjuli, Guru Arjan Sahib says:

Union and separation are determined from the Origin. Having created the five elements, the puppet has been made.

We are often reminded that all things exist in the command of the One. Here, we are invited to deepen our understanding—to accept separation and distance as they are, recognizing that these, too, exist in the command of the One. What are we but puppets in the hands of the Puppeteer? What are we but bodies made of the elements, animated and illuminated by the One?

These elements and creations are always transforming under the Command. If our bodies are transient, existing in this form for only a brief period, what are we, ultimately?

Guru Arjan Sahib invites us to glance beyond the veil and recognize that the One is behind all transient appearances. The same animating life force that we all share, that animates us all, is the One alone.

We are taken back to the beginning of our human lives, all the way back to our time in the womb: Where the fire burns like a furnace, there, in pitch darkness, the being is lying upside down.

We pause.

We tend to think of the womb as safe, warm, and comfortable. Here, it is framed as a threshold to be survived, immensely hot and dark. The womb, then, is a place where we survive by sheer connection with the One. In this space, we are utterly immersed in full, unencumbered remembrance. This is our lifeline. We can take this same lifeline out into the world, too.

It is when we leave the womb that we enter a state of persistent forgetfulness. No longer in that space of connection, we become overtaken with the world and its distractions. We forget the One whose remembrance helps us to navigate the world. We attach ourselves to labels and categories, and to the material world. We feed our sense of duality, and we come to believe that our worldly experiences are all that we are. We become lost, steeped in the temporary, unable to see the forest for the trees.

The Guru reminds us that we can face the tumult of the world with the remembrance of the One—this is the one precious sustenance that endures. This is the oasis; drinking from it, we become victorious. Drinking from it, we experience the Grace of the Gracious One. Drinking from it, we experience union.

May we remember who we are beyond our apparent, transient bodies.
May we enter the sanctuary of remembrance.
May we experience the Grace.

May the Wisdom-Guru guide us!