On his 25th birthday, we went from Mississauga to New York and stayed with him.
Due to holiday scheduling we went separately, the advantage being that we were with him for almost a month. On the morning of February 4-Sunday, we went to Marble Collegiate Church and prayed. I told Sagar about the MC and the links with the writings of Dr.Norman Vincent Peale (NVP) which I first started reading in India in the 1980s. As we walked through the Met Museum later in the afternoon, I peeled different layers of life in India when I was around 25 years old, the way my father would come to Delhi hostel and we would have a meal together in Golcha of DaryaGanj.
We shared about the struggles of young adulthood and I did a modification of the Healing by Memories exercise which I was taught by a mentor in Manresa.
Healing By Memories – one has to imagine and go back into the time when one was born and the conditions, atmosphere, dynamics of the family and society at that time. This can be done for different phases of one’s life , like the first time when one went to school. Or the first time when one started staying alone , away from family.
Going beyond Positive Thinking to Positive Experience
Dr NVP prayers like Pray to the God who made me, to remake me, have been refined over the years.The Positive experience layer to positive thinking makes the exercise a deeper experience. Museums with children, letters to loved ones who have passed away, walks and gratitudes together are some ways we have enhanced our experiences over the decades.
Flashcards and the Family Altar
In October 2022 when Sagar first shifted to Elmhurst, after two air bnb stints we came from Mississauga and brought some pictures and collages as momentoes. One of the framed pictures was that of my parents -just married- Jan 30,1967. As we lit candles, I told him about the Benares of the 1960s, his great grandfather and great grandmother- Ganesh and Kamla Uniyal and the way my father found a life of the family through marriage and the linked associations which was different from the Shimla life of the 1940s, 1950s. My father’s mother passed away when he was less than five years old. He often told about the mother he did not have, the ways of the joint family and how he came to Delhi to study for his premedical and then joined AIIMS-Delhi in 1958.
Our Journeys Together: After Marble we went to Met. Worship and Museums together have been part of the family tradition. Later in the week, I went to Barre- (Barre Centre of Buddhist Studies-BCBS), Central Massachusetts for a retreat. The Mindfulness of Death special retreat facilitator Nikki Mirgafori told us to do many unique creative exercises. One of them was to write the names of loved ones who have passed and then group read them together, and then places those papers in a common altar which was in the Meditation Hall for the five days of the Retreat.
My father’s first posting when he was around 25-the age which Sagar is now, was to the North East (Shillong-1963). Over the decades, there were many such tours of duty to the North East. The early, mid nineteen sixties was a time for rebuilding the Eastern front. The recent movie “Sam Bahadur” tells how then Major General (Later Field Marshal) Manekshaw took control of the Eastern Command and told his troops that they were not to withdraw from their positions unless he gives a written order, and that order is not going to come.
The picture below the marriage picture of my parents is in Maharashtra around 1976. We stayed in Pune and Khadki cantonments. Institutional and organization memories were ingrained into us, and the personal family library has been a tradition which my grandparents and parents instilled into us. Our visits to Ajanta Ellora caves of Maharashtra which represent ancient monasteries (Viharas) and worship-halls (Chaityas) of different Buddhist traditions carved into a 75-metre (246 ft) wall of rock.
Food for thought
Write about some memories, dialogues, places you went together with someone you loved and cared for. This will enhance the positive thinking and help absorb them in your being, making them embedded experiences.
Earlier perspectives
Prashant Bhatt's notes 