Do you believe in destiny? Do you believe that there are things in your life that have been prewritten to occur? I can go as far as to say that if I jumped off a 10 story building with a concrete sidewalk below, I would probably be dead or close to dead within the next minute. That I could say for sure, if I jumped, but apart from situations like that I do not believe that anyone can tell you what the future holds for you. It is as unlikely as having the ability to travel through time. Then why is it that so many of our eastern faiths put so much confidence in fortune tellers, palm readers, and astrologers?
Just the other night my sister suggested we go this face reader at her friend’s house. Just for shits and giggles. I had heard of this guy. I also met him at a wedding in India a few years ago. He seemed to have a very positive vibe and a welcoming smile. He is tall with long white hair and a thick white beard. He reminded me of someone who should have been at Woodstock. He also spoke English very articulately. At one point during a ceremony he was performing at the wedding in India, he leaned over to me and said, “This is all a humbug! This whole ceremony is all a humbug because it serves no purpose anymore”. After that the guy was cool in my books. I occasionally met him at other occasions here in Jakarta and people would point him out saying he was the face reader. My mom even suggested a number of times that I go and have my fortune told but I have never really been interested.
So we tromped off to meet the face reader a few nights ago after dinner. We got the house where he was staying and it seemed he was already in a meeting with somebody so we chilled in the living room chatting and having small chop. It was pleasant. We also had stiff drinks. There was no religious atmosphere in the room. After a good 30-45 minutes a woman emerged from a room looking very distressed. This man had obviously told her something she was not too happy to hear about. And she believed it. This man had a reputation of being very blunt. She took a tissue and went back in. After another 15 minutes she emerged again and my sister and I were told to go in the room.
We walked in to see him sitting across a round table wearing a traditional Indian hat and a white kurta with a saffron colored sash draped around his neck. Now usually people would enter the room saying “Hari Om Guru Ji” and touching his feet and all which is the traditional way to meet a Guru, but I did not regard this man as a Guru and I don’t think he regarded himself as too much of one either. Anyways, I have my own ideas behind all that so I just went up to him and shook his hand, reminding him of the times we crossed paths in the past. He remembered me vaguely. My sister and I sat across from him and prophesy began.
I will not really go into detail of what he said to my sister as it is her personal thing but I will say that neither of us was blown away… Not that I expected to be. I found the situation quite humorous. First thing he did was to pass my sister a stack of papers and a pen and said WRITE. He started naming her features and following them with adjectives, for example eyes, honest. He did this quite fast and she was writing to keep up with him and as he was saying things he was looking over to see if she was writing. He told her stuff about herself and we showed him pictures of my nephews. He said Zubin is gonna make pots and pots of money, Aaryan will be a scholar, and Nesta will just chop life, then he pointed at me and said, “Like him”. Fucking A man, how can somebody make such a wild prophecy and diss me at the same time? I had to look behind me to make sure he wasn’t pointing at someone else. He continued to tell us things and continued to make my sister write. He even made here flip back to the first page at one point to check if she had noted every thing. This was getting heavy, there is no way I can write that much so fast. The only time I use a pen anymore is to sign checks or doodle while I make phone calls. Schools out!
I was next on the hit list though. The man stared deeply into my eyes and I stared deeply back into his. He said, “You are a good boy. A very innocent and decent boy with a good heart”. The last word I heard was innocent. Ha ha ha.. This dude was trippin. I haven’t been innocent since I was 9 years old! He just kept looking at me and praising me to a point where it was just embarrassing and I had to tell the man that I just am not that good. If he only saw me last Friday night he would change his mind. He also told me that I enjoy life a lot and I put too much faith in friends. Pretty accurate I would say. Anyways, I did not come here to be commended so I proceeded to ask him about more important things. “Guru Ji, when will I get married?”. Nooo way Jose, I asked him about money! How is the bidniz, what good dates can you give me for cutting deals? He told me flat out, “You want the truth?” I said yes sir. He wrote on a piece of paper the dates 26th May 2005 and June 2007… I said hot damn, that’s now. I am looking at some good times ahead. He said to me, “These dates… Veeeeeerrryyy bad. Don’t go into partnerships and don’t give credit.” As we left the room he reminded me that I am a good boy and I enjoy life too much. Did we ask about marriage? Well I avoided it but my sister had to squeeze out the question, but before the Guru could answer I reminded him of the rough 2 years I have ahead and with a smile he told her pretty much to get everyone off my case for a while.
So that was that and I was not blown away and I took it all pretty light heartedly. I am going to be as careful in business as I have always been and I will maintain my policy on credit. I just find it primitive how people put so much faith in what these people say and really adjust their lives to suit the prophecies. This is just one Guru but they are here all the time and in India, forget about it, they are everywhere, and they will tell you a lot of stuff about “your future”. Okay, even if anyone did have the ability to see into the future, would you want to know what was in store for you? One person told me that if they knew they were going to die soon then they would spend more time with their loved ones or travel to places they wanted to see. Well, do you need to know you are going to die to have to do that? If that is what you feel then that is what you should be doing now. Or working towards it at least. I honestly would not want to know my future even if it meant I was going to win the lottery in 5 years or I was going to die in 5 days. This is the beauty of life to me, the mystery. It’s like a loving relationship. When 2 people are attracted to each other and start to date, there is an air of mystery about them that keeps them wanting to meet one another and spend time with one another. I think successful relationships are the ones that maintain that mystery. When that is gone then shit is just boring. I mean how many movies are there that you want to watch even when you know what the ending is. Food for thought.
3 comments:
That's a topic i myself have been thinking about quite a bit over the last few months and i'm not quite sure as to which side i lean towards. I'm a firm believer that you create your own destiny...to a certain extent though...beyond that, I'm still unsure. Why were we born into the circumstances that we were born into? Was that fate?
Why is it that certain people are born under very unfortunate circumstances, such as those suffering in Rwanda and Darfur? That's looking at it from a bigger picture though.
My former roommate (and he's an honest fella) used to tell me stories of his childhood...of a lady in their town that could read certain parts of one's future. It was not the lady's aim to make predictions, but certain images would appear in her head when she saw certain faces...and not all the time...sometimes images would not appear. According to my former roommate, it was something beyond her control, but her predictions did come true most of the time.
But I'm not gonna sit on my ass waiting things to happen, thas for sure.
I hear you bro. Alot of people attribute the circumstances we are born into to Karma, actions and desisions made in previous life times. This is somthing I do not believe in at all for various reasons. amybe we can do another post on that as it is a long topic too. But as for there being some reason for chips falling where they do, I do not see any at all. Like you said, there are people born into horrific situations all over the world, and there is no way that fate could justify that.
Hey Avi, I like this topic, wish we were sitting around a bonfire discussing it.
Destiny brings into question the reason for our existence, i mean, if all has already been decided then how come we still have to go through all of it. And if our lives have already been written then is someone out there just reading a storybook and we're the characters in it, yet from time to time the editor likes to send an agent (palm readers, face readers, tarot card readers, etc...) to give us clues to whats gonna happen next? Doesn't make much rational sense, and im not sure it matters that we try to make sense of them as it can only confuse us further.
But rationality aside, i think it is good to have an open mind to the unknown, sometimes they are clues to remind us of how ignorant we are, or that we need to re-assess our reasons for living, or the reasons we have given ourselves for doing what we do everyday and the goals we set for ourselves. There is truly so much we have not understood about the universe, energy, love and our beings as part of all of this. Coming back to why i like this topic, because it makes us question our reason for being here... when we sincerely begin to seek the reasons for this, keeping in mind what is truly important to us, it helps dissipate the clouds of dust that we have surrounded ourselves with over time, be it our over materialistic over importances or our dangerous over indulgences that we explore to keep us distracted.
Its might be good thing that most of us dont understand how some of the laws of the universe operate, if man did then they would probably exploit them for power. So maybe we're not ready for the next step in our evolution, meanwhile we could try to better understand who we are and why we are here.
hmm, i have been rambling on and on, like i said i wish we were sitting around a bonfire chatting about this... next time ok!
Post a Comment