Floating On A Cloud

We get a feeling of floating on a cloud when we are onto something which we are doing with our whole heart and passion. The things happening and people around us become secondary, meaning we continue doing our routine work but our thoughts are in the new passion.

Many years back, when I was into learning the Lalitha Sahasranamam by heart, I had this heady feeling. There are about 1001 names of the divine Mother plus the opening and closing lines invoking her blessings.

My mother would always put on the tape of the Lalitha Sahasranamam sung so wonderfully by the Bombay Sisters, Saroja and Lalitha. If I sing it, I owe it to my mother for playing it loud at home and the Bomaby Sisters for singing it so beautifully. They are all my gurus.
This composition has a lot of ragas which I may not be able to identify by names, yet the tune got embedded in my mind long before I had the opportunity to learn the divine names. Meaning the tune floated without my being too keen on the lyrics all the years in the past.
All that changed when my elder sister from Chicago told me of how powerful singing this hymn really is. That was a period of a lot of confusion for me from all around. My mind was full of thoughts of solving some very pressing problems which involved major decisions all on my own. Those were hard times and the mind was clogged with doubts, fear, confusion, fate, futility of all actions, etc.
This divine song was recommended by my sister as a remedy for showing me the right path.
She also joked that Goddess Kamatchi is the CEO and we have to ask help and SHE will oblige.
I grabbed at it like the last straw for a drowning me. My sister had bought a tape and a book for me to follow. When I put on the tape it sounded all too familiar due to my mother listening to it for years together, without fail each Friday and each day of the navaratri and here I was blissfully unaware that this was Lalitha Sahasranamam indeed!

I knew the tune by heart and all I had to do was to follow the text to fit the tune.
Due to power cuts which Chennai was famous for during those years, I thought memorising the whole hymn would make me less dependent on the vagaries of power supply so I went about memorising it. What bliss I found during the week that I tried this divine exercise. I could sing much of it without the book by about a week of starting.
Later I honed it by singing it every single day, anytime, anywhere as I am reasonably fair singer.

Without my being aware, my mind was kept away from my struggles for some time, though I was very much with the problem. The mind had got a powerful diversion from the pending problem. With time the problem got solved smoothly.

Is it the power of Lalitha Sahasranamam, I wonder. It is something much more than that.

The mind needs a mantra, a chant or anything to divert us from our everyday work which has to go on and cannot be stopped for any reason.
It is this diversion which makes the mind calmer.
If the diversion is of a harmless nature like chanting a mantra then the mind reaps tons of benefit.
Should the diversion be like going to a bar to have a swig or two, going out to see any movie, smoking, doing stuff, then it gives the mind a high of a different kind, yet it leads to more problems to not only us but others around us too. Both are addictive yet there's a subtle difference in them. Choosing mind diversions wisely is the key word.
The passion with which I would wait to get back to singing the hymn would make others around me think I am out of my mind, yet I forgot all about my earthly problems for some time.

This is what mantras or chanting divine names actually does to a mind, whether troubled or not. The other day I had the time and opportunity to watch on youtube, MS Subbalakshmi amma singing the popular Tamil song "Kurai Onrum Illai.." What a blissful state she was in while singing it. It was like she was unaware of the entire audience in front of her. The bhakti comes through and we forget the voice, the tone, the raga, the accompaniments. Its the bhakti(divine) and the bhava (passionate expression) which takes us away into some higher state of divine bliss.

Our minds need some diversion in the form of mantras always.
It may be anything: Ram-Ram; Allah-Allah; Jesus; Narayana, Shiva-Shiva or Jai Mata Di. It will take our troubled minds away from the problem. When we cut our thoughts off our pressing earthly problems and return back later to think about it, we see it in a different perspective, we get leads to solve it in ways other than what we thought was the best way.

Stepping back from time to time with everyday work is good for a troubled mind to heal itself. A peaceful and refreshed mind is better able to solve issues in a peaceful and balanced way.

Jai Mata Di!

Mahalakshmi.