Gerald D'Cunha

H appiness and peace are not same; they are different. This is Lent… Jesus Christ’s suffering – through physical torture and humiliation – comes before me. On this earth, He wasn’t God; He was like you and me – a mortal soul. So, He went through all the feelings that you and I would go through in times like the ones He had gone through before He was crucified - fear, doubt, helplessness, shame, betrayal and isolation… Yes, He had to experience all these feelings in order to conclude, “Father, it is not my wish… It is Thy”. Nobody can experience happiness when humiliated and tortured. Certainly, Jesus Christ amidst pain and fear was far from happiness. Had the ‘test’ been taken away from Jesus by His Father, perhaps, He would have felt happy. So, Happiness depended on that condition… But, when the ‘Test’ could not be taken away, Jesus surrendered to the will of God… With that came Peace… The struggle to undo the “Test’ by oneself is how it starts for all of us...

Pic.: Dilip V. “ Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.” - Eckhart Tolle T hese words of Eckhart Tolle from his famous book – ‘Power of Now’- help me to calm down, become peaceful. The misery and suffering in my life, always, are in proportion to the resistance I throw to my life-situations. In other words, they are there in me because I do not accept the reality of my present moment. The more I spend my time resisting – blaming, cursing, self-pitying and resenting – the more I will experience the turmoil with… my misery and suffering. What Life has brought me right now is my reality. If I can’t get out of it right now, I must accept that reality and slowly and steadily take some concrete actions to come out of it… Yes, I should not lie passive, saying ‘God will get me out of ...