Khel writes to awaken — breaking through belief and illusion
to remind you of what you already are
Excerpt from ‘Don't Meditate Just Be’ by Khel Kalyan
THE SILENCE IN WITHDRAWAL
hen you abandon the tendency to stop acting constantly and choose to simply be, the anxiety that accompanies sudden silence will hit you as a stark contrast to the life of becoming you’re so used to. You will soon come to terms with silence through an acceptance of your natural state, but you should be prepared for a mild shock.
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You will quickly notice how loud your mind, activities, and habits are in comparison to the peacefulness of your inner space. Amid the incessant noise of our objective world, we have become desensitised to simply existing in the expanse of silence. You may fear that there is no activity in the silence. The human mind craves problems to solve and something to focus on. In the beginning, silence is regarded as a cruel lesson, both boring and terrifying in what it may reveal about your true nature.
The quietness reaches out unendingly into an incomprehensible void of nothing. “Are you able to cope with the stillness?” your mind may jeer at you. Yet hushed tranquillity is all around you, you just refuse to let yourself hear it.
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There are hints of silence in the gaps between the words, the pauses between the notes of music. Meaning is articulated and created in the spaces between the things we use to construct the universe around us. In the hashtag world of non-stop communication, the lulls between words are forgotten and meaning becomes confounded with a torrent of syllables and sounds. Being by yourself in meditation, withdrawing from the constant clamour of the world, allows you to explore the silence, stillness, and space that houses the being in you.
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Entering this new, noiseless territory is a courageous leap into the process of embracing your inner being. In some respects, it is a new form of communication precisely because it is bereft of language. There are no clear signposts to tell you what to expect in the silence or how it is to be interpreted. You will be detached from logic and reason as the ineffable profundity of silence is made clear to you. Allowing yourself to experience prolonged stillness eventually reveals the true nature of its textures, the enormous life and vibrancy contained within it, qualities which transcend the vocabulary of structured prose or rational thought. There is no vocabulary that can express the sound of the universe, just as there is no way to accurately describe the ache of a broken heart.
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Religious scriptures have often used different varieties of vibrational frequencies to comprehend, or at least peer at, the cosmic “Aum” expressed by the silence of the universe. By exploring ways of harmonising your inner frequencies through stilling your body, mind, and heart, you can travel within the immensity of silence found in the eternal universe of being.
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One day, when you’ve become receptive enough, silence will find you. You will wonder: “What is that sound!?” That is indeed the sound of silence. Yes, silence does have its own voice, the universal melody, which cannot be caught by human ears. But it has long been referred to as Aum: the celestial soundless-sound. This sound is your inner voice. If you are fortunate enough to hear its whisper, stay with it, drown in it, and it will lead you to the beyond.
Excerpt from ‘Make Love Not Marriage’ by Khel Kalyan
ATTRACTING YOUR SOULMATE
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oulmates are mistakenly considered to be your perfect match, perhaps made in heaven. In truth, though, there isn’t anything about a relationship which resembles perfection. All love relationships are inherently flawed; that’s the whole point of them and precisely why they are beautiful. They are what they are: an opportunity to grow, learn and consciously evolve. More often than not, the people who mistreat us, take advantage of us and get on our last raw nerve turn out to be our greatest teachers. They are invaluable because they expose all our weaknesses and bring our hidden traumas into the light. With this in mind, do you still think soulmates are always the “right people” for us? If your goal is to expand your awareness and insight, can’t soulmates often be the “wrong people” instead? The people who infuriate us and trigger all our bad traits can easily be said to be wrong for us...but this may only be because we take too narrow a view of love’s role in our journey through life.
Very many people on the planet won’t openly admit it, but believe they married the wrong person and imagine they would have had a better love life with someone more like them. Some run from imperfect relationships, consumed with bitter regret, in search of a true soulmate connection. Regardless of prior experiences, we are convinced that we are wise enough to create the connection we want with someone who is supposedly right for us. Practically every single person today exhausts themselves hunting for the famed soulmate. They do this in ignorance of the fact that we are all someone’s soulmate. We have the capacity to become healers and teachers for each other, even when we bring out the worst parts in one another. Every person, no matter how they behave and treat us, is a divine signal, someone placed in our path to help us learn who we are.
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Equally, it could well be that many of us have previously dated and even shared a life with the right person, an individual that was in fact perfect for us, but one who we overlooked and neglected. Therefore, we must expand our views on who is right and who is wrong for us, what differentiates a bad relationship from a good one. This is not a matter of pleasure, comfort, or apparent harmony. Every encounter is purposefully suited to our spiritual maturity at any given time, sent our way by the mysterious workings of the universe.
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Some relationships are short-lived, as people who are not meant to stay long come into your life. Nevertheless, they sometimes teach us more in a few months than people we know for a lifetime. These are the fleeting strangers who say and do exactly what you need to hear and experience, then they quietly drift away out of your life. To put this another way: some relationships aren’t about living happily ever after, but have a great deal of impact on our lives, presenting us with a short burst of realisation. As we become more self-aware, we come to accept all our love affairs (good or bad, short or long) as our teachers. In the process, we also improve our ability to attract better people into our lives. Every relationship is a divine connection, so you could say we are all in a soulmate relationship right now. Every love affair raises our consciousness, most especially if we are receptive to its lessons. I hope, now that you’ve heard this thought stated, you will be inspired to look at all your exes and your current lover differently. Perhaps, you’ll even want to silently thank them for their teaching – even if it wasn’t pleasant at the time.
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It certainly doesn’t help to chase after your soulmate. If you have a few decades behind you in this lifetime, you will have observed a noticeable change in the landscape of how couples and singles alike behave: the popularity of marriage has been steadily declining while divorce rates are increasing across different cultures. Whereas people used to consider “settling down” as a prime goal of early adulthood, having numerous sexual partners in your 20s is now the norm. Meanwhile, a small but rising number of individuals have become so disillusioned with the transactional, image-obsessed nature of modern relationships that they’ve given up on dating altogether. Many others only secure their best chance at a relationship way beyond their 40s, after many failed attempts.
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Although it is certainly possible to eventually find the relationship that works out for you, this has little to do with stumbling upon the right person but everything to do with your maturity. You see, the people we date and connect with on an intimate level are those who mirror who we are at that given time. We attract our equals, but I don’t necessarily mean people of similar social and financial status: rather, those who resonate with us in ways beyond physical appearance and emotional compatibility. These individuals, mysteriously steered to us, are impeccably matched to our needs (though often not our desires). This includes their flaws, too, which may form a counterpoint to your own. Have you ever wondered why someone special came into your life? It was because they were, in one way or another, your soul’s reflection; they are part of your karmic journey.
This realisation implies that expanding your social circle or trying internet dating is not the answer to your loneliness. Instead, you’ll find that working on your own development and intentionally raising your consciousness (by reading this book, for example!) improves the calibre of the potential lovers who cross your path. As you deliberately grow, the people you date will reflect your increasing spiritual maturity. Every person you intimately engage with should be regarded as your soul’s reflection, an opportunity to learn.
This means that, as you refine and expand your awareness, you will automatically meet and date the type of people you’ve always wanted to. Previously, you may have thought you lacked the charisma and confidence to attract desirable partners, but there were really more profound forces at work. For example, if you have consistently been dating self-absorbed fools or people who took advantage of you, this only indicates something about the person you were at that time. There was a lesson for you to absorb, or a pattern of behaviour you needed to discard; these cycles repeat only until you succeed. Therefore, the solution here is for you to improve the spiritual echo you send out into the world. Perhaps, this could also mean temporarily withdrawing and not reflecting anything back at all – this happens to be my current situation and one which I am wholeheartedly embracing.
I’d very much like for this book to be useful to as many people as possible. However, all the guidance I provide has to be adapted to your situation, and the change you need will have to come entirely from you. The cornerstone of the approach to love I want you to follow is, in essence, to become the person worthy of the one who you really long for.
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I am reminded of the ancient fable of Rama and Sita, a deeply loving couple who embody the greatest Hindu love story. Every Indian woman wants to find her Rama and every man seeks to marry his Sita. However, as many of us learn too late, mere desire doesn’t get you anywhere; as a few discover, the act of searching for the perfect mate is equally futile. The only reliable method is to become an attractor for the one you seek. Therefore, since I’m male, I must become Rama, the archetype of strength, integrity, devotion, and other quintessentially desirable masculine qualities. Then, Sita will naturally appear in the guise of any woman I choose to be with. It is not that I must chase after her, especially since she is an idealised role model; instead, I must actualise the Rama within me.
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But, while this approach definitely works, it will prove horribly frustrating for so many people while they are still trapped in their old habits. To find the perfect love means devoting time towards inner self-awareness and perhaps shattering your current worldview. I admit, it seems simpler to just carry on with the old routine and take your chances. But ask yourself: has what you’ve been doing all along been working? Have you, perhaps, noticed that you keep following the same behavioural patterns in each new relationship you enter? On deeper examination, you’ll also come to see that you’ve been dating the same kind of people your all life. This is entirely because of your own nature; the kind of love you’re able to experience remains the same purely because you yourself have not changed.