Thank you for the Double Rainbow
How I reentered heaven from earth
“How will I know?” I asked my grandfather
“The Cosmos will change.”, he replied
“What’s that Grandpa?
“ No one has decoded the cosmos yet. You, they, I- we will only know when we die. And who knows, maybe there is no heaven after death. Just a dead end. Or maybe there is one- to each his own. Our heavens are maybe different. You dance in yours, I read in mine. Maybe we all are in a loop, between heaven and earth. Or maybe, this, right here, IS heaven.”, said my grandfather while pointing to a Double Rainbow in the sky. It was raining since morning. And we both thoroughly enjoyed scanning the sky for a speck of the seven colors. I found my colors in it, he looked for his heaven.
He slowly whispered a tune, that I had become attuned to, since he sang it every time he saw “A thing of beauty”, as he would refer to every natural phenomenon around him, this one being a Double Rainbow.
“Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast”
Let me translate for you this Farsi couplet by Amir Khusrau.
“If there is a paradise on earth,
It is this, it is this, it is this”
That was in 1996 when I was a six-year-old girl. Too young and naive to understand heaven and earth.
My grandpa continued,
“Your feet will be more grounded to the Earth.
Your eyes will brighten lives with the Fire in them.
The Air will be stable and the storms will settle.
Your Spirit will connect to the one Above.
And your heart?
Your heart will flow like a River!
That’s how you will know when you are in heaven.”
My grandfather passed away in 2012. Besides all the great things that he was, he was a poet and a thinker too. I think a few of his qualities have been passed onto me. I chose English Literature for my Master’s for two reasons:
- My indescribable desire to read and learn more about poetry.
- That conversation with my grandfather. I wanted to experience the ‘heaven’ that he found in books and nature.
I was a firm believer in God. As strange as it may sound, I thought I could connect with him, as believes every believer. After few years of adulthood and its bittersweet experiences, I had given up on God. But how do you give up on the one whose existence is yet unknown?
By giving up on yourself!
For years, I believed, He(God) lived inside me, answered my questions, and showed me the right path. But when your eyes refuse to see the heaven, even God cannot help you. I drifted away from spirituality and lost a connection within. Only someone who has savored solitude and relished in the loveliness of one’s own company can understand what a waste of one’s life it is to disconnect from oneself. I parted ways from the secret pleasures of life- reading, dancing, unreasonable laughter, positive internal conversations, and belief in God and myself. Few ungranted wishes questioned His actuality. A heartbreak shattered my confidence in Him. In short, life happened, as with any other teenager. At that age, you take everything personally, oblivious to the fact that everyone goes through these phases in life, that Shakespeare has precisely summed up-
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.
Everyone goes through such experiences. I had become so busy with the materialistic things and the worldly charms of the outside that I had lost the internal connection. This was back in 2013.
In the year 2010, my college friend had told me her treasured experiences with God and spirituality. I was mesmerized by her stories. She told me that she had read a book called the ‘Sai Satcharitra’ and that anyone who reads it within a span of seven days, gets their wish fulfilled. Her belief was more in God than fulfilling the wish. I got the book home and kept it in my mini-library in my study room. For years it withstood the dust and grime in the unattended study room, that I had also abandoned during those low years when I finally opened it. And I found this handwritten note from my friend who had gifted me that book.
I started reading the book in 2019, nine years after she gave it to me. You can imagine to what extent time and thoughts can keep us apart from incredible things and happenings. I thought, “What good will come from a book? That’s nonsense, I do not believe in this BS.”
How easily we walk over a book, by just judging its cover.
How quickly we choose the beach over the mountain when we have never even visited the mountains before.
How simply we reject Italian over Mexican, without even giving it a try.
How conveniently we question His power when our dreams aren’t realized.
Our preconceived notions, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness can restrict us from a limitless life.
I cannot write what and how I felt while reading the spiritual book. Words always fall weak in explaining something as mighty as God, and short in defining at length the most undefined topic in the world. The book talked about having Faith and Patience. Isn’t that the only elixir of life? Having Faith in your seeds and the patience to wait for your crop to grow? And there’s one secret in the book that I had known all along in texts and poetry.
The emotions you keep in your heart determine your experiences.
The same thing I have been reading all along in life.
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder- Plato
The beauty you see in me is a reflection of you- Rumi
It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will- L.M. Montgomery
I will not spill on all the details, since it is one thing to hear it from me, and another to read it yourself, like the Double Rainbow, bringing heaven only to the one who has seen it.
A few days back, during my evening walks in the park, I witnessed a Double Rainbow. It wasn’t raining. A fountain near the lake spilled water droplets into the thin air. The omnipresent Sun entered the thick water droplets, flashing through them, not once but twice, forming a mesmerizing Double Rainbow that caught no one’s attention but mine. This happened the first time, since 1996 when I had witnessed a magical Double Rainbow with my grandfather. The spiritual significance of a Double Rainbow was then unknown to me. A six-year-old child wouldn’t be anything more than just fascinated by the Double Rainbow. But, a thirty-year-old writer would go deeper to the depths of the lake on which she had witnessed this natural phenomenon, in order to find out its meaning and to join the dots.
Three questions occurred to my curious mind,
Why This?
Why Me?
Why Now?
And the significance of a Double Rainbow answered all these questions and many more.
A Double Rainbow is considered to be a symbol of transformation and prosperity, the top arc representing the material world and the bottom arc representing the spiritual dimension. A single rainbow signifies movement from the spiritual to the material world- heaven to earth. So what does a Double Rainbow signify?
The ascendance from the material to the spiritual realm- earth to heaven.
That day, my Double Rainbow manifested my reentry from earth to heaven; from the disbelief in God to the firm belief; from the material world to spirituality. I had once again found the connection with myself. I had reentered the splendor and charms of the spiritual world, that I had once rejoiced in. I recalled my grandfather’s answer as to how will I know that it is heaven?
Your feet will be more grounded to the Earth.
I have become more emotionally stable.
Your eyes will brighten lives with the Fire in them.
I have become more giving and helpful.
The Air will be stable and the storms will settle.
I am unflustered by troubles and negativity.
Your Spirit will connect to the one Above.
I am easily swept away by the sweet ringing of the bells or the peaceful calling of the morning Adhan.
Your heart will flow like a River!
I feel my heart flowing all the time.
Can a heart smile? I feel it by watching a plant growing, a tree hissing, the pool bubbling, a sparrow cheeping, a cicada rattling, the wind flowing, and the clouds blowing.
Can a heart laugh? I feel it smelling freshly baked bread, sipping hot brew, touching a glow worm, and petting a dog.
Can a heart flow? I feel it in a warm hug, a sweet handwritten love note, a heart-to-heart conversation, an enchanting poem, a morning run, and 10 minutes of deep meditation.
I pray every day now like I used to before. I find Him in the small cracks and spaces and trees and peaks. But He mostly resides in both the haven and heaven of my heart. This was the story of my reentry and reconnection to the spiritual realm and in turn, to me.
The reentry wasn’t overnight. I read Sai Satcharitra, books on Sufism, started meditating, made peace with my past and a pact with the future to embrace it as it comes. But most importantly, I restarted my conversations with Him, through my thoughts, actions and writing.
To the ones who have elevated to the zenith of spirituality, I need not explain anymore.
To the ones who haven’t yet, I wish you witness your Double Rainbow soon!
