I am watching this movie here, "Seethamma Vakitlo Sirimalle Chettu."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI57egii7aw
I don't mean to be comparing myself with others, but I cannot help but feel as though I am looking through a window into another way of life. It's about two brothers, daily life, marriage in the SD tradition. I'm not done with the movie yet, but I had to stop and say something.
It seems that the characters in the movie have a very rich daily and family life. So much meaning, so much love, so many issues to work through. It's as though everyone of these characters are in the last 2-3 lives, if not THE last life before they leave to go on with moksha.
I look at myself. I never married, never had children, my parents divorced, and it was a rough divorce for all of us. Our family is not close (father's side of the family). Because of disagreements about something, we didn't see each other for ten years until my brother-in-law passed on. Here, in Texas, within my family of half-siblings and their children, none have any children. We are basically going to die off. I know nothing of my aunts' and uncle's families, even though most of them are in Texas. It's like something exploded apart before I was born, and I never got to experience the family like my much-older siblings did. And of course, I live by myself in a travel trailer smaller than a bedroom, even though it has EVERYTHING I need to maintain a daily life. I also wonder from year to year if this is the year in which I have to start releasing my silver which is my social security (Sanātani women mostly have gold in this case, but silver is all I can afford on disability income and scant work as a renaissance faire worker) - This year is looking more than ever in the past that this might be the time I will have to release some silver to pay surgery bills and repair bills for my travel trailer and Jeep truck. I seem to find a way to make payments at a reasonable speed so that my silver is never touched, which I hope continues, because like Sanātani women elsewhere, I NEVER touch my silver unless it is a dire emergency, last option with no hope for help.
I'm trying to understand why I am having these experiences in my life, such that I fervently hope to reach moksha (or may have already) and not have to come back here. I'm tired. I'm exhausted. However, I have the feeling that I'm not done yet. While I'm thinking about it, I think about the characters in the movie, and I see the interactions with one another, healthy and not. I see they have varied skills that I either don't have or are dormant for so long that I don't know that I could handle using them on a daily basis. But of course, I know hardly any Sanātanis in my personal life right now. I see these interactions and long to be able to relate to people in these manners. It is as though western, Abrahamic society is one level of functioning, and then SD society is a whole another level of functioning that seems fuller, enriching, and bright.
Of course, I might be falling for the "grass is greener on the other side" feeling right now, considering my present situation, where I work (meat kitchen), my way of life, the people I know, etc.
I have thought about going to a mandir soon, after I'm done with all this work as a renaissance faire worker, learning more about them and the people who go there, and seeing if I can put myself "out there" as a person wanting to work within the dharmic business world in some capacity for income, before making the decision upon determining the nature of the mandir, to devote my life over to them in the third, possibly fourth stage in life. I'm currently in the second-third ashramas, but I feel stuck, mired in low-paying jobs without sought-after skills. Not to bleat or complain, but the fact remains that it is very difficult for people with disabilities to gain an equal footing with able-bodied people in America. As little as I make per year, I'm lucky to be doing something, as about 65-80% of the deaf community are unemployed or underemployed.
I see that in America, families with strong Christian backgrounds tend to be financially successful (in a way I wouldn't want to be, though), primarily because it's who you know, and most of the people I know personally are on the fringes with no money, power, or representation in America. My immediately family was not and is not one of these well-connected families, so we don't have these things going for us.
However, I've mentioned before that in the ten years since I learned about SD and gold's role in culture I've circled closer and closer to Dharmic thought, and it wasn't until the last 12 months or so that I started to really circle much closer, touching upon it several times before really starting to glide into the outer sphere of it, and it does feel like the glide path is becoming steeper and steeper towards the center, the more I learn about it and understand the history of how and why what is what it is. It's taken me a long time to get to this point because of my Ancient life experience as a child. I have a lot of built-up resistance to examination of spirituality as people seem to think of it because of the Abrahamic society I live in, and I was not educated to know that there are views entirely outside of Abrahamic thought. It wasn't until the last couple of years before I began to see the divide between Abrahamic and Dharmic thoughts and understand now why I have had so much trouble with the former kind of thought.
Dhanyavād for the chance to air these thoughts out.
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